The SMAC/X FAQ: COMMON QUESTIONS and their ANSWERS

[logic_error]

Q: What kind of production or growth bonuses does the AI get?

A: When you are playing on X DIFF, the computer gets production penalties/bonuses as follows (assuming +/- 0 INDUSTRY):

Where X =

Citizen - 130% of normal cost
Specialist - 120%
Talent - 110%
Librarian - 100%
Thinker - 80%
Transcend - 70%

What that means is that when you are playing at, say, Citizen level, you need 10 nuts or mins to complete a row in the box, but the AI needs 13.

Similarly, if you are playing at Transcend level, you need 10 nuts or mins to complete a row in a box, but the AI needs just 7.

(Originally written by Googlie)

[Lord Nword]

Q: Are there any ways to take screenshots without the colors being wacked up?

A: Yes, two good ways to do this are:
1. In the Alpha.INI file, add the follwoing line:

DirectDraw=0

This allows you to take a screenshot during the game, then exit the game, and paste into a graphics program.

However, when this is used, you can not see anything when you Alt+Tab out of SMAC/X. I.E. you can't read instant messaging windows when this line is in the Alpha.INI file.

2. Alternatively, you can run the graphics program while running SMAC/X. Take the screenshot as usual. Then, Alt+Tab to the graphics program and paste. Initially, the colors might look distorted, but once you quit SMAC/X, the colors are fine.

-----

Could someone detail the Probe Rating bug, please?

[Shadowlord]

Actually, you can change the color-depth back to normal while SMAC/SMAX is running, and it will continue to work just fine. I actually made a program some time ago to automate doing just that, but never posted it anywhere (I had written it for friends originally). It just runs terran.exe and then uses one of the windows API functions to restore the display settings to normal (which means the display color-depth, mostly, but it also changes the gamma back, at least on some machines).

I've attached a zip file to this post which contains two EXEs, one which waits 30 seconds after starting terran.exe before changing the color-depth back to normal, and one which waits only 1 second. There's a (very short) readme too.

You can use it with Alien Crossfire if you rename the EXEs (there's no way to tell this to run terranx.exe instead of terran.exe, so you have to rename them). There would probably have been four EXEs if I had had Alien Crossfire when I wrote this, but I didn't, and I don't want to hunt for the source in HD backups now.

[#endgame]

Question 35:
Is there anykind of mod-swapper available to swap between the alternative factions? I mean something you could just load diffrent faction packs with or compile your own coctail from diffrent faction pacs i.e. 2 faction from the alpha, 3, from beta, 1, gamma etc...

Originally posted by smacksim

One is being developed by me right now in DOS (Fileswatter) which is generalized for any game or application . There are other mod-swapping utilities around for the various civ games, including Modswapper and Civswap. I believe these are fairly specific to those games. To my knowledge no-one has done any work on this for Shell Scripts (linux) or Applescript (mac), both of which are substantially easier to work with for this sort of thing. Come by the Fileswatter thread and lend a hand.

Also, I believe this thread is for asking AND answering questions, so only post your questions when you've had them answered elsewhere and can provide a summary.

In assisting Smacksim with his Aldebaran2 mod, I got a bit carried away and wrote a generic modswapper for SMA(C/X), called ModMan, which replaced fileswatter in the Aldebaran2 package.

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=118976

[epsilonx]

Originally posted by CEO Aaron
Q: What about the XP compatibility patch?

A: You can get that here:

http://www.firaxis.com/downloads_detail.cfm?file_id=60

Anyone have this patch handy? Seems I can't get to any download links at firaxis.com anymore.

[Lord Nword]

Originally posted by epsilonx

Anyone have this patch handy? Seems I can't get to any download links at firaxis.com anymore.

I googled and took the first result which appeared valid:

http://dlx.gamespot.com/pc/sidmeiersalphacentauri/moreinfo_2896776.html

I can't test it since I don't have XP

[epsilonx]

Thanks! I had done a Google search but after checking the first few unfruitful links, I ran out of time.

[Xian]

Originally posted by Marid Audran

10) How do I get SMAC/X to run in a higher resolution/window?
A: Edit the Alpha Centauri.ini file and add 1024 to the Video Mode headings, e.g., Video Mode=800 or Video Mode=1024 forces the screen resolution to either of these two sizes(800 x 600 and 1024 x 768 pixels, respectively) . It isn't possible to run SMAC/X in anything other than a full screen.

look it

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=127263

[Elhoim]

Do you know where to find a no-cd crack for version 2.0? Thanks!

[Lord Nword]

Originally posted by Elhoim
Do you know where to find a no-cd crack for version 2.0? Thanks!

http://smac.2be.cc/tools.html

Near the middle of the page.

[Elhoim]

Thanks!

[paramir]

dead link

the link in wuestion number one for the official website has changed, if that could be edited that would be good.

[Petek]

Q: When I try to install SMAC, I get the message "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM32\AUTOEXEC.NT. The system file is not suitable for running MS-DOS and Microsoft Windows applications." How do I fix this?

A: Copy the file autoexec.nt from your C:\WINDOWS\REPAIR folder to C:\WINDOWS\System32.

(Note: This problem is apparently caused by installing XP SP2.)

[mountrain]

I did the ini thing and it says the same message. I press ok and after that I can play up to 1 hour. Then my monitor shuts down and computer is still running. Could someone help me with this problem if they can.

[Chaos Theory]

1 hour exactly? Maybe you have some odd incompatibilities with "Power Management".