Starflight
Platform: Commodore 64
Gametype: Undefined
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Description

A long time ago, a great empire comprised of Humans, Velox, Thrynn and Elowan ruled the stars. The Empire's currency was an energy source called Endurium. But something happened and this empire is no more. Furthermore, the small colony world named Arth has forgotten this heritage and technology. 1000 years have since passed and the people of Arth have rediscovered archaeological evidence of their empire. Using these discoveries, they create spaceships and form the Interstel corporation to govern the fleet. It's time to take the first steps back into space... but could it be the same enemy that destroyed the Empire still exists?

Starflight is a space exploration game. The player must first form a crew, assign their positions and customize the spaceship before blasting off from spacedock. Once out into space, the standard interface allows access to different crew members and navigation. The entire galaxy is unknown and it's up to the player to travel to distant planets to explore and land on them. Using a top-down interface, a planetary lander will venture out with the task of finding minerals and biological data to transport back to Starport. These resources can then be used to train crew members and improve the ship. Different alien races control the galaxy and it will be up to the player to engage them diplomatically or engage them in combat. Successful exploration of the galaxy and alien cultures will yield clues and new leads as to the fate of the Empire.

Trivia

Advertisement

 The advertising on the back of the box is strongly inspired by Star Trek, although the game itself is not. It shares a few elements with it, however. 
Compaq
 The Starflight reference card lists this helpful hint if playing on an original Compaq "luggable":

 Compaq(tm) users with an external composite monitor should type Control-Alt-< at the DOS prompt before starting Starflight to activate the composite display output. 

This means that Compaq users could play the game in 16 colors (instead of the CGA 4-color palette) as long as they hooked up a TV or composite monitor to the composite output. 
Copyright notice
 The DOS version of the game features a copyright notice written in the spirit of the game and reproduced below:

INTERSTEL POLICE WARNING

As provided by the Galactic Treaty of 4410, this computer software product is hereby declared the Intellectual Property of the Human authors, Binary Systems. All rights are henceforth reserved in space and time.

Provision for the protection of Intellectual Property is covered under section 8.9.1A-F of the Intangible Property Act of 4506, ratified by all beings except the Gazurtoid.

Included in Section 8.9.1A-C is the provision for Interstel Corporate Police to enforce the Law.

WARNING: Any being caught with an unauthorized copy or version of this Software Product will be punished by Interstel Corporate Police. Punishment may include the destruction of the offending being. 

Additionally, players will be visited by an Interstel Police Vessel at some point in the game and forced to give a passcode. Oh, and it has level 75 shields. 
Development
Starflight and Starflight 2 were written in a mixture of Forth (!!) and assembly.

In an interview, the creators stated that what they did for both games was to create the universe first, populated all the various races, and then let them tell their own version of the story. This is directly opposite to most modern designs, where you have the story first, and the art/universe come later. 

EGA re-release
 Electronic Arts re-issued Starflight packaged in a box (as opposed to the album-cover packaging) with proper EGA support a couple of years later its initial release, but this version had an extremely limited distribution and is considered very rare. The gameplay in this release is also slightly different, which is seemingly unintentional because the gameplay differences conflict with established rules (shields stay up in nebulas, etc.) 

Extras
 
The package came with a colored starmap listing every single system in the game and their star class. One quickly learned to add the "wormhole" jumps to the map in order to save fuel and/or avoiding enemies. 
Game design notes
 The inside tri-fold lists notes from the game designers:

The Dream: 
Back in 1982, we approached Electronic Arts with the idea of creating a universe on a disk that would let people experience the feeling of exploring the universe. It was an ambitious idea. We knew it would require a lot of time and the development of some new technology. We were more right than we knew.

The Cutting Room Floor: 
We rewrote the game several times as we struggled to achieve our goals. We wanted the universe to convey a gigantic sense of space, complexity, and life. And we wanted an exciting fantasy role-playing game, with a wide spectrum of character interaction and activity. It seemed like whenever we were close to finalizing the script, we'd find another way to make the game more fun.

The Planet Builder: 
About nine months after we started the actual programming, we came up with the idea for the fractal generator. A fractal generator so powerful that it could create surfaces in space. It took 6 man-years to create the technology, but it gave us the ability to cram 800 complex and unique planets into each game, instead of the 50 we'd had before. There are so many that even we haven't explored them all.

The Aliens: 
To find the right names for each race, we wrote long profiles and histories for each, then tossed random syllables at each other for several days. To handle their languages, behavior, and combat-action, we had to devote months to building a sophisticated artificial intelligence system. We threw away the communications module three times before we had exactly what we wanted. Sometimes we wondered which would come first, flying to the stars in Starflight, or flying to the stars in real life.

Breathing Ammonia: 
Once the fractal generator builds a planet, the eco-system generator creates environmental conditions for it, like gravity, atmosphere, minerals, and temperature. Once we took a journey back to Earth, only to find the eco-system generator had given it new continents and an ammonia atmosphere. It took two years to perfect the technology.

15 Man-Years Later:
The last several months were spent tying all the various technologies together. Because of the program's complexity and scope, the play-testing alone took months. But all that time and effort has proven worthwhile. We had a vision of what an outer space fantasy game could be, and now that vision is a reality.
Saving
 For the DOS version of the game, all of the player's information is saved onto a single save file. For this reason, the game points out you NEED to make a backup and should not play off of the original disks. And also, the game needs to be saved prior to exiting or the progress can get stuck "in-progress". 
Size

Starflight (and the sequel) contains over 800 planets, each with specific artifacts and minerals to find and mine--all on two 360K diskettes (which also have to share space with program code and graphics) and without needing more than 256K of RAM. Consider the following: You could go to any arbitrary planet, find a cluster of artifacts and take only one of the artifacts in the cluster, leave the planet, spend another 20 hours exploring other planets, fighting battles, saving the game, etc., then go back to that same planet and find everything exactly as you left it, including the cluster of artifacts with only one taken. This was (and still is) an astonishing technical achievement! 

Awards

Comuter Gaming World 
Hall of Fame member
November 1996 (15h anniversary issue) - #55 in the "150 Best Games of All Time" list
Power Play 
1987 - Best MS-DOS Game '87

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Description from the packaging:

Boldly go where no game has gone before... into the most far reaching outer space adventure ever.
Explore 270 star systems and 800 planets with unique eco systems.
Interact with 7 alien races, each with unique languages and cultures.
Choose and train 6 ship's officers: Captain; Science Officer; Communications Officer; Navigator; Medical Officer; and Chief Engineer. Their performance improves with experience.
Includes animated graphics of rotating planets, hyperspace travel and more.
-The equivalent of 15 man years in development; Includes starmap and security decoder.

Explore strange new worlds.
Your mission: To seek out new life, and the remnants of ancient civilizations. And to change the galaxy's future by discovering the secrets of its past.
Open a channel to the alien vessel.
Each alien race, like the Veloxi, has a unique language, culture, and personality. With enough training, your Communications Officer can make you some powerful friends.
Full power to lasers!

You're ambushed in hostile territory. Use diplomacy to buy time. Or let your lasers and missiles do the talking.
Standard orbit, Captain.
Your Science Officer scans the planet surface for environmental conditions, valuable minerals, and life forms. There's a stiff fine for recommending colonization of airless lava-worlds.


http://www.mobygames.com/game/c64/starflight
