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[DrazharLn]

@mcshame,

The latest and greatest way to patch the game is to use this mod manager I'm working on. It preserves the original game files and lets you turn the patches on and off.

I'd appreciate feedback on it, too.

Link: http://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?topic=17869.0

That thread is about the SMAC in SMAX project, but you'll see a combined patches mod attached to the first post. Grab that and install the mod manager, tell the manager where SMAC is, it'll make a backup, then just enable the combined patch. And if you like, you can check out the SMAC in SMAX project.

For graphics, the best we have at the moment is PRACX's mod, which, amongst other things, draws the game map at whatever resolution you want.

[mcshame]

Sounds great, I'll give it a try this weekend when my wife doesn't have me gardening and...oh! Mothers Day...I'll figure something out.

Just a question, and I hope this doesn't start a war...isn't SMAX an improved version of SMAC? I thought I was suppose to play SMAX because it included  SMAC and more. Read what you wrote in the other thread, it's as if these are 2 different games, is that the case?  Should I actually start by playing SMAC and not SMAX?

[Harpalus]

Just a question, and I hope this doesn't start a war...isn't SMAX an improved version of SMAC? I thought I was suppose to play SMAX because it included  SMAC and more. Read what you wrote in the other thread, it's as if these are 2 different games, is that the case?  Should I actually start by playing SMAC and not SMAX?

Yes, SMAX is an improved version of SMAC. It's a good expansion, and I recommend just playing with that, not SMAC. I suspect people prefer the original game for thematic reasons, not for gameplay reasons. Sure, there's a few unbalanced secret projects, but if we're honest the whole game is rather unbalanced, making it seem a little petty to pick on SMAX in particular.

Personally, I'm guessing that some of the fondness for playing "plain SMAC" is nostalgia. It is very "intelligent alien-focused", which might not be a good thing if you prefer your science-fiction to be intelligent alien free, but they're well-presented intelligent aliens with an entirely different way of communicating and seeing the world. It's not like there wasn't already an intelligent alien in SMAC (the planet). Some dislike the new human factions, but personally I don't.

• The Cultists are a weak faction, but make perfect sense in the context of the game's lore and have an interesting playstyle. They're thematically different from the Gaians, even if they seem superficially similar.
• People compare the Data Angels to the University, but I don't see it. Zakharov has a stated desire for the "free flow of information", but you don't torture and experiment on willing subjects. To me he's weak to probes because the scale of his experiments means that information suppression is difficult. The Data Angels are more relevant today than they were when the game was released. Governments everywhere seem to want private access and control of your technology, control of what you read, or both.
• The Cybernetic Consciousness make a lot more sense if you see them as being transhumanists, not "the borg". The faction leader and flavour as presented are then what they become over the course of the game. This interpretation makes them seem more believable and relatable. They find "reproduction awkward" in the early game because they dislike reproduction--not necessarily sex--and begrudgingly oblige until they have the means to clone on a wide scale.
• Few factions treat their drones particularly well, making room for the Free Drones. Yang's utopia isn't at all a "working class" society, so it's nice to see some working class politics to balance against Morgan. You can argue that he treats his drones in-game like everybody else, but that can be seen as unintentionally clever commentary on the failures of communism.
• That leaves the Pirates. Probably the "silliest" faction to me, but it's not terribly difficult to imagine that the Unity has ample preparation for aquatic life, leaving charasmatic Svensgaard an opening to form a faction. ("We tried living on land last time guys, come on! It'll be cool. We can hoist pirate flags.") They're quite fun to play as or against.

The only real problem left in my opinion is a thematic one: all of the progenitor techs don't make sense if you're not playing with aliens. You can "head-canon" this as simply studying and analyzing remnants and of the Progenitors left on the planet and their Battle Ogres rather than getting to know them, but that doesn't explain some of the new quotes by or about them. They're overpowered and a good challenge, and have new unit/UI graphics.

Forgive the blocks of text, but hopefully that helps SMAX feel as "believable" as SMAC. It's important to know that it's not an all-or-nothing affair. Yitzi's patch lets you selectively disable some of the new expansion features, and there's always DrazharLn's smac_in_smax.

[DrazharLn]

Lots of people dislike the alien races in SMAX, and slightly less dislike the other new factions.

The mod was made because a reasonable number of people want to play SMAC, and we wanted to give them the extra bug fixes and so on.

Yitzi's patch lets you select precisely which aspects of the expansion you want enabled, so you can play with the new human factions and the ability to free leaders but not the new techs and units.

The only real problem left in my opinion is a thematic one: all of the progenitor techs don't make sense if you're not playing with aliens. Solution: disable the new technologies and expansion features if you're not playing with them in, leaving in the new human factions. Or, just play with the aliens added. They're overpowered and a good challenge, and have new unit/UI graphics.

Yitzi's patch lets you select a lot of stuff in the expansion to enable or disable, but not which techs or facilities to enable. For that, you need to make other changes in alphax.txt. It's not particularly difficult if you have a diff program, but I've already done the work, so if you want the SMAC tech tree and facilities dependencies in SMAX, you might as well just use the smac_in_smax mod.

[Harpalus]

Yitzi's patch lets you select a lot of stuff in the expansion to enable or disable, but not which techs or facilities to enable. For that, you need to make other changes in alphax.txt. It's not particularly difficult if you have a diff program, but I've already done the work, so if you want the SMAC tech tree and facilities dependencies in SMAX, you might as well just use the smac_in_smax mod.

Thanks for the correction.

[pepoluan]

Hi all! I'm a newb here, and I found this site when I was trying to figure out how to make SMAC run in Windows 10.

(I'm using GOG's DRM-free edition btw)

At this point, I successfully ran it by setting "DisableOpeningMovie=1". But clicking the mouse to move units cause a crash...

Oh well, Full Keyboard mode then... now if only I can figure out how to move my units diagonally on a laptop keyboard...

[Buster's Uncle]

I believe one of the patches -not kyrub's- in the right sidebar will help with that.  -Someone more tech-minded will be along anytime to verify or set me straight, though.

[DrazharLn]

pepoluan,

Are you trying to run SMAC or Alien Crossfire (SMAX)?

In either case, I recommend you go to this thread and try the mod manager out. It makes installing mods pretty easy.

If you want to play SMAC, I recommend installing yitzi+pracx and then either smac_in_smax to play the SMAC experience in SMAX, or installing kyrub's patch (bottom of the page) and playing SMAC with terran.exe

If you're still experiencing the broken mouse and movie behaviour, comment in the PRACX thread, and I'll help you sort it out, if I can.

[Valka]

Oh well, Full Keyboard mode then... now if only I can figure out how to move my units diagonally on a laptop keyboard...

Do you not have a numeric keypad on your laptop? If that's the case (as with my XP laptop, which is what I use for playing Civ), I plugged in an external numeric keypad. No more problems with making diagonal moves.

[Kyriakos]

Hi!

I found out of this forum through Valka's frequent mentioning of it at CFC

[Valka]

Welcome!

[Buster's Uncle]

Folks, I know this feller a little, and he's cool.  Heckuva writer, too.

[DrazharLn]

Welcome

[babbymode]

I came here in search of solutions to online multiplayer with a few friends, so far to no avail. :C

[Buster's Uncle]

This is how to set up hotseat games or something?

You want to post in this thread
From installation to tcp/ip games; SMAC(X), Hamachi and you if you have technical questions it doesn't answer, and/or in this forum Command Nexus, to organize live IP games if you're looking for more players, or get in on the play-by-email/thread action always going on.