[delayed]

> 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.

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 fixed and full narrative like most stories.

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 (e.g. expanding is too overpowered, games become too dull to close out - given the win was effectively gained hundreds of turns ago, AI being too costly to implement and difficult to balance). IMHO the best 4x game that will come out at some point in the future won't actually follow the 4x format.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hou-Iwv1GvM&list=PL3DDD41A3E...

Particularly good ones:

1-22 fac : 9:13 - Chairman Yang - Genejacks.

23-38 fac : 3:22 - Project PYRRHO

0-24 techs : 1:16 - Nwabudike Morgan - The Ethics of Greed.

0-24 techs : 8:06 - Sister Miram - We must dissent

25-49 techs: 2:17 - Chairman Yang - Looking god in the eye

25-49 techs : 4:26 - Prokhor Zakharov - For I have tasted the fruit

25-49 techs : 6:03 - Commissioner Lal - Mind Machine Interface

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

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.

Please don't go. The drone need you... they look up to you.

One of my favorite games of all time. Like others have said, the quotes/videos/etc presented during secret projects or research breakthroughs left quite a mark on my young mind.

That and the X-COM: UFO Defense opening cinematic lol

https://paeantosmac.wordpress.com/2016/02/02/base-facility-g... This is a very cool blog that analyses SMAC, Bryan Reynolds comments in a few places, too.

The little clone of Civilization still up and available!

http://c-evo.org

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 / 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

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....

One of the best parts of SMAC was the game manual that came with the physical copy, sometimes I wonder if it's still hiding in a junk box somewhere in my parent's house. It wasn't only the expected kinds of controls documentation but mixed with game lore was real science.

>If Alpha Centauri inspires a few young scientists and astronauts; if it convinces a few more citizens to write to their congressmen and work to rejuvenate our space program, humanity’s space program, that will surely be its greatest and most lasting accomplishment.

I'm thinking given the comments here it succeeded.

https://oldgamesdownload.com/wp-content/uploads/Sid_Meiers_A...

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.

one of my favorite games growing up; fascinating to read the history and inspiration for such a great game.

i love that one of my favorite parts of the game (designing your own units) was the game designers' least favorite parts. hah!

i never read the pandora sequence that inspired it - thank you for sharing this article!

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.

A good article. If anything it understates how obviously influenced the designers were by Frank Herbert's novels. The little vignettes of quotes are a common device in his books. The transhumanist themes too. And of course, there's the obvious parallel between the Human Hive and Herbert's book Hellstrom's Hive.