Designer's Notes for SMAC

[MysticWind]

Map of Planet notes

Chris Pine, Firaxis Designer, wrote a two-pager in the Prima Official strategy guide about how he designed the Huge Map of Planet. Text copied to Pastebin for easier archiving.

Alpha Centauri Designer Diaries on GameSpot

Original version preserved on Internet Archive, nicely paginated and in early web dark mode for readability. Live link here.

Four game design entries from Brian Reynolds and one by producer Tim Train (who would go on to produce SMAX). My summary:

04/14/98 - Tweaking AI. Brian discusses the challenges in building convincingly smart AI in strategy games, noting that most players prefer to play multiplayer matches against fellow humans because "the AI is crappy." He goes over a few real-world examples of poor AI while play-testing SMAC: Deirdre selling a frequency for far too low (five energy!), Yang launching a weak invasion, Santiago violating territory too often, and ways he fine-tunes it to play smarter. Not sure what "Alpha Crawlers" are, might be an earlier name for Rovers.

06/04/98 - Designing a "future historical" game. This is my favorite entry, so apologies for all of the quotes. You really should just go and read it now.

Depending on the game I'm making, I may get to be a historian, an anthropologist, an archaeologist, or a military officer. These days, with Alpha Centauri, I'm pretending to be a scientist, a science-fiction writer, and perhaps a philosopher.

At the "Sid Meier School For Better Game Design," a successful design presents the player with a series of interesting decisions - decisions where he (or she) feels genuinely torn between choice A and choice B - and allows the player to win by any of several different strategies.

Because SMAC is set in the future, unlike Civ, the team aimed to have the gameplay reinforce the concept of creating human history. Hence, the detailed climatic model and world builder to focus on how terraforming literally reshapes Planet. Brian also lays out their ambitious views of allowing the player to "map out your vision of future utopia."

economics, liberties, religion, health care, military service, education, environment, and information. On each issue, you can choose to take a "ruthless," "moderate," or "idealistic" stance, with a variety of consequences. Choose the ruthless "free market" economy, which promotes efficiency and economic growth at the expense of the environment, or the idealistic "fair market" economy, which encourages citizen loyalty, population expansion, and raw industrial output at the expense of economic growth.

Similarly, you may choose (ruthlessly) to conscript a massive, inexpensive, but ill-trained army, or you can (idealistically) raise an all-volunteer, highly trained, and very expensive force. Ruthlessly, you maintain ironfisted control of your information networks, preventing enemy infiltration, not to mention the corrupting influences of pornography and subversive literature. Or idealistically, you open your networks to the free exchange of ideas and information, reaping the rewards of greater creativity and productivity but running the risks of infiltration, corruption, or even open rebellion. Idealistic public health care keeps your citizens happy and healthy, not to mention loyal; a ruthless health care "for profit" scheme encourages economic efficiency, not to mention advanced medical research.

[...] You can create literally thousands of different societies in Alpha Centauri - an atheistic, polluting police state with a free market economy, universal education, and all-volunteer military. Or perhaps a devoutly religious democracy with a heavily censored information network, conscript army, and cradle-to-grave health care.

Okay, the actual SMAC is very scaled back from this vision, which is probably for the best. Save that level of granular social engineering for Paradox Interactive grand strategy spreadsheet simulators. Having the factions mostly conform to their ideological archetypes helped to keep their characterization strong. But you have to wonder what a modern AC game would be like if it let you actually tackle the issues of "free flow of information" and uh, health care.

08/11/98 - "Factional Strife - Balancing a Masterpiece." First off, that title is bold, ambitious, and prophetic. Tim Train (embarrassingly misspelled as Tim "Trian") discusses how factions should be able to support multiple strategies based on their strengths and weaknesses, while making it fun.

Even when deprived of its optimal strategy, the faction's weaknesses should not be insurmountable.

Specifically cites the University, the Believers, and the Gaians as mini-case studies. Originally Miriam was dependent upon population expansion, but would be crippled if starting on say an island. So they gave her Fanatic attack. Originally Deirdre only had buffs against base pollution, but that was boring so they added early mindworm capture.

[...] I've noticed that when I win using a particular strategy, it gets chalked up to "unbalanced powers" (and a new set of attribute rules soon follows); when designer Brian Reynolds wins, it's "superior gameplay."

12/09/98 - Home stretch, Multiplayer features. Pretty short. Just a preview for multiplayer.

03/15/99 - Final entry, Brian's closing thoughts. Covers Firaxis' prototype-first approach to game development - "we don't start by creating a 50-pound design document" (someone should've told Square Enix Montréal that). That leads to a "feedback loop", which is greatly aided by public beta testers, whom Brian gives a big shout out to.

[Hierophant]

That is very cool, having original documents from the designers of such an old game. Always appreciate more lore.