Alien Crossfire Community Patch Bundle

[Thaumasurge]

Hello everyone! As someone who has enjoyed Alpha Centauri since the day he first picked it out of some bundle with 15 EA Games included, the game has greatly fascinated me and to this day, I have seen nothing like it.

I've always wanted to play a multiplayer game, but was unable to do so, mainly because of the game's age and horrible handling of netcode (TCP/IP at any rate). So I was ecstatic to finally get a multiplayer game going, but not without significant difficulty.  As such, I would like to share a "Community Patch Bundle" that I complied together in order to get the game running "decently" and capable of playing multiplayer.

Attached to this forum post is a file containing several patches/modifications as well as the files necessary to play LAN via Hamachi far more easily than TCP/IP (which I could never get working).

This "Community Bundle" contains the following unofficial patches/modifications already applied to the game

Yitzi's Patch 3.3B (all text files included) by Yitzi
PRACX 1.04 by PlotinusRedux
The Comprehensive Datalinks Update by GooglyBoogly (only the Conceptsx.txt file, as Yitzi's patch contains a more up-to-date helpx.txt file)
IPXWrapper (necessary to use an IPX connection in SMAX on Windows Vista and above, as the function does not exist past Windows XP)

My personal AlphaCentauri.ini file - Unmodified aside from PRACX changes, SmoothUnitAnimation Enabled, and the opening movie disabled. All other options in-game, such as Automated Formers being capable of raising/lowering terrain and Confirming odds before attacking can be changed in-game.

All you need to do is copy/paste the contents of this file into your Alpha Centauri folder. This was created using the GOG.com version on a Windows-based machine. Once you have copied the files, you need to run directplay-win32 or directplay-win64.reg based on whether you have 32 or 64-bit Windows and restart your PC. You should be able to start SMAX and in Multiplayer, you should have an option to start an IPX connection. All you need at this point is to install Hamachi or another private VPN program, connect your friends, and away you go!

NOTE: I take no credit for the patches and files contained. They are entirely the work of far more talented people than myself. All I did was make it simple and put them into one convenient file, so people need not scour the internet for all of them individually.

[Flux]

Going to download this.
I might want to play MP one day, y'know.

[Thaumasurge]

I think one of the biggest setbacks in playing multiplayer is what it actually takes to get it working. I would love to play more SMAX multiplayer, provided people actually want to. IPX is pretty much the LAN mode of SMAX.

[Flux]

Oh man. Stuff like that scares me.
I remember the first computer thing I did that almost had me in tears. I was trying to set up a multiplayer server for something across the internet.
After months of on-and-off trial and error, it turned out our router was an old piece of crap that couldn't support the server. Somehow I did get it to work a long time after that, and there was a 190 second delay for everything anyway.
Not worthit.

[Thaumasurge]

This should be much easier. Copy/paste, run the reg file, reboot, make sure you're on a Hamachi network with friends, host an IPX game, people join, ? , something about underpants gnomes, profit.

[Flux]

This should be much easier. Copy/paste, run the reg file, reboot, make sure you're on a Hamachi network with friends, host an IPX game, people join, ? , something about underpants gnomes, profit.

Eh, I didn't use Hamachi for what I had tried. So is there no other way besides Hamachi?

[Thaumasurge]

This should be much easier. Copy/paste, run the reg file, reboot, make sure you're on a Hamachi network with friends, host an IPX game, people join, ? , something about underpants gnomes, profit.

Eh, I didn't use Hamachi for what I had tried. So is there no other way besides Hamachi?

Hamachi works best, but anything VPN wise that can create virtual LANs should work the same. It's just that as far as I'm aware, Hamachi would support using IPX whereas I can't guarantee much else can.

[DrazharLn]

Gameranger works pretty well for SMAC(X) and doesn't require a VPN connection. Lets you create lobbies and so on.

[Thaumasurge]

Haven't tried GameRanger, not sure if better than IPX connection.

[DrazharLn]

Gameranger's main advantage is that you don't have to arse about with VPNs.

[sisko]

I remember not being able to connect through GameRanger last time i tried.

[DrazharLn]

I haven't tried it in a while. Maybe someone should test again.

I remember it not working for a long time, then I emailed the guy who made the GameRanger software and he fixed it.

[Thaumasurge]

I just recently tried hosting a game with GameRanger. When I hit Multiplayer in Alien Crossfire and selected GameRanger, it gave a "DPERR_UNAVAILABLE" error, essentially thinking my DirectX was non-existant.

I do not have this problem when hosting an IPX connection game on LogMeIn Hamachi, so clearly my DirectPlay isn't broken. Then again, as I said before, IPX doesn't exist past Windows XP so the wrapper is needed.

[DrazharLn]

Thanks for testing it. That is odd. I'll test here sometime if I have a chance and might hit the developer up again: it was quite a good system.

For posterity: I don't really know why one would want to use IPX rather than tcp/ip. TCP/IP is just better in most regards. Is the AC2 tcp/ip multiplayer noticeably worse than ipx?