Notices

I was wondering if there are any games for the N8x0 similar to Stars! (if you don't know it check here). I don't think there is a port or a way to emulate Stars!, but i'd like to find something in that spirit, any suggestions?

The wiki page you linked to has 4 open source Stars! clones at the bottom of the page

This one looks to be semi promising...

I think your best bet would be Thousand Parsec which is an open-source game engine based on Stars!

Hope this helps

Actually no, it doesn't, but thanks for the answer. I'm looking for games for the tablet, most of those have been dead for years (no updates and unplayable), and thousand parsec is a game creator for pc, not a game, and as far as I understand it's multiplayer.
Basically I'm looking for something to play single player with heavy resource and tech management, no need for graphics or animations. In the dosbox thread someone said Master of Orion works fine, so i'll try that (as soon as my N800 arrives), but any other options are appreciated.

OK, there's 4 links.

2 of them have been dead for years; I can't comment on playability. (One of them appears to not build on Linux, the other one apparently does.)
One of them is expanded in scope, as you point out, and apparently on account of that still not ready.
But the fourth, Nova, seems to be what you're after, except multi-player. So all you should need is a bot. And no porting needed, even.

Edit: And Nova is in active development, too. Always a plus.

lol, all i need is a bot? easy as cake, I'll just call R2D2 and play with him...

sarcasm aside, my programming skills are, how to put it, insufficient. I can edit a bash to change the path, I can edit the repositories to add something, but changing a game to do what I want? nope.

Maybe I should explain myself better. I'm looking for a finished (as in playable and fun without extra effort, not necessarily all the levels complete) game. Something i can install from a .deb or from inside a repository and doesn't need any assembly (the opposite of "some assembly required" ). It does not need to be a Stars! clone, I just put that as an example of a game I enjoyed for years. MoO is fine but a little basic, something in the spirit of Settlers 2 wouldn't be too far off (that one had some serious resource management).

While I was writing this I found Widelands, a Settlers 2 clone that works on linux. I get the feeling that the "Build-12 Linux/i386 binary package" wont work, so I should go the "Build-12 Source Package" way?. When I get the tablet I'll continue to follow that thought.

Anyway, if anyone knows any games of that type that work on the N8x0 without too much trouble...

pd: english is not my first language (mother tongue?), so if something is not easy to understand it might be my brain translating literally from spanish. Any doubts about what I mean ask and I'll try to explain differently.

Well, the i386 package won't work, but (assuming there's no arm package), you're going to have to compile it from that source package; unfortunately, it's not quite as easy on the N800 as on a typical PC, because you either need to setup a cross-compiler on the PC or install a native build environment on the tablet. The former is easy enough, but more complex to use. The latter is not easy at all, but when you get it, you can do just like on any other machine.

ok, thanks, i'll just play with the things that are easy to install then.

My first step is to hunt around in Debian's repositories, and then, if there's an "armel" version for the "Unstable" or "Testing" Distributions, I go and install that in my Debian chroot. Most of the time, the game doesn't work very well on the tablet (most games are terrible resource hogs), but it's a lot easier to test it this way than to compile it from source ...

I'm almost positive that there's a Widelands .deb for the tablet out there, too, I think in the Extras repository?

EDIT: Yes, Widelands exists, along with "Stratagus" and "Battle for Wesnoth"

I don't think Mono for OS2008 will be up-to-spec to run this (I have severe issues with even simple forms not seg-faulting), and the requirements do indicate a minimum screen resolution of 1024x768, so the UI will have to be hacked to heck and back.

Yeah, but you can make those tweaks and recompile in the same environment, if needed. Or easier, set up a local X server and use a scrollbarred VNC window or equivalent to view it.

The mono issues could be a show-stopper though; I am not knowledgable in that area, so thanks for the warning!