NOTE: This is The Column, a regular feature on Apolyton where anyone can write about anything to do with Civilization or the gaming industry as a whole. If you feel like writing, please visit the article submission page.

Although Civilization IV has [just] hit the stores yet, plans for the first total conversion of Civilization IV [have] already be[en] laid.

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (commonly abbreviated to SMAC) was a computer game created by Brian Reynolds and Sid Meier and released by Firaxis Games in February 1999. Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire was the expansion that soon followed. Apolyton Civilization Site's Alpha Centauri community has been active over all this years, and continues to be, although the game is nearly seven years old. However level of game customization was severely limited since many of the things in game were hardcoded, like facilities and their effects. This also prevented balancing some of the finer points of the game. Nevertheless, up to this day they are many user mods available or in production for SMAC.

Civilization IV's highly customizable capability has intrigued the minds of many who wished another Alpha Centauri game. If everything was highly customizable, would it be possible for Civilization IV to be turned into another turn based game... SMAC. Many threads and posts over the boards exhibited this tendency and the time has finally come to formally start organization of Alpha Centauri mod for Civilization IV.

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Senethro took the courage to start the official thread about the conversion mod for Civilization IV. The basic idea for SMACmod is that SMAC in CivIV's engine would be a good thing and the way to achieve this is for a group of players to make a mod.... I personally see the CivIV engine as a better environment for modification, enabling the perfect multiplayer version of SMAC to be made....Open discussion on what SMACmod should be is a necessity at this stage.Within a day, thread started to receive a lot of input and it was obvious that there is more than enough will and determination in the SMAC community to undertake such a project. Administration of Apolyton Civilization Site has offered assistance to modding project by offering the following: 1) Civgroup so participating members can publicize the mod as well as news posting independent from main Apolyton news 2) forum under (properly renamed) AC-Creation forum 3) Wiki hosting under smac.civilization4.net . The project is located in AC-Creation | CivIV: Alpha Centauri forum under [the] "Alpha Centauri" group of forums.

Many will ask what is the goal of the team: SMAC or SMAC 2. [The t]eam has agreed that the priority is to make a full SMAC clone. As binTravkin says SMAC clone working with bugs 2.Bugfix of a SMAC clone 3.a) Additional features or features that were non-working (but should be working) in SMAC b)Improved AI and other needed things. Everyone has his own vision of SMAC 2, and this is why the team will strive for recreating the exact clone of SMAC. The SMAC clone will be a starting point for all other SMAC related mods. Project is to be heavily documented, so that other users can learn from the modding experience. The clone itself should be easily moddable, thus enabling potential modders possibility for further C4:AC modifications.

In case [developer] Firaxis [Games] announces one of expansion packs for Civilization IV is meant to be a SMAC remake, [the] team has decided to continue the work regardless of that fact. One might ask, what [wa]s possible to do in [the initial] stage, when Civilization IV is not even in stores, and [even afterwards the Software Development Kit (SDK)] will be available only in January 2006. There are many tasks that need to be done before coding is started, like comparison of SMAC and CivIV mechanics, identification of all SMAC game files, designing a project chart etc.

About twenty people have already signed up for the project. The team will welcome any outside help, especially programmers and graphic artists.

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