New Development number one. I was able to get Starshatter up and running in Linux. I have for a long time absolutely HATED Windows 10 and the ridiculously large amount of resources that it hogs by loading tons of junk into the background that I do not even use. My solution was to build a new computer out of some spare parts and carefully sourced scratch and dent and refurbished stuff from Newegg.com. Total cost for this new rig was $130. The linux operating system (ubuntu) is free so no cost for an OS. The good news is it can be run from a freaking thumb drive. This computer is nowhere near as fast as my gaming rig, but with a reasonable operating system that doesn't boot all the junk, it will actually boot up almost as fast as the gaming rig. I also was able to figure out how to get some windows based applications including Starshatter to run in Ubuntu. One concern I have had is that Starshatter is 32bit software not 64 bit. That means that no matter how much memory you put in your machine, it will not be able to access more than 4GB. With windows 10 a pretty significant portion of that 4GB is being eaten up by the operating system. With every new version of Windows that comes out, we are getting closer and closer to the point of not being able to run our dear old game very well if at all. With this free Operating system, that is no longer a concern. There is a slight learning curve in getting familiar with a different Operating system, but so far I am more than pleased with the results.
Second piece of info. The coder I have been in contact with over at Hard Light is really good at adding new features to Starshatter using the open source code. Last night I asked him if it would be possible to add a new class to the game called Super Dreadnaught now that extremely large ships can be added to the game and still look decent. This morning he emailed me Version 5.5.2 and sure enough he got a Super Dreadnaught class added. Its still in the testing phase to make sure it doesn't cause problems, but the good news is it can be placed in the main directory along with whichever older version we know to be stable and have both versions without having to over write the old exe in case this one does not work. I am attaching the 5.5.2 exe build if you would like to try it out.
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Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you, and be sure of this, I will be with you always even unto the end of the age. Mathew 28:20
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