Stardrive BlackBox

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 Note - this is a free alpha build. While it is far more stable and better than the original, expect bugs, some crashes and other glitches. We appreciate any feedback and bug report. See discord link below.

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This is the 15b version of StarDrive.exe decompiled from CIL and almost completely rewritten by BlackBox. The current release is BlackBox - Jupiter, which ported the game to 64bit, removing the old and leaky Sunburn engine + XNA 3.1 and replaced all of that with Monogame.

Notice: We have StarDrive developer's publicly and privately stated approval for modifying the game for educational purposes but this software is still under the steam license restrictions. Do not use this for immoral or personal financial gain, donation requests are ok but can not be demanded or required. Do not attempt to circumvent game DRM. Be reasonably respectful of the dev and the original software and steam. Full details in the team's github  here.

Jupiter 64-bit Port

what 64-bit gets you (vs Mars 1.51)

• No more late-game out-of-memory crashes. Mars was capped at ~2 GB of RAM because the engine was 32-bit. Huge late-game empires, fleets in the hundreds, and big modded games (especially Combined Arms) would routinely run the process out of memory and crash. Jupiter has no practical ceiling - your save runs as far as your PC's RAM lets it.
• Heavier mods are now livable. Combined Arms players know the drill: load it on Mars, play a few thousands turns, and the game becomes flakey. The 64-bit memory headroom is the main thing CA needed.
• Modern Windows, modern runtime. XNA 3.1 redistributable is gone. The game now ships with bundled MonoGame and the .NET 8 runtime, so "fresh Windows 11 PC won't launch the game" should be a thing of the past.
• Faster spatial queries under load. The native math/collision layer was rebuilt 64-bit with up-to-date compiler tooling. You'll feel it most in late-game combat with lots of ships on screen - the simulation tick stays tighter for longer.

Things to be aware of:

• Some visual effects look different. Mars used SunBurn, a fancy lighting engine that was discontinued years ago. Jupiter re-implements those effects on MonoGame; most look identical, a few are simpler than they used to be.
• Mars save games and Mars-compiled mods will not load on Jupiter. Saves are partitioned by design; mods need to be rebuilt against the Jupiter binaries.
• It's still alpha. This is the first Jupiter release - expect bugs we haven't caught yet, especially around mods.

For bug reports join our Discord Discussion