GameTap has been going full bore since coming online over a year ago. This site offers a site where you can download over 800 games to play, Unlimited access to the entire GameTap library is available for as little as $6.95 per month. No additional hardware is needed. Up to eight separate accounts are available under one subscription, so the whole family can enjoy GameTap for the same low price.Sid Meiers Alpha Centaurai is a most excellent addition to this ever popular and growing website.
Alpha Centauri free online guidebook may just be what you the need to get over any learning spikes or curves. Follow the link to GameSpot and check this article out and then crank up Alpha Centaurai and perhaps, a whole new universe of conquest shall await you and the most unfortunate foes you soon encounter after.
The first edition of the AC fiction contest is now officialy over. The submissions were recieved and ranked by a three member committee and results are as following:
In a talk held at the 2006 Edition of the Austin Game Conference, Bioware lead combat designer Damion Schubert (who has worked on games like Shadowbane, Ultima Online 2 and Meridian 59) discussed why Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) games all look and feel the same. As Gamespotreports, the talk titled "Men in tights" discusses issues like why combat plays such a major part in these games, why they are all class-based, rely on systems of experience points and levels and revolve around a fantasy theme.
For the last he draws a parallel to two Sid Meier titles: Civilization IV and Alpha Centauri. The key according to Schubert is that a fantasy-based MMO game, just as a history-based game like Civilization IV, has the benefit of familiarity, whereas MMOs that invent their own setting, as Alpha Centauri did, do not have this benefit and have a much harder time drawing a large audience.
[Schubert] asked the audience how many people played the sci-fi Alpha Centauri for 15 minutes and then longed to be playing a historical Civilization game instead. "It`s pretty much the same game mechanic, but we know what the wheel is," Schubert said. "We understand what the railroad is. We get that intuitively, whereas Alpha Centauri was trying to teach us all these terms in this fiction that they created."
After much time Apolyton Civilization Site is running the contest for the best AC-stories again. It doesn`t matter if you are a AC fiction veteran or an aspiring new author, the contest is open to everyone.
To participate you just need to nominate your story (which has to be complete) by PMing Illuminatus. In addition, due to a hiatus between the previous AC story contests this cycle will allow the submission of stories written and published within the eight months previous to the start of this contest cycle. This means that you can nominate any stories written within the 4th August of 2005 and the 4th August of 2006. ACS Staff is not eligible for participation in this contest. After the submissions for this cycle of contest are closed a committee of three reviewers will be appointed (one of them Illuminatus) who will rate the submissions and decide upon the winners.
The new contest will run in four month cycles and will feature a 18$US worth prize package per cycle. The participants will recieve prizes in the form of subscription to ApolytonPLUS (PLUS), ACS` optional subscription service. First three places will grant the following prizes:
While it is April, the SMACX Hall of Fame feature has been revived with Chaos Theory`s Winter Solstice Challenge. You are now able to compare you results by using the Apolyton Civilization Site`s Hall of Fame feature. This is a friendly competition and it would good if you would share your strategies with others.
Take over for the dim-witted Domai and spread his vision of communism across Planet!
The challenge features alters basic game rules and puts you in control of the Free Drones faction in mid 22nd century.
The rules as similar to those of others Hall of Fame threads, do not use any of the SMACX exploits forbidden in PBEM games.
Please be sure to read the instructions in the opening post of the thread.
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