With Moonbase Commander finally out for everyone to try it, here is a software made by fans you need to know if you like this game.

Moonbase Console (by Katton) is a tool that allows you to play on random maps.

You choose the kind of maps (2 kind of maps), the size of the map, the tileset, quantity of energy, terrain and water. You press single player, and voilà, the game is launching with the random map.

But the most wonderful is the multiplayer options in that tool. You may experience problems joining each other games : Moonbase Console allows you to play with friends on random maps easily.
The host just type his ip, click on the button and share with everyone a key.
Other players just type the key, and the game should launch and join automatically with the random map.

Using Hamachi or some other tool like this is advised though.

Moonbase Console : http://individual.utoronto.ca/katton/MoonbaseConsole_2_1_26.zip (Mirror : http://www.florent28.fr/mbc/MoonbaseConsole_2_1_26.zip

I didn't buy the game yet from Gog, so I don't know if this is the last version.
In case it's not, here is the patch 1.1 : http://www.florent28.fr/mbc/MBC_Update_v1.1.exe )

Happy games!
Florent

Moonbase console is a nifty tool, and I have used it before. However, the download as it stands trips an alert from Avira (TR/Downloader.Gen). This occurs on both mirrors. Is this a false alarm, or should I stay away?

Well, it should be a false alarm, I tried it without any problem.

Anyway, Gog changed something in the MBC exe, and the Console is not working for now. I contacted Katton and Mycroft, who developped the software, and they'll have a look into it when they have some time.

Maybe a Gog person can explain what kind of changes they brought to the exe ? I know the MBC Console is checking in the registry, it may have changed.

Florent

Yes, that was my conclusion as well. Thank you for contacting the developers, hopefully they can find out how to fix it.

Until then, for those wanting to play multiplayer, there is MoonbaseIP. While lacking the random map feature, it does allow online play.

You can find MoonbaseIP at:

http://www.zauron.net/downloads/MoonbaseIP.zip

Be sure you launch it as administrator, and from the moonbase commander folder or it won't work.

Be sure also that the host has the following ports open:

2300, 47624 (TCP)
2350 (UDP)

Happy gaming!

Thanks for posting this florent28, I hope the developers can fix it. I tried to contact them a while ago to see if they'd release the source for Moonbase Console, but I didn't get any reply :(.
That said, I was trying to send a message to Katton's youtube account, which he might not even use anymore...

If this is still a problem, you should contact them directly. There are so many game forums that the GOG staff sometimes has a hard time finding posts like this.

I guess it's worth a shot, but I don't know if they'll bother fixing some random thing in the .exe file so some random third-party application can work with it. It'd probably more practical to modify Moonbase Console instead...but it's hard to get a hold of the original authors :(. If only they'd released the source code for it ><

I'm the author of the main code (Mycroft in MBC days), Katton and SpacemanSpiff did the map generation algorithms.

I poked around a little with this. It seems that the GOG version changes some stuff in the INI files that Moonbase Console uses to locate the directory that MBC was installed in. It wasn't immediately obvious to me how to fix it, and I couldn't find the compiler I used and... SQUIRREL!

I'll see if I can find time to work on it again today. I'd be happy to put the source on SourceForge or GitHub or something, but I've never done it before so I'm not sure where to start. If someone wanted to point me to an "open source for noobs" article I'll be happy to look into it.

Ok, I have something that "works on my computer". Anyone care to test it? I've tried to share it via Google Drive. I'm open to suggestions about other places to host it. I can't seem to get this site to accept the URL, it just kind of blanks things out.

I tested the single player and replay stuff, which seemed to work. The networking setup works, but I didn't play a net game because I don't know anyone who plays anymore.

Try going to Google+ and searching for Moonbase Console.

Mycroft, I'll try soon the new exe you sent to me yesterday. When everything will be fixed, I can upload it to my website.

We can also try multiplayer, if we are both available.

MYCROFT you magnificent bastard!! Thanks for doing that. I'll have to give it a try at some stage. Is it still backwards compatible (i.e. compatible with the old-school retail versions of the game)? I guess I can test that out as well :D

So your best bet to upload the source would be using git on github. It can be a bit tricky, but github has some decent instructions on their website:
https://help.github.com/articles/set-up-git
If you have issues, I could totally do it for you. I won't pretend I wrote the whole thing or anything :P.

Actually, just had a thought, if you're uploading the source, you'll probably want to pick a license and all that. I think github walks you through that as well.

Also, try posting the .exe via dropbox? That seems to be the done thing these days...

For the retail version, the version in the first post should work (http://www.florent28.fr/mbc/MoonbaseConsole_2_1_26.zip ).

I'm currently testing the version Mycroft is updating, and I'll upload it next to the other one when it's ok (although having it on dropbox can be also good if people want it).

I've published the latest beta to dropbox. I'm having trouble with it under Windows 8, so I know I'm not done with it yet. I believe it should still work with the non-GOG version, but I haven't tested that yet. It should be compatible with people using version 2.1.26, but again I haven't tried that yet.

I'm getting really annoyed with these forums. Why can other people post links, but I can't? It's eating the URL code. Here's the URL in a "build-it-yourself" form:

<secure http prefix><dropbox URL>/sh/e39gx8n9zj9u06w/aU2l0ygk16

Legend! I'll give it a spin when I'm back from work.
Actually, I should note that I recall friends getting crashes from Moonbase Console sometimes. I think it was something to do with the random map generation algorithm, possibly a 64-bit issue. Not sure. This was a few years ago now, but it would've been the same version

There were always a few reports like that. I could never reproduce any of them and they were apparently uncommon enough that people could look past them.

The Windows 8 issues I'm having right now are considerably more frequent.

Florent says it appears to work on Windows XP, which is some comfort.

Yes, working on Windows XP in solo, I need to test it in multiplayer as well.