Starflight Resource Pages

Hey Steven, good to see the site up and running again! I like what you've done to the place.

Needed to give you an update on SFRPG...the active site now at http://www.starflightrpg.com. This URL will redirect to the publisher's page at lulu.com. The site does have the final e-book version available as a download and contains a link for those who want to purchase hardcopies.

Are you going to have the screenshots available again when everything's said and done? Just curious.


Stephen (capi3101)

Thanks for the update and the idea - I've corrected the link and added two pages of slideshow "screenshots" using my old graphics library. Each image is set to show for 2 seconds. If you have any new material or links or even ideas for material, please feel free to mention them.

Love the site, love the game :-)

I was wondering if the title theme (sound/audio) is somewhere available in whatever formats (Midi?). Would make an excellent ring tone for my mobile...

Thanks for making my dream of playing Starflight again come true!! I played, and still have one of the original versions that appeared for the IBM/Tandy. It's been 20 years since then, but this was always my favorite. Even made my own starmap with all the fluxs and locations. It sits pinned to my wall below the poster for the Genesis version.

It was also nice to have all the PC types in one Dosbox version. I word of advice to any who would download this... the plain version of IBM game still has the "Miner's Bug", meaning that if you do too much mining, the game will eventually freeze/crash on the "Scanning New Terrain". Unlike any of the comments I've read here, the IBM version doesn't reset the ground minerals or Eudurium; it remembers every place you've been and what you picked up. If this wasn't true, you could easily have all the fuel you'd every need by visiting the City of the Ancients, but you can only raid the area once.

I recommend doing the million credit starting version. You will still have to make all the discoveries, but without the stress of all that mineral gathering. Starflight was, and still is the best space exploration game ever with Starflight 2 a breath behind!

As an added comment... I can confirm that the Mysterions' message of "1" and "0"s is in fact International Morse Code, and that it was at the time, the office phone number for Binary Systems. I discovered this back in 1986, and had a good talk with Alex, one of the designers. They had put it in there as an "Easter Egg", and didn't think anyone would figure it out. A handful had before I made my own call! It was quite a surprise to find out that it was a "real" phone number!

WOW!
I can't believe that I found your site. The Best computer game I had ever played was Starflight and Starflight 2. I go way back to the com64 days and a time you could have run to several electronic stores (Egghead, Electronic Boutique, Software etc and so on) and rummage through the space sime but these two were the standard for what followed. These games exploded the players imagination.
The next standard came with Origin's Wing Commander and its entire spinoffs. (Side note, I think the creator of Wind Commander was influenced by Star Wars, Star Trek, and Starflight)

Today I am into the new Star Trek Online MMO and I know that If I was able to get my Starflight I and II operational again with m yVista system, I would probably be exploring i tas much as I am exploring the STO universe.

Thank you for keeping this game alive and trying to expand it.

Anthony

I'm disappointed with the lack of spoiler warnings. I have been playing starflight 2 for a couple of weeks, and, after looking at the starflight 2 "miscellaneous" page for a minute, i feel spoiled to the point that i may stop playing.

Very, very disappointing.

WOW!!
thank you so much for this resource.
ORIGINALLY played on Tandy 1000 back during the Cold War.
Bought computer and game from Radio Shack.
Computer is Long gone but still have discs, code wheel, star map with ALL the fluxes, original discs and play and save discs. They're in storage, but I know EXACTLY where they are!!
REALLY got into this when I got an Commodore PC10-2.
That was an IBM Clone with a hard disc (40 Meg) AHHAHAHAH
BUt it was the PERFECT setup for Starflight. IT had an AMAZING Graphics Card for the time, that played color games in Monochrome emulation. It WAS a step down playing in monochrome for a minute, but, I sallied up the cash for a VGA monitor, and reconfigured the card. BOOM! Though NOT as good as the Tandy 16 colors, it was bangin'!!!

Now I get to do it all over again. This is an AMAZING resource.
I know the storyline by heart, so no spoilers to hurt me.
You have INCREDIBLY detailed Mining tips, locations for artifacts and ruins, and even some advance math working in for fuel consumption. YOU ROCK! With all of that info and a LOT of pluck, here is my strategy:

Beef up my engines and my crew ASAP, and go and grab shit. ALL of the good shit.
Laser Force Field helpers
Cloaking device, Flux identifiers
All that. Then go into Gazurtoid space and PIRATE for Endurium and other minerals. Do that for 6 in game months and load up. Obviously log of inhabitable worlds for extra cash, destroy the Uhlek brain world, and and the crystal planet.

It's the SUBTLETIES of the game that make it so awesome....
Get the Dodecahedron, after you beef up engines, shields, armor, lasers, and the right artifacts, fly into enemy space, and ATTRACT them 5 or 6 at a time with the dodecahedron. Then drop the shit hammer on them and take all the fuel!!! MUAHAHHAHHAHAHAH!!! Smack them up and with a cloaking device, they can't hit you. If the DO manage a chance hit, shields, and laser force field will help ALOT, as well as armor. THEY HAVE NO CHANCE. and it; FUN!

Anyway. I am going to get right to work on this. THANK You for putting all this datum together. I'll let you know how it goes in a few months. Party ON DUUDES!

How may I download the Starflt I version? None of the links seem to work.

Hi Stephen,

Great sight! Thanks for sharing it with us all--brings back a lot of nostalgia.

Both SFs are some of my favorite games, I still own the originals that my dad bought me way back in the day for our TANDY, complete with all materials and even my notes from my original playthroughs. The thing I appreciate the most about your website is some of the info about what the developers did under the hood--they really cared about what they were building! I always find it amazing how influential these games were, but at the same time it's easy to see why they were. I replayed SF1 recently just for fun and am about to do the same for SF2--it's been a good 10 years since my last re-play of these. They are truly great games.

I also wanted to let you know that I've made three 100% pixel perfect maps of Starflight 1 that I'd be glad to share with you, if you'd like to include them on your website. Feel free to contact me and I'll email you the images.

Map #1: SF's internal game map with all fluxes showing. This is higher quality than the flux map that is currently on your site, and would make a great replacement for it. Here are the differences:
1. Flux paths are all perfectly drawn.
a. I took my screenshots to minimize SF's misdrawing the paths when they cross screen boundaries.
2. Re-distributed the info panel to look nicer, rather than letting it duplicate from the screenshots.
3. I made sure that the measurement scale always showed increments of 25, for consistency.
4. Saved in both original size, and double-size (your flux map is double-size)

Map #2: The same as above, but without fluxes.

Map #3: This is a 100% accurate full sized map of the entire visible area of SF1 that I caringly stitched together over several weeks. Here are the details:
1. Measures 16080 x 10632 pixels
2. The background star field is built from screenshots of one of SF's actual generated backgrounds
a. SF1 backgrounds are 510x255 repeating
b. I lined up the bg so that it matches the exact alignment as generated in the game
c. Fun fact: This particular generated background reminds me of Orion (sideways)
3. All continuum fluxes are present, with max navigation skill and NOT using the ring device (intentionally).
a. All fluxes are actual generated flux patterns from the game.
b. If I didn't like a pattern, I'd start and stop Navigation to let the game generate a new pattern, until I got a one that I liked--I did this for every flux
4. Because its a 16 color palleted png, with loads of continuous solid color spaces (great for compression), the file size is only 280KB.

P.S. Dave - You can buy both SF1 and SF2 on GoG for just a few bucks. I believe that's why they've been removed from this site. Even though I own both, I re-bought them since it's so cheap and GoG sells the EGA version of SF1 and I own the original CGA/Tandy version (it has crashing issues).

Hey guys I am working on an inspired by starflight game called Void of Darkness!

http://www.indiedb.com/games/void-of-darkness/#3766777

Hi,

thank you for sharing such a great Starflight site!

I've written a browser version of the Starport Codes of Starflight 1 which displays well on mobile phones.

Here's the URL: http://danieldietrich.net/starflight/codewheel.html

Cheers

Daniel

Hi,
I learned from the WC CIC forums that you are looking for the original version of SF1. I just recently made images of the my original disks. I'm not certain of the revision history of the game, but the version I have is for the Tandy 1000, needing a Tandy graphics card to display 16 colors. My understanding is that EGA support came later. If you are interested in copies of the disk images, please contact me.

You know, not one single starflight resource makes a mention of this that I have seen.

I was gifted as a kid, starflight when it came out. I wish I had the original stuff! Anyway, I had discovered the third planet in system 117x114 used to be the best place to mine. I would start the game, buy 16 cargo pods, and go directly there, and in one trip net almost 80k of minerals. If I recall, it had mercury, promethium, and chromium, all fairly valuable minerals.

But.. every version of the game available for download that I have found - there is no planet like this anymore at 117x114. There must have been a revision to the game, and no one talks about it. Ever.

Fun trivia!

fellow starflight enthusiasts:

i have synthesized a lot of data from my own personal starflight notes and many here on starflt.com to make a sort of "master map" that doubles as an attractive wallpaper!

feel free to enjoy: http://plusnine.buhananrecords.com/tempie/ultimate-starflight-map.png

Hi,
Good job with the map. Looks great. I did notice a few typos though:

It should Koann 3 and Pythagoras
Check the spelling of molybdenum with the Gazurtoid ships
Check the spelling of "miscellaneous"
Shouldn't the Mysterion ship be made out of Rodnium? I know it's not a real element and rhodium is, but that's not what the game uses.
68,66 appears two have two colonization recommendation bonuses.

Some years ago, I wrote a 16-bit DOS map generator program for SF1. I suppose I should update it with a nice 32-bit Window version. :) I also have a very large paper map that I drew by hand - I should post pictures. Still love this game. Thanks for the great site!

Dave Sheldon

Hi there,

I bought an original copy of Starflight back when I had my very first computer. A Tandy 1000 with 128k base ram, and forced to upgrade to 256k to play most games. I eventually upgraded to 640k and thought I was really sporting something. I had dual low density 5.25" floppies and nothing else in it. So every game, program or anything had to be loaded via a boot disk I created myself. Ah, the days of messing with config.sys and autoexec.bat to squeeze out the most of the available ram. Sorry for reminiscing about the old days. Anyway, I was really hoping to score an original floppy disk image of the game, that I could install on my virutal machine running DOS6.22 and WIN3.11. I've searched a lot of places on the internet, but have not come across any. I did find an original copy of Rogue by Epyx on disk images. It plays rather nicely in my VM. In fact I have my 15 year old son, playing it now. He's absolutely hooked. Let me know if you would like a copy of that. And please let me know if you are able to get those disk images of Starflight. I've been hankering for some original Starflight.

Thanks so much,
Scott

Hi there,

I bought an original copy of Starflight back when I had my very first computer. A Tandy 1000 with 128k base ram, and forced to upgrade to 256k to play most games. I eventually upgraded to 640k and thought I was really sporting something. I had dual low density 5.25" floppies and nothing else in it. So every game, program or anything had to be loaded via a boot disk I created myself. Ah, the days of messing with config.sys and autoexec.bat to squeeze out the most of the available ram. Sorry for reminiscing about the old days. Anyway, I was really hoping to score an original floppy disk image of the game, that I could install on my virutal machine running DOS6.22 and WIN3.11. I've searched a lot of places on the internet, but have not come across any. I did find an original copy of Rogue by Epyx on disk images. It plays rather nicely in my VM. In fact I have my 15 year old son, playing it now. He's absolutely hooked. Let me know if you would like a copy of that. And please let me know if you are able to get those disk images of Starflight. I've been hankering for some original Starflight.

Thanks so much,
Scott

I have been playing for about 2 weeks, but need to restart my game every time because I run out of fuel. Don't they sell fuel at Starport? I have been through half a dozen of these sites and not one seems to address the issue specifically of refueling the ship. The game seems great but it lasts about 30 minutes each time.

Have you ever thought about taking this concept and turning it into an educational game? I would love to see the full periodic table of the elements able for exploitation. It would also be an exciting way to introduce young minds to nuclear energy and atomic propulsion systems.

Does this project currently have a budget? How many folks are working on this?


Thanks for your time! please email me at andrewmdodson@gmail.com and lets chat some!

I have the Sega Genesis version (sucks to encounter a Uhleks). Anyway, I noticed that the Artifact page http://www.starflt.com/tables/index.php/starflight1/artifacts/ says Hypercube: No known use. However, it actually shows nearby encounters on the star map (which looks like a series of up and down arrows).
You may wish to update said page.

Are there any hints in the Genesis version for how to scan debris and collect what remains after destroying a ship? The only time I had such an encounter, I was kicked out of the encounter screen before I could collect my prize. Did I push the wrong button on my D-pad, or is there a time limit before the game recognizes my ship is the last one standing and kicks me out of the encounter screen?

Sincerely,
Christopher
Salem, Oregon

POTENTIAL SPOILER ALERT

Beat Game Steps page at http://www.starflt.com/tables/index.php/starflight1/beat-game-steps/
After completing steps #11-12, Step #13 says: Go "NW", find one more Ancient ruin for fuel

Step #13 isn't specific enough. I went NW along the surface of the current planet, but found nothing. I passed one ancient ruin with nothing around it, but no water either to prevent fuel from spawning. The amount of endurium I spent trying to find this non-specific clue, with the correct coordinates, I could have spent less fuel if I just shot back into orbit and re-landed than I wasted in a wild goose chase.

Unless it was just missed when the game was ported to the Sega Genesis.
Assistance, please (yes, I have beaten the game at least once without using the Beat Game Steps page)

Sincerely,
Christopher
Salem, Oregon

I have the game, played it completely through back in the day... without any help or spoilers.
Played some times with a friend or two to assist and suggest moves, etc.... loved it and have the star map with most of the coordinates entered into it.
But trying to find the downloadable game, on here but the links are broken?
any advice? Links? help?