bvanevery
Warlord
I have uploaded my SMACX AI Growth mod version 1.58 to the Alpha Centauri Downloads section.
It is with heavy heart that I'm forced to admit that the Alpha Centauri 2 website, does not look like it's coming back. Aside from my mod, I also have many years of After Action Reports on that site, which at this point could very well be gone forever. All development conversation about my mod over the years, could be gone too.
AC2 has been offline for many months in 2023, somehow held hostage to some kind of cyberattacks. Last I was able to communicate with anyone, moving to a new server provider was needed to solve the problem. That sounds like a daunting task, and not one that I'm personally involved with in any way. I wish the site admins the best, if indeed they are taking this burden on. But someone actually asked me for my mod today, so I have finally been forced to take action.
This shall be the new home for my mod for now. Can't very well drive traffic to a website that is offline. I don't have time to make my own website right now, and at least this forum has some pulse, for the beloved game.
What's this all about then? Repeating the description I gave in the downloads section:
Copyright 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 by Brandon Van Every
This mod rebalances the tech tree, the factions, the world generation, the unit abilities, the predefined units, the social engineering table, and the available AI inputs, to maximize the potential of the original game and make it more of a challenge. It will not make a genius out of the game, but it will greatly extend the shelf life for experienced players. This has been confirmed by numerous third parties on the internet at this time; it is not just my say-so. If you want a better version of SMAC, you should be playing this.
I began this mod in mid-April of 2018. Its design, and all the playtesting needed to improve it, took 15 PERSON MONTHS of full time work to produce. In some other universe where I made money, this could have been more than a year's salary. It was 2.5 years of psychological engagement, spread out over 5+ calendar years in a "long tail" of effort. Now my mod is stable, mature, and in maintenance mode. I still play it and very rarely, find something to tweak in response to player feedback. Very few mods are ever this "baked" and playtested, on the order of many years of work.
This mod aspires to professionalism, to be substantially better than the original game. Bear in mind that the strength and configurability of the original game's AI, makes this mod possible. Anyone could always have done something like this. I am just the one who had the fortitude to actually do it, over the course of many years. I hope people will try and enjoy it, as that validates the effort spent. Thanks to playtesters fihttf, gehennaliving, zoneplate, ih8regin, kaminiwa, Douglas, Rocky, Jade Dragon, Vidsek, and Esper for finding important bugs! And to modders Douglas, Nexii, Tim Nevolin, JNM444, vonbach, PvtHudson, and Mart for ideas borrowed from their own work.
The Alien Crossfire expansion is required. All testing was performed with a standard Good Old Games binary, which includes all official patches. For installation instructions and full details of what was changed, including an exhaustive CHANGELOG of every decision that was ever made during development, see the included readme_mod.txt. This work is under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license if you want to redistribute it or mod it yourself.
It is with heavy heart that I'm forced to admit that the Alpha Centauri 2 website, does not look like it's coming back. Aside from my mod, I also have many years of After Action Reports on that site, which at this point could very well be gone forever. All development conversation about my mod over the years, could be gone too.
AC2 has been offline for many months in 2023, somehow held hostage to some kind of cyberattacks. Last I was able to communicate with anyone, moving to a new server provider was needed to solve the problem. That sounds like a daunting task, and not one that I'm personally involved with in any way. I wish the site admins the best, if indeed they are taking this burden on. But someone actually asked me for my mod today, so I have finally been forced to take action.
This shall be the new home for my mod for now. Can't very well drive traffic to a website that is offline. I don't have time to make my own website right now, and at least this forum has some pulse, for the beloved game.
What's this all about then? Repeating the description I gave in the downloads section:
Copyright 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 by Brandon Van Every
This mod rebalances the tech tree, the factions, the world generation, the unit abilities, the predefined units, the social engineering table, and the available AI inputs, to maximize the potential of the original game and make it more of a challenge. It will not make a genius out of the game, but it will greatly extend the shelf life for experienced players. This has been confirmed by numerous third parties on the internet at this time; it is not just my say-so. If you want a better version of SMAC, you should be playing this.
I began this mod in mid-April of 2018. Its design, and all the playtesting needed to improve it, took 15 PERSON MONTHS of full time work to produce. In some other universe where I made money, this could have been more than a year's salary. It was 2.5 years of psychological engagement, spread out over 5+ calendar years in a "long tail" of effort. Now my mod is stable, mature, and in maintenance mode. I still play it and very rarely, find something to tweak in response to player feedback. Very few mods are ever this "baked" and playtested, on the order of many years of work.
This mod aspires to professionalism, to be substantially better than the original game. Bear in mind that the strength and configurability of the original game's AI, makes this mod possible. Anyone could always have done something like this. I am just the one who had the fortitude to actually do it, over the course of many years. I hope people will try and enjoy it, as that validates the effort spent. Thanks to playtesters fihttf, gehennaliving, zoneplate, ih8regin, kaminiwa, Douglas, Rocky, Jade Dragon, Vidsek, and Esper for finding important bugs! And to modders Douglas, Nexii, Tim Nevolin, JNM444, vonbach, PvtHudson, and Mart for ideas borrowed from their own work.
The Alien Crossfire expansion is required. All testing was performed with a standard Good Old Games binary, which includes all official patches. For installation instructions and full details of what was changed, including an exhaustive CHANGELOG of every decision that was ever made during development, see the included readme_mod.txt. This work is under Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license if you want to redistribute it or mod it yourself.
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