GOG.com Now with Alien Crossfire! $2.99 for SMAC & SMAX

[Lord Avalon]

According to this post at CivFanatics, GOG.com now has the Alien Crossfire expansion on sale with Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri for $2.99 through Jan 3.

The GOG.com page currently only has the original SMAC box pictured, but it says below:

Includes the Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire expansion.

Petek says there if you already have SMAC from GOG, you can redownload the installer to get SMAX.

 

[Green1]

About time.

I guess everyone raising heck over 3 or four different forums got GOG to take note. Crossfire should come with SMAC at this point. In my mind, they both are one product and how the designers intended. Just like you really do not do vanilla Civ 4, you need Beyond the Sword as that is how Civ 4 is meant to be. Or- you do not do Civ 5, you do Gods and Kings. If you want just the 7 factions, you can use just those. This time, though, with fungal towers!

[Kirov]

Just bought it!  Good to have an online no-CD copy. 

[woengel]

Thanks for posting this... I had never seen SMAX for < about $70, so it was really easy to talk myself into this purchase 

(started playing SMAC around 2002 or so)

[Green1]

Thanks for posting this... I had never seen SMAX for < about $70, so it was really easy to talk myself into this purchase 

(started playing SMAC around 2002 or so)

Yeah... before the age of GOG, you had to purchase an original copy at collector's prices off of ebay. Other classic games had that issue, too. For instance, a copy of Age of Wonders went for a hundred. Piracy was the "unspoken" word because many had no choice. I am glad there is a legal option now that does not involve paying big money to someone and praying you do not end up with a scratched, worthless disc with no recourse for getting money back.

[Lord Avalon]

Most times I checked, SMAX on eBay was pretty expensive, but then I was lucky enough to find the Planetary Pack for $40, and I jumped on that.  (Woo full-size tech tree!)  But it is great that GOG finally got it.

[Zoid]

I bought it! $2.99 is a steal... Played for 4 hours straight after I dl'ed it. Happy days, party like it's 1999!

[Kirov]

I bought it! $2.99 is a steal... Played for 4 hours straight after I dl'ed it. Happy days, party like it's 1999!

Great, because my copy doesn't work after I patched it to 2.0 (using the patch from this forum). The game starts and I can choose my options, but when it comes to Planetfall, terranx crashes. Has anyone experienced anything similar?

Just when I finally got my hands on a brand new copy...

[Zoid]

The one you dl'ed? I assumed that was already patched?

[Kirov]

Could you check that, please? Just hit Ctrl+F4 when playing. I'm quite sure mine said "1.0" and we need 2.0 (for SMAX; SMAC should be 4.0). Also, what resolution do you have? Mine is default 800x600 and I think we need the unofficial patch by scient to correct that.

And how do you get rid of that 'welcome to smac' first window?

[Buster's Uncle]

You need Petek.  He is the King of install troubleshooting.

[Petek]

Kirov,

You're correct that GOG-SMAX displays version 1.0 when the most recent version should be 2.0. I don't know why. (GOG-SMAC shows version 5.0, which is correct. 5.0 was the Win2k/XP update.)

The current GOG versions of the games have been modified from the originals. Both exe files (terran.exe and terranx.exe) are larger than the originals. The main game folder also contains two new dll files (goggame.dll and goggame_add.dll). I think this implies that GOG has the source code for the games and has recompiled it, but I'm not certain.

To correct your problem, I suggest uninstalling and re-downloading the games from GOG. You then could try installing scient's unofficial patches. However, these patches were not tested with the current GOG version of the games. If you choose to do this, I suggest renaming the GOG exe files (terran.exe and terranx.exe) so that you can easily restore them if something goes south.

To suppress the "Welcome to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" message, open the file jackal.txt (in the main SMAC folder) and delete the section

#FILEFIND_NOCD
#xs   320
#caption Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Welcome to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

(This section previously generated a warning that the game might not work correctly if the CD wasn't in the drive.) First make a copy of jackal.txt if you're paranoid, like me.

[Lord Avalon]

The current GOG versions of the games have been modified from the originals. Both exe files (terran.exe and terranx.exe) are larger than the originals. The main game folder also contains two new dll files (goggame.dll and goggame_add.dll). I think this implies that GOG has the source code for the games and has recompiled it, but I'm not certain.

Hmmm, I wonder what they've done.

To suppress the "Welcome to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" message, open the file jackal.txt (in the main SMAC folder) and delete the section

#FILEFIND_NOCD
#xs   320
#caption Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Welcome to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

(This section previously generated a warning that the game might not work correctly if the CD wasn't in the drive.) First make a copy of jackal.txt if you're paranoid, like me.

Why not just comment out those lines?  (Put ; in front of them.)

[Zoid]

Do we miss anything important if we don't have 2.0? I've forgotten if there was any major bug fixes in this...

[Petek]

The current GOG versions of the games have been modified from the originals. Both exe files (terran.exe and terranx.exe) are larger than the originals. The main game folder also contains two new dll files (goggame.dll and goggame_add.dll). I think this implies that GOG has the source code for the games and has recompiled it, but I'm not certain.

Hmmm, I wonder what they've done.

One change that I noticed is that Alt-Tab has been disabled from within the game.

To suppress the "Welcome to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" message, open the file jackal.txt (in the main SMAC folder) and delete the section

#FILEFIND_NOCD
#xs   320
#caption Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri
Welcome to Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.

(This section previously generated a warning that the game might not work correctly if the CD wasn't in the drive.) First make a copy of jackal.txt if you're paranoid, like me.

Why not just comment out those lines?  (Put ; in front of them.)

That would work. Deleting the section was the first thing I thought of.