Graphics&rules mod: Conquering in a single planet? A whole galaxy is funnier!

[NP-complete]

Recently I reinstalled SMAC, and I noticed that a loooooong time ago I made a SMAC mod which could be interesting for SMAC fans, I don't know. Basically, it lets you play in a solar system or galaxy, rather than on a single planet. The basic idea is very simple: It consists in turning the original sea into "space" and making round continents look like "planets." I made some new terrain graphics to make the sea look like the space, as well as to make planets look very different to each other. I'm attaching some screenshots so you can check it by yourself. I also had to modify the rules a little bit: for instance, raising/lowering the terrain is forbidden for obvious reasons; the original SMAC fungus now is now blue and it represents the oceans inside each planet (so it must not be easy to remove); building colonies in the sea (i.e. orbital/space colonies) is harder and resources are harder to gather in them; etc.

Many years ago, I sent this mod it to the administrator of a Civ-like fan web, but I received no answer from him. I admit that my English was really poor by these days, so maybe he didn't understand a single word of my e-mail and he just ignored it. :-) Or maybe he didn't like the fact that the alphax.txt rules file was written in Spanish, I don't know. So, as far as I know, the mod remained unpublished.

After reinstalling the mod and playing it for a while a few days ago, I thought that there could still exist a living community of SMAC players/modders... And it turns out that I found it here, so I registered a few minutes ago. :-)

So, if you think it is interesting enough (maybe it is a silly idea, or maybe there already exists a better, prettier and bigger mod with the same aim), I could upload the mod here. Before I upload it, I would have to transfer my original Spanish alphax.txt file into an English alphax.txt file. Thus, I'd prefer to be sure that there is somebody interested in the mod, so the effort would be worth.

[Indiginous Lifeforms]

This, fine sir, might be the single greatest idea that anyone has had for a SMAC mod. I ask you three things. One, keep working on it, its a great mod. Two, Please put it up so that I and the rest of the community can play it. Three, If you need any help doing anything in this mod, please ask me, This looks interest!

[Buster's Uncle]

You definitely want to post this; looks very interesting.  You ought to post the Spanish version as well - we have a section in Downloads for that.

Welcome to AC2, both of you.

[Nexii]

This looks like a really fun idea with some more work.  Are the sea units converted to spaceships?

[Geo]

Heh, reminds me of the day I was trying to make a successor of my Mars scenario. The prefix was a habitable moon around 47 Ursae Majoris b where survivors of the end event on Mars would wind up (split into at least three factions IIRC). At some point I created an extra long map so two moons of this gas giant could be played on, the second moon more akin to pre-terraformed Mars. a wide bar of oceans and trenches was the interplanetary space between both moons.
Unfortunately, one of the AI's wasn't expansive enough to my taste and I canned the whole thing.

[NP-complete]

So there is interest in the mod, that's great! Thank you, guys. I have made an English version of alphax.txt, so the mod is ready to be tested (it is attached below). However, I have noticed that there is a small problem, and I think I need your help.

In order to allow more types of terrains in the mod, I modified almost every original terrain graphic in the game. In particular, in my previous screenshots you can see a kind of Mars-like red terrain, as well as a kind of snow-covered terrain. I used the original "very rocky" and "medium rocky" terrains and converted them into "red terrain" and "snow terrain". Initially, I considered using the "very rocky" tiles for the red type, and the "medium rocky" tiles for the snow type. However, in this case players could not build a base in red planets, because bases cannot be built in very rocky tiles. Then I found a better idea. I noticed that, for the sake of variety, the original SMAC texture files had two different "very rocky" tiles and two different "medium rocky" tiles. For each kind (e.g. very rocky), both tiles of the same kind are mixed in the map according to some fixed pattern. Hence I decided to create the red terrain by using ONE very rocky tile and ONE medium rocky tile. Similarly, I made the snow terrain by using the OTHER very rocky tile, and the OTHER medium rocky tile. So, by using this "shuffling" trick, I could draw red planets consisting in an (invisible) mixture of very rocky AND medium rocky terrains. Moreover, snow planets would also be an (invisible) mixture of both kinds of terrain. Thus, bases could be built in some tiles of both kinds of terrains. (Clearly, players could still know the real kind of each tile by reading the text info in the game interface.)

However, yesterday I found a problem. When I loaded my old "galactic" maps, I saw that red planets had some random snow tiles here and there, and snow planets had some random red tiles too. Both kinds of tiles are fully square forms, so there is no smooth transition between them. Hence, these landscapes are artificial and geometric, they just look awful (see the second screenshot below). What's the problem? My original maps worked fine in my old Pentium II SMAC installation but, for some odd reason, the mixing rule of "very rocky" and "medium rocky" terrains is different in my current SMAC installation (in a modern laptop). Yesterday I adapted the maps for my current laptop and they work fine: the pattern is respected, so red areas are only red, and snow areas are only white. Moreover, in a few planets where I mixed red and white on purpose, they mix as expected (snow for the poles, red for warm equatorial areas, and some mountains in the middle to avoid the awful "geometric transition" effect). However, when I tried my new adapted maps in ANOTHER modern computer, I saw that the pattern was broken again: some planets randomly mixed red and snow tiles. 

Thus, the maps only look fine in the computer where they are built. If you download my maps and edit them in the map editor to exchange some "medium rocky" and "very rocky" tiles, then the saved map will look fine in YOUR computer, because each computer seems to respect its own pattern. I have loaded my adapted maps in the same laptop many times, and they always look fine. However, here you have a posible clue: some changes in your "Alpha Centauri.ini" file may break the pattern, even in the same computer.

An obvious solution consists in using "very rocky" tiles only in red planets, and "medium rocky" only in snow planets, but then red planets could not be colonized. If nobody finds any other solution for this weird problem, then I'll solve it in this way.

Any idea?

Next I attach two screenshots to illustrate the problem (one is Ok and the other one is wrong), as well as a rar file containing all mod files so you can check it by yourself. You are all modders too, so there is nothing to explain about its installation. Just take this into account: the game can be played only with the attached maps. (Two versions of each map are attached; each version looked fine in one computer.)

After the problem is fixed, I'll add an installation instructions text file, I'll explain the rule modifications to you in detail, I'll discuss some ideas for improving the mod with you (e.g. replacing text references to "sea" by "space"), etc. Finally, I'll be able to upload it to the "Downloads" section.

(Btw: yes, sea ships "mean" starships now.)

[NP-complete]

Definitely, the problem has something to do with file "Alpha Centauri.ini". I tried using the same file in both computers and it "almost" worked: rather than 1/3 wrong tiles in each planet, most of tiles were right this time (there were only 2-4 wrong tiles in each red or snow planet). So, using the same "Alpha Centauri.ini" file as the one who made the map matters (somehow).

Why?? Is there any preference flag in this file having some relation with "rock tiles patterns" or other displaying patterns??

The resolution in both computers was different (screens are 4:3 and 16:9 respectively), so the same "Alpha Centauri.ini" file could be interpreted in a different way in each computer.

[ariete]

I think you did very well studied. unfortunately I could not give you much help, except for the creation of factions (learned on this forum). I believe, however, that with a long and helped work you can achieve a good level of graphics for all terrain types and for planetary satellites. But as asked above, the sea-units become spatial units or those are the air units?

[NP-complete]

Ariete, "spaceships" are othe original sea units (foils and cruisers). It means that you can build spaceships only in bases located in the border of the planet (the original shores). I admit that this restriction looks a little bit weird. However, take into account that only some areas in Earth are suitable to launching space rockets (in general, they are near to the equator). Thus imposing a restriction for spaceship construction locations and loading/unloading locations is not too strange after all.

Initially, I tried using air units as spaceships because they can move both over land and over sea. In fact, you can create air transport units in SMAC if you wish (both airplanes and copters). I thought it could work, so I disabled foils and crusers, and next I created a predefined "transport airplane" to aid human players and the AI to find the new transport unit. Unfortunately, the AI never managed to use this unit properly. AI factions never loaded/unloaded units in them! Thus, the AI was unable to colonize or conquer other planets. :-(

Thus I discarded the idea of using airplanes for transport spaceships, and I decided that transportation should be done by means of foils and cruisers. Foils do not look like spaceships at all, but cruisers do, so a possibibility would be disabling foils. However, I prefer having two kinds of spaceships: A slow one (foils) and a a fast advanced one (I increased the movement rate of cruisers to 12, which represents a kind of "advanced spaceflight", e.g. hyperspace travel or something like that).

Regarding the problem I mentioned in my previous comments, I'll do some experiments with file "Alpha Centauri.ini" as soon as I can (I having a busy week in the job). Hopefully, I'll find a "Alpha Centauri.ini" file which makes red/snow tiles look right in all computers, and then I'll attach it to the mod (the current rar file with the mod is attached to my previous comment, right before the screenshots).

[Flygon]

If I can bump in something here, this reminds me of Sensible Software's Mega-Lo-Mania. The mechanics of the game are even the same. You take over space-islands, through colonization and expansion... the main difference, of course, being gameplay. Even the graphical style is surprisingly similar.

Are the similarities coincidence, or a bit more?...

[NP-complete]

Flygon, I didn't know Mega-Lo-Mania, so it's only coincidence. :-)

Actually, it was not the first time I implemented such idea: I did a similar mod for Civilization 2 (round continents, space colonization, etc). Moreover, I not only changed terrain graphics, but also unit graphics, with several spaceship kinds and warriors of several alien races. In Civilization 2, units were still 2D, which was great for modders: they are obviously easier to modify than 3D graphics. The sad thing is that I don't find the files of that mod, so maybe it's lost. I have a stack of old CDs in some drawer, maybe it's still there.

[Kilkakon]

Hey nice work! I've done this before with Civ 2, great to see it here, and it looks convincing for a change too!

You should totally finish it so there's more than one total conversion for this game. *nods*

[NP-complete]

Thanks, Kilkakon!

Something weird happened to me while trying to fix the mod. I wanted to make some experiments with file "Alpha centauri.ini", so I re-installed the game to know how the original "Alpha centauri.ini" file is. However, now the file is totally ignored by the game. It exists, but modifying it does not cause any effect. For instance, I inserted the line "DirectDraw=0" to set the maximal available resolution (my favourite playing choice), but the resolution does not change.

I remembered that, if you deleted the file and re-ran the game, then a new "Alpha centauri.ini" was created, so I tried it... but no new file is created now: "Alpha centauri.ini" does not exist since I deleted it. Interestingly, the game works perfectly and, moreover, it keeps my in-game preferences (e.g. "no tutorial messages") from a game run to an another! As far as I know, preferences were stored as a bit array in "Alpha centauri.ini" file. However, if the file does not exist, where are these preferences taken from?

I even thought that perhaps I installed the game twice in different folders by mistake, so I could be seeing the wrong folder. But it's not: the game is in a single folder. There are no hidden files in the game folder either. I know Windows 7 makes some crazy things in "program files" folder, but I don't understand it... WTF?

[Petek]

Look in

C:\Users\(user name)\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files (x86)\Firaxis Games\Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri

for the working copy of Alpha Centauri.ini. The above path may have to be modified, depending on where you installed the game.

[Kilkakon]

Ah yes I remember that issue. It's possible to disable it via registery (which I did), but it's advanced computing. As Petek suggests, it should live somewhere in one of your VirtualStore directories. As a rule of thumb it's usually suggested installing games that need to access their files outside of Program Files.