A long time ago (2005 to be exact), I started working on a computer program to implement the Second Sathar War game from the Knight Hawks Campaign Book and the tactical starship combat from the Tactical Operations Manual.

I originally started the project as a way to learn how to do GUI programming and the UI definitely shows its age. It’s been basically dormant since 2011 and I’ve not done any real work on the game other than to update the library versions so it can run on modern computers. (And I’ll often show the code to my students.) However, I’ve started working on it again and have a new version to release. I hope to keep working on it slowly over time and get new versions out.

As of this version, all the core game play functionality is implemented with three exceptions: Seeker Missiles, the Repair Turn, and the ability to track ships as they move off the map. Otherwise, I think everything is in the game. I’m working on those three features now and they will be in the next release.

As currently implemented, this is a “hot-seat” game, meaning both players have to be on the same computer taking turns moving ships and firing their weapons. Network play is on the to do list, but I want the full game functionality implemented first.

There are actually two programs as part of this. There is the SSW program which is the full strategic game, and the BattleSim program which is just the Knight Hawks board game combat system. The SSW game launches the BattleSim board when combat occurs in the strategic game (or gives you the option to play out the combat somewhere else and just enter the results). The BattleSim game allows you to play the predefined scenarios in the Tactical Operations Manual or create your own (between the Sathar and the UPF, pirates/militia aren’t an option yet in the stand alone tactical game).

Download

The current version is version 0.0.18. If you are interested in testing it out and playing with it, you can download it for Windows and Linux (sorry, I don’t have a Mac to build a Mac version).

• Linux Download (~68 MB)
• Windows Download (~10 MB)

Just click on the link and unpack the contents of the file somewhere. They both place the contents into a SecondSatharWar directory. The executable files are in the bin sub-directory and you can just click on them to launch them. There are also shortcuts in the top-level directory on Windows that may or may not work (I didn’t think to check if they worked if I moved the base directory around. i.e. to a different computer. 🙂 )

I’m not 100% sure why the Linux version doesn’t compress down as small, but I suspect not many people will be grabbing that one.

The Code and Reporting Problems

If you are interested in looking at my horrible old code (the program is written in C++), you are welcome to poke around in the project’s GitHub repository. This is also where you can report bugs you discover for me to fix. Just go to the Issues tab and hit the “New Issue” button.

Release Notes

If for some reason you want to see older versions (no guarantee they will run) you can see earlier development over on my old Star Frontiers Network site in the forums. The changes since that old 0.0.17 version are as follows (and this list, as well a more developer focused details, are included in a file in the download):

• Tactical combat now produces a much more informative damage summary dialog after fire resolution. The summary rolls damage up by ship, preserves weapon and defense hit identities, includes electrical fire and mine results, can show optional hit-detail lines, and now reports ADF and MR losses explicitly instead of collapsing them into vague effect text.
• Damage-resolution edge cases were tightened up to match the tactical rules more closely. Hull fallback handling was expanded for cases such as advanced damage hits, repeated damage-control repeat hits, and disastrous fire outcomes, reducing incorrect or misleading damage reporting.
• Stopped ships are easier to maneuver in tactical combat. The UI now supports stopped-ship facing pre-selection, free rotation before movement, preview-route rendering, and direct clicking on highlighted preview-route hexes to continue movement selection.
• Tactical station setup and movement behavior were corrected. Repositioning a station during setup no longer duplicates pending placement state, and station orbital movement now preserves the intended heading and speed when movement is finalized.
• Tactical screen layout and readability improved substantially. The movement and fire prompts no longer crowd or overlap action buttons, the lower panel reflows more reliably as the window changes size, ship-stat presentation is cleaner, and the tactical speed and ICM controls now size and render more consistently on wxGTK.
• Tactical dialogs are more polished and predictable. The damage summary dialog has a safer close path and better default focus behavior, while tactical, strategic, and BattleSim dialogs were reworked to fit and center correctly on first show.
• Startup and launch behavior is cleaner. The splash screen and initial frames are now centered consistently, and BattleSim launch dialogs and scenario flows received follow-up sizing and lifecycle fixes.
• Image and icon loading is more reliable across installation layouts. Shared asset-resolution logic now handles normalized paths and fallback lookup more consistently, which reduces missing-image failures in startup, tactical, and strategic displays.

Future Plans

Currently I’m focused on finishing the tactical game system. The current prioritized task list is:

• Add Seeker Missiles
• Add the Repair Turn mechanics
• Add map boundary handling
• Add the ability to save/load a tactical game in the middle
• Add the documentation into the game itself
• Add the ability to toggle the display of detailed damage results (right now it shows a ship summary and the individual hits for debugging purposes). The default will be the ship level summaries with the option to turn on the detailed results if desired. This will also come with a clean up of the damage summary interface.

Last Thoughts

I’m looking to reactivate this blog and this is one of the projects you’ll be hearing about. It might be the only thing for the next couple of months but starting in July I hope to be more active.