Home » Stars! 2.6/7 » The Bar » Eagle's STARS! Abandonia Review
Eagle's STARS! Abandonia Review |
Fri, 11 September 2009 15:06 |
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Eagle of Fire | | Lt. Commander | Messages: 809
Registered: December 2008 Location: GMT -5 | |
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Hi folks.
Been a little while since I stopped playing my main game... Got some time off as work begin to be a little less overwhelming, and I thought this would be a good time to work on my Abandonia review. Some of you might remember that I mentioned once or twice that I am working on this review since some time now... And knowing myself, if I don't do it soon then I'll simply forget about it.
I scrambled a few notes here and there at work and got them all into my first draft. Since a lot of players here know more than me about STARS!, and also since it will possibly also have an effect on you and this site, I wanted to share this review with you before sending it to Abandonia.
I am particularly interested to know if it would be wise or not to incorporate your site adress in my review itself or if it would be better to create some kind of text file explaining where to get to all the ressources about STARS! on the net. Or if it would be wiser not to mention Autohost at all.
Please note that English is not my first language and that I typed it all on my small notebook... Spelling mistakes and typos probably abound.
Quote: | STARS! Review, by Eagle of Fire
Always been a fan of 4X games but also always been frustrated by the lack of good quality multiplayer games around? Look no further my friend. Welcome home.
STARS! is a great strategy game designed solely for the best of multiplayer experience against other humans. The mechanics of the game are not only detailed and well designed but also well balanced, thanks in part to the help of a small but very loyal player base who spots possible bugs and/or abuse and police the games officialised by their automatic host.
Loyal to the (now modern) ideology of the 4X space game genre such as Master of Orion, you are elected as the everlasting leader of a planet from which the dominant race have managed somehow to discover the secrets of space exploration and colonization. It is then up to you to guide this emerging race into the void and turn this humble begining into a mighty empire able to crush the other races in the galaxy. A small story is written in the nice ingame helpfile system, explaining how the galaxy formed and why you have limitations such as not being able to cross the borders of the galaxy map.
Created in the era of the elderly Windows 3.1, one of my greatest fear was to discover innabilities due to the antique coding. Not only did STARS! age wonderfully along with the new modern OSes, it only took me a few sessions to realize that what can be considered weak points can just as easily be turned into assets. For example, the size and the lack of entry in the registery allow you to carry the game on a USB stick and play from about any computers as long as you are aware and wary of the cheat protection. The interface and spartan graphics, reminescent of the old Windows 3.11 games, are another good example. Obviously designed with the limitation of the antique system in mind, they do both excell in their practicality. I have to admit that, in the 20 or so games that I played so far, the interface never got in my way even once. This game also do not sport music at all and barelly even support sound effects, depending of the version that you are using. Obviously done to, again, keep the file size very small, it does help in the long run to concentrate on the task at hand when playing. The game taking so little ressources on its own to run on your computer, it is also a simple matter to open your favorite music player to listen to music you actually like instead of always listening to the same boring syntethyser music. A problem which plague a lot of other older games.
The whole game core files being able to fit on a single floppy, it is easy to simply carry the game and your turn to any other computer 16 or 32bits compatible and play from there (While XP works without an itch, 64bits Vista systems are not compatible. DOSBox can be used in conjuction with Windows 3.11 in this case.). The game will simply create on the new machine a harmless |
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Re: Eagle's STARS! Abandonia Review |
Sat, 12 September 2009 10:56 |
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iztok | | Commander | Messages: 1207
Registered: April 2003 Location: Slovenia, Europe | |
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Hi!
I'd like to add a warning, that you shoud IMO mention in the second paragraph: Stars was designed primarily as a PBEM multiplayer game. Nowadays everyone assumes MP is real-time. As a consequence of PBEM, games with live players take long time to develop and finish, so one of the needed virtues to play Stars! is patience (that's IMO in quite a short supply nowadays ).
Maybe you should also enphasize many viable ways the game can be played: use fast, but low-capactiy race, and try to quickly eliminate slower neighbours to compensate for low capacity with more "territory", or use slower race with high capacity, play it friendly, and crush everybody in later stages of the game, or go with something in-between, trading techs, ships, planets and alliances, just to achive the goal of the particular game.
Anyway, I'd say you wrote a good review. OFC I'd done it a bit differently, but if that's the style of Abandonia, just go ahead.
BR, Iztok
[Updated on: Sat, 12 September 2009 10:58] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Eagle's STARS! Abandonia Review |
Sat, 12 September 2009 16:27 |
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I like the review.
And my suggestion would go into a similar direction like itzok's: I'd emphasize that the true joy of playing comes when playing vs other humans.
And the last chapter I'd rework a bit: less emphasis on time consumption, more emphasise on the advantage of roundbased pbem-games concerning your time and life schedule in comparison to realtime- and online games which keep you slaved to the comp.
Eagle of Fire wrote on Fri, 11 September 2009 21:06 |
I am particularly interested to know if it would be wise or not to incorporate your site adress in my review itself or if it would be better to create some kind of text file explaining where to get to all the ressources about STARS! on the net. Or if it would be wiser not to mention Autohost at all.
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IMHO it is one of the big assets of Stars that there are lots of strategy articles available and a still lively community you can play with. Yes, I'd certainly mention autohost, stars-wiki (http://wiki.gible.net/), starsfaq.com.
Actually I'd add some parts to the download area besides the game:
* Stars! Official Strategy Guide (http://stars.arglos.net/download/ssg.zip)
* How and where do I get a serial code? http://starsautohost.org/sahforum/index.php?t=msg&th=115 8&rid=1#msg_29817
* the newest Stars-help with a find-feature: http://stars.arglos.net/download/e27ihelp.zip
What Stars file do you intend to offer for download?
- demo
- german/english shareware, jrc4
Do you intend to offer one free serial to give everybody the option to use the race wizard?
One other thing that might be worth to be mentioned:
A nice and (usually) mature player community that regularly offers new games specifically for beginners. the game is from the 90ies and the average Stars player is older, has a life which often enough involves job, family and kids and this also shows in the games and turn schedules. Most of us can be called hardcore strat&tact players with a serious history of game addictions and... having coped with it somehow.
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Re: Eagle's STARS! Abandonia Review |
Sat, 12 September 2009 18:05 |
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Eagle of Fire | | Lt. Commander | Messages: 809
Registered: December 2008 Location: GMT -5 | |
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Thank you all for your comments. I'll make sure to take note of this when I will finish my review.
Quote: | And the last chapter I'd rework a bit: less emphasis on time consumption, more emphasise on the advantage of roundbased pbem-games concerning your time and life schedule in comparison to realtime- and online games which keep you slaved to the comp.
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Quote: | I'd like to add a warning, that you shoud IMO mention in the second paragraph: Stars was designed primarily as a PBEM multiplayer game. Nowadays everyone assumes MP is real-time. As a consequence of PBEM, games with live players take long time to develop and finish, so one of the needed virtues to play Stars! is patience (that's IMO in quite a short supply nowadays ).
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Yeah, I know that already. I am planning to write a final paragraph indicating that STARS! is really for hardcore strategy gamers and that a neophyte strategy gamer should look into easy strategy titles like Ascendancy and SpaceWard Ho!. It is also why I've placed a lot of emphasis on the heavy time requirement in the end of my review: I don't think this game would be good for a younger audience on a sugar rush...
Quote: | One other thing that might be worth to be mentioned:
A nice and (usually) mature player community that regularly offers new games specifically for beginners. the game is from the 90ies and the average Stars player is older, has a life which often enough involves job, family and kids and this also shows in the games and turn schedules. Most of us can be called hardcore strat&tact players with a serious history of game addictions and... having coped with it somehow.
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Well, as much as I'd want to describe STARS! in depth, I am not particularly interested in breaking the Abandonian longest review record. I really worked hard to write a epured review which is as simple as possible while including as many elements as I could. I was thinking about including such things as what you mentionned in a readme text included in the archive.
Quote: | What Stars file do you intend to offer for download?
- demo
- german/english shareware, jrc4
Do you intend to offer one free serial to give everybody the option to use the race wizard?
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An old archive of the game on 2.6i that I have found on the net, including 16 serial codes which were (I think?) found in the past on a hacker site and which were consequently banned on the next releases. This would mean that someone downloading the archive could use the serials to play with his friends, and if he/she/they wish to become serious and come to Autohost (or play on the current version) they'd need to find a new serial code... Like those which can be found here.
-EoF
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Re: Eagle's STARS! Abandonia Review |
Sun, 13 September 2009 20:47 |
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Eagle of Fire wrote on Mon, 14 September 2009 08:28 |
Quote: | One other thing that should be mentioned is that Stars! can be played in Unix/Linux systems thanks to Wine, and that similar arrangements can be made for Macs.
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I am not sure that I should add this in the review. Should not Mac users already know about this?
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Well... I guess not every game runs ok in Wine etc., so it might be worth mentioning that this game does run OK under emulation. Does Abandonia have categories for Max / *nix games? If so, can you flag it in those if it works with Wine?
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Re: Eagle's STARS! Abandonia Review |
Mon, 14 September 2009 15:23 |
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Orange | | Officer Cadet 1st Year | Messages: 215
Registered: November 2005 Location: TO, ONT, CA | |
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Dogthinkers wrote on Sat, 12 September 2009 01:18 |
Eagle of Fire wrote on Sat, 12 September 2009 06:43 | I am suddenly overcome by doubt... Should "diplomatie" not be spelled "diplomacy" in English? I think I wrote it in French...
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Correct, it should be "diplomacy"
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The good thing (or bad, depending on your point of view) about English is that english writers/users will (steal) use words from other languages to become "english". Perhaps "diplomatie" will get into the Oxford dictionary someday as an english word.
Have look at http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Stars!
With respect to you article, I would suggesting compacting your last 2 paragraphs into one i.e.
Created in the era of the elderly Windows 3.1; the Stars game runs well up to the 32bit Vista OS. It will run fine on 64bit Vista OS and Windows under Virtual XP mode. As such, you may easily store the game and games on a USB stick and play from any computer.
You could jazz it up a bit - for example
STARS! is a great strategy game designed solely for the best of multiplayer experience against other humans. The mechanics of the game are not only detailed and well designed but also well balanced, thanks in part to the help of a small but very loyal player base who spots possible bugs and/or abuse and police the games officialised by their automatic host.
Could become
STARS! it is truly a game ahead of its time. It is by far one of the most strategically in-depth and balanced games in existence. It has kept people addicted for years, and further a loyal player community continues to support forum and a library of articles from game mechanics to strategies (my personal favorite: the Horde Strategy). See http://wiki.gible.net/index.php/Main_Page
[Updated on: Mon, 14 September 2009 15:37] Report message to a moderator
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Re: Eagle's STARS! Abandonia Review |
Tue, 15 September 2009 09:49 |
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Orange | | Officer Cadet 1st Year | Messages: 215
Registered: November 2005 Location: TO, ONT, CA | |
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gible wrote on Mon, 14 September 2009 18:50 | ooo Orange writes well...
Orange...I have a little err.. job for you. The pay is utter crap but its very personal rewarding and eventually it brings great.. well... modest fame
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Gible: The wording is mostly yours, thus you should get the fame. I intend to get my fame from winning the Dueling Championship, hopefully this year.
Eagle of Fire wrote on Mon, 14 September 2009 23:04 | Orange: nice try, but Abandonia forbid the stealing and copying of other articles.
Yes, I did read those.
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As someone with an interest in copyright law, the "doctrine of fair use" permits the copying of small portions of the works of others especially for articles/comments. This would not be the "stealing and copying of other articles" especially whole or substantially whole articles.
[Would you care to guess what I do in RL ?]
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Re: Eagle's STARS! Abandonia Review |
Sun, 27 September 2009 15:12 |
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Eagle of Fire | | Lt. Commander | Messages: 809
Registered: December 2008 Location: GMT -5 | |
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Ok, I have some more extra time of quiet today. Time to finish this.
Quote: | I'd like to add a warning, that you shoud IMO mention in the second paragraph: Stars was designed primarily as a PBEM multiplayer game. Nowadays everyone assumes MP is real-time. As a consequence of PBEM, games with live players take long time to develop and finish, so one of the needed virtues to play Stars! is patience (that's IMO in quite a short supply nowadays Wink ).
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I purposely ignored your suggestion of adding the PBEM note on the second paragraph. I expect that youngsters will be the biggest target audience, and telling them right away that this game is to be played by email ought to scare most of them from the start. I also hope that the patience thing will be assessed well enough in the last part of the review.
Hopefully we can hook a few players with the single player mode, which can be played out fast, and then the multiplayer "problems" should be easy for them to cope with afterward. Doing the reverse would probably not give good results.
Quote: | As someone with an interest in copyright law, the "doctrine of fair use" permits the copying of small portions of the works of others especially for articles/comments.
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It migh be so, but it really is Abandonia policy not to copy even parts of existing reviews. The goal is to have a new review which can then become the property of Abandonia.com in full, and thus should always be a review totaly original made by the reviewer himself.
Quote: | Nice review!
I found only minor nitpicks, mostly concerning spelling of plurals: Rolling Eyes
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Thanks, I fixed them. Damn plurals, they'll be the end of me!
Here is the updated review:
Quote: | STARS! Review, by Eagle of Fire
Always been a fan of 4X games but also always been frustrated by the lack of good quality multiplayer games around? Look no further my friend. Welcome home.
STARS! is a great strategy game designed solely for the best of multiplayer experience against other humans. The mechanics of the game are not only detailed and well designed but also well balanced, thanks in part to the help of a small but very loyal player base who spots possible bugs and/or abuse and police the games officialised by their automatic host.
Loyal to the (now modern) ideology of the 4X space game genre such as Master of Orion, you are elected as the everlasting leader of a planet from which the dominant race have managed somehow to discover the secrets of space exploration and colonization. It is then up to you to guide this emerging race into the void and turn this humble begining into a mighty empire able to crush the other races in the galaxy. A small story is written in the nice ingame helpfile system, explaining how the galaxy formed and why you have limitations such as not being able to cross the borders of the galaxy map.
Created in the era of the elderly Windows 3.1, one of my greatest fears was to discover inabilities due to the antique coding. Not only did STARS! age wonderfully along with the new modern OSes, it only took me a few sessions to realize that what can be considered weak points can just as easily be turned into assets. For example, the size and the lack of entry in the registry allow you to carry the game on a USB stick and play from about any computer as long as you are aware and wary of the cheat protection. The interface and spartan graphics, reminescent of the old Windows 3.11 games, are another good example. Obviously designed with the limitation of the antique system in mind, they do both excell in their practicality. I have to admit that, in the 20 or so games that I played so far, the interface never got in my way even once. This game also does not sport music at all and barelly even supports sound effects, depending of the version that you are using. Obviously done to, again, keep the file size very small, it does help in the long run to concentrate on the task at hand when playing. The game taking so little ressources on its own to run on your computer, it is also a simple matter to ope |
...
STARS! Wiki
STARS! Wiki Français
I am on a hot streak... Literally.Report message to a moderator
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Re: Eagle's STARS! Abandonia Review |
Sun, 27 September 2009 20:43 |
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Hi Eagle of Fire:
Fantastic! Hope to see the new stars enthusiasts here soon!
Just a few minor spelling and grammatical corrections:
ressources ==> resources (multiple places)
The whole game core files being ==> Since all the core game files are
specialised ==> specialized
combinaison which strike ==> combination which strikes
Thanks so much for helping our our community by doing this.
naz
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