StarDrive Jupiter 1.60 released - the community port finally crosses the 64-bit line
Quick context for the folks who don't know: StarDrive was a 2013 real-time 4X with a really promising design (RTS-style fleet battles, deep ship-by-module designer, factions with distinct identities) and a famously rocky launch. After the original developer moved on, a small community team got his explicit permission to decompile the game and rebuild it. That project is BlackBox, and we've been at it for roughly a decade.
Most of that decade was spent fixing what the original couldn't - late-game performance, save corruption, AI deadlocks - and shipping a content overhaul mod called Combined Arms that effectively doubles the game (ever tried designing a 4K slots Titan?)
We have also added many new features - like Mining Ops, Research Stations, Trade redesign, AI War redesign, new Espionage, Dyson Swarms and more.
Last week's drop is the one we've been chasing for years: Jupiter 1.60 is fully 64-bit.
What that means in practice:
- The 2 GB process ceiling that crashed late-game saves with large empires is gone. Combined Arms past mid-game is finally playable.
- Engine moved from XNA + SunBurn (both abandoned) to MonoGame 3.8 on .NET 8. No more XNA 3.1 redistributable. .NET runtime bundled in the installer.
- Restored visual effects, skinned/animated meshes, material maps, post-process passes, basic shadow maps.
Download (itch.io, ~690 MB installer, Combined Arms bundled):
https://stardriveteam.itch.io/jupiter-160
Discord (bug reports, questions):
https://discord.gg/dfvnfH4
Happy to answer anything in the comments - first-time setup, what's actually different from vanilla, modding, or just war stories from porting an XNA game off an abandoned middleware stack.
A pre 64-bit review (5 years got)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwLs56ZK4HQ&t