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I've been waiting/hoping for this to come out since 2000. The first version - Stars! - was a Civ-type game played in space, and is still played by fans 10 years later; the sequel would be more of the same but with awesome graphics, better combat system, spys/diplomacy, less micromanagement, and fully extendable. Also with an end-of-turn newspaper created to help you track events.

I'd check back to the official website and the fans sites every few months, drool over the screenshots, and read the beta testers game reports.. Sadly, sometime last year the websites have gone away. http://www.crisium.com/ and http://www.starbasedelta.com/ (fan faq)

I've only been able to find this review left with some great screenshots..

http://pc.ign.com/objects/015/015220.html#previews

R.I.P.

At this moment, as well as three play-by-email games of Stars! right now. Trying to hook up a game of Alien Crossfire, too, but no such luck.

Stars! is a turn-based 4x game that's completely awesome. The graphics are a little dated -- ok, the graphics are a LOT dated -- but the game is incredibly good.

This is the website.

I was involved in commercial game dev in the mid to late 80's on PC's. A good friend created a rather good Ultima type game for the Apple ][ (81 or 82). This was a 'A' product it was created by one programmer (100% 6502 asm) who also created all the sound effects. One producer who did all the level design, art, and admin. 4 friends did playtesting.

The next project was a PC game, D&D in space called "Spelljammer". This game had one fulltime programmer (me), 2 part time programmers (they wrote exactly 2 routines for data compression in asm), 3 contract artists, one full time producer who also did ALL the game design. Music was done by 3 friends with a midi keyboard. I also did a fair bit of art. SSI provided a sound lib (with effects), box art, advertising, etc... The game engine, gui, movie player, etc... was all done from scratch. The whole thing took about 14 months and we ended up with a good "B" game.

The bar has been raised very high for "A" and "B" titles. The amount of music and art, not to mention a good game engine, is so much higher now than it was in the early days that you simply need a lot more money just to pay the salaries of everyone invovled for the two or three years it takes to make a half decent game. And this assumes you know what you are doing.

Small game developers pretty much have to aim at the types of PC games that do NOT require massive amounts of art. The barrier to entry is even higher for console games due to dev kits and licensing. The console manufactures do this to keep the "riff raff" out and quality (prices) high.

It is a whole different world now.

See Stars! SuperNova for an example of a good project getting stalled due to money, and they had a very good track record.

You think 7 years is a long development cycle for a game? Check out Stars! Supernova Genesis. The original release date for this game was in 1997. It's a sequel to a 16 bit Win3.1 game! If there was ever a game where the developers bit off more than they could chew, this is it. Even though they were delayed for several years, the developers did say they had something they were going to release around 2000, but even that seems to have gone nowhere.

What's next? A Duke Nukem Forever release? I remember checking out this site back before I ever got the 3D acceleration working on FreeBSD. I'd always figured they were going the same route as Stars! Supernova Genesis. It's great to see that it's going to be Open Source as well. It'll be great to play something beyond the ancient LAN demo.

Look no further than Stars!. Sure, it doesn't look pretty, but for my money the gameplay takes MOO out back and gives it a damn good kicking.

That's how I played Stars!

Anyone remember that one? Anyone interested in cowriting a Linux or Java clone?

We never did this at my school unfortunately.

But I agree with the other posters who've recommended strategy games. I suppose since this is a school you should try and set a good example - that is, use the facilities for education purposes. Strategy games are educational in a lot of different ways.

I'm partial to anything involving sci-fi so my recommendations are:
Stars! - this is even play-by-email meaning the players wouldn't even need to be in the lab at the same time.
Master of Orion II - it's old so you should be able to find it on the cheap.

Btw, though not multiplayer, Orbiter is a great game that could be very education since after all it's based on realistic physics.

Speaking of Stars! Mare Crisium is producing it's sequal Stars! Supernova Genesis. Check out Crisium's homepage for more info on it. It is significantly snazzier, including the option for allied victory.

Choose Primary race types (Energy beings, stargate masters, etc)
Choose Secondary race attributes (excel at remote mining robots but have poorer engines, etc)
Choose Environmental Conditions (optimal gravity, temperature and radiation)
Choose how productive your race is at building and mining
Choose how prolific your race is
Choose how good your race is at researching each broad category of science

Tons of options and configuration possibilities....Everything is done on points, and each race characteristic (good or bad) gives or takes points, with the only restriction being your race points must be positive (you can't have taken too many good traits, without balancing with some poor ones)....fun fun fun

The designers of Stars! are making a new one. Stars! Supernova Genesis sounds even better.

I won't buy MOO. I'll wait for Stars!

First: I have found that few people have even heard of it.
Second: It is "turn-based" which allows strategic characteristics to show, not have fast you react to: "Units under attack!"
Third: You must specialize yourself at the very beginning, hence, you must make a plan even before you start to command your ships. This element is the result of the fact that you design your own race.
Fourth: If you in the game manage to follow your plan successfully you will probably win, if you fail, you lose. In-game, there is components of both micro- and macro-management involved.
Fifth: It is very easy to understand and start to play and you can continue to get better all of the time.
Sixth: Every plan, or strategy, has a counter-strategy. (Let's play scissor, paper and stone)
Seventh: It is highly customable, which should fit you.

I believe there should be a demo available at http://crisium.com (the makers of Stars! and Stars! 2, Supernova Genesis), to be precise at http://crisium.com/stars/stars/demo.htm.

Enjoy, it is a good game!

"The fool thinks himself to be wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool."

- William Shakespeare

I think that an open source environment for games has two potential benefits - firstly for allowing bugs to be quickly fixed, and secondly to allow the game to be enhanced and updated in reponse to user requests and ideas.

You don't need open source code for this.

As id has demonstrated time and again with the Quake series, it is possible to design a game so that users can enhance and modify it. Another good example is the Rules Description Language (and this link too) of Stars! Supernova. Using the RDL, the multiplayer Stars! community will be able to effect gameplay balancing changes without waiting for the developers to release a patch. They'll also be able to set up custom rules for creating themed games, like Star Trek, Star Wars, or Babylon 5. Stars! Supernova will also has some interesting ways of letting players supply custom artwork and sound for their races. For more on this game, see news://rec.games.computer.stars.

At any rate, the point is through the implementation of good game design, developers can ensure that users will be able to update and enhance a closed-source proprietary game. It'd be interesting to see if anyone else has examples of this sort of design besides the ones I've mentioned (*hint, hint*).

Jonathan David Pearce

I think that an open source environment for games has two potential benefits - firstly for allowing bugs to be quickly fixed, and secondly to allow the game to be enhanced and updated in reponse to user requests and ideas.

You don't need open source code for this.

As id has demonstrated time and again with the Quake series, it is possible to design a game so that users can enhance and modify it. Another good example is the Rules Description Language (and this link too) of Stars! Supernova. Using the RDL, the multiplayer Stars! community will be able to effect gameplay balancing changes without waiting for the developers to release a patch. They'll also be able to set up custom rules for creating themed games, like Star Trek, Star Wars, or Babylon 5. Stars! Supernova will also has some interesting ways of letting players supply custom artwork and sound for their races. For more on this game, see news://rec.games.computer.stars.

At any rate, the point is through the implementation of good game design, developers can ensure that users will be able to update and enhance a closed-source proprietary game. It'd be interesting to see if anyone else has examples of this sort of design besides the ones I've mentioned (*hint, hint*).

Jonathan David Pearce

I think that an open source environment for games has two potential benefits - firstly for allowing bugs to be quickly fixed, and secondly to allow the game to be enhanced and updated in reponse to user requests and ideas.

You don't need open source code for this.

As id has demonstrated time and again with the Quake series, it is possible to design a game so that users can enhance and modify it. Another good example is the Rules Description Language (and this link too) of Stars! Supernova. Using the RDL, the multiplayer Stars! community will be able to effect gameplay balancing changes without waiting for the developers to release a patch. They'll also be able to set up custom rules for creating themed games, like Star Trek, Star Wars, or Babylon 5. Stars! Supernova will also has some interesting ways of letting players supply custom artwork and sound for their races. For more on this game, see news://rec.games.computer.stars.

At any rate, the point is through the implementation of good game design, developers can ensure that users will be able to update and enhance a closed-source proprietary game. It'd be interesting to see if anyone else has examples of this sort of design besides the ones I've mentioned (*hint, hint*).

Jonathan David Pearce

I think that an open source environment for games has two potential benefits - firstly for allowing bugs to be quickly fixed, and secondly to allow the game to be enhanced and updated in reponse to user requests and ideas.

You don't need open source code for this.

As id has demonstrated time and again with the Quake series, it is possible to design a game so that users can enhance and modify it. Another good example is the Rules Description Language (and this link too) of Stars! Supernova. Using the RDL, the multiplayer Stars! community will be able to effect gameplay balancing changes without waiting for the developers to release a patch. They'll also be able to set up custom rules for creating themed games, like Star Trek, Star Wars, or Babylon 5. Stars! Supernova will also has some interesting ways of letting players supply custom artwork and sound for their races. For more on this game, see news://rec.games.computer.stars.

At any rate, the point is through the implementation of good game design, developers can ensure that users will be able to update and enhance a closed-source proprietary game. It'd be interesting to see if anyone else has examples of this sort of design besides the ones I've mentioned (*hint, hint*).

Jonathan David Pearce