Stars in Shadow

What works

• starting a game
• all the different game functions (star map, colony management, research, ship design, combat, diplomacy...)
• saving/loading
• steam achievements

What does not

I could resolve all the issues listed here by applying the workarounds listed below (in the workarounds section), which resulted in a fully functional game without any noticable problems.

• the (large) animated mouse cursor continuously flickers (epilepsy warning...), sometimes also distorting the image below it (see workarounds)
• the performance is quite reduced on some Wine versions, on others it is smooth (game should work on 3.0.1+ / 3.4+ according to bug #43357, I saw good performance on 3.0.2/3.4 and terrible on 3.13)
• Steam has multiple issues with both the installation and in general, but in the end I could use it to both install and launch the game (see workarounds)
• a few images do not appear properly (tanks and planetary defenses in some cases), but nothing game-breaking

Workarounds

At first, I wasn't able to install the game (any game) from Steam with the "Content servers unreachable" error message, until I applied the workaround described in the comments for bug #45329:

Open drive_c/Program Files/Steam/config/config.vdf, and under

"InstallConfigStore"
{
    "Software"
    {
      "Valve"
      {
          "Steam"
          {

add the following entry (for me it's directy under "cip" and "CM"):

"CS"

"valve511.steamcontent.com;valve501.steamcontent.com;valve517.steamcontent.com;valve557.steamcontent.com;valve513.steamcontent.com;valve535.steamcontent.com;valve546.steamcontent.com;valve538.steamcontent.com;valve536.steamcontent.com;valve530.steamcontent.com;valve559.steamcontent.com;valve545.steamcontent.com;valve518.steamcontent.com;valve548.steamcontent.com;valve555.steamcontent.com;valve556.steamcontent.com;valve506.steamcontent.com;valve544.steamcontent.com;valve525.steamcontent.com;valve567.steamcontent.com;valve521.steamcontent.com;valve510.steamcontent.com;valve542.steamcontent.com;valve519.steamcontent.com;valve526.steamcontent.com;valve504.steamcontent.com;valve500.steamcontent.com;valve554.steamcontent.com;valve562.steamcontent.com;valve524.steamcontent.com;valve502.steamcontent.com;valve505.steamcontent.com;valve547.steamcontent.com;valve560.steamcontent.com;valve503.steamcontent.com;valve507.steamcontent.com;valve553.steamcontent.com;valve520.steamcontent.com;valve550.steamcontent.com;valve531.steamcontent.com;valve558.steamcontent.com;valve552.steamcontent.com;valve563.steamcontent.com;valve540.steamcontent.com;valve541.steamcontent.com;valve537.steamcontent.com;valve528.steamcontent.com;valve523.steamcontent.com;valve512.steamcontent.com;valve532.steamcontent.com;valve561.steamcontent.com;valve549.steamcontent.com;valve522.steamcontent.com;valve514.steamcontent.com;valve551.steamcontent.com;valve564.steamcontent.com;valve543.steamcontent.com;valve565.steamcontent.com;valve529.steamcontent.com;valve539.steamcontent.com;valve566.steamcontent.com;valve165.steamcontent.com;valve959.steamcontent.com;valve164.steamcontent.com;valve1611.steamcontent.com;valve1601.steamcontent.com;valve1617.steamcontent.com;valve1603.steamcontent.com;valve1602.steamcontent.com;valve1610.steamcontent.com;valve1615.steamcontent.com;valve909.steamcontent.com;valve900.steamcontent.com;valve905.steamcontent.com;valve954.steamcontent.com;valve955.steamcontent.com;valve1612.steamcontent.com;valve1607.steamcontent.com;valve1608.steamcontent.com;valve1618.steamcontent.com;valve1619.steamcontent.com;valve1606.steamcontent.com;valve1605.steamcontent.com;valve1609.steamcontent.com;valve907.steamcontent.com;valve901.steamcontent.com;valve902.steamcontent.com;valve1604.steamcontent.com;valve908.steamcontent.com;valve950.steamcontent.com;valve957.steamcontent.com;valve903.steamcontent.com;valve1614.steamcontent.com;valve904.steamcontent.com;valve952.steamcontent.com;valve1616.steamcontent.com;valve1613.steamcontent.com;valve958.steamcontent.com;valve956.steamcontent.com;valve906.steamcontent.com"

Also, in Steam a lot of images are simply missing/not loading, the Store and other pages are full black, but the Library can be selected and the game launched.

For the mouse cursor flickering, I found out that if I edit the .ani files in the game's "cursors" folder (drive_c/Program Files/Steam/steamapps/common/Stars in Shadow/cursors) and resize them to e.g. 32x32 from 72x72 (with any free .ani editor from the internet e.g. ArtCursors (via Wine :))), the problem goes away (changing animation duration settings didn't help)

To fix the incorrectly appearing tanks and other images, open the Wine configuration tool (winecfg), go to the Libraries tab and add an override for "vcomp140". If the game has already been launched before doing this, you will also need to delete the ArtCache folder inside of the game's main folder to remove the cached broken image files.

What was not tested

• completing a full playthrough
• trying all the different game settings

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU: Nvidia
• Driver: proprietary

Additional Comments

r22151 (04/15/18)