posted 03-24-99 10:44 AM ET        

Hope everyone is having a great time with SMAC!

Don't forget to take a moment to support Alpha Centauri for the Internet Top 100! Just send a message to "[email protected]" and include the line:

5 Alpha Centauri [3168]

Thanks!

posted 03-24-99 01:41 PM ET            

Also ... it is easy to remember how to put in your vote ... I have a VOTE link in the top left corner of every Alpha Centauri Heaven webpage! (and report on SMAC standings in the news section as well).

(currently am working on merging them into SidGames but will maintain the VOTE link there too)

For now:

posted 03-24-99 02:23 PM ET            

Before the explosive growth of the web, the Internet PC Games Top 100 started in a newsgroup called comp.sys.ibm.pc.games, as a grassroot effort to rank the popularity of pc games, including demos, sharewares, as well as commercial games. Gamers all around the world send in their votes through email, ranking their favorite games on a scale of 1 to 5, 5 being the best. Then the votes get counted, rankings sorted, list formatted, the finished result posted in the newsgroup for the world to see on a weekly basis. The orginal Civ/CivNet stayed on the chart for 234 weeks, rendering it the most popular game of all times.

Since it's based purely on the votes of actual gamers and not tied to any commercial promotion or endorsement, the Internet Top 100 is an accurate gauge on how successful a game is, and game companies often use it for that purpose. For me, I'd trust it over PC Gamers's score or GameSpot's review any day.

With the help of web, now you don't have to go into the newsgroups to get the list. Go into www.gamesdomain.com (click on charts) or www.worldcharts.com you'll the latest edition.

So yes, it does help to promote SMAC. It helps a lot.

posted 03-24-99 02:23 PM ET            

NO! We remember Lemmings because we read about it in our history books. We remember quake because it has added new words to our vocabulary. We remember Civ because we get Civ strategy classes in college (i'm not joking, this happened to me).

posted 03-24-99 07:32 PM ET            

I am sure that many others here, like myself, read the Internet Top 100 every week to see what is new and popular. Granted, it doesn't in the least help my enjoyment of the game to vote for it. It might, however, help someone else who hasn't heard about SMAC before but sees it beating their own favorite in the charts.

posted 03-25-99 09:30 PM ET            

++SMAC_VoteCount;

Now THAT'S an increment!

posted 03-26-99 08:18 AM ET            

x += 1;

and

x++;

anyway. If you're not using the order of evaluation semantics of the pre- or post-increment/decrement operators, what's the difference?

I suppose you still use the 'register' keyword, too. ;-)

posted 03-26-99 09:05 AM ET         

I use many different languages besides C/C++. The "+=" operator works in Clarion, which I used a lot, so I tend to use the form of the operator that is common to both languages.

Also, this way I could claim that SMAC_VoteCount += 10; was just a typo, not really an attempt to stuff the ballot box.

posted 03-26-99 10:57 AM ET            

cSMACvotes++;

and in this forum my pointless posts end with

cPost++;

about cSMACvotes += 100;

posted 03-26-99 12:38 PM ET            

I prefer inline assembler:

asm inc word ptr ES:[SMAC_VoteCount]

Throw in a few goto's in place of a while() and a couple of conditional return's in the middle of a for() and you've got my style ... not to mention taste!

Seriously, I end all counters with "Ct" and all selectors with "Sel", so that "FldSel" might be a field selector while "FldCt" would be the total number of fields.

posted 03-26-99 01:48 PM ET         

Lets see, I could throw out some examples in SQLWindows, FORTRAN, Clarion, dbase, PL/I, BASIC, APL, COBOL, SAS, SQL and Modula-2. We could write a song. Here is a start (sung to tune of "50 ways to leave your lover"):

There must be 50 ways to increment your counter...
Just push on the stack Jack...
Make a new call Paul...
Reset that Key Lee...
Use malloc( ) and free( )...

posted 03-26-99 05:00 PM ET            

After I stop laughing over 50 ways to
increment your counter.

I realized that I don't understand how
free() or malloc() can be used . Was this just poetic license, or is the rust in my
programming skills just showing.

add one to the sum, bum
prune the B-tree, kee
...

posted 03-28-99 01:45 AM ET            

As for "stuffing the ballet", I once saw a ballet (while eating a whole chicken, which made the experience hilariously surreal) in which the dance moves, costumes, and set backdrops were all Freudian phallic references ("Sometimes a preindustrial hand tool is more than just a preindustrial hand tool," Doctor Freud might have deduced ...) This glorious example of tax dollars at work sure gave new meaning to the words, "stuffing the ballet" ...

I was rolling on the ground laughing -- at one point, doubled over in pain, my rib muscles cramping as I gasped for air -- thus while watching some dance choreographer use government money in a clever ploy to provide himself with assistance in choking his chicken, I almost choked ON chicken ...

It was called "Grotsky Park" or something, and the way the choreographer talked about it before it started was so serious, like he had created some great work of high culture. Sort of like that old narrator guy in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show", the "straight line" for this joke is delivered before the show actually starts. And like an Ed Wood movie, this "ballet" was either a beautifully executed practical joke or a perversely hilarious exercise in extreme self-humiliation.

posted 03-28-99 03:59 PM ET            

SMAC now is officially the No.1 PC Game in the world!

posted 03-29-99 07:18 AM ET         

Yea, "50 Ways" uses lots of "poetic license", but don't tell anyone 'cause I might be arrested for practicing poetry without a license.

posted 03-29-99 09:05 PM ET            

Don't forget to keep voting!