no Debian package?

Added

Even a PowerPC .deb, nice! *downloads*

Nice but buggy. Please add help for how to control and... under Ubuntu 8.04 when I pressed Space the fighter started to flush all its missiles and nothing could stop it.

Also when it is not in fullscreen it does not respond to some keys/

I enjoyed this game previously, but was dismayed to discover the 23rd September 2008 Macintosh version doesn't appear to decompress correctly. Thanks for the work you've done on this: I hope others will get the same enjoyment I have.

By default the gameplay manual is installed into /usr/share/doc/starfighter/. There one can find an HTML page with all the gameplay instructions. I can add it to this page if people so desire. At this point I'm going to try and avoid fiddling the game's source code since it's 8 years old, was my first project, and is quite painful to look at ;)

The version shipped with Ubuntu 8.04 is painfully slow. I believe this could indicate the presence of other bugs. Build from source or use the DEB file from here.

Mac version - I never made this one myself, it was a contribution. Anyone got a Mac version?

re: Mac version

I got an endless recursion of archives when I unzipped the Mac version. I removed the .gz on the end, leaving .dmg, and whaddaya know it opened fine as a disk image.

Try my modified version: http://murkymind.de/projects/project_starfighter
- key configuration
- bug fixes
- lots of improvements

I need help defeating Boss #2, Kline Kethlan. Please Help!!!!

heh... It's been so long since I played this game I can't even remember what the strategy is... Off the top of my head I believe you need to switch to spread shots (left shift, I think) so that you can take down the mines he drops. Ensure you have Plasma Output of at least 3.

I really need help on the second level of starfighter where you battle kline kethlan. It's almost impossible to make a scratch on him. can someone please help me!!!! email me at superrp@gmail.com.
PLEASE I NEED HELP

Syth:
I have modified the saved game file with a hex editor. Check your money sum on the upgrade tab. Convert it to hex. Open the saved game state with the hex editor. Search for the above converted sum. Replace it with FF FF. Then you will have 65535$. Upgrade the ship with the most advanced weapons.

I really love this game, but there are two aspects of it that I really would like to see better. One is support for 640x480 resolutions. I would love to make this game part of my Arcade Cabinet, but my Arcade Cabinet uses an Analogue TV For Display output, and for that reason, its maximum screen resolution is 720x480.

Another serious need is actual Joypad support. Joypad to keyboard mapping is a non-starter. WahCade uses certain keyboard events for certain functions. Joypad mapping is disruptive.

I think i found a glitch... When i was on misson Sol,Earth I was fighting kethlan. When he was at four shield points, one of the laser ray cannons that are in the misson came down and fired right in line with kethlan. And instead of making him run away, It killed him. When he got killed he said the line he always says whenever he gets killed in misson
Sol, Venus. Can someone try this in the newest version?

Robert, Use the cheat mode on the game to use unlimited shield and if you are using concentrate plasma press SHIFT to set it to spread If you are still having trouble hitting him (make sure the channel splitter, capacity condenser and nitrogen capsules are at no less stage 3). and use the laser cannon as your secondary weapon. It does much more damage!

That goes the same for you Syth.

Is a sequel currently being made? I finished the game three years ago.

No, there are no plans for a sequel.

(sigh)...I was really hoping for one...but Oh well. Thanks for letting me know about it. Also are there any wallpapers for this game or any other game?

No, no other wallpapers. Just the ones that are already there. Sorry.

You mean Screenshots?

No, I mean wallpaper / desktop background / etc.

Great game, thanks! On Windows Vista I have to play windowed, as fullscreen has significant flicker. Is there any way for me to prevent such flicker?

Upgrade to Windows XP..? ;)

No, sorry, I have no idea, not being a Windows user myself.

I love this game! Unfortunately I didn't realise until now that there were more games by Parallel Realities. Thanks for all teh games!

Hi there! Very nice work!! I would like to play this game on my netbook at 640x480 resol. Is it possible? Thanks a lot!

Unfortunately the screen resolution is locked at 800 x 600. Metal Blob Solid works fine in 640 x 480 though, so it would be ideally suited for a netbook.

Followup: solution to my fullscreen flicker problem on Vista: I turned on fullscreen, and ignored the flicker long enough to quit the game. On restart, I've got fullscreen with no flicker! Thanks for the game -- having a great time at it.

Steve, don't you find it interesting that the game you refuse to make a sequel for is the game that is getting the most downloads? I suppose I understand, since you seem to be more interested in your "Blob Wars" series, it's just that this game is so much more epic, even with all the bugs. IMO, this game is second only to Star Control II, which is saying quite a lot.

When did I refuse to make a sequel? I only said that I have no plans. Also, Starfighter being the most downloaded game on the site is likely only so because it is the oldest game on the site - It has been here since 2001.

Kill frigate in three minutes... Is it possible at all? Anyway - this game is interesting. ^_^

is not mercury ( in the 4th sistem) fightable ?

No; the game ends at Venus.

This game is cool, could you guys update it? I beat it a while ago...

@Dylan - Update it with what, exactly? The game is finished.

Thanks for this game. Or not... it keeps me not studying... ~_^

Actually, I have found a bug... Eyananth: I rescued that cute girl (thanks a lot for manga-style faces) at first and then rescued the slaves. After rescuing 250 of them, it wanted me to rescue her again and again (in an infinite loop). I had to quit the game and load an older saved position... Then I saved the slaves again and it was OK.

great games. any chance of posting the md5sums somewhere on the site so downloads can be checked? thanks.

I'm not sure what you mean, Tim? What would you be checking for?

checking that the download was ok. We have sat-broadband and half the time it seams to corrupt tar.gz files when downloaded with firefox (windows or linux). ( wget is fine but not so convenient for regular browsing)

Hmmm, well, I don't have any plans to add something like that to the site, and the other thing is that, if the file was corrupt, it wouldn't decompress anyway. But thanks for the suggestion.

where should the starfighter-1.0-1.music.zip file be extracted to on linux and on windows? thanks

@Tim - The music doesn't have to be unzipped anywhere. It's on the site as a separate archive because people said they liked it and wanted to listen to it outside the game (probably to convert it into MP3 and chuck on their iPods).

ok thanks. I'm almost done creating a slack 12.2 package for starfighter. I've done one already for blobwars episode 1. do you want them for your site?

@Tim - Yeah, sure. Just let me know where you've put them (a temporary website) and I'll add them here.

ok. the slackware 12.2 packages are at the following urls
http://winsender.sourceforge.net/blobwars-1.11-i486-1_SBo.tgz
and
http://winsender.sourceforge.net/starfighter-1.1-i486-1_SBo.tgz
please let me know when you have downloaded them so and remove this comment, so I can remove the files from my winsender project site. either via this "board" or email tim@tree-of-life.co.uk
the slack build scripts i wrote to create the packages are at
http://winsender.sourceforge.net/blobwars.tar.gz
and
http://winsender.sourceforge.net/starfighter.tar.gz
if you want them as well.

Hi! I'm porting this game to Sony PSP, for now the game runs (!), at the moment I'm fixing keyboard handling. Steve, will this be hard to rearrange HUD and menus to fit in 4800x272? Otherwise, I will have to leave resolution in streched-to-16:9 640x480 and I think it will make lots of things hard to see. THanks in advance :) .

Ok, controls are now working, but graphics in game took terrible. As a quick fix I will use SDL_gfx to resize game window to 480x272 with with smooth quality. Will you want a binary of PSP version when I finish this? BTW, do you have PSP? xD

I don't have a PSP, no. But I'm happy to host it once you're done. Just let me know where you've put the archive and I'll download it and add it to the site.

Sorry, I thought game is 640x480, in real it is 800x600, my fault :-/

Do you know that someone released the PSP version of Metal Blob Solid?

Yep; it's been out for quite a while. Not sure what the state of it is, but I believe it's pretty complete and playable.

It is complete, but it's a high chance that after completing a mission game shows a .pak file read error (I think console is out of memory) and you have to complete a mission again, a simple gameSaving before showing "Mission complete" screen could be a quick fix. I will try to tweak that after completing Starfighter port if Deniska (http://deniska.dcemu.co.uk/, no wondering, it's NOT me) released source code. If not, I will have to port it from scratch, but I see your source code is really easy to compile on all platforms and it's easy to understand. Ooooo I go test my next build!

Ouch, a "," sneaked into a web link :-|

SDL_gfx somehow doesn't want to work - just gives an empty surface... The only option now is to change game fixed resolution. What do You think, is it possible to rearrange all items on screen to 480x272 resolution?

One more thing, I think I will need a .pak file unpacker to shrink some images, PSP just isn't able to handle 800x600.

There isn't really an unpacker available, but some fiddling with the code could easily create one. Having said that, I'm not sure how well the game would downsize to the PSP's screen. I once saw a version running on an Xbox (640 x 480) and that was pretty cramped right there.

Might be worth saving yourself a world of pain and disappointment and having a play around with the PSP version of Metal Blob Solid, if you think you can fix that crash.

The second solution is simply shrinking 800x600 surface to 480x272 with black bars on left and right side of the screen, but like I said previously, SDL_gfx does't want to work and I think some smaller things or text can becone hard to see. I need to play a game I'm trying to port!

Don't you think that simply shrinking the bitmaps and decreasing font size could save alot of screen space? I miss an "Edit post" button...

If you want to give it a go, then by all means go ahead, but I'm not too convinced it would work too well, unfortunately.

Oh, if I managed to port and DOWNSIZE Meritous, then I think most games won't be a porting challenge to me :)

It might just be my graphics card, but it seems like in-mission communications and weapon impacts in Project: Starfighter are affected by similar alpha blending issues to those in Metal Blob Solid.

Yep, you'll be right there. I'll take a look and see what I can do.

I've sent a message to you guys using the Contact form last week, but so far I've not received a reply and no action with respect to the message has been taken. Please contact me at rworkman _aT& slackbuilds.org

@Rob - I don't think I ever got your message. Please send it again.

Hey can you update the deb files to work with Ubuntu Karmic 9.10? It won't install because it can't find libstdc++5.

Dylan - I'm no longer maintaining this game. It's now up to individual Linux packagers to ensure that the game can compile and run on their OSes.

> <snip> I'm no longer maintaining this game <snip>
...which means they will be grateful if me or you or 'the community' can help take care of and improve the game :)

That's right, Niklas - Getting cracking on it!

Hi,

I'm waiting for a book which will hopefully help me get started with Python/Pygame. One of the first projects I would like to do is a remake of this game, probably adding in additional stuff (i.e. more weapons, more modes). But I can't seem to find any of the media (images, sounds, music) in the source code. I know the music can be found somewhere on this site, but what about the other stuff?

Sadly, you'll need to write an extract program for the PAK file. I used to have all the loose data files, but I lost them during a hard drive crash.

Do you know where I can find more information on PAK files? A search on Google sends me to a bunch of articles on Pakistan, and Wikipedia only has an article on ZIP files.

The PAK file is a custom file format. The Starfighter sources have code for extracting the data.

Hm... well that's a problem for me, because I don't really know how to use C. All I know about C is a tiny bit of the syntax. Oh well... I guess I'll have to rip the ship and character sprites via screenshots, and make everything else myself. Luckily, most of the rest of the graphics are pretty simple, so I should still be able to pull this off. Thanks anyway. :)

How do you collect six cargo pods????

You mean at Ceradse? You destroy the purple ships and collect the colorful pods they drop. Don't let them get destroyed by energy blasts; I recommend using missles to take out the cargo ships.

Thanks

I think this would be a great game to port to Javascript, using either Canvas or SVG. It's not overly graphics intensive, while still having nice graphics. It's all done in 2-D. Combine this with offline storage, and it's a great game to port to Javascript. I might start it some day...

Re: six cargo pods
Missles won't do too much good if you've got a double missle launcher, One will got right through it, use single missles only, and take into account that you'll have a limited supply of missles, and that ships could pass by at any time.