Did anyone play Alpha Centauri while it was in development?

[MHaruspex]

I stumbled across this page yesterday: http://sidmeiersalphacentauri.wikia.com/wiki/Factions

It has mostly basic information, but these two interesting tidbits as well:

During development, this faction was named "The Labyrinth" and had a stronger scientific inclination, before being changed to "The Hive" in the final release; however, one of their bases is still called The Labyrinth. In the pre-release version of the game, the Hive's belief in the greater good greatly raised the morale of Yang's army; however, this is not present in the final version of SMAC or the SMAX expansion pack.

While the game was being coded, this faction was named "The Conclave" before being changed to "The Believers" in the final release.

Did anyone play during the beta, or know a bit more about SMAC could have been? I'm curious.

 

[Petek]

I don't know whether or not any of the SMAC beta testers ever posted here. However, I do know that Zakharov was originally called Saratov.

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

Yang with a morale bonus...

 

[TrailblazingScot]

Yang with a morale bonus...

 

[GoodGame]

I didn't get the game until 2011. But I remember the marketing scheme where snippets of back-story were released every week I think. I wonder if that website is still up somewhere.

 

[Petek]

I didn't get the game until 2011. But I remember the marketing scheme where snippets of back-story were released every week I think. I wonder if that website is still up somewhere.

You're probably thinking of www.firaxis.com/smac. That site is currently unavailable, but efforts are being made to either get access restored, or to resurrect it from the Internet Wayback Machine.

 

[vyeh]

Petek,

Here is the page from the Internet Wayback Machine.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080526182628/http://www.firaxis.com/smac/story.cfm

Please remove the link discreetly if there is a CFC issue.

FYI,

I referenced the Wayback Machine link in the Wikipedia article "Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri" if you want to browse the archived site.

The article got Wikipedia's "Good Article" rating, which is much better than the ratings for the other games in the Civ series. The Wikipedia "editor" Nolelover deserves a lot of the credit.

HTH

 

[Petek]

vyeh,

Thanks for the info. Other members of the SMAC community have saved (or are in the process of saving) the SMAC articles from the Wayback Machine. I've contacted the Firaxis webmaster to ask that the permissions to the original page be restored.