How to start playing StarMade - For Dummies

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    Me and some others agreed that there were way too many questions in support/public chat that went like: "Where to get the game?" "How to start the game?" "It's not working, why?", etc etc.

    This thread is supposed to be an easy guide for all that, which can be linked to those people wondering. Please sticky, or it won't be as useful!



    Table of contents:

    - Where to get the game?

    - How to start the game?

    - How to start playing online?

    - How to secure your account?

    - General Troubleshooting

    - How to install StarMade manually?

    - How to play the game?





    Where to get the game? (See picture for clarification)



    1.) Go to the download tab above.

    2.) Hit the Terms&Conditions checkbox, else you won't be able to download the game.

    3.) First pick the REGULAR download for your operating system (Windows, Mac OS X or Linux). If the regular one fails to download, pick the alternative one.



    How to start the game? (See pictures for clarification)

    1.) Put the launcher you just downloaded in a folder somewhere, then run it like you run any other program.





    2.) Let the launcher download the latest version of StarMade, then click the "Start Game" button.





    3.) If it's not on SinglePlayer mode yet, tick the circle like in the picture.

    4.) Give yourself a name, without spaces.

    5.) Press OK, and the game should start!



    How to start playing online? (See picture for clarification)

    1.) Ensure you went through step 1.) and step 2.) from the above.





    2.) Tick the MultiPlayer circle, and fill in an IP-address of a server you'd like to join (with the port). You can find servers on www.starmade-servers.com. The port is usually 4242 for StarMade.

    3.) Continue with steps 4.) and 5.) from the guide above this one, and you should join the server!



    How to secure your account? (See pictures for clarification)



    1.) In the game settings menu, press the "Uplink to star-made.org" button.





    2.) Fill in your FORUM username and the password for it, it basically links your CURRENT NICKNAME with that account. So if you change your nickname, and don't uplink it again, the link will be LOST.

    3.) Hit the "Save Login" checkbox so you won't have to do this everytime (note that if you don't do this, you have to repeat step 2.) everytime you start StarMade!)

    4.) Press OK when you are done with all this, if you did everything correctly it should go back to the game settings. From here you can start the game again with the guides above.



    Trouble-Shooting - Game won't run:

    1.) Ensure your Java is up to date/working and ensure you actually have Java installed on your computer, the game is based on it and cannot run without it. http://www.java.com

    2.) Ensure your graphics card drivers are up to date. You can find lots of help with this on google, as it is a pretty general thing I won't elaborate on here.

    3.) If you can't join servers, first check if you did all steps correctly, then check if the server is online (www.starmade-servers.com shows this). If it's none of those two, it might be your firewall/router or the firewall that comes with your virus scanner.

    Again, the internet is full of solutions for such problems, so I recommend a quick google search "Firewall problems" or something.

    4.) If the launcher fails to download the latest version, you can always get it manually from http://files.star-made.org/build/ , the latest one is the one at the bottom! See the guide below for more info on this.

    5.) In Windows, try to run the launcher as an administrator, it could solve some issues.



    How to install the game manually? (See pictures for clarification)

    1.) Download the launcher as explained in the first guide at the top of this thread.

    2.) Go to http://files.star-made.org/build/ and get the latest build at the bottom.





    3.) Open the .zip file, make a folder INSIDE of the folder that contains the launcher, call it "StarMade", and copy ALL OF THE the contents of the downloaded .zip file into that folder.

    4.) Start the launcher and run the game as explained in the guides at the top, you won't have to update/install in this case since you did it manually.



    How to play the game?

    Look around on YouTube, or on these forums, there are tons and tons of guides everywhere that should help a lot, but you have to look for them.

    For starters I especially recommend video tutorials on YouTube.



    That's all for now, more will be added as it becomes necessary. If you see people asking how to launch/play/download the game, link them to this, it will help to keep the chat cleaner.