Solarex
Solarex is a space traveling, trading and prospecting game built upon a stellar system generator. There is a galaxy full of stellar systems with all sorts of treasures to explore - so enter your spaceship, buy some fuel and head off!

You start in a stellar system of the inhabited zone, with no freight, a little money and, of course, your ship. You can become a trader, prospector or explorer, or all of them a little bit.

Main features;
  • Procedural solar system generator.
  • A galaxy with hundreds of thousands of solar systems.
  • Five races in the inhabited zone, each with uniqued traits.
  • Simple and easy to use interface.
  • Mining and planetary resource collection operations.
  • Quests and jobs for the player. But do you really want to work for others?
  • Newspapers report latest events from simulated background world.
  • Several ship types to choose from, each with several equipment options.

System requirements
  • Minimum JRE: 1.6.0 Build 22 GA


Solarex on an eComStation machine with Open JDK


Installing Solarex
Download solarex-v0_42.jar. Create a folder (directory) "solarex" and copy the file to the directory. That's it! This is the last version which works with OpenJDK 6, the next version "solarex-v0_43.jar" and up needs Java 7.

The solarex.cmd file
With this file the program Solarex starts. I have made a solarex.cmd file with the following contents; 
@echo off
set path=[drive: java]\JAVA160\bin
set BEGINLIBPATH=[drive: java]\JAVA160\bin
set CLASSPATH=
[drive: solarex]
cd [drive: solarex]\solarex
java -Duser.home=[drive: solarex]\solarex -jar solarex-v0_42.jar 2>solarexbugs.txt
I use 2 separate folders (directories), one for Java and one for Solarex with the files created by this program. The references used in the cmd file;

  • [drive: java] = drive with Java
  • [drive: solarex] = drive with Solarex

should be replaced with real drive letters. Edit and save the file "solarex.cmd" from the distribution. This file is copied to the "solarex" folder (directory). Furthermore, different paths?, adjust according to your needs. Create a new program object. Specify the path and file name: "[drive: solarex]\solarex\solarex.cmd". In the tabpage Session check the boxes "OS/2 window", "Running as an icon" and "Close Window to end program". In the tabpage General you can enter the name "Solarex". You find enclosed in the file a Solarex OS/2 icon.

Parameters / options explained
  • The statement "-Duser.home=[drive: solarex]\solarex" will ensure that Solarex will save all necessary files in own directory instead of saving them in the home directory.
  • The addition "2>solarexbugs.txt" ensures that errors are saved in the file "solarexbugs.txt". The 2 in "2>" is not a typo! Don't be alarmed that this file will never be 0 bytes. The program dumps also its log into this file.

Download
In the file you can find the above command file (all driveletters are set to C:) and an OS/2 Solarex icon: solarex-ecs.zip.

revision July 12, 2015