4X The Unsurpassed Brian Reynolds' Alpha Centauri thread

[Quatlo]

What's the obstacles to a HD remastered graphic mod for this game? Not changing anything other than making this run on today's comp and graphic card at reasonable graphic eye candy level.

I totally forget if this question ever answered anywhere in this thread.

Edit your alpha centauri.ini and change
DirectDraw=1 to 0 under [Alpha Centauri] section.
There, full hd res.

There is also some dudes mod that tries to emulate the look and feel of modern civ interfaces if you are into that kind of thing.

 

[laclongquan]

Checked that guy already~ Not impressed. Sure, the minimalist view is not bad per se. But I am not fed up with the old look and look for new. No need to change style~

Okay, will try that DirectDraw trick later~

 

[agris]

~∆~

 

[Severian Silk]

Someone should make a movie starring Tom Cruise based on AC game.

 

[kyrub]

Intriguing!

Any chance of finishing it? Your mod was fantastic and very pure. Really breathed new life in the game.

I haven't got SMAC or SMAX installed anymore, I totally shut up the shop.

All I can do now is post the result exe file here along with brief patch notes. If someone can test it for primitive fonctionnality (it does not crash during the game) and for a few features, it would give us at least some basic ground to build upon in the future (I may have some time in 6-7 weeks). Otherwise, the whole work will eventually go to the bin.

 

[Nevill]

All I can do now is post the result exe file here along with brief patch notes. If someone can test it for primitive fonctionnality (it does not crash during the game) and for a few features, it would give us at least some basic ground to build upon in the future (I may have some time in 6-7 weeks). Otherwise, the whole work will eventually go to the bin.

Sure, post it, along with what it was supposed to do and what to look for when testing. I'll give it a shot. It'd be better than to just waste all the work.

 

[laclongquan]

And no one ever hear about kyrub ever again...

 

[kyrub]

And no one ever hear about kyrub ever again...

Huh?

https://uloz.to/!5KPqaVZOK52C/terranx-kyrub-9e-zip

If it is not working at all (freezing), don't be surprised. There's litterary a hundred of code changes inside, it is very easy to make a mechanical mistake while transcribing long hex codes. In case of freeze, inform me, we are able to work from there and find the bug.

The document was meant as very short notes for me, so you will probably have hard time to decipher what was meant. I am sorry but I don't have time to explain here - it's your guess.

For testing, it is actually mostly hard to notice, because 80% of changes are the soft kind. This means that I changed the weighs for some AI actions, like buildings etc. You should notice a difference in things that AI omitted totally like:
- AI definitely drills some boreholes
- AI uses crawlers a bit
- AI terraforms more with forests
- AI changes a lot of techs between themselves
- AI actually uses boreholes with its workers

Sadly, I did not get to the new AI social engineering, as that seemed to make a big difference in the SMAC patch. Maybe next year, who knows.
(Good luck and be patient, Rome was not built in a day.)

 

[laclongquan]

So you break the curse. Last time some indie game maker say they will post source code here they disappear right after that.

 

[kyrub]

I acutally think I built the patch on one of last Yitzi's versions... I am sure I intended to do so. It should work like Yitzi's patch, if not inform me please.
No debug implemented, I just need to know if it freezes. I usually used the "auto-mode" for this - start game, go to editor, erase my faction, let AI play till the bitter end. Observe problems.

 

[kyrub]

Do you have Yitzi's patch installed?

If not, it's a very good sign, because it means the patch was really build on it and you need it. Looking on dates, I started working in October 2015, so you should use the 3.4 version.
http://alphacentauri2.info/index.ph...ebqhb1cg912&action=downloads;sa=view;down=291

So:
1) install SMAX
2) install Yitzi 3.4
3) overwrite the .exe file with the SMAX 555 patch



(But there are some reports SMAX now works badly with updated win7, please be careful.)

 

[kyrub]

Btw, asides from SMAX support, is there anything different from this version and the SMAC one?

I made several corrections, this version should be better than the SMAC one. The changes are minor, though. For instance, the AI now better understands the true value of some SPs and will pursue them. Also, it will not always cripple itself with changing the SP to Recreations Commons (and losing the minerals) - the behavior I have observed in SMAC frequently. And so on, small changes like this.

 

[kyrub]

I am in no hurry.

Re: orbital distance setting, I have never tried SMAX, in last 10 years. I made the patch without starting the game once, working only with the pure code - so no idea about what is original/added by Yitzi. SMAX 555 AI patch does not change any settings / mechanics of the game.

Btw, the SMAX patch is superior only in the few fields I have worked on. Sadly, the passage with AI social settings which seemed to bring the crucial stimulus for the AI was situated in the latter part of the exe file, so I haven't done it yet.

 

[kyrub]

Grr, I knew it would happen, there is some code mistake evidence.
It seems I will have to (find somewhere and) install the SMAX anyway :-(
The trouble is, I have run out of time, see you after New year, hopefully with a solution.

 

[Lujo]

Noticed something like "did anyone ever do an economic victory" much earlier in the thread. I did, with Morgan which used to be my go-to faction anyway. The reason I didn't do it often, as far as I remember, is that it's a bit of a "rush" strategy and feels more like nonstandard game over than a true victory. You can say it feels "cheap".

 

[jeroendstout]

The problem with economic victory is that you wait a long time, have a lot of money, press the button, wait 20 turns... instant victory.

The range of aggressive actions is deeper than that of diplomatic and far deeper than that of economic, which makes this victory a bit drab.

 

[Lujo]

Yes, I was going to write: The problem with winning via just having a bunch of money is that every other victory is also achieved by having lots of money + doing something with it, while this one is achieved just by having lots of money. It's like a faster, less cool Transcendance. Also, you don't have to wait a long time to do it, that tends to make it more difficult, I remember it being a very fast victory condition (although it may only be that for Morgan).

 

[Jason Liang]

Yes but try Transcending with Believers...

 

[jeroendstout]

Didn't the believers all "transcend" by going through a Psi Gate? That lead to """eden""".

 

[Lujo]

Believers have a nonstandard Transcendance? o.O Or am I just gullible?

Anyway, I've tried applying the kyurb patch over the GoG version even though I've seen some doubts about that working around the net. Stupid question: how do I know it this did anything? Is there anything like a changelog?

 

[jeroendstout]

I was just joking because it's been suggested by quite a few people that Miriam's tech quote on the Psi-gate means she encouraged all her followers to commit mass suicide. I.e., promise them heaven, send them through a bad materoport.

 

[Lujo]

Well, if it's any help for feedback or whatever, I'm using the SMAC patch with the vanilla GoG installation if that even works.

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be looking at in terms of improvement because I haven't played in a loooooong time, but at transcendent the Hive seems to outpace everybody else by... well, an order of magnitude actually. Quite routinely.

The current game I'm in, I beat up Miriam into signing a surrender pact, and I have a treaty with the Uni and Santiago. Santiago's left with only one base, because Lal took all of his bases, and I beat Lal back taking almost all of Santiago's bases. Lal is still strong enough to mount a seemingly unstoppable counteroffensive, he hasn't lost any of his own cities to me and is fighting a simultaneous war against the Hive. I have choppers and quite a bunch of Infinite City Spam (well, not the best ever but it's functional) - and still, neither me or Lal are at 1/10 of the graph compared to Yang.

Is this supposed to happen?

 

[kyrub]

The Hive outpacing other AIs is normal behaviour. However, with my SMAC patch even some other factions can mount a serious challenge. University and Morganites used to be crippled by self-inflicted "don't spread the base quickly" check. Lal partially suffered as well. I was still unable to do anything to basically improve Santiago, he felt lost in almost all of my test games.

The AIs should build a lot more naval bases earlier with the patch as well. They should try to build boreholes and use supply crawlers (never happened in the original).

LBNL, AIs now rely heavily on air power, tend to build a lot of AAA defenders.

(and a lot more small improvements).

 

[Lujo]

I've been playing Morgan so IDK about how the AI does him yet, but I do remember the AI being quite lousy with him. It's funny that he'd have "don't spread quickly" checked when he's one of the most natural fits for "spam cities like mad" guys. You must have really improved him if you removed it Gotta try a game with someone else and see how Morgan does.

University seems to not be doing that well. It think it might be because the warmongering guys are just too aggro with bullying for tech, so having a tech advantage doesn't mean anything. It mostly just means more free tech for the guys with actual bonuses or being stuck in war with them if you refuse, which drags you to their level.

Lal seemed to be doing really good. He first beat up the Spartans, then managed to kick my ass in a counteroffensive while holding off Yang. He seemed to adapt to my air power, too, and choppers didn't seem to just hand me the game at all. You seem to have improved this aspect of the game

I don't remember the AI having trouble with naval bases, they used to spam them even back in the day. What was encouraging naval bases supposed to achieve?

As for Santiago... eh, if the industry bonus is making Yang naturally as strong as all the others combined, then it makes sense that Santiago would be the weakest. The obvious problem is that there isn't a very good mechanism for taxing other people's industry, so if Santiago bullies you she ends up with stuff she doesn't necessarily need. Like bullying people for tech and this ends up with with her having tech that she can't effectively implement / is useless to her OR bullying people for tech which starts wars which she can't necessarily win, because the other guy can just outproduce her.

Or it's the other way around - she's too unlikely to go to war because of ideology, when she should be going to war. In the last game Me (Morgan) and her were neighbours, and Santiago let me encroarch on her teritorry by pushing the frontier with infinite city spam. She had probes and rovers and she could take me on without problems. But since I was a Police State and gave away my tech, she just never attacked me. She could and should have just rolled me, but instead she got into a war with Miriam and Lal and they kicked her ass. I bet the Miriam war was because someone wouldn't give tech away which is kind of silly because Santiago just shouldn't be looking to pick a fight with a unit spammer like Miriam, and the other was an ideology war but not very smart. And the deeper problem here is that it's perfectly possible that Santiago and Miriam went to war first and then Lal was easy to talk into joining the conflict because of his ideology differences with Santiago. And it was all stupid, she should have been going after Morgan all along.

Anyway, Gaia has the same problem. In every game which I started Gaians were quickly eradicated, generally by the Hive. With Yang as overpowered as he seems to be (compared to the others), being set to antagonize him (or be antagonized by him) seems to lead to disaster. This might also be why the University seems to be doing poorly, and might also be part of why Yang does so well - he's likely to get into fights with people he can beat up. Santiago gets into fights with people she can't beat up :D

Just my thoughts.

 

[Absinthe]

Spartans might do a bit better if they started deliberately worm popping to convert their military power into more energy. If you have trance units walk through unoccupied fungus tiles without roads the odds of spawning worms should be 1/3 per move.