Nerve Stapling Your Way to Success - Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

Mai-Kero

So I recently installed this game, which I've heard is fantastic, and want to know if there's anything I should do to improve my play experience.

1) Should I go for the expansion?
2) Is there any way to increase the resolution past 1024x768, or run in a windowed mode?
3) Any mods I should know of?

harvest

I also want to know about running it in a different resolution or windowed.

SirUltimos

If there is a way to run the game in windowed mode then my life is pretty much over. If I can talk on MSN and play Alpha Centauri there's really no hope of me ever doing anything else.

Behumat

I had trouble running this on my laptop, it would just randomly freeze up. I never did figure out why. Anyway, awesome game. I highly reccomend the expansion. As great as the main game is, the expansion turns it into a whole new, and equally awesome game. I have no idea if you can run it in a window though.

Rainfall

I found the expansion a bit silly, but I never did play it too much. Probably because I really liked the story of the game and then these six factions that were supposed to show up AFTER the other factions are all well-established just show up at the start like everyone else. It was weird.

But man, that game was fantastic fun.

'Indigenous life-forms.' OH SHIT!

Binary

I can't recall running it in Windowed mode successfully.

The expansion is just even more of a great thing, but good luck finding a legit copy. I've seen unopened copies go for $100+ on eBay.

I still have this installed on my laptop and it.

Kris_xK

I love this game... unfortunately it wont run on my new computer for some reason which is a tragedy.

The expansion was good just for all the the stuff it added... but I usually did play it with the aliens off.

Sea Pirates for World Domination!

galenblade

God, I love this game. It's like playing a science fiction novel.

To this day, I still cringe at memories of that sound clip: "Drone riots."

Norgoth

Wait what? Expansion?

Kris_xK

Norgoth wrote: »

Wait what? Expansion?

Love it.

greeble

Yeah I loved this game. I had the Linux version from the now defunct Loki that included the expansion. I should see if I can find that disk.

finalbroadcast

this is by far one of my favorite games of all time. Although I wished that the ending would have been better developed. The only time anything but a score sheet came up was when you transcended.

Fiaryn

I need to buy this game. The problem is, it's just not COMPLETE for me without the expansion, which can't be found for anything shy of ninety freaking bucks.

ArcSyn

I want to say I own this; I want to say I own the expansion; I want to say I own the instruction manuals and strategy guide as I got them all in a nice big box set YEARS ago.

I need to research this when I get home. I remember playing this game a long time ago, but I haven't seen it in a while. Worst case scenario, perhaps I will pack it up and sell it and get some bucks for some new games if it's going for that much.

Plutonium

Oh man

Fuck you Miriam, fuck you you bible-thumping bitch, I'm not going to give you my flight tech for free.

And the same goes for those hippies out there - I mean you, Diedre and Lal. I'm not going to stop drilling boreholes.

Bama

Was the Gaia faction leader named Diedre? Wow, it's been a while since I played. Playing Gaia and using native life for your fighting force was ridiculously overpowered so long as you kept a nice patch of fungus to farm. I cackled maniacally as a wave of locust swept over the land, leaving nothing behind.

Gdiguy

Stupid alpha centauri... if I remember correctly, you didn't need the cd in the drive to play, so I lent it to a friend of mine... and then like 3 years later when I upgraded computers and wanted to install it again, I couldn't find the cd for the life of me

The create your own unit structure was so awesome

Mr_Rose

This remains the only Civ-style game I've ever "completed", as much as you can complete these things, mostly because it is just that awesome. Civilisation and friends generally bore me to tears after you get to the modern era technology and suddenly you're "inventing" things I could make from scratch at age ten. Like firearms (long story).

But this? It starts way beyond that and just keeps rockin' on...and those glorious, glorious secret projects/videos.
Also, Pirate faction FTW. Just a shame there was no ninja faction though.

thorpe

This game is unbelievably perfect.

Singularity Planetbusters remain to this day unrivaled in terms of sheer, unmatched "fuck you" overkill.

Raslin

Whats her name, the chick that was able to spawn the virus monsters or whatever at the beginning... she was broken, and I almost always used her.

Unless I wanted to lose, and just used the science guy.

Bama

Raslin, none of that makes any sense to me. Is the chick you're referring to from the expansion? I don't remember a virus monster in the core game.

Also, the University faction was the first to get nerfed IIRC. You could crank out a new tech like every turn eventually, but a patch put a lower bound on research time. Even with that, University was one of my top two favorite factions.

Kris_xK

I think by Virus he means the Mind Worms.

If I'm correct, hes reffering to Diedre of the Gaia faction.

I always used to play as the Peacekeepers. Sure, I hated the name, the leader, and his picture, but the starting bonus (-1 to efficiency) was just too damn good to pass up.

MalaysianShrew

The University was 8 kinds of cheating. You'd get shit like "Your planet busters do not scare me. Be warned the first prototypes of our new Laser Foil (2-1-2) have just left the factory!"

And that Hive faction. The only way to defeat them was with a Planet Buster or two. I mean, you COULD beat them conventionally, but goddamn they always had so many cities. And they all got like a 50% defensive bonus. It got so tedious capturing and razing their cities.

emnmnme

If they can put two Simcity games on the DS, they can put Alpha Centauri on the DS. The bottom screen would be a close up of the map and the top screen could be a zoomed out shot. Voxels do not scare the DS.

Raslin

Kris_xK wrote: »

I think by Virus he means the Mind Worms.

If I'm correct, hes reffering to Diedre of the Gaia faction.

I always used to play as the Peacekeepers. Sure, I hated the name, the leader, and his picture, but the starting bonus (-1 to efficiency) was just too damn good to pass up.

Yes, you are correct.

I found my disk. Does AC require a cd-key? Because I honestly don't know where mine is(checked the CD case, manual, cd itself, etc). If it does, I'll have to look around more.

Shujaa

This game really deserves a sequel.

LewieP

Nope. Just install it and you are good to go.

At least my version is like that.

Strayth

Gosh darn it to heck, I wish I could find this game again. This game rocks.

Kagera

Alpha Centauri was my first Civ-type game (actually there was this game called Utopia on the SNES which was like Civ but with only one playable faction and one NPC faction that you never really saw because it was off the map so it was really like SimCity with aliens so nevermind) and I loved it.

LOVED IT.

FUCKING LOVED IT.

God I loved Morgan Industries.

"Human behavior is economic behavior. The particulars may vary, but competition for limited resources remains a constant. Need as well as greed have followed us to the stars, and the rewards of wealth still await those wise enough to recognize this deep thrumming of our common pulse."

-- Nwabudike Morgan, "The Centauri Monopoly"

Win++

Invisible

I've always been a fan of the Longevity Vaccine.
"Hey, get off my land you peacekeeping son of a..."

Mr_Rose

Wow. I just dug out my SMAC boxes and what should I find but the minimum system specs.
Anyone else remember when 200Mhz Pentiums were top of the line?

Indie Winter

Invisible wrote: »

I've always been a fan of the Longevity Vaccine.
"Hey, get off my land you peacekeeping son of a..."

Is that Bin-Laden?

Jackanapes

Oh, you miserable bastards! Now I have to go home and install this and the expansion. God, so much love for this game.

One of the real strengths of the game, for me, is the AI personalities. There was some real effort put in by the creators to develop the personality and ideology of the factions. To this day, I get more excited about Miriam of the Believers (the prospect of destroying her, that is) than I do, say, facing Shaka Zulu in Civ.

Plus, that quitting message... it actually makes it difficult for me to stop playing

Please don't go. The Drones need you. They look up to you.

subedii

Shujaa wrote: »

This game really deserves a sequel.

That presumes there's something to actually improve about the game, and aside from the graphics, I honestly can't really think of much, barring the odd tweak.

harvest

Ok I borrowed the discs from my friend who gave up PC gaming but there's a problem. On Vista I get to the screen where it asks if I want to play the xpac or the normal game, but the program just exits whenever I choose anything.

Anyone know any tricks for making it work on vista?

subedii

harvest wrote: »

Ok I borrowed the discs from my friend who gave up PC gaming but there's a problem. On Vista I get to the screen where it asks if I want to play the xpac or the normal game, but the program just exits whenever I choose anything.

Anyone know any tricks for making it work on vista?

Have you tried running it in compatibility mode?

Kagera

harvest wrote: »

Ok I borrowed the discs from my friend who gave up PC gaming but there's a problem. On Vista I get to the screen where it asks if I want to play the xpac or the normal game, but the program just exits whenever I choose anything.

Anyone know any tricks for making it work on vista?

http://www.vistareadygames.com/showthread.php?t=67586

Invisible

harvest wrote: »

Ok I borrowed the discs from my friend who gave up PC gaming but there's a problem. On Vista I get to the screen where it asks if I want to play the xpac or the normal game, but the program just exits whenever I choose anything.

Anyone know any tricks for making it work on vista?

I know to get it to work in XP, in addition to patching, you had to change ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=0 to ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1, so you might try that.

Rainfall

What, no love for the Spartans? Commander Santiago was the best.

Okay, so she totally fucked up the original mission(on purpose,) but she was SO hardcore.

And starting with rovers made nabbing all the glorious artifacts so much easier.

Mr_Rose

Personally, my favourite bits have to be the philosophical musings that go with some of the Secret Projects. An especial favourite is this one, because it is actually entirely true; if you have sufficient will, you can subvert and overcome physical pain.

Also, didn't someone suggest that the sequel would have to be the return to Earth, after who knows how long. Would be interesting to see the formerly ascended cut off from their unified mind as one faction vs. the remnants of the various Old Earth powers as the others...

harvest

Kagera wrote: »

harvest wrote: »

Ok I borrowed the discs from my friend who gave up PC gaming but there's a problem. On Vista I get to the screen where it asks if I want to play the xpac or the normal game, but the program just exits whenever I choose anything.

Anyone know any tricks for making it work on vista?

http://www.vistareadygames.com/showthread.php?t=67586

I found this and it reminded me to find the update for smacx which helped a bit. Then, I tried just running the executable directly instead of using the launcher and everything works now.