Bringing this thread back...

I'm curious about this too. I just installed my copy of Starflight that I've been sitting on forever and it doesn't have an EGA mode so I can't play it. I am confused. 🙁 is there a patch I can apply?

I'm in the same situation, I'm afraid. My copy of Starflight provides these 4 choices only..

create a dosbox.conf file in the game directory:

1[dosbox]
2machine=tandy
3memsize=31
4
5[cpu]
6core=dynamic
7cycles=5000
8cycleup=500
9cycledown=500
10
11[mixer]
12nosound=false
13rate=44100
14blocksize=2048
15prebuffer=10
16
17[sblaster]
18type=none
19
20[speaker]
21pcspeaker=true
22tandyrate=44100

Thraka wrote:

Bringing this thread back...

I'm curious about this too. I just installed my copy of Starflight that I've been sitting on forever and it doesn't have an EGA mode so I can't play it. I am confused. 🙁 is there a patch I can apply?

"RGB" is the Tandy/PCjr mode. That's the one I used on a real Tandy 1000 back in the day.

thecrankyhermit wrote:

Second, is there a difference between playing version 1, and playing version 2 in any mode other than EGA?

Probably no different than any other game that supports EGA or Tandy/PCjr modes. Starflight makes some assumptions about the native speed of the computer so if you don't have Dosbox close to an 8088 speed, time will go by too quickly to finish the game.

If people are being purists about it, I'd probably think it has to do with the timing of how things work in the game. One major animation, the Flux's either takes a very long time ( several seconds) or nearly instant.

Starflight EGA is my first retail PC game and one of my all-time favorites!

I *think* the pre-EGA release supports Tandy implicitly under one of the other options. Not sure which.

The EGA version has some missing animations, such as the spinning planet on the title screen and the docking bay doors opening/closing.

I haven't heard any good explanation of what other differences there are between versions. They both run out of memory on me when I collect too many items and such.

Honestly I recommend the Amiga or Atari ST ports. The only thing they messed up in my opinion is drastically changing the Mechan 9's look.

The C64 version is too slow and oversimplified, and the Sega Genesis version adds too many action elements for my taste.

I think I can clarify.

My dad bought the original CGA version of Starflight back in ~1986. My family had recently sold our beloved Apple //e, which had a surprisingly diverse color scheme, to the horrible, horrible cyan/purple CGA color scheme. At the time I really resented my dad for doing this to the family! The awful CGA palate really got in the way of my enjoyment of the game (which today is one of my all time favorites).

There was also some sort of game breaking issue that required a physical patch. I don't remember specifically what it was but I think it had to do something with the save game states. We had to write to EA and after an interminably long wait, we were sent a floppy disk which allowed us to patch the game, I assume to version 2, because it now displayed in the comparatively glorious EGA.

Starflight 1 EGA release is a little easier. AFAIR, there's some neighbouring planets to Arth that are colonizable, making your life much easier at the beggining and cutting mining time. Also your ships won't drop shields in the nebulas so there's one difference that makes purists simply prefer the original. I'm sure there are smaller things here and there. I think Kris Asick's Starflight review talks about these diffrences so you might wanna check that. Check YouTube for Ancient DOS Games and search around episode 140.