A custom virtual machine for the Stars 4X game
Summary
The post describes StarsVM, a custom 80286 emulator and Win16-Win32 bridge that enables running Stars! 4X on modern Windows by embedding the original 16-bit game inside a VM. It details implementation, performance optimizations, I/O handling, and serial-code handling, and discusses potential for modding and further exploration. It serves as a technical deep-dive into retro game emulation and system-level virtualization with open-source tooling.