When I was younger, I used to play a game called Stars!, and I loved it but I've lost it and haven't been able to find it anywhere. It occured to me today that maybe one of you guys might know where I can get my hands on it. It was originally distributed by Empire Interactive. I have been able to find demo's and patches, but not a clue about the full game. If anyone could point in the direction of acquiring a copy again, that would be awesome.

u on about this

http://support.empireinteractive.com/de ... B9D6528995

coz sos to say if ya read the bottem

This software is no longer avaiable from our store as the item has now been delisted and we do not produce or distribute the software anymore.

Yup, that's the one. I'm not surprised it's not being distributed anymore, I was kind of hoping someone had found an abandonware version of the game or something.

If it's abandonware, did you check places like FileFront?

It doesn't appear to be abandonware. It would probably say so here.

Following some of the links from the underdogs, it seems Empire is planning to release it again in the first half of 2006.

*checks date*

Ah...

quit it now guys please, no talk of warez, cracks, or abandonware allowed on thesae forums, we have to be whiter than a white thing ok.

Sorry, I thought Abandonware was legal, my bad.

Yeah, I thought so too. Isn't BoTF abandonware?

In either event, I just bought this awful 4x game called Sword of the Stars for 40 USD. It's by Lighthouse Interactive (never heard of them before). It uses a 3d system for the planets... and RTS sytle 3d combat.

My biggest problem is camera positioning and the horrible combat system. For starters, you can only refocus the camera by clicking on objects, but you can zoom in and out and rotate the camera with the mouse. But the clicking on objects to move the camera's x and y positions is a pain in the ass in the 3D map. And the same camera behavior is in the 3D RTS combat - which is an absolute disaster.

Having said that, I like their build system although their interface blows. The game will build as much starships as possible in each turn, as opposed to BoTF wasting production by only producing one ship a turn. If your system has enough production to produce 2.38 ships, by golly it will build 2 ships and get the third to 38% completion.

Also, they employ a design system for ships... but I haven't played with it much and it appears that they could have just as well set the ships as standard models instead of forcing the user to "design" it themselves to be used. The design system isn't that complex... and the "new designs" come with a lot of standard stuff. The cool thing about it, though, is that you can swap out the weapons you research new ones - that's the only cool thing about the Design A Ship system.

I checked some places, and talked with some poeple, but sorry man.

no Stars!

is the shareware version the full version that you have to activate, or just a demo and you have to download the full version once you buy it?

In theory, you can just enter a key, it just continually forgets because there's no installer and so no registry key is made, and I don't know where it's meant to go. I could guess, but I could spend forever randomly entering keys into my registry without getting anyway. *sighs*

Yeah, i've heard of Sword of Stars, Azhdeen. I'd heard that once you've upgraded your ships to a certain level, there's pretty much nothing else to do in the game.

The graphics are supposed to be good as well, but the interfaces are poorly designed - as you said.

It's a shame really, coz it sounded like a good game.

...

Guys, Jig said to avoid talking about stuff like abandonware, cracks, and whatever, because A) it's against the forum rules, and B) coz such talk can attract attention from the sort of people who might decide to shut down the site or even the whole BOTF2 project. So do as he says, ok?

Again, I ask... isn't BoTF abandonware? And isn't abandonware... well... abandoned?

Abandonware is legal. However, not all "abandoned" software can be classified as abandonware and legally redistributed.

we consider it to be so, however the rights to the game belong to atari. paramount owns all title to the star trek name, whe ni say we have to be whiter than white it is besauce we do not want to draw to much attention our way, any more questions?

Just one Jig



How do you know if abandoned software can be classified as abandonware, and redistributed? Just wondering

if the companey which has developed it says it is abandonware then it is, otherwise it ain`t.

Nope, if a company drops the rights to a certain title, then it becomes freeware, meaning it becomes legal to distribute the software for free.

Warez is just a term for games of a certain age. As many of these games are still being sold, software companies will definitely try to sue warez-sites whenever they get the chance. This is really stealing from software companies, so definitely illegal.

Abandonware is something in between. The term is used for (usually older) software that is no longer being distributed, but where someone still owns the rights. Abandonware sites argue that, if games are no longer for sale, they should be made available for free. The purpose is to preserve the games and to give people a chance to discover classics that are no longer being sold. Though you can discuss if abandonware is morally right, as far as the law is concerned, abandonware is illegal. But as the companies involved are no longer making any profit out of these titles, they usually don't bother to sue the abandonware sites.

So anyone can have an opinion on abandonware, but as it's illegal, I think it's safest if we don't link to any abandonware sites here. I seriously doubt it would ever get us into trouble, but you never know, we might as well avoid the risk.