CD-Free patch?

[Chowlett]

Ok, that's an improvement - I now just get the "May not have all features w/o full install dialog"

[Deimos]

HP,

I had a similar problem with the game not being recognized. It was working fine, then all of a sudden, nada. I traced the problem to the Windows Delux CD Player. After listening to an audio CD, this bugger left an icon in the system tray. While this icon was present, SMACX would not load. After closing this icon, everything was hunky-dory. This all occured on a system that was runing W2k, and SMACX, not the PP.

If this helps, great, otherwise tell me to come in from left field

[Fitz]

Yes and no. If you execute the autorun on the CD, you will get a popup that lets you choose 'play alien crossfire'. If you go on from there, you get a screen that lets you choose 'Classic' or 'Alien crossfire'. Now, as I understand it, choosing one or the other is the equivalent of running terran.exe and terranx.exe. But, I also thought that both do the CD-check to the SMACX CD, not one to SMAC and the other to SMACX.

It really depends on how the CD crack works. Is it a new executable (i.e. a modified terranx.exe)? Now that I think about it, I believe it is. In that case, it won't work for SMAC.

Apologies for wasting your time

[Helium Pond]

That's the one! Thanks thanks!

[Chowlett]

That'll be www.gamecopyworld.com as in the thread Fitz (?) bumped.

[Helium Pond]

As far as I know, the patch 2.a for SMAX fixed the CD thing for Alpha Centauri Classic, but not for Alien Crossfire. So if you run that patch, you should be able to run Alpha Centauri without the CD. The other way to do it is, like you said, just copy the original terran.exe onto your hard drive, and run it instead of the axstart.exe program when you want to play Classic SMAC. Of course, depending on what version of Classic SMAC you have, you may have to patch that terean.exe also.

But as for the SMAX no-CD patch, I know I found one on the web a while ago, and it worked fine, and it wasn't the one listed above, which ***DOES NOT WORK***. I downloaded it and tried it and the game still won't load without the CD in the drive, which is a major pain for me, because for some reason my game won't recognize the CD even when it IS in the drive, so I REALLY need this patch. But the problem is, I forgot where I found it! Does anybody know? It was some big website that had a blue background, and a big catalog of patches and cracks, and I think it had "game" in the title. Anybody? Anybody? Bueller?

[Chowlett]

It is. Anyone else know if this is possible? I suppose I could always just copy the original terran.exe back over and put the SMAC crack on that...

[Chowlett]

I was under the impression that to play plain vanilla AC (as I need to, for PBEMs), you ran Terran.exe and for SMACX, Terranx.exe. Is this not right?

[Fitz]

Why on earth do you need a SMAC patch if you got the planetary pack (and therefore SMACX)? Just run SMAC through SMACX.

[Chowlett]

Ok, that gives me a SMAX patch, what about SMAC? The standalone crack complains it's not the right size.

[Paul]

Yes, you can find it at www.megagames.com

[Chowlett]

I recently obtained the PP, and woe is me, gone are my days of CD-Free gaming. Is there a patch around that brings back the ability to play w/o the CD?