The State of SMAC 2

[Dale]

I've spent 15 years as a sysadmin looking after many server related things, including backups, archives and DR.

Tapes have a rated life span of 15-20 years, then deterioration renders the tape unusable.  To avoid this, you refresh your archived backup tapes onto new tapes.  But to do this, you either need to find a tape library and software compatible with the 15 year old tapes, the actual backup software (the exact same version as was originally used) to extract the data off the tapes, the storage to extract the tapes to.  Once you get to this point, you can then re-archive onto tape using your current backup methods.  The other way is to contract some other company to do it (VERY expensive and really only economical when talking hundreds of terrabytes).

So basically, IF Firaxis had backed up the source code to tape, it'd be past EOL.  There's a chance you MIGHT get something off the tape, but doubtful.  That's assuming they kept the tape.  Traditional backup methods mean your tapes are recycled every year or two, so the final backup would have been over written the next year or two.  If it by some miracle still existed on a tape, you'd then have to go through the process I highlighted above.  Though having a tape is no good, you need the entire backup set for that date range.  And then, you need to pray, cross your fingers and hope the tape hasn't deteriorated too much.

There's other issues to work through too if you actually did get the code:
1. It's so old, you'd have to re-write massive chunks of code to upgrade to current tech (eg: DirectX).
2. Point 1 assumes you can get permission from the companys who's tech you used (assuming they still exist) to upgrade those techs.
3. Project settings: if the code exists you'd need to find the same compiler make and version as used back then, PLUS, guess at what the project settings are.

So just getting the code is only the first step of the battle.  Personally, I don't think it's worth it to chase source code release.

[JarlWolf]

At that rate, it would be best to start from scratch then. A relic of a game that was brought to present times and had great success is XCOM. XCOM was a turn based tactic and strategy game based on a world funded paramilitary organization facing an alien invasion force in a guerrilla warfare type style.

The game was made in the early-mid 90's and was pretty innovative. It got revived and it still follows the original core of the game pretty well, even minor details and lore.

What we need is to get SMAC(X) similar attention/support. Spread the word of the original game, and get modifications out, make people besides die hard fans get interested in the game and make it well known across the internet like XCOM was to an extent.

That way there is a consumer demand for the game that companies will notice.
The Old XCOM if anyone is interested.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0BCSxdpFy4
The New XCOM is in within the previous link.

This game was also made by Firaxis as well, if you didn't know.

[Dale]

The original was Microprose actually.  Then Hasbro, Infogrammes, 2K and back to Firaxis.

[Green1]

Any sneak peak at the world builder you are working on, Dale? I understand the want to go through with your pre industrial to first nuke strategy (interesting), but a lot of us are "pics or it is not happening" kind of guys.

[Buster's Uncle]

That was diplomatically put...

[sisko]

That was diplomatically put...

..still, no answer to date. :confused:

[Dale]

My game is still heavily in development.  Time frame has slipped a bit, but not unusual for a project of this size.

[Vishniac]

Hello !
I came across this thread late yesterday and finished reading it this morning. It brought me all kinds of thoughts and ideas that I shall share with you; it’s some kind of unorganized melting pot so don’t feel disagreed or disrespected.

The thing that mainly struck me is the dichotomy between a so called SMAC-2 and something else (that I’ll call SMAC-else). It seems that the majority here is wanting its SMAC-2, that is a SMAC clone only improved with graphics, some AI, a better MP tool and that seems to be it. I was even amazed to see entire pages of bitching about some SMAC mechanisms

About conservatism:
People react negatively to changes.
As I like to talk with analogies, this is the one coming to me yesterday: Stargate SG-1 !
SG-1 was a cool series and I loved it with lot of my friends. Strangely very few of them liked the second series Stargate Atlantis while I did. It had everything: a new enemy, a new galaxy, the lost city of the Ancients providing endless exploration and new techs…but they didn’t like it. The reason: it’s not the same characters!

And that’s what it feels like when I read SMAC-2 must have the same story, the same characters, the same everything… Personally I don’t want the same, I already have the original, can play it again and again even MP with you, read the stories. I would be more interested to have a new point of view, see someone else would tell this story or a similar one. I am no nostalgic of SMAC, I would be satisfied with a game SIMILAR to SMAC, with what someone referred to as a compelling story (but not necessarily the same), exotic techs, factions (but which ones); I want Mankind at its best, taming a hostile world, uncovering mysteries and crushing alien scum. There are other games like that, with different stories, even different playstyles, and I like them. I don’t think I’d really like a SMAC-2

When reading about SMAC-2 I think about all those endless Hollywood remakes and sequels without soul. You like John Carpenter’s movies? Then there’s not really any reason to watch the new Fog, the new The Thing, or the nth Halloween. There is a new Spiderman movie 10 years after the first one; they want to film a new Fantastic Four. No ideas anymore. Let’s just remake the same things again and again… Transformers 4, Wolverine 2, Very Bad Trip 3, Saw 7…
Civilization 5 and SMAC 2 ?

Games:
One of the last posts talked about XCOM. People have been wanting a new XCOM for 15 years and here it is. I bought it and that sh*t is so buggy I can’t even play the game. Bad luck probably?
But in the meantime these last years I have played others XCOM-derivated that where given relatively low scores on PC gaming sites…and I loved them. Let’s see:
•   UFO Afterschock: of course a tactical-team game with some strategic planning. I found it very cool. What does it have to do with SMAC you’d say? Well, like I said there was some kind of strategic planning (putting bases, setting laboratories and weapons manufactures ) but nothing like an empire-builder game. But it had a story unfolding involving different factions, aliens who wanted to turn the earth into…a sentient planet (aha! Rings a bell, uh?) and other aliens coming for some evil reasons (progenitor-like).
•   UFO Afterlight: the sequel on Mars. Again with factions: humans wanting to terraform (aha!) the planet, discovering the old martian civilization while other alien factions pursue their own agenda.

Prospective ideas
I was thinking about these two when I read that SMAC-2 should have terraforming and a sentient planet. And then I let my mind wander.
What if the planet was not Alpha Centauri? Someone talked about using planet Pandora from the movie Avatar to dodge the rights question. Yeah, it would have a sentient being slowly awaken, factions, a hostile nature.
And the I came back to Mars and, hey, that’s when I gained enthusiasm to post. I am neither a game-maker nor a modder nor a novelist but ideas started to flow.
The Martian Trilogy novels, probably the reason why I bought SMAC as my first modern strategy game, has also been a major inspiration for Brian Reynolds (Red Mars is credited in the SMAC manual). I assume you’ve read it, otherwise you must! A game based on it wouldn’t be SMAC-2, wouldn’t be the clone you’d like, could even be really different but could have everything we like though mixed differently. It already has:

-   A hostile planet and terraforming.
Chiron has a hostile fauna but SMAC is not really about terraforming per se but more about changing the landscape and industrializing it. Mars has almost no atmosphere, no fauna, no flora; man can’t walk without a suit, cities must be domed, piercing the dome kills an entire city at once! New places and new ways to die would say Colonel Santiago.
In this world, no ocean. Terraforming would mean enhancing the atmosphere through bringing comets, melting the permafrost, engineer plants to survive and colonize. Only after that can you have a Green Mars and then a Blue Mars by breaking aquifers.

-   Factions. Not exactly the same as we have but factions, allied or adversaries. Terraformers, scientists, a despotic UN, moguls. Moved by their own ideologies with social engineering working underneath.

-   Technologies. Oh yeah!

There could be so many variations just with this theme. Imagine: “Based on the award-winning sci-fi novel Red Mars”. Someone could contact Kim Stanley Robinson to know what he’d think about it: would he help, invest himself in it, deny the rights to his work?
One game could be called “Red Mars – War”. That would be our SMAC-else. Factions splitting with pods, establishing cities the civ way, waging war. But who decide for terraforming then? Who approves, who disapproves, who fight it? Any advance in terraforming can render weapons obsolete: piercing a dome kills nobody if the atmosphere is already dense enough; inversely you can’t use chemical weapons if cities are domed and soldiers use spacesuits.
But it could be the same story with a very different game, let’s say “Red Mars – Insurrection”: as cities grows and population expands and terraformation advances, the different factions of the game wouldn’t be separated geographically but only ideologically. They would fight among themselves INSIDE society to cut or keep the links with the UN and Earth. Hard to visualize as a game but that would be like fighting inside the matrix: using propaganda, activists, hackers, assassinations, opposing or not great projects as they give advantages or not to one’s faction, then provoking revolt to take entire cities, at last fielding armies… Madness!

You can have your inter-planetary war, sending asteroids, using space kinetic weapons, (I went ecstatic when  watching GI Joe 2 ), Phobos as a warbase, sending military reinforcements through the space elevator but having to wait due to the Mars-Earth orbital mechanic…

The world has changed since 1999 so game mechanisms could change too. Put more emphasis on different things: more detailed genetic warfare, computer warfare, put secret projects on the map and not inside a city. Let them be taken or destroyed alone (geeeh, destroying the space elevator and having the consequences…).
And why not changing how secret projects work? The faction building it would have its advantages during x turns and then his neighbors would slowly begin to get them too (depends on what it is). Playability comes before realism of course but nowadays any country/corporation/sect powerful enough could duplicate the Human Genome Project or the Manhattan Project. Even a starving country like North Korea can build nuclear weapons so your Longevity Vaccine wouldn’t remain a secret for long. That would force a faction to immediately use a secret project and not sit on it. Just an idea of course.
I was almost shocked to see people discuss the crawlers and their details. Any SMAC-2 should have crawlers? They were just a clever handy tool but can be replaced by something else. Do you think people could send a thousand trucks loaded with minerals and that it would speed an Iranian genome-mapping? No of course. I have nothing against crawlers but I’d say that nothing is sacred, that we shouldn’t want the same things doing the same things for the same characters in the same story. Life is short, I like to get surprises.

But now you lack your sentient planet. Fair. So let’s put some alien artifacts, let’s have archeological teams too and they’ll discover ancient vaults, antique machinery, old viruses/bacteries/forms of life buried in the soil and reactivated by the terraforming. Why not an ancient evil, uh? Everybody loves ancient evil stories! Cryogenized aliens. You name it!
That wouldn’t be Red Mars anymore? Then change the name; who cares as long as we have a deep game and a compelling story?

Pandora First Contact
Strange that nobody evoked Pandora First Contact here even though they proved one can make a SMAC-else without the rights to SMAC.
I have read the Pandora thread and I see that our best minds are already in the beta test. I also see disappointment that the game is far less deep than SMAC, at least for the moment. That doesn’t surprise me.
If someone is waiting for the game to be SMAC-2, it’ll be a disappointment. I am more happy to see that after 14 years we get a SMAC-else. Think about it: it’s the first disciple! Someone deemed SMAC marketing-able enough to start to make a look alike. First iteration will perhaps not be that good for us but if they sell good:

-   They could make a sequel with improvements

-   That could give others/bigger makers (EA) the feeling that there is money to be made with a new sci-fi franchise based on / inspired by SMAC

From what I read the testers are not getting much feedback. It would be interesting to know why Pandora is subpar thus far: lack of money, lack of time, lack of personnel, not dedicated to make it too complex, or doing it one thing at a time. Do they communicate about the ideas behind? Their strategy? Do they have already made some other games?
+   +   +   +   +   +
In short, these were only ideas flying through my head today. It’s not really organized as a post so pick up what you want if you want. Food for thought.
As for me, it just can be compacted into: I wouldn’t want just a SMAC-2, amaze me with a new similar game!

[Green1]

Excellent points, Vishniac.

You forgot one point: modding.

I think the modding community, while a minority, is the key to the success of a game. They tend to bring lots of lurkers, too, so you can not feel the full impact modders have.

If the Pandora engine can be modded even to the level of Civilization, the community can take care of the deepness issue. I have not been on Pandora's forums, so I have no idea if they plan to do anything with that.

As far as SMAC 2, I have changed my position a bit. I would want to keep it a period piece and keep the 1990s sci-fi air to it. I would update graphics and AI, maybe add the best 2 new progs and 5 custom community factions, fix bugs, and do nothing else. Though, SMAX could use some improvements like Civ 5's hexes and "embarkment" system to keep down transport micromanagement and Civ 4's way of handling air. Copters would need to be looked at, too. Though there are counters to copters.

[Sigma]

Second to better AI, SMAC2 needs to have better troop management. Anyone who's ever waged a late game war should know that the micromanagement of your army is incredibly tedious. You should be able to group units together so that they can be moved simultaneously.

[testdummy653]

Second to better AI, SMAC2 needs to have better troop management. Anyone who's ever waged a late game war should know that the micromanagement of your army is incredibly tedious. You should be able to group units together so that they can be moved simultaneously.

Stack movement and stacks in general get abused too much in pre-CIV V games, hence the term Stack of Doom (SOD). I agree with the over-all point that unit management should be done better, and I think  civilization series has made some progress on fixing troop management.

[Green1]

Civ V catches stress, but I love the way the hexes work. It feels like the terrain is real and a choke point is a choke point.

Now I do not have Brave New World and i heard the AI was a bit better. That was my only misgiving about Civ V. Maybe I am just "good" ( I hope not... there are folks on CFC who say Deity is too easy) or there actually were some AI algorithms than needed tweaking. I heard BNW fixes a lot of things.

I am wondering how Civ V could handle a Planetfall type mod... AC would be interesting with hexes and no stacking.

[Geo]

I am wondering how Civ V could handle a Planetfall type mod... AC would be interesting with hexes and no stacking.

All right. Let's start this mod.

[Buster's Uncle]

If anyone gets serious, AC2 will give it a dedicated folder, and throw whatever support we can behind the project.

[Geo]

If anyone gets serious, AC2 will give it a dedicated folder, and throw whatever support we can behind the project.

Looking at CiV's landmarks (at least most of the initial ones), I thought someone at Firaxis included them in hopes some modder(s) would pick up on them.