Stars vs OS

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This article is still being written. Feel free to help :)

Because Stars! was designed to run on Windows 3.11 or Windows 95, you may experience problems running it on later Windows versions.

In particular version 2.7 (the retail version) requires wavemix.dll, which can be found on the downloads article.


Windows

3.11

Stars! was designed for this OS. There are no issues using Stars! that I am aware of.

95/98/ME

wavemix.dll

Required by v2.7. To install it, simply copy it into your c:\windows directory(or wherever you installed Windows.) Wavemix.dll under Windows 9x tends to cause Stars! to crash when other sounds, such as mp3s, are played at the same time Stars! is running. This is not an issue with later versions of Windows.

NT/2000/XP

wavemix.dll

Required by v2.7. To install it, simply copy it into your c:\windows directory(or wherever you installed Windows.)

stars.ini

Because stars.ini resides in the windows directory (%WINDOWS% - C:\Windows or wherever you installed windows too), Stars! needs to be run by a user with administrator rights for stars.ini to be created. Once created, granting write access will allow all normal Stars! functions. If you do not have and cannot borrow admin rights, Stars! will run just fine without stars.ini, but you will lose the benefits stars.ini provides i.e. you'll have to re-enter your serial every time Stars! is run, Stars will not remember your window layout, zip orders, saved queues or custom fonts.

General issues

  1. Occasionally the cursor will disappear when over the map pane. Closing all instances of Stars! and restarting Stars! will fix this.
  2. If Stars! will not run due to an error with the 'win16 subsystem'. Reboot(restart) the computer.

Vista

32bit
Same issues as NT/2000/XP. In addition, stars.ini is located at: [drive]:\users\[user]\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Windows
64bit
Requires emulation to work. The simplest solutions are either Win3.x running in DOSBox or MS Virtual PC.

Windows 7 beta

[1] Coyote reported that 'it also runs just fine on win 7 beta (64 bit).'

Linux

Screen shot of the Tutorial running under WINE in Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope(guest) on VirtualBox on Windows XP(host)

Stars runs well under WINE.

Ubunutu or Debian

Steps to get Stars! running under Ubuntu 9.04 Jaunty Jackalope, all typed into a shell:

  1. Install WINE
    sudo apt-get install wine
  2. make stars executable
    chmod +x stars.exe
  3. run
    ./stars.exe

Notes

  • Sound is sometimes an issue in Wine configuration. It helps to have sound turned off, or use v2.6 rather than 2.7
  • At least one user has noticed that the serial number gets prompted for very often under Wine. This is only a minor convenience, and is probably because Stars! keeps detecting what looks like hardware changes.

OS/2

No reported issues have been found.

MacOS 9/X

As far as I can tell Mac users don't play Stars!

Emulators

DOSBox

Once installed with Windows 3.11(easy), and the 'resolution' increased to 1024x768(not so easy) Stars! runs just fine and is very playable.

Win3.11 installation with Stars! 2.6jrc4, setup for 1024x768. Requires DOSBox 7.2 or higher.