The SMAC/X FAQ: COMMON QUESTIONS and their ANSWERS - Page 2

The Big Mc · January 19, 2004, 19:41

Is there a way to increases what you get from a base upgrade, like upgrading it so that century preserve gives a slightly greater eco bonus?

CEO Aaron · January 20, 2004, 14:39

No. And please read the introduction of this thread, where it says that if you post a question, also post the answer. Thank you.

Skanky Burns · March 3, 2004, 08:05

I have problems with the game under Windows XP

Originally posted by Kaboth
When launching Alpha Centauri. I receive the error message "CPU not supported". My computer has a Pentium 4 or newer CPU.

Answer
You will need to modify a line in the Alpha Centauri.ini that is located in the game folder. To do this:

Double click on My Computer
Double click on the C: Local Drive (your Hard Drive or the drive that the game is installed to)
Double click on the Program Files Folder
Double click on the Firaxis Games Folder
Double click on the Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Folder]
Double click on the Alpha Centauri.ini File (The file looks like a read me text file with a little gold symbol on it).

Once the file is open in Notepad, change:

ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=0

to

ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1

Be sure to save your changes, then run the game. You may still receive the error message. If it occurs, click OK and the game will load fine.

If you are Installed Sid Meier's Planetary pack then their will be no Alpha Centauri.ini File initially. Upon attemping to play the game and
clicking ok despite CPU being unsupported the ini file will be produced. Then simply change the ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm to 1. Or if necessary copy ini file from original SMAC.

ALSO download the patch that helps XP:

Alpha Centauri (PC) PATCH - Update for XP.

Question
What does this update do?

Answer
This patch will attempt to locate your installation of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, and defaults to that location, if found. If the patch cannot locate Alpha Centauri, it will default to C:\Program Files\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

In this situation, you should ensure the patch installs to the directory that you have installed Alpha Centauri into.

This patch is a Windows 2000/XP compatibility update, to allow users of Windows 2000 or XP to run Alpha Centauri. It is not required for users of Windows 95, 98, or ME. However, users with these operating systems may will need to install this patch if they wish to play multiplayer games with other players who have installed this patch.

There is a known issue with sounds skipping on Windows ME machines. This should not affect the game stability.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

I didn't need the XP compatability patch on my machine. I've never encountered not enough memory though. If it helps I run a P4 1.7 Ghz, 256 MB SD-RAM, 64 MB Geforce 2 and 40 GB hard disk space.

The latest patches need to be installed before the compatability patch can be also. But if your running planetary pack you should be at SMACX 2.0 already from memory.

Polaris9485 · March 5, 2004, 16:15

Where can I find Alpha Centauri for Mac??? Is it just hopeless?

Chaunk · March 26, 2004, 21:04

38. Help! I suck at SMAC! What can I do?

Go to http://www.civgaming.net/smac/academy.shtml and learn! See also question 12 for more informative sites.

iamyiddish · April 27, 2004, 14:08

What ability flags do what in the #units (predesigned units, worms/native, battle ogres, etc) table inside alpha/alphax.txt?

from left-to-right:

10000000000000000000000000 Dissociative Wave
01000000000000000000000000 Soporific Gas
00100000000000000000000000 Slow (-1 Move, unused in game)
00010000000000000000000000 2X Police
00001000000000000000000000 Repair
00000100000000000000000000 Nerve Gas
00000010000000000000000000 Heavy Transport (+50% cargo capacity, also Unused)
00000001000000000000000000 Trance
00000000100000000000000000 Blink Displacer
00000000010000000000000000 Clean Reactor
00000000001000000000000000 Artillery
00000000000100000000000000 Trained
00000000000010000000000000 Fungicidal
00000000000001000000000000 Polymorphic Encryption
00000000000000100000000000 Empathic
00000000000000010000000000 Antigrav Struts
00000000000000001000000000 Comm Jammer
00000000000000000100000000 AAA
00000000000000000010000000 Carrier
00000000000000000001000000 Deep Pressure Hull
00000000000000000000100000 AIR superiority
00000000000000000000010000 Drop Pod
00000000000000000000001000 Amphibious
00000000000000000000000100 Cloaked
00000000000000000000000010 Deep Radar
00000000000000000000000001 Super Terraformer

As of right now, I have no idea how to change the reactor setting for 'predisned units'.

Impaler[WrG] · May 6, 2004, 01:29

Q: Is it possible to create predesign units with Fusion, Quantum or Singularity Reactors?

A: No, their is no paramiter for this, aparently its a stupid oversight on Firaxisi's part

Q: Is it possible to predsign and use units that use armor/weapons/abilites that are set to DISABLED in other parts of the Alpha?

A: Yes and they will work, the player will NOT be able to use the disabled weapon/armor/ability in the workshop after geting the predesigned unit, they will be able to build ONLY the predesigned unit adsactly as its described in the Alpha.

Petek · May 18, 2004, 18:16

Q: I can't install SMAC on a PC running Windows XP. Setup.exe hangs when I try to do so. Can I fix this problem?

A: Try running the XP Program Compatibility Wizard on Setup.exe or run setup.exe in Windows 98/Me Compatability mode. See the following link for instructions on how to do so:

http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/p.../appcompat.asp

Qwerty88 · June 11, 2004, 03:37

Quote:

Originally posted by laurentius
Question 35:
Is there anykind of mod-swapper available to swap between the alternative factions? I mean something you could just load diffrent faction packs with or compile your own coctail from diffrent faction pacs i.e. 2 faction from the alpha, 3, from beta, 1, gamma etc...

In SMAC you can: Load the factions by using the LOAD function when selecting the factoin your playing as and typing the name of the faction; or you can edit the Alpha.txt file under the line #FACTIONS to the 7 factions you want; or change the name of the factions you want to the default faction names (GAIANS, HIVE, UNIV, ect.) For SMACX you can simply add the 7 factions you want in the alphax.txt file under the line #CUSTOMFACTIONS or load them in the sanario editor, save them, and click 'add faction to game'. Also in SMACX if you wanted to have 3 sets and switch factions back and forth frequently you could replace the 7 original factions with set , the 7 new factions with set 2, and add set 3 as the custom factions.

Qwerty88 · June 17, 2004, 23:25

39? What ability flags do what in the #units (predesigned units, worms/native, battle ogres, etc) table inside alpha/alphax.txt?

Note that for alpha.txt you cannot use the Dissociative Wave or the Soporific Gas special abilities and to delete the first to zeros.

41? Is it possible to predsign and use units that use armor/weapons/abilites that are set to DISABLED in other parts of the Alpha?

Though the player cannot use the disabled armor/weapon/ability they can revese engineer the unit to get other units with that armor/weapon/ability

Xiab'ed · June 29, 2004, 10:42

What is SMAC v5.0 ?

The XP/2000 Compatability patch on the firaxis site also patches SMAC to version 5.0. FYI.

[...] the patch also introduces the dodgy drone display bug into SMAC, as well as fixing a few other bugs.
(answer from Chaunk)

Enigma_Nova · June 29, 2004, 11:05

Q. Is there any way to spectate over a game of SMAX?
A. Watch an open-password PBEM:
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=116127

NOTE: must have SMAX at hand to download and view files.

GeoModder · June 29, 2004, 15:31

Q. Is there a possibility to let units go from a seabase to an adjacent landtile without the need of a transport ship in the base?

A. Yes, a landgoing unit can move from a seabase to an adjacent landtile without the need of a transport ship if there is a friendly (from pact partner or your own faction) unit standing on the target tile.

Qwerty88 · July 4, 2004, 23:16

Q. Is there a possibility to let units go from a seabase to an adjacent landtile without the need of a transport ship in the base?

A. Also units with amphibious pods can of course move freely.

smacksim · July 11, 2004, 00:21

Quote:

Originally posted by laurentius
Is there anykind of mod-swapper available to swap between the alternative factions? I mean something you could just load diffrent faction packs with or compile your own coctail from diffrent faction pacs i.e. 2 faction from the alpha, 3, from beta, 1, gamma etc...

One is being developed by me right now in DOS (Fileswatter) which is generalized for any game or application . There are other mod-swapping utilities around for the various civ games, including Modswapper and Civswap. I believe these are fairly specific to those games. To my knowledge no-one has done any work on this for Shell Scripts (linux) or Applescript (mac), both of which are substantially easier to work with for this sort of thing. Come by the Fileswatter thread and lend a hand.

Also, I believe this thread is for asking AND answering questions, so only post your questions when you've had them answered elsewhere and can provide a summary.

logic_error · July 11, 2004, 07:55

Q: What kind of production or growth bonuses does the AI get?

A: When you are playing on X DIFF, the computer gets production penalties/bonuses as follows (assuming +/- 0 INDUSTRY):

Where X =

Citizen - 130% of normal cost
Specialist - 120%
Talent - 110%
Librarian - 100%
Thinker - 80%
Transcend - 70%

What that means is that when you are playing at, say, Citizen level, you need 10 nuts or mins to complete a row in the box, but the AI needs 13.

Similarly, if you are playing at Transcend level, you need 10 nuts or mins to complete a row in a box, but the AI needs just 7.

(Originally written by Googlie)

Lord Nword · August 17, 2004, 17:30

Q: Are there any ways to take screenshots without the colors being wacked up?

A: Yes, two good ways to do this are:
1. In the Alpha.INI file, add the follwoing line:

Quote:

DirectDraw=0

This allows you to take a screenshot during the game, then exit the game, and paste into a graphics program.

However, when this is used, you can not see anything when you Alt+Tab out of SMAC/X. I.E. you can't read instant messaging windows when this line is in the Alpha.INI file.

2. Alternatively, you can run the graphics program while running SMAC/X. Take the screenshot as usual. Then, Alt+Tab to the graphics program and paste. Initially, the colors might look distorted, but once you quit SMAC/X, the colors are fine.

-----

Could someone detail the Probe Rating bug, please?

Shadowlord · October 27, 2004, 14:46

Actually, you can change the color-depth back to normal while SMAC/SMAX is running, and it will continue to work just fine. I actually made a program some time ago to automate doing just that, but never posted it anywhere (I had written it for friends originally). It just runs terran.exe and then uses one of the windows API functions to restore the display settings to normal (which means the display color-depth, mostly, but it also changes the gamma back, at least on some machines).

I've attached a zip file to this post which contains two EXEs, one which waits 30 seconds after starting terran.exe before changing the color-depth back to normal, and one which waits only 1 second. There's a (very short) readme too.

You can use it with Alien Crossfire if you rename the EXEs (there's no way to tell this to run terranx.exe instead of terran.exe, so you have to rename them). There would probably have been four EXEs if I had had Alien Crossfire when I wrote this, but I didn't, and I don't want to hunt for the source in HD backups now.

#endgame · October 27, 2004, 18:17

Quote:

Question 35:
Is there anykind of mod-swapper available to swap between the alternative factions? I mean something you could just load diffrent faction packs with or compile your own coctail from diffrent faction pacs i.e. 2 faction from the alpha, 3, from beta, 1, gamma etc...

Quote:

Originally posted by smacksim

One is being developed by me right now in DOS (Fileswatter) which is generalized for any game or application . There are other mod-swapping utilities around for the various civ games, including Modswapper and Civswap. I believe these are fairly specific to those games. To my knowledge no-one has done any work on this for Shell Scripts (linux) or Applescript (mac), both of which are substantially easier to work with for this sort of thing. Come by the Fileswatter thread and lend a hand.

Also, I believe this thread is for asking AND answering questions, so only post your questions when you've had them answered elsewhere and can provide a summary.

In assisting Smacksim with his Aldebaran2 mod, I got a bit carried away and wrote a generic modswapper for SMA(C/X), called ModMan, which replaced fileswatter in the Aldebaran2 package.
http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=118976

epsilonx · December 31, 2004, 11:52

Quote:

Originally posted by CEO Aaron
Q: What about the XP compatibility patch?

A: You can get that here:

http://www.firaxis.com/downloads_detail.cfm?file_id=60

Anyone have this patch handy? Seems I can't get to any download links at firaxis.com anymore.

Lord Nword · December 31, 2004, 13:34

Quote:

Originally posted by epsilonx

Anyone have this patch handy? Seems I can't get to any download links at firaxis.com anymore.

I googled and took the first result which appeared valid:
http://dlx.gamespot.com/pc/sidmeiers...o_2896776.html

I can't test it since I don't have XP

epsilonx · December 31, 2004, 13:46

Thanks! I had done a Google search but after checking the first few unfruitful links, I ran out of time.

Xian · January 4, 2005, 23:20

Quote:

Originally posted by Marid Audran

10) How do I get SMAC/X to run in a higher resolution/window?
A: Edit the Alpha Centauri.ini file and add 1024 to the Video Mode headings, e.g., Video Mode=800 or Video Mode=1024 forces the screen resolution to either of these two sizes(800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 pixels, respectively) . It isn't possible to run SMAC/X in anything other than a full screen.

look it

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...hreadid=127263

Elhoim · January 18, 2005, 11:21

Do you know where to find a no-cd crack for version 2.0? Thanks!

Lord Nword · January 18, 2005, 14:48

Quote:

Originally posted by Elhoim
Do you know where to find a no-cd crack for version 2.0? Thanks!

http://smac.2be.cc/tools.html

Near the middle of the page.

Elhoim · January 18, 2005, 15:27

Thanks!

paramir · February 16, 2005, 16:50

the link in wuestion number one for the official website has changed, if that could be edited that would be good.

Petek · March 2, 2005, 20:00

Q: When I try to install SMAC, I get the message "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\AUTOEXEC.NT. The system file is not suitable for running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows applications." How do I fix this?

A: Copy the file autoexec.nt from your C:\WINDOWS\REPAIR folder to C:\WINDOWS\System32.

(Note: This problem is apparently caused by installing XP SP2.)

mountrain · March 5, 2005, 02:19

I did the ini thing and it says the same message. I press ok and after that I can play up to 1 hour. Then my monitor shuts down and computer is still running. Could someone help me with this problem if they can.

Chaos Theory · March 5, 2005, 04:58

1 hour exactly? Maybe you have some odd incompatibilities with "Power Management".