It seems that you're using an outdated browser. Some things may not work as they should (or don't work at all).
We suggest you upgrade newer and better browser like: Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer or Opera

×
Community
General discussion (archive)New release: Starflight 1+2(131 posts)(131 posts)
(131 posts)
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
This is my favourite topic
Posted November 24, 2011
Meet Starflight, one of the first great space opera adventures, available here on GOG.com for just $5.99.

Some of you may not know this game but that’s why we write these fascinating articles, right? [url=http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/starflight_1_2]Starflight 1 begins on the planet Arth, when your civilization discovers that they were, in fact, a colony planet of Earth. Excavations into the ancient colony landing sites enable humans to build starships, and set course for new life and new civilizations. You are set to embark on a mission to re-explore space and discover why the Old Empire collapsed. As time goes by and you discover new planets ready to be colonized, discover new lifeforms, and eventually build yourself a proper battleship, an old threat emerges and will humans triumph this time over the mysterious Crystal Planet which endangers the galaxy, or will it all fall to ruin and ashes again?

Gameplay consists of oddly familiar features for the genre, in part because Starflight defined a number of standard elements space opera adventure games. For example, you start out with a ship that is held together with duct tape and baling wire. Most of the cool features aren’t available yet--like weapons. Initially, you will need to get by with mining and trading, but after you’ve paid your dues, things start to get more interesting. When you’ve earned a little cash through hard work you can enroll a crew to man six different posts (each has a direct correlation to your ship’s performance) and upgrade every part of your spaceship. You can also land on planets (but not all of them, some are so high gravity that you will crash if you try). After you touch down safely, you can send a terrain vehicle to travel around the planet for minerals, artifacts, or alien lifeforms (that ring a bell for anyone? :).

The Starflight universe consists of over two hundred stars and several hundred planets to explore, and the Starflight II universe is even bigger. No RPG can be good without random encounters, and you’ll meet aliens of all kinds and shapes. Some will be belligerent, and some will be friendly, and you’ll rarely know until after they’ve fired at you.

Starflight 2 basically takes all the good things from it’s predecessor and improves on it drastically. Following the events of the first game, the galaxy is at relative peace but a race of cowardly, gelatinous blobs gain access to superior technology and it’s your mission to find out how to stop them! The story may start a bit ordinarily, but it definitely ramps up to an exciting finale! If you’re a fan of Starflight--or another game in our catalogue that has you flying around the stars and talking to aliens--you should definitely pick up this incredible two pack for just $5.99 today!
Posted November 24, 2011
avatar
Skystrider: snip
Dear Sir,

will you do me the honor and let me gift you next gog you'll be interested in?
Posted November 24, 2011
avatar
spindown: I'm getting tired of all the smartasses who keep posting this BS. It's just splitting hairs on semantics, nothing more. Normal people use the expression "buying a game" in the same sense as "buying a DVD" or "buying a book." When you say that you buy a book, you obviously don't mean that you acquire the intellectual property rights. You just buy a reproduction of its contents, which is really all a customer wants. I think almost everybody would consider it pretty ridiculous if you kept insisting that you cannot buy a book but only a license to read it. Buying something in the everyday sense means to get legitimate access to something for indefinite and (mostly) unrestricted use. So yes, I can indeed buy games from GOG, thank you very much.
Thank you, ever so much, for saying that. Really.
Post edited November 24, 2011 by EndlessKnight
Posted November 24, 2011
avatar
grviper: Release 1.01 is still beta?
Yes, officially the devs are calling the 1.01 release Beta 5. Had a little play through of the re-make and couldn't find any bugs so far. Even so, I will still be buying the GOG releases too as they are more authentic and in some ways the original games are still the best ;)
Posted November 24, 2011
avatar
timppu: So which platform has the best version of these? I presume PC versions probably don't have any sound card support and at least SF1 is CGA graphics (ack!!!), so how about the Amiga and Sega Genesis versions? Bugginess, graphics, sounds?
There was an EGA version of SF1, and the GOG screenshots look like that. I've got the original CGA version and it looks quite different, even in composite mode (see www.mobygames.com/game/dos/starflight/screenshots for examples of RGB CGA, composite CGA, and EGA SF1). The sound is PC-speaker only...

(Edited to fix the URL...)
Post edited November 25, 2011 by thekittster
Posted November 24, 2011
Oooh I'm having this, pretty sure I can actually afford it and even if I can't, screw it its StarFlight!
Posted November 24, 2011
Wow, these were such great games back in the day! Especially the original. Never got to play the 2nd game, so maybe now's my chance.

But a word of caution... I'm not sure about #2, but the original Staflight has a VERY STRANGE SAVEGAME system, and if you're not careful you WILL get burned. Maybe someone else can recall exactly how it works and put up a better warning. Basically, it's something like... you can't just "exit" the game and have the game remember where you left off. When you finish the game, you MUST EXPLICITLY SAVE your progress BEFORE you exit... or something like that. I actually did play this last year, and when I was finished one day i just exited. Came back the next day, and my old savefile was UNREADABLE. When you go into the game, it is updating your savegame file as you play, but it won't close the file and save your final progress until you tell it to, making the savegame "corrupt" until you save it.

This might be one of those games where you're wise to make a BACKUP of your savegame folder before you begin playing for the day. I think I used to have a .BAT file that would copy yesterday's save to another folder before starting to play. Then if you get bit, you'll at least be able to recover,

I don't mean to unduly alarm anybody, because this was truly a great classic game. But please do "practice" playing and saving and restarting the game before you dig in for the long haul.
Posted November 24, 2011
avatar
spindown: ...
You've totally missed Tsugirai's point though. It was a response to HGiles saying that because the EA EULA has a some lines completely irrelevant and inapplicable to the GOG release, he/she won't be buying it.

HGiles seems to think that the EA EULA means he will own Starflight 1+2 less than other GOGs even though you're only ever granted a limited use licence. I think Tsugirai was simply pointing out that while, no you won't actually own Starflight 1+2, it doesn't matter because you don't own any of the other games you own.


Or at least that was how I interpreted it.
Posted November 24, 2011
avatar
SirPrimalform: snip
I suppose Tsugirai and I agree that you don't own the EA games with their EULA any more or less than any of the other games on this site. However, if I understand him correctly, he would say it's because we don't own any of the games, while I would argue that we own all of the games we've bought here. I'm sorry if I sounded rude in my previous post, but people keep bringing up this notion that we don't actually own anything, which I find rather irritating. I get their point, but I strongly disagree as long as we're talking about the common-sense meaning of ownership and not intellectual property rights or anything like that.
Posted November 24, 2011
avatar
SirPrimalform: snip
avatar
spindown: I suppose Tsugirai and I agree that you don't own the EA games with their EULA any more or less than any of the other games on this site. However, if I understand him correctly, he would say it's because we don't own any of the games, while I would argue that we own all of the games we've bought here. I'm sorry if I sounded rude in my previous post, but people keep bringing up this notion that we don't actually own anything, which I find rather irritating. I get their point, but I strongly disagree as long as we're talking about the common-sense meaning of ownership and not intellectual property rights or anything like that.
Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that it's fine to say 'own' when you mean 'own a licence for'. I just thought that in this specific instance that Tsugirai was less being pedantic and more trying to make a point to HGiles.
Posted November 24, 2011
avatar
spindown: I suppose Tsugirai and I agree that you don't own the EA games with their EULA any more or less than any of the other games on this site. However, if I understand him correctly, he would say it's because we don't own any of the games, while I would argue that we own all of the games we've bought here. I'm sorry if I sounded rude in my previous post, but people keep bringing up this notion that we don't actually own anything, which I find rather irritating. I get their point, but I strongly disagree as long as we're talking about the common-sense meaning of ownership and not intellectual property rights or anything like that.
avatar
SirPrimalform: Don't get me wrong, I agree with you that it's fine to say 'own' when you mean 'own a licence for'. I just thought that in this specific instance that Tsugirai was less being pedantic and more trying to make a point to HGiles.
Yep. Thank you, SirPrimalform.

Spindown: Sorry if I was to be misunderstood, I like being short and to the point most of the time. HGiles said (if I understood him correctly). that he won't buy EA games, just because he doesn't own them like he does with the other titles. Saying you don't own any of the games was simply shorter than saying you own EA games on gog like you own any other titles here. I also thought this phrasing will better get my point across, guess I was wrong, lol.
Post edited November 24, 2011 by Tsugirai
Posted November 24, 2011
This game is no doubt an oldie, and I think some people will have trouble enjoying it for that reason. But, this is a game I'm considering breaking my "sale purchases only" for.

Anyway...would love to play SC without having to look up coordinates on a map for copy protection.
Posted November 25, 2011
avatar
spindown: I'm getting tired of all the smartasses who keep posting this BS. It's just splitting hairs on semantics, nothing more. Normal people use the expression "buying a game" in the same sense as "buying a DVD" or "buying a book." When you say that you buy a book, you obviously don't mean that you acquire the intellectual property rights. You just buy a reproduction of its contents, which is really all a customer wants. I think almost everybody would consider it pretty ridiculous if you kept insisting that you cannot buy a book but only a license to read it. Buying something in the everyday sense means to get legitimate access to something for indefinite and (mostly) unrestricted use. So yes, I can indeed buy games from GOG, thank you very much.
As can I, happily. But there is still a real issue here, if not with GOG itself.

We are talking about the Doctrine of First Sale, which (among other things) makes it perfectly legal to run a used bookstore or sell your DVD collection on Amazon.

However, DoFS is very much under challenge in this new frontier of downloaded and streamed digital products.

For example: DoFS means that book or music copyright owners cannot enter my house and seize my legally-purchased, physical copies of their intellectual property REGARDLESS of whatever changes they wish to make to their business models or license terms. I bought 'em; they're mine. I can keep them, resell them or give them away as it pleases me. In addition to my "user license" to read Stephen King's book, my ownership of the actual printed item is recognized and protected by the law.

Now compare that with the EULA which every user of the Kindle must assent to. Amazon can reach out and erase my entire library and there is not one thing I can do about it. Doubt me? Go read the terms.

You're right, we never "owned" that book, song or whatever to being with. The problem confronting us now is that the digital marketplace enables a subversion of DoFS --- now we don't even own our personal, legal copy.

This is not "semantics," brother. This is a major step backwards for consumer rights and the courts cannot address it quickly enough.
Post edited November 25, 2011 by brainfromarous
Posted November 25, 2011
I'm excited to see the SF series on gog.com, but I will not be buying them due to that fact that I still have the original boxes and their contents for both games from when they were new! The EGA version of SF1 was the first boxed game I got for the PC and it has remained in my top 10 favorite video game series (along with Deus Ex, Fallout, etc.) ever since. Aspects of the Starflight games are still inspiring modern game developers, with recent influences being seen in games such as Mass Effect 1 & 2.

With that said, it's probably going to be hard for a lot of people to get into these - with the exception of true fans of games from that era, and possibly die-hard space RPG fans. If you do make the leap, make sure to read all the notices at the starport and note down every clue that you find. You can also beat the game very quickly by following a walkthrough (there are many out there now). Finally, although it is cumbersome, don't be afraid to save often and make multiple backups of your saved files at various points. Oh yeah, and have fun!
avatar
tritone: Wow, these were such great games back in the day! Especially the original. Never got to play the 2nd game, so maybe now's my chance.

But a word of caution... I'm not sure about #2, but the original Staflight has a VERY STRANGE SAVEGAME system, and if you're not careful you WILL get burned. Maybe someone else can recall exactly how it works and put up a better warning. Basically, it's something like... you can't just "exit" the game and have the game remember where you left off. When you finish the game, you MUST EXPLICITLY SAVE your progress BEFORE you exit... or something like that. I actually did play this last year, and when I was finished one day i just exited. Came back the next day, and my old savefile was UNREADABLE. When you go into the game, it is updating your savegame file as you play, but it won't close the file and save your final progress until you tell it to, making the savegame "corrupt" until you save it.

This might be one of those games where you're wise to make a BACKUP of your savegame folder before you begin playing for the day. I think I used to have a .BAT file that would copy yesterday's save to another folder before starting to play. Then if you get bit, you'll at least be able to recover,

I don't mean to unduly alarm anybody, because this was truly a great classic game. But please do "practice" playing and saving and restarting the game before you dig in for the long haul.
Because the game engine is so old and was so massive at the time, it worked by modifying the main game files at runtime. This means 2 things:

1. In order to start over, you need to restore a backup of the original files. The original floppies were actually write-protected and you had to either install them to the hard drive (if you had one) or do a disk-to-disk copy and play from that.

2. In order to leave the files in a working state, you have to choose the "save and quit" option so that the game can write everything to the game files that is needed to restore your game later.
Post edited November 25, 2011 by HunterZ
Posted November 25, 2011
avatar
spindown: ...
I'm getting tired of all the smartasses who keep posting this BS. It's just splitting hairs on semantics, nothing more. Normal people use the expression "buying a game" in the same sense as "buying a DVD" or "buying a book." When you say that you buy a book, you obviously don't mean that you acquire the intellectual property rights. You just buy a reproduction of its contents, which is really all a customer wants. I think almost everybody would consider it pretty ridiculous if you kept insisting that you cannot buy a book but only a license to read it. Buying something in the everyday sense means to get legitimate access to something for indefinite and (mostly) unrestricted use. So yes, I can indeed buy games from GOG, thank you very much.
Sorry again, but I disagree with what you say that the general masses mean when they say they own it. Buying a book is buying the physical copy of it. You own the copy afterwards. Buying an ebook version is not buying any physical copy. You only buy a license to use it for a certain time which can have a specified end or not.

For me ownership implies that I can also resell my property or pass it on, not only that there is no control of access. With GOG games, as with all non-physical things, this is not possible, since the GOG license does not allow it.

Why not sticking even more to the truth and saying what GOG really is: a live-long, single person, non resellable, non supervised permission to play a game. You can ask any court in any decent country respecting copyrights for that and they will agree.

And of course you can name it as you like, I will name it: buying a license. :)
Post edited November 25, 2011 by Trilarion
Posted November 25, 2011
GOG has thrown us a real surprise again. This time a classic from back in the late 80s when the PC was still competing with the Amiga and the Apple II was still a popular system (although I'm pretty sure no Apple II version of Starflight existed.) I remember I bought a copy of Starflight 1 on 5.25" diskette a while after its initial release and really couldn't get into it.

Then my close friend Nick (who, sadly, passed away back in 2000) sung its praises to me, taught me how to play, and got me hooked. This was the EGA edition like you get here, but it only had cheap photocopies of the documentation and the map. Still, once I got hooked on it, I played it every day and still never seemed to even make a dent in the game's universe.

Starflight 2 does what a sequel should; it expands on the original while keeping all the things that made it great. If you are a fan of space opera like the TV series Star Trek, this one's for you. It's your chance to be a captain of a space exploration ship. Give it a try. You'll like.
Pages:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussion (archive)New release: Starflight 1+2(131 posts)(131 posts)
(131 posts)