[Jeff Vader]

Erm. Not having followed anything Starshatter-related, I'm just guessing here. But if they did the same thing that Volition did with FreeSpace 2, and released the source code, then you really should not find the game assets from any legal site. The game engine runs the game and does all sorts of cool things, but assets (textures, effects, sounds, whatnot) are a different matter and at least in FreeSpace 2's case, those were never released, and still remain under the ownership of the IP holder.

So no, you can't find any "game files" here. And for future reference, please don't post links to (possibly) copyrighted material. Unless some credible source says that the entire Starshatter game was released for free, I'm going to assume that the assets are not freely available and will remove the link to that sound file from your post.

Thank you.

[The E]

The deal is slightly different in this case. The actual game was abandoned and released by its original developer, and a patched version had been up for download at starshattermods.com.

[Jeff Vader]

Kk. Continue.

[braddw25]

Does anyone here know anything about what has happend to starshattermods.com??? I am a moderator at that sight, yet have been unable to sign on for 3-4 days, and have heard nothing from Wdboyd, the owner of the sight. I'm starting to get a bit worried. Hope all is well with him.

[The E]

The site seems to be down, and down hard. As in, all I get when going there is a bunch of error messages from what I assume is the php parser installed on the server.

[braddw25]

Could that indicate that possibly William's computer may have crashed?? I have emailed him a couple times and have not gotten a response. Although I am not completely sure I'm using the correct email. I seem to remember that he recently changed to a new addy. As I said, it's unusual for somethign like this to occur and for me to not hear from him about it. The site has gone down before, but he always emailed me in the past to let me know what was up, and it's never been down for this long before. Not at all certain what is going on, but I hope everything is okay with him.

[The E]

It seems something on the server has become misconfigured. What this means, I have no idea; it does mean however that whatever is going on isn't a simple crash.

[RecklessPrudence]

I've been looking at trying to get this game for a while, it's good that it's available somewhere again, since you haven't been able to buy it from MatrixGames for ages.

Since StarshatterMods.com is down, I got the game from SpaceSimCentral, like someone suggested earlier in the thread. I haven't booted it up yet though, as the only guide I could find for installing it really seemed to recommend getting the "Starshatter Reborn Effects Mod," which apparently does a bunch of bbugfixing, as well as adding new shinies. Unfortunately, the guide links to StarshatterMods.com for downloading said mod.

A bit of googling later, and I can't find any alternate sites for downloading it - anyone know of any, or have any ideas?

[jr2]

Someone who has it, go upload all the StarShatter stuff to gameupdates.org.  Then you'll have a decent mirror.

[Thaeris]

Well... if we have intentions of possibly moving a Starshatter project to HLP, could we not upload the files to FS Mods, or use some other hosting function we have here? Starshatter is not terribly large, and I believe it's less than 700 megabytes when compressed...

...Furthermore, we could put all of the base files of the program into one complete package for the latest release, because, God forbid, that was such an unreasonable request on Starshatter Mods...



The real shame with SS Mods going down is losing some of the important mods, like the carrier fix. I can't tell you how many AI fighters will knock themselves off without that installed. It will occaisionally kill you, too (by not having the fix installed). I do have the toolkit, rscapers fantastic port of the FS starfield to SS, and the carrier fix still on hand, and I think we could rummage all the bits and pieces of the program together if need be. The only thing I'm leary of is... back in the day, I picked up an "illicit" copy of SS because it certainly wasn't up for purchase. A lot of the visual pieces of the game were broken, and I still use the voice files (vox.dat) from that copy (and that's the only thing from that copy, actually), as last time I checked, Boyd had not included that package with the stand-alone install posted on the old site. Otherwise, I actually still have a copy of the latest working copy of SS zipped on my desktop as well. There's a bit of residual junk to clean out that wasn't properly removed when it was uploaded to SS Mods, but that's an easy fix.

I certainly am not going to be uploading anything for the next few days, however. Finals are coming up too damn fast!

[Alan Bolte]

I still have on my hard drive:
SCP_505.zip
SSTGS.zip
SS_Reborn.zip
vox.7z

I'll put them on the tracker jr2 posted, but if you want me to upload them elsewhere, PM me.

EDIT: here's the torrent: http://gameupdates.org/details.php?id=5035

[Alex Heartnet]

Could any of you provide a little bit of explanation of what the mods included in the torrent are meant to do?  I got as far as being able to activate them in the mod config tab in the options screen, but there isn't any real indication of what content.dat, starshatterupdate.dat, and mods/Vox.dat are meant to do.  (SS Reborn at least comes with a readme file.)

[Thaeris]

SS is hardly poor in its documentation, but wondering what things do is not bad, either. Unlike SS mods, I don't think that means treating you like an imbicile when you ask questions, that, even though a bit of common sense would make the answers clear, you ask because you just don't know, and no one told you before:

- The vox file is an important .dat file left out of the package when it was uploaded on SS Mods. "vox" means what it sounds - voices! This is all or most of the pilot chatter and what have you in the game, as well as any additional voice content for later in the game.

- If you did not know, .dat is like FS's .vp, but better in some ways, maybe worse in others. Supposedly, directories are packed in an orderly fashion in the file, but if you open the files with Starshatter's .dat editor, you'll oft see no real structure in the heirarchy like you'll see in a .vp. It is there, though. However, the .dat file is compressed, unlike the .vp, and thus takes up less volume on your drive. It's more "bang for your space," at least.

- Starshatter Update is probably a program that will see no more use, or will only see more use when the source code is revised sufficiently for use by devs.

- The content.dat just seems to be a bit of additional information added to the principal data set.

All the above files are handled automatically, you do not need to worry about mounting them like you do mods. And, if you're looking for the manual, did you look under the "Manuals" directory?

However, looking back through some of the old files brings some good questions of my own to light - back in the day, Starshatter had a demo, of course. I think some of the .dat files may be redundant, actually. And, you will note that some files are mounted seperately from the principal .dat's. Looking into better organizing the distributable data will need to be something done to SS in the future.

[The E]

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=80780.new#new

[braddw25]

For those interested in/concerned about Starshattermods, I just heard from Wdboyd. Apparently he was attempting to update the site, and somehow the database got lost and was not backed up so the database for the site is gone for good and can't be restored. William does have all the files in the download section and I asked him if he would allow then to be hosted at annother site should such a place become available. I have yet to hear from him on that one, but I anticipate a response soon.\

As for starshattermods, it looks as though it's run has come to an end. William had been disappointed with the level of participation for quite some time, and has decided this is the time to bring it to an end, so no further attempt will be made to revive the site. A sad day to be sure, but anyone who enjoys the game Starshatter owes a great debt of gratitude to wdboyd for maintaining starshattermods and keeping the game alive for so long. While I am quite sad to see SSMods come to an end, I look forward to what may come from the source coding that is now in its infancy, and I am still willing to help out in any way possible to further that effort.

[G0atmaster]

Dang... I just became interested.  What a shame...

[jr2]

... I look forward to what may come from the source coding that is now in its infancy, and I am still willing to help out in any way possible to further that effort.

http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=80780.new#new