The long awaited sequel to Planet X3 has arrived. And it has everything people wanted, mouse support, more unit types, better AI, smooth animations, etc.
You can download it for free to use on the Commander X16 emulator here: PLANETX16
You can download the emulator itself here: https://github.com/X16Community/x16-emulator/releases/tag/r46
To install, simply unzip the contents into the same folder with the emulator. You can start it from the command line like this:
X16EMU -prg PLANETX16 -capture -runOr simply open the emulator and type /PLANETX16 and then RUN
Warning – Be sure to capture the mouse in the emulator by pressing CONTROL-M, otherwise it will be hard to control.
Rather play on a real X16, order yours here: https://texelec.com/product/cx16-preorder/
That’s a wonderful surprise, I didn’t know the release was imminent. And for free? That’s like an early Christmas present. Thanks very much!
I just had an intense game on the Two Rivers map on “normal”. For quite some time I thought it’d be a piece of cake as the protoids lingered along and never really showed some real offensive mindset and didn’t care to get things going. I built up my defenses and was sure to be safe behind my walls. I deviced the strategy to flank them by a second base and to attack them when they’re out of the house. Never would I have expected them to undertake a massive onslaught once I began building that second base. Desperately trying to hold the line while producing kamikaze units (light tanks) in the second base to attack their rear, I finally managed to destroy their base while they were doing the same to my base No 1. I was astonished that they just ran through my defenses as soon as they had the drive to do so. Very surprising and definitely no easy game. Can’t wait to try the next map.
Gameplay is rather different from X3 and X2. The possibility to view the whole map from the beginning takes a bit from the suspense not to know from where the ebnemy comes, especially as there is no “fog of war”. And yet it isn’t necessarily easier this way. Especially the missiles seem to be a real challenge to use now. Is there no global coordinate system like in X3?
Oh and I like to add that the music is top-notch, absolutely fantastic.
X16 is yet another fantastic entry in this great series. I’d love to buy it in a physical way with a nice manual.
Thank you. I’ve never actually cared for the “fog of war” and to be honest I always use cheat codes to turn it off on modern RTSs. That’s mostly because I usually play against the computer and the computer obviously knows where my base is. So I think it’s only fair that I see where their base is. I felt the missile was too easy to use in X3, so I made it more expensive and more time consuming this time. That way it requires significant investment in both time and resources to make that work.
Looking forward to play this game on an old CRT ^^.
Noticed a little typo in the command you wrote: PLANETX6 instead of PLANETX16.
This is amazing! I downloaded the emulator for Mac and the game into the same folder, but the command is not finding the program. I’m confident it is me as I have not used an interface like this since my Apple IIE days. I’ll figure it our and look forward to playing.
For Lee Mabie and anyone else who is confused about how to run the game on a Mac, this is the way I was able to get it running.
I follow David’s channel on YouTube closely and when I saw I could play his new game with an emulator I got excited. When I found out I didn’t need to dig out a PC or Windows because the x16 emulator could be run in macOS I was thrilled!
By-the-way, I have no experience with a Commodore machine or the x16 and have just enough programming knowledge to really screw something up so take the following with a grain of salt.
I started by copying the contents of the PLANETX16-RC3 folder I had downloaded into the x16 emulator folder. Then I ran the x16 emulator and typed “/PLANETX16” in the emulator but got a “FILE NOT FOUND ERROR” response. I knew those “BIN” files in the PLANETX16-RC3 folder still had the zipper icon. Many times macOS doesn’t care if a file is compressed or not but I knew this was probably a unique situation and assumed their “compressed” state was the problem.
I tried to “unzip” the game “BIN” files but discovered they could not be “unzipped”. I learned this is likely because those files are in a format used by the emulator and are not compressed in the way we usually see a compressed file in macOS. They don’t need to be decompressed at all to play the game. I think macOS just sees them as some typed of compressed file and slaps the zipper icon on it.
The key for me was to find out how to tell the x16 emulator to change the directory to the PLANETX16-RC3 folder so a short crash-course later I learned these commands:
DOS “$” (this will show you the contents of the current directory)
DOS “CD:xxxxxxxxxx” (changes the directory to what you typed after CD:)
So in the emulator you need to change the directory to the PLANETX16-RC3 folder that is in macOS (for me it was still in the Downloads folder). Once you get there you can then type “/PLANETX16” and it should work.
Hope this helps!
Thanks 8-Bit Guy!
you might already have this and i just missed it but do you have anything that explains how to play planetx16 I have been playing but i would like to know all the keyboard hot keys?
other then that I love it keep up the good work
The hotkeys are all listed in the included documentation.
Morning, wanted to buy this game off Steam to support you. Noticed there is a new version of this game with mouse support. Does the Steam version have this support and all the new goodies? If not, will it?
I don’t really understand the question. There’s only one version of Planet X16, and it has always had mouse support from the beginning. You may be thinking of Planet X3, which is the previous game.
Your correct. I did get the two games mixed up. Ok cool, I will be buying the Planet X16. Thanks for the quick response.