SMACX on Mac OS X Snow Leopard

[sarges]

taking the cue from a poster on another thread, I'd like to know if there are people running Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire on current generation Macs: i.e. intel based hardware running Snow Leopard OS X 10.6

I absolutely love the game, played since it came out '99, a couple years ago I switched to Mac and played it on in a boot camp partition of Windows XP and then Vista. Got a new Mac but really don't want to purchase Windows (7) just to play the game.

I know there is a Mac version (which hard to get hold of) but that works only on powerpc architecture, I have a modern intel based machine. So I wonder if somebody is able to play it on modern Macs, running Snow Leopard OS X and how did they go about to make it work? Also is the look and feeling of Mac version similar to PC Windows'?

thanks for any advice

 

[Petek]

Our resident Mac/SMACX expert is vyeh, but I haven't seen him post recently. I'll send him a message and ask if he has any information.

Petek

 

[vyeh]

I suspect you are out of luck. There is a carbonized version of SMACX, which I got from Brad Oliver's blog, but it came out before Intel, so it is unlikely to be "universal."

The look and feel of the Mac version is similar to Windows. The command key is used instead of the control key and one can get a left mouse click by shift mouse click (if you have a one button Mac mouse).

 

[evandy]

I just got SMAC and SMACX up and running on my new Snow-Leopard equipped Laptop... And have managed a couple games, even with my new 4-month old to help take care of.

However, you might not be able to follow the same route:

1: Acquire copy of SMAC/SMACX for Linux (I was a Beta tester and got mine for free!)
2: Install A modern Linux in a virtual machine (e.g. Ubuntu in the free VirtualBox)
3: Follow directions for getting SMAC(x)/Linux up and running.
4: Enjoy.

 

[ebouwman]

I installed virtual box, installed ubantuo or whatever it's called, installed SMAC, but now it seems to crash as soon as i name the home base, i just noticed i haven't installed any updates so i'm gonna try that

EDIT:
After hours of searching online and not finding out anything i scrapped the idea and just used bootcamp to install XP

 

[Wayne Smith]

I run both of these programs on Snow Leopard by using VMWare Fusion 3. I find that application to be very useful and polished. I run SMAC and SMACX in a Win XP virtual machine. The beauty of Fusion 3 is that windows can be resized easily, you can go full screen easily, and you can drag and drop files from Snow Leopard into it easily. There are no performance issues on my Mac Pro configuration. I abandoned using BootCamp after Fusion 3 came out. It is just much more useful than Bootcamp. Have not tried Vista or Windows 7. I hear people running Windows 7 are not entirely happy with performance under Fusion 3. I also run a Ubuntu VM and that works well, also.

I also tried to run SMAC and SMACX on Snow Leopard under the SheepShaver emulator, which emulates a PowerPC processor on Snow Leopard. Although that emulator works quite well for older apps, it cannot presently emulate the MMU component of a PowerPC processor, so it will not run SMAC or SMACX. I can get it partially started up, but it fails on the opening screen.