Stargunner goes freeware!

Danny · Post by **Danny** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 8:02 pm

3d realms classic side scroller goes freeware!

http://www.3drealms.com/stargunner/

landshark · Post by **landshark** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 8:28 pm

Awesome! I had been looking for a full release of this game for a long time. Hope someone ports to windows. Gonna have to run it through a dos emu for now.

Damocles · Post by **Damocles** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 10:07 pm

Uhh....anyone else getting corrupt files when they try to unzip it.

black mariah · Post by **black mariah** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 10:35 pm

If you have to unzip it, you're getting the shareware version and not the full version. Full version is EXE.

Damocles · Post by **Damocles** » Thu Jun 23, 2005 10:40 pm

stargunnerfreeware.exe is the one that's giving me troubles.

'scuse my lingo.

dave4shmups · Post by **dave4shmups** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 12:02 am

No offense, but it's not free if you have to pay a subscription fee to Mercury.

sethsez · Post by **sethsez** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 12:13 am

dave4shmups wrote:No offense, but it's not free if you have to pay a subscription fee to Mercury.

Which you don't, so it's free.

black mariah · Post by **black mariah** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 12:22 am

Ah, okay, I see the problem now. Self-extracting EXE.

I didn't have any problem extracting, but the program refused to run. Lame.

dave4shmups · Post by **dave4shmups** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 12:39 am

Ok, I just didn't see the public servers section. Downloading now.

Vexorg · Post by **Vexorg** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 12:42 am

I think i see what you're running into. There's a "sign up" page, but if you look it also has a "download without logging in" button on it. Then you have to scroll down to find the public servers.

dave4shmups · Post by **dave4shmups** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 12:45 am

black mariah wrote:Ah, okay, I see the problem now. Self-extracting EXE. I didn't have any problem extracting, but the program refused to run. Lame.

Same here. It says that the file isn't suitable for running on MS-DOS or Windows.

If anyone knows how to get this game up and running, that'd be great!

landshark · Post by **landshark** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 2:27 am

I just started the D/L, but I plan on running this in DoxBox (DOS emulator).

dave4shmups · Post by **dave4shmups** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 2:30 am

Is DosBox difficult to use? I just haven't used "type-in" commands since I last used an Apple IIe!

Honestly, if the company wanted to make this shmup freeware, they could've AT LEAST made it playable on current versions of Windows.

sethsez · Post by **sethsez** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 2:45 am

dave4shmups wrote:Honestly, if the company wanted to make this shmup freeware, they could've AT LEAST made it playable on current versions of Windows.

They released a game that used to be commercial software for free to please fans. They're not making a cent off this... they didn't need to do anything.

Tar-Palantir · Post by **Tar-Palantir** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 3:09 am

dave4shmups wrote:Is DosBox difficult to use? I just haven't used "type-in" commands since I last used an Apple IIe!

Quote of the Month.

FRO · Post by **FRO** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 3:53 am

Tar-Palantir wrote:
dave4shmups wrote:Is DosBox difficult to use? I just haven't used "type-in" commands since I last used an Apple IIe!
Quote of the Month.

I concur. "type-in" commands are considered a "parser" interface.

kong · Post by **kong** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 4:25 am

Download a front end for dosBox if you can't handle command line nonsense. There's a link to several on the downloads section of the dosBox homepage under the tools section.

landshark · Post by **landshark** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 5:04 am

dave4shmups wrote: Honestly, if the company wanted to make this shmup freeware, they could've AT LEAST made it playable on current versions of Windows.

That's a pretty poor view of things.

If you were GONNA give it away, you could have done X.

NO. Not at all. They were nice enough to give it away. They are under no obligation to do anything.

Besides, dosbox is braindead easy to use.

landshark · Post by **landshark** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 5:08 am

dave4shmups wrote:
black mariah wrote:Ah, okay, I see the problem now. Self-extracting EXE. I didn't have any problem extracting, but the program refused to run. Lame.
Same here. It says that the file isn't suitable for running on MS-DOS or Windows.

If anyone knows how to get this game up and running, that'd be great!

I just d/l'd it. Dave - step 2 of the readme that pops up after it installs TELLS you to use DosBox.

Worked just fine - though it is a bit choppy (i'm on an AMD 64). I had all the detail cranked though. But it worked in dosbox on my first try. Just ran dosbox, mounted my drive, cd'd, and ran the exe. Sound + joystick support was right there.

Cthulhu · Post by **Cthulhu** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 11:24 am

I haven't tried this game yet, but I've gotten a -lot- of old DOS games to work just fine on Win XP by right clicking on them and setting things to Win 95 compatibility mode, 640x480 resolution, and 256 colors... they even run the right speed. Even Kings Quest 1 (!) ran just fine like this. (Although on my Japanese machine the fonts were screwed... non-system font reliant games have all been fine though.)

Damocles · Post by **Damocles** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 7:35 pm

The saga continues. I re-downloaded the game, but now the controls are wonky. I'm just running it in XP under Win95 compatibility mode.

*shrug*

Kaspal · Post by **Kaspal** » Fri Jun 24, 2005 8:00 pm

i had to resort on DOSBox, cuz in Win95 Compatibility mode, the game wont run ... only thing i dont like about DOSBox, is that even if i tell to use 3000 processor cicles, sometimes, the game feels like its takin up ALL of the resources of the system... besides that, the DOS games runs JUST fine with that app. (and this STARGUNNER its a good game, i liked it)

Cthulhu · Post by **Cthulhu** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 2:23 am

Yeah, I just d/led it and tried to get it to work with the win 95 compatibility mode... no luck. I can get it to start, but it acts really funny and the main menu never shows up. DOSBox seems to be needed this time.

Now I've just gotta wonder, why in the hell did games written for a 286 work but not this?

landshark · Post by **landshark** » Sat Jun 25, 2005 4:45 am

The original game used a ton of base memory back in the dos days. Getting something like that working in WinXP is often not doable.