How to play Starbound older versions without 3rd party tools.

This guide will show you how to get download older versions of the game, and then play it.
I'll be covering Glad Giraffe update, since it's the last one before the update that streamlined the game.
The method shown is only for Windows. I have no idea how that can be done on other platforms.
You'd probably need to find out how to open Steam Console on your platform.

Little Note

This guide is made oriented for Windows version of Steam.
I have no idea how to do this on other versions.
Beside, the only part that might need adaptation based on operational system, is opening Steam Console, which definitely is very different for other systems.
You can look for how to do that on the internet.

Also, patience is a virtue. Do remember that you'll be downloading the older version directly from Steam servers.

Enabling Steam Console.

To download a previous update from the game, we need first to enable the Console on your Steam client.

There are two ways that can be done:

The first one will most likely effective as soon as you do it.
Press WindowsLogo+R, then place/write this on the text box: "steam://nav/console"
Running that will open the CONSOLE tab on your Steam (even if Steam is already running, so no need to close it).



The second method, would be to open the properties of the Steam shortcut, then add " -console" at the end of it.
For some reason, that didn't worked for me, but the first method worked.

Downloading an older version of the game.

To download the older version, we first need to find it first.
For reference, we can use Starbounder to find when the update was launched, and Steam DB manifests page to download the desired version of the game.

If you just want to download specific versions of the game, skip to the next step to get the manifest number instead.

For example:
The Glad Giraffe update was launched in December 15th, 2015. We need to look for the Manifest that has the date of December 15th, 2015, or the latest that's not nightly before next update, to download the game update.

https://starbounder.org/Version_history
https://steamdb.info/depot/211821/manifests/

Do notice that SteamDB will not show all manifests if you haven't logged in on their site with your steam account, for some reason.



The blue box on the end of the manifest line, clicking it will copy to clipboard the link to download that specific version of the game from Steam Console.

To download it, you have to open Steam, go on CONSOLE, then paste the copied text on its text box.
The pasted text should look like this: "download_depot <numbers> <more numbers> <even more numbers>"

There will be no progress bar or anything, but it will show in the console when download is completed, alongside where the update was downloaded, so please wait a while, go watch a video or something.

Specific Versions Download List

This contains a list of specific game updates that you can download.
Upon inputting the command and pressing Enter, wait until the confirmation message show up on the console.
The confirmation message will also show the directory the game was downloaded to.


You can check here what each version offers.
https://starbounder.org/Version_history

If you're looking for the last sandbox update, get Glad Giraffe.

Version	Manifest
Cheerfull Giraffe (Basically test version of the 1.0)	download_depot 211820 211821 1832884687015271119
Glad Giraffe (Last sandbox update)	download_depot 211820 211821 1842730272313189605
Pleased Giraffe	download_depot 211820 211821 4822988714066195114
Spirited Giraffe	download_depot 211820 211821 234722745975791695
Upbeat Giraffe	download_depot 211820 211821 7881549028894035700
Rampaging Koala	download_depot 211820 211821 1181941016889826211
Enraged Koala	download_depot 211820 211821 147953706162142271
Furious Koala	download_depot 211820 211821 5164766409002525939
Angry Koala	download_depot 211820 211821 2454660953408374440
Offended Koala	download_depot 211820 211821 7202667018365434471
Indignated Koala	download_depot 211820 211821 6862364170638162798
Frustrated Koala	download_depot 211820 211821 2808196942879935607
Annoyed Koala	download_depot 211820 211821 9074544928571942179
Irritated Koala	download_depot 211820 211821 3814411259811439312
Perturbed Koala	download_depot 211820 211821 1973987759762023975

I tried to get the link of the latest updates of each, since they bring patches with fixes to issues and changes.
Hopefully I didn't messed them up.

Sadly, no progress of the download will be shown. In case the console spends way too long on the Downloading Depot message (like, 10~20 minutes), you can try the download again.

Finding the downloaded version

After the download is completed, Steam will tell you where the file was downloaded.

Go to the directory shown on the interface, and you'll find that the entire installation of that game version is located there, under the name "depot_[numbers]".

What to do from here, and what should I look out for.

From here, you can move that folder somewhere else, rename it to like "Starbound Old" or "Starbound [Something]", and then you can also add it as a Non Steam game shortcut, just to have access to it through your library.

Depending on your version, just go inside the folder of your windows (or os) version, open the game executable, and voilá.



Do notice that most mods will probably be broken on older versions of the game, which might be quite troublesome. And depending on what version of Starbound you downloaded, the modding method might be different (and probably erased from the internet by now), so keep that in mind.

From what I've seen on the Version History and a old patch note, if you're playing on any version that has "Giraffe" in the name, then it uses the recent modding system on the game, so installing mods should give not much problem (unless they use something that should be in base game).

Well... I'm pretty sure that you know that if you want to play with your friends this update, they will also need to download the same version you did, right?
Gladly, you can make things easier by providing the manifest you used, and let them do the rest heh.

Anyways, I hope this guide was handy. And do let me know if you bump into any issue with this guide or the process of getting older versions.

Have fun :)

Credits

• SteamDB for listing older versions, and allowing copying their manifest.

[spirit6-minecrafting]

I have a separate copy on a different folder already, i just was wondering whether you hada clue, will try it later tonight.

[なかの31]

I'm not really sure, but if you want to replace the starbound folder for the older version, probably still a good idea to make a non steam game shortcut for the executable.

[spirit6-minecrafting]

is their a way to get pre-mechs to work through steam, or will it simply update to current?