[HN Gopher] Alpha Centauri
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Alpha Centauri
Author : doppp
Score : 51 points
Date : 2025-06-20 16:50 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.filfre.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.filfre.net)
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| If gog ever manages to get the rights to rerelease civ II, I'd
| gladly pay $80 for a copy I could just click and run on windows
| and linux. Yes, there are copies on abandonware sites, but the
| sound is almost always jank, the soundtrack is gone and the
| advisors don't work (they really added a lot of character to the
| game!). The nostalgia of childhood is broken. I've tried
| everything, up to and including running win 3.1 with sound
| blaster drivers on dosbox to no avail. This is my white whale
| glimshe wrote:
| Is this an emulation problem or are the online copies
| corrupted? You can buy an original copy of the game on eBay and
| run it in Dosbox-X or Dosbox-staging, both well ahead vanilla
| Dosbox in features.
|
| Also, I bet the Internet archive or exoDOS will have a perfect
| copy. The latter is a one click experience. Check the laws in
| your country for whether these are legal.
| mirashii wrote:
| There's a number of active communities about still playing the
| game, including /r/alphacentauri on reddit, a discord server at
| https://discord.gg/7BkcvXUX , and
| https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=community
|
| I know the last time I picked it up, there were a well
| respected set of patches from scient (a quick google pointed me
| to https://github.com/DrazharLn/scient-unofficial-smacx-patch
| ). Somewhere in here is a pre-done distribution you can just
| click and run with for modern windows.
| ptmcc wrote:
| SMAC was a really great game, ahead of its time in many ways and
| laid some groundwork for ideas later worked into Civs 3+.
|
| It's a shame the totally-not-a-SMAC-sequel Civ: Beyond Earth did
| not not do it justice.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I agree! With all the debate about Civ vii vs Civ vi, the group
| I play civ with sometimes debates what was the best version of
| civ. SMAC might be my choice! It was only a single player game
| but as a single player game it had great balance and strategic
| choices. The map art was a little ugly and customizing units
| was not that interesting.
| swyx wrote:
| > Alas, today Alpha Centuari feels far more believable than
| Civilization and its sang-froid about the inevitability of
| perpetual progress. These days, Alpha Centauri's depiction of
| bickering, bitterly entrenched factions warring over the very
| nature of truth, progressing not at all spiritually or morally
| even as their technology runs wild in a hundred different
| perilous directions, strikes many as the more accurate picture of
| the nature of our species. People play Alpha Centauri to engage
| with modern life; they play Civilization to escape from it.
|
| wow. ive never understood why AC worked while Civ5/6 fell off the
| map for me, but i think this was it.
| swyx wrote:
| so like, i know there are some civ clones out there... has anyone
| tried to make an OpenAlphaCentauri? i'd love to hack on this but
| i dont have the time or gamedev experience to take it 0 to 1....
| mirashii wrote:
| https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac
| bbarnett wrote:
| I recall a C64 game(or Amiga, but I'm fairly sure C64) where you
| settled the solar system. The Moon, Mars, Venus, Titan, etc.
|
| You even had to genetically engineer your colonists, so they
| could withstand the environments. Fun game, but I can't find it
| via Google.
|
| If anyone knows this game, please share. I'd love to play it
| again.
| swyx wrote:
| teaching you to fish:
| https://chatgpt.com/share/6855db77-b474-8012-863e-8cf8d6e415...
| teddyh wrote:
| Clickbait rescue: "Millennium 2.2 (1989) -- and possibly its
| 1991 sequel, Deuteros: The Next Millennium.". Not released
| for C64, but (among others) for the Commodore Amiga.
| bbarnett wrote:
| Yes! That's it. Thank you.
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| What really set Alpha Centauri apart for me was the fictional
| history and how it is presented. Civilization's tech tree is a
| form of human history, accompanied by famous quotes
| contextualizing the importance of the discoveries.
|
| Alpha Centauri presents its tech to you the same way, but it's
| inventions are science fiction, and likewise the quotes [1] are
| fictional, from the important characters, the major players of
| the various factions within. You get a real sense for the groups
| involved and the major players from such. You get a sense of the
| civilizations involved, sometimes presented in their folklore or
| humor. For example, the militaristic Spartans quote a variation
| of an old marching cadence - "I don't know but I've been told /
| Deirdre's got a Network Node / Likes to press the on-off switch l
| Dig that crazy Gaian witch!"
|
| My favorite, though, and feeling ever more prescient:
|
| "As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century,
| free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny.
| The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on
| information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but
| the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public
| discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he
| who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he
| dreams himself your master.
|
| Commissioner Pravin Lal U.N. Declaration of Rights"
|
| [1] A good compendium of them -
| https://www.generationterrorists.com/quotes/smac.html
| Quarrelsome wrote:
| my favourite game of all time. However without the "plot" and the
| voice acting I wouldn't rate it anywhere near as highly.
|
| The "meat" of the plot was the audio snippets that would pop up
| whenever you researched a tech, built a facility for the first
| time or finished a secret project. Most of them were quite
| fascinating and had a haunting beauty to them [0]. The way that
| Chairman Yang half-laughs when discussing the genejack, how
| adament Morgan is about the right of present generations
| exploiting fossil fuels, Lal's horror at the outcomes of
| Mind/Machine interface.
|
| This game was the first time I had encountered the art of telling
| stories through crumbs, instead of one godly fixed narrative like
| most media.
|
| I agree with the article in that the mechanics of the game
| weren't ideal. Personally as someone that LOVES 4x and has spent
| _way_ too much time playing them, I think the format is
| fundamentally flawed and cannot be saved. IMHO the best 4x game
| that will come out at some point in the future will actually be a
| completely different type of game.
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hou-
| Iwv1GvM&list=PL3DDD41A3E...
|
| Relevant timestamps: 1-22 : 9:13 - Chairman Yang - Genejacks.
|
| (these techs are listed in a random order, as opposed to early
| game => late game techs).
| sandspar wrote:
| For several days I gave custom instructions for ChatGPT to speak
| like different Alpha Centauri faction leaders. ChatGPT seemed to
| enjoy speaking as Zakharov best, often giving the longest
| responses in his voice.
| smeeger wrote:
| im annoyed by authors who beat you over the head with their
| politics. he says "her" instead of "his" in the context of 90s
| single player 4x (please) and insists that human will not inhabit
| any other celestial body (mars) for countless generations. im
| sure he would insist upon this even if elon musk didnt exist. lol
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