discolorations and other oddities..

[Sankis]

I just bought the laptop collection after having played a "borrowed" copy of SMAC/SMAX for sometime. I installed it via the "Planetary Pack" disc that came with it. Unfortunately I can't seem to get it to work correctly..

Occasionally, when starting the planetary pack launcher and SMAC, it splits(?!) my screen in half, and I see two of the same screen, split through the middle. (Hard to explain...tried to get a pic, but crashed before i could)
Any ideas how to fix it?

now, in game when I manage to get it working..(seems fairly random?) the attack 'swirl" thing when attacking mind worms and such is greenish, as is their explosion. This isn't very big, but is very annoying..

Anyone have a clue how to fix this? :/ (if you even understand it..i can't really explain it too well)

[Skanky Burns]

Sounds like the graphics card is having trouble switching to the required resolution.

Edit alpha centauri.ini and find the line down the bottom of the file. Change
ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=0
to
ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1

That may just help this problem. If not, perhaps try the XP compatability patch.

[johndmuller]

You might also try bypassing the launcher and running terran.exe or terranx.exe directly. There are also cracked .exe files (don't require the CD to be in residence) for both programs that might work for you as well or instead.

[Blake]

Sounds to me like a video driver issue.

I think I know the split screen thing, it's both split and interlaced and often happens when the monitor cannot support for requested video resolution. However that shouldn't be the case for the 800x600 that SMAX uses, so it's probably driver issues.

So upgrade to all the latest drivers and compatibility patches and pray

[Sankis]

Well, i'm using Windows 98 so i'm fairly sure the XP compatability fixes won't work for me

I never had this problem using the "borrowed" copy, atleast not as much as this. If only I could remember how to fix it. I'm only using an ol' GF2 since this computer is several years old, so I'll try some of the drivers I have...the main annoyance, however, is the mindworm thing...Oh, I hope i get this working..

Edit: Also, does anyone know why my faction editor is all screwed up? when i open it, and click one of the buttons on the side, it stays as the same screen, except the text for the new screen appears making a huge mess. Again, not very good at explaining it.

[Alex]

I'm also using an old GF2 with the newest Nvidia driver (official driver, not leaked one), and I experience no problems whatsoever. Try installing the most recent driver (you can find the official one in Nvidia's site) and see if it helps.

[johndmuller]

Sometimes an older driver works better for some things than a newer one; on one occasion, SMAC/X went from being stable to only loading about 50% of the time with the driver that Windows Update was pushing. (The skin on the new audio control panel was much nicer though )

[gwillybj]

Did you completely uninstall the borrowed game before installing from the purchased CD?
I ask because the odd Psi Attack / Death coloring makes me think files may be corrupted: one or more image files, or system.txt in the SMACX folder.
Have you tried uninstalling everything and reinstalling from the new PP CD? You can move any factions you've added, and your saved games, to another folder temporarily while you do that.

As for the faction editor provided with the game, I've never read anything good about it. It's really not hard to edit an existing faction's txt and save it with the new name, then make copies of the three pcx files with the same new name.
There is also ACEdit, a faction editor that successfully creates or edits SMAC faction txts, available at Dreifels' Alpha Centauri Stuff, http://smac.2be.cc/. You can use it to make SMAX factions if you open the txt in Notepad and type in any SMAX-specific parameters.

[Sankis]

I have no clue why it worked, but after I reinstalled it again it was fine. Oh well. Mystery solved for now. Thanks for the advice, anyways.