1989…so probably not, sorry. Thought I remembered playing in color, though, so not on my Mac SE. must have been on a IIsi.
You rich kids and your Apple II’s. How I lusted after those machines.
You folks who haven’t played the original should fix that. It’s easy to get into. Especially the Genesis version.
I also had apple envy in the 80s. I had a TRS-80 model 1 at the time the Apple II was common. Eventually I got a PC knockoff made by Epson. I played the original Starflight in CGA. I think somewhere around 1988 I had saved up money from my after school job and purchased an EGA card. I played SF2 in glorious 16 color.
I wish you guys had talked up the Genesis version back when I had access to a modded Xbox. That thing had a great emulator. I can’t be bothered to track down that kind of stuff for the PC though. The modded Xbox was great because I could finally play old console games on the TV on a great emulator (with things like save anywhere, and being able to fast forward, which came in very useful in RPGs like Chronotrigger).
Oh right, I have a modded Xbox, thanks for reminding me. Note to self: check if it has Starflight installed.
What is Starflight? Is it like a bad Star Citizen ripoff?
I will kill you. Slowly. Painfully. Delightfully.
Weird that you guys are talking about Apple envy in this thread. I had a IIe, and when I would see the advertisements for Starflight–with the talking grasshopper alien–my mind would reel at how incredible it looked and my soul would weep that somehow it wasn’t for Apple II. Everything was on Apple II at that time, except this.
You didn’t ask.
Forth and assembly language. Old story, but when I bought Starflight, I was disappointed to discover it didn’t run on my PCjr. (Yeah, yeah… I got it cheap. I couldn’t afford real computers then. 🤣) Anyway, I spent several nights digging through the code with DEBUG. I’d had some previous experience playing with Fig-Forth, so I recognized the threaded code pretty quickly. Eventually I found the video init code, which was dropping values directly into the I/O ports. Problem was, the PCjr doesn’t use the same video hardware as a stock CGA adaptor. So I patched Starflight to use the BIOS init instead. Problem solved!
Never let it be said that I let a piddling thing like hardware incompatibility keep me from a great game. 😀
Heh, yeah. Starflight was this enormous game; at least, for something published in 1986. It totally sucked me in for weeks.
The best game of that genre is still Star Control II, in my opinion, but I am watching this new effort with obvious interest. :)
Thanks for reminding me of the one question I absolutely have to pose to @Greg_Johnson!
So, why Forth? Was it just due to prior familiarity or was there a specific reason you felt the language was suited to the project?
I wanted to give you props for the old school hacking story. I’m glad I didn’t have a PCjr back then. That was well beyond my ability. I was just transitioning from writing basic to pascal around the time Starflight came out. Except for some knowledge of what to peek and poke in basic on the TRS-80 I had had previously, I didn’t know a thing about getting down to the PC hardware yet.
New email:
Ooh Lookie What We Found!
Today Greg opened up the ole archives for us and HOLY COW did we find the good stuff! Over SIX BINDERS WORTH of Greg’s original handwritten Starflight notes, decision trees for alien interactions, a mint condition copy of Starflight 2 (still shrink-wrapped!), a print-out of the ORIGINAL SOURCE CODE! GASP Whew! And what’s even crazier is what’s shown below is just about HALF of what we found.
There are some other gems in here, can you see ‘em?
Share what you find in the comments! And as always if you have any questions, want to share a Starflight memory or just want to say hi drop us a note in the comments as well!
Sincerely,
The Starflight 3 Team
That image makes me so joyful.
I love how they’re so happy to have a “print-out of the original source code” in 2018.
As I said above, this is my first contribution to a kickstarter-type-of-thing for a PC game. Although I have to wait until the end of 2020 at a minimum, I’m feeling optimistic!
This image is GLORIOUS.