10 years of SMAC

[Mart]

Wikipedia gives the earliest release date of SMAC (in the USA) January 31, 1999.
It appears this month we will have SMAC for 10 years. Is some celebration planned for this occasion?

[Illuminatus]

There are no festivities as far as I am cognizant of.

[Mart]

We could have something, anything time/resources allowing.
Any ideas? It doesn't have to be large thing. We could recognize the date, like in the news. I'll see what comes to my mind.

[RedFred]

Wow! Ten years of great fun. How the time has flown. I am still playing - started up a Cult game on Thursday. Maybe we could have a virtual SMAC party. It would be great if everyone could recount a memorable SMAC game or moment. It would be especially nice to hear from some of the other 10 year vets.

My best recent SMAC moment came by surprise. My longtime nickname for my father-in-law from India is Lal. He resembles the picture of Lal and while he is a great guy and extremely educated, he has a fussy and somewhat officious way of speaking. Anyhow, I recently found out his middle name and, yes, it really is Lal.

[LoriTX]

10 yrs already!!! Just seems like yesterday I started playing this game!!!! It really does have the power to keep you coming back!! I will find a new game to play here and there, but always come back to SMAC!!!!! This last time, I had a hard time getting it to run on my computer!!! But I did figure it out, whew!!!

My DD (she is 26), plays all the time too!! She has so many mods on her laptop I wont even try to play it on hers!!! I love the normal unchanged game!!!! I had to get the .ini file off her laptop to get my computer to even think of running it!!! I now have the .ini file backed up, just in case!!!

I will play this game till it no longer runs!!!! And I do have an extra set of the game in case anything happens to it!!

I am a 48yr old SMAC and CIV4 addict!!!

[Hydro]

Wow, hard to believe!

SMAC kept me entertained way back in 1999 on long business trips to unpleasant places like Houston and Beaumont TX, and more than once I was pleasantly surprised when someone looked over my shoulder in a plane, airport, or laundry mat and (excitedly) asked me what I was playing. We passed a knowing smile.

Since then Apolyton has been a great home, and a better venue for a venerable game like SMAC/X.

I may wander off to other games but I always wander back to SMAC. The lovely DeeDee, irascible Morgan, rapacious Santiago, vitriolic Miriam, sanctimonious Lal, impenetrable Yang, and excitable Zak always call to me.

Anyway, a few ideas:
• 10th anniversary Apolyton SMAC Map
• A highlight of the Best Of with useful tools, maps, items of interest to remind us where we’ve been and provide useful tidbits to new folks or folks wandering back from the wilderness
• A thread “What SMAC Means To Me” (yeah, kind of sappy)
• A few pols we haven’t seen in a while (Favorite Faction Leader! Favorite Unit! etc)
• A thread where people share how they found SMAC, what they like, and why they stayed

Cheers!
Hydro

[GooglyBoogly]

Well I did just release my Comprehensive datalinks update (see sig) a short while ago - I figured if no1 else had done it (Buster made a good start) by now I would have to get it done myself.

The best thing we can do to celebrate, is to keep playing and discussing this great game. Perhaps some sort of petition could be set up to show the demand for the re-release of SMAC, especially along with the eXpansion of course.

[LoriTX]

Well I did just release my Comprehensive datalinks update (see sig) a short while ago - I figured if no1 else had done it (Buster made a good start) by now I would have to get it done myself.

The best thing we can do to celebrate, is to keep playing and discussing this great game. Perhaps some sort of petition could be set up to show the demand for the re-release of SMAC, especially along with the eXpansion of course.

And keep it updated for future Computer operating systems, (vista, etc) I barely got it running this time, and I am not a novice computer user. Most people would have just given up with the problem I had installing it this time!!
I got lucky that my DD had managed to get it installed on her laptop, so I was able to take the .ini file from there to get it started on my computer.

[vyeh]

And keep it updated for future Computer operating systems, (vista, etc)

I'm sure that adapting software that was designed for Windows 98 for Vista is a major undertaking. It can only be justified if there is a market for SMAC/X post Civ IV.

Sid Meier seems to say that SMAC was an experiment to see how far the basic Civ ideas could stretch.

And there are some Civ IV advancements over Civ III that are reminiscent of SMAC.

Given that SMAC seems to appeal to a very small segment compared to Civ IV, will there be enough incentive to update it?

[Hercules]

I would like to celebrate 10 years of Smacx but I am not sure how.

It might be interesting to compare a number of those CIV enhancements with Smacx.

In particular the graphics, battles, the end game.

Smacx mods compared to CIV mods.

Darsnan has worked on and delivered a Smacx mod of CIV. Views?

In Smacx can there be more than more than 14 factions and all playing together.
Are they individual enough.

Some thoughts.

My overall aim is to celebrate 10 years, rather than stir up heated debate..

[vyeh]

One thing that fascinated me about Civ 4 is the promotion tree, where you could choose what benefits a unit gained from experience. In some ways, this gave the same ability to customize units that comes from the Unit Workshop in SMAX.

The various civics in Civ IV have some resemblance to social engineering in SMAC.

[Verrucosus]

I would like to see another succession game. Something basic. Standard rules, standard factions, maybe even librarian level and the Map of Planet. The idea would be not to seek a new challenge, but to remember how we came to like the game in the first place. To reflect the slower tempo of the forums these days, the pace should be kept as pedestrian as possible.

In celebration of the anniversary, players who have the time could present turnset logs as a decennial report back to Earth mandated by the Charter. Earth being dust wouldn't keep Lal from meeting such a charter obligation, would it? The report could also be done as a broadcast. (If he wants to, Googlie could even bring Paula Forbes out of retirement for the occasion.)

Because few people will have much time to spend on SMAC as they did 10 years ago, it might be wise to wait for the current democracy game to finish. On the other hand, it is also tempting to have Planetfall on release day - is the wikipedia information reliable? - and settle for a slow pace.

Anyway, I'm very glad that Mart has brought up the topic. I am so much distracted by work at the moment, I might very well have missed it.

Verrucosus

P.S.: For the moment, I'm happy with "Restricted Style EW" except for the lack of blue. However, I hope that, in three weeks, the forum will work again as smoothly as it used to before the upgrade. Otherwise this might be much less fun than it could be.

[vyeh]

I suggest that a news tip be written for the SMAC section. Maybe we could use this thread to draft it and it could be posted on the anniversary.

[Darsnan]

I suggest that a news tip be written for the SMAC section. Maybe we could use this thread to draft it and it could be posted on the anniversary.

Also, maybe we could open up the Rec Lounge again, so that everyone who stops by can raise a toast, and maybe say a few words (prefereably after they've had a few xenodrafts, as its always more interesting what people say then...).


D

[Illuminatus]

A Recreation Commons is already present (a remnant from ACDG5).

Incidentally, four of the faction leaders are "around" Zakharov (since 1994), Yang (1999), Morgan (2005) and Lal (2006).