GLSMAC - Open-source OpenGL/SDL2 remaster of SMAC

[afwbkbc]

Hi all, I just started an effort to recreate/remaster SMAC (Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri) to let it run on modern systems, and especially to have working, stable, reliable multiplayer. It's still at very early stage, but feel free to subscribe, review, discuss and maybe even participate. I estimate a playable version to come in a month or so.
The idea is to use existing resources and game logic of SMAC (to preserve the feel) while having a modern, multi-threaded, bug-free game client. Once this step is done I will move further and add modding support, better graphics, various online services and more.
Code repository is located at https://github.com/afwbkbc/glsmac , it contains more details, discord link and also some ubuntu-compatible binaries if somebody is too lazy to compile.
It will be nice to have consistent feedback while development goes, to make sure I do everything right

[Buster's Uncle]

    

[Secundus]

Awesome work! One thing for sure I watch your project with great interest
You should also consider sharing r/alphacentauri to reach more people for feedback

[Alpha Centauri Bear]

Nice attempt.
Is this first in the history or someone else tried it before? How about OpenSMACX?

Practical question - are you going to rewrite all the code there or borrow it from original?

[Buster's Uncle]

The Facebook post this morning about this on AC2's page, and shared in the Alpha Centauri group, are burning up with 'likes', 'loves', and comments...

Let me know if you get hung up on any graphics issues.

[bvanevery]

To quote a dead Vulcan, "fascinating".

Your README says:

What will be same between GLSMAC and original game?

Models, images, movies, texts, lore, factions, game rules (such as tech trees, types of armor/weapons etc), UI

To my knowledge, nobody has cracked / reverse engineered the proprietary 3rd party voxel format that the SMAC 3d models use.  Someone got as far as making a tool that could texture map those models, but that's about it.  The company that made the voxel renderer is defunct, I think.  Do you have some special insight / knack for this problem?  As otherwise, recreating all the 3d models from scratch in a more modern, known format, would seem to be the saner course.

[DrazharLn]

Great to see you on the forum again Yotzi and great to see such an ambitious project that's made so much progress already

@bvanery, I think Ford Prefect worked out the voxel format. And even if not, working out the last bits of it may well be easier than recreating all of those models and animations.

[DrazharLn]

FordPrefect and PlotinusRedux worked at reverse engineering the voxel model and animation format (caviar). There are pretty detailed notes here: https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Caviar and an open source python project is linked from there that can repaint caviar models.

[afwbkbc]

Hey, sorry I'm not here often, busy with coding 

Awesome work! One thing for sure I watch your project with great interest
You should also consider sharing r/alphacentauri to reach more people for feedback

Good idea

Nice attempt.
Is this first in the history or someone else tried it before? How about OpenSMACX?

OpenSMACX is about decompilation from what I see, so it's different thing. There's also OpenSMAC but it's certainly less ambitious and is unfinished for some reason.

Practical question - are you going to rewrite all the code there or borrow it from original?

100% written from scratch, only SMAC assets like textures and sounds are loaded in runtime (hence it requires existing SMAC installation, basically a drop-in terranx.exe replacement).

To my knowledge, nobody has cracked / reverse engineered the proprietary 3rd party voxel format that the SMAC 3d models use.  Someone got as far as making a tool that could texture map those models, but that's about it.  The company that made the voxel renderer is defunct, I think.  Do you have some special insight / knack for this problem?  As otherwise, recreating all the 3d models from scratch in a more modern, known format, would seem to be the saner course.

It seems to be already reverse engineered - https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Caviar , I haven't tried it yet tho.

[afwbkbc]

Approximate roadmap:

Versions 0.x: replicating original SMAC gameplay as closely as possible (but without bugs)​
0.1: fundamental engine functions, such as: rendering, UI, netcode, sound system
0.2: basic map functions, such as: tiles, mapgen, creating/saving/loading games, map rendering
0.3: basic multiplayer: ability to host and join games, lobby, save/load games with same players. multiplayer support will be maintained during further steps from now on
0.4: game processing, such as: game turns, units, buildings, technologies, building of bases, terraforming, basic combat, victory by conquest
0.5: all remaining SMAC units, buildings, terraformings, tech, etc
0.6: all remaining victory types
0.7: AI (computer opponents, cities automation, units automation, etc) and diplomacy
0.8: alien lifeforms, ecology
0.9: all remaining in-game UI, including game settings
0.10: non-crucial things like movies, interludes
0.11: final polishing and bugfixing
Versions 1.x: fixing bugs, adding optional small features that weren't present in original SMAC but won't change it's gameplay drastically. See 'GLSMAC 1.x features' section on discord​
Versions 2.x: adding all kinds of features, as long as they are worth the time. See 'GLSMAC 2.x features' section on discord​

So game will become somewhat playable at version 0.4, I think it will happen in few months. Multiplayer will come before single player so you should have some friends tho

[Ford_Prefect]

To my knowledge, nobody has cracked / reverse engineered the proprietary 3rd party voxel format that the SMAC 3d models use.  Someone got as far as making a tool that could texture map those models, but that's about it.  The company that made the voxel renderer is defunct, I think.  Do you have some special insight / knack for this problem?  As otherwise, recreating all the 3d models from scratch in a more modern, known format, would seem to be the saner course.

It seems to be already reverse engineered - https://alphacentauri2.info/wiki/Caviar , I haven't tried it yet tho.

Hi.  I was one of the guys who figured out the format a bit. :-D  Wrote the paint program.   Been a long time since I did anything with SMAC but I'm glad someone is working on it. 

The cvr was surprisingly elegant in storing a voxel shape with as little space as possible.  I was surprised to figure out that the units were in 3d.

I also looked into the music format a bit... and the format looks like someone based it off of middi... or at least the idea of middi. Never tested to see if they actually used the same values for notes and timings as the middi file format or someone decided on something "custom".   

[afwbkbc]

Oh wait, so those are voxel models? Converting them to vertexes and polygons will be fun challlenge then 
And yes, good job decoding it 

About dynamic music - it will be hard or impossible to copy exact algorithm, but sounds are there and I can improvise.

[Buster's Uncle]

Ford, what I wonder is - could I paste in images from a more sophisticated graphics editor?  That would make all the difference.

[DrazharLn]

All of the units (except native life) and unit parts are 3D models, represented as one or more chains of voxels, with each voxel having a single colour and each chain having a location and orientation. The models can also be animated. If they are, then each chain of voxels can be moved, rotated or hidden in each animation frame.

BUncle, do you mean that you want to texture the existing 3D models or that you'd like to use 2D images instead of the 3D models? The 3D models are used to let units face different directions and to allow unit parts to be visually combined.

[Buster's Uncle]

For what I specifically have in mind, 2D with the colors I pasted in working.  The 3D thing would really be nice for a lot of SMACX modding purposes we've never been able to do even badly, but at least a single 2D frame...