Infotaxis Blog

Before I even begin to cover this excellent game, let me say that it is also a Windows (and MAC) game, and was actually released for Windows first. It is categorized in this new series of Linux-compatible games because most games aren’t created to work with Linux due to the low gamer population. Without further ado..

This game is one of Sid Meier’s less-known titles, shadowed greatly by his Civilization series. This game was essentially used as a testbed for that series, in fact. It is similar in concept, but has a number of advanced features and game functionality never incorporated into the Civilization series.

I’m going to assume you’ve never heard of Alien Crossfire, Alpha Centauri, and have never played Civilization, as many of you may have not. The series of Civilization has been around for some time, has had four installments, and this spinoff (Alpha Centauri). It consists of a grid with various types of terrain, and you build a nation up from humble (or no) beginnings. This includes developing all of the technology for your race, war, colonization, and diplomacy. It is worth noting that this game is turn-based, though it is by no means slow or boring (as some TBS games are).

Now that you’ve got the basic concept, I’ll go into detail about this particular title. It takes place a few centuries after the modern day. A large ship known as the Unity was sent from Earth, along with representatives of many ethnical backgrounds. Alpha Centauri covered the story of this ship. Their leader, Captain Garland, is assassinated by one of the crew. Each of the seven officers of the ship (science, economics, etc.) gathers their followers and siezes one of the pods from the ship, landing on the planet to start their nation. You play as one of these factions, and story emerges as you play.

Alpha Centauri is an excellent game in and of itself, but it was further enhanced by it’s expansion pack, Alien Crossfire. This adds seven more factions, more story, and tons of new technology. In addition to all of that standard expansion pack jazz, it also adds two alien factions of a race known as the Progenitors. The planet is in some way sentient in this game (you find this out fairly quickly), and these two factions disagree on how to deal with it, as do the human factions. The game contains the ability to create your own units using the technologies you research, and with the expansion there are 32,000 unit permutations. With the advent of Alien Crossfire, there is also the ability to customize the factions, changing names and titles, etc.. There is also a system to generate the map based on settings, and an editor. This all provides for extensive replayability.

This game’s learning curve isn’t terribly steep, but to master it will take some time. I’ve been playing it for a long time and could not stand a chance against maximum difficulty opponents, at least not for long. It provides for nearly endless entertainment if you enjoy the game, really.

This is one of the few games available to run under Linux without WINE, and one of even fewer TBS games. It was re-engineered to run on Linux by an admirable group known as Loki Games. This group’s goal was to try to convert games to run on Linux, mostly niche games that tend to be enjoyed by the same people who enjoy Linux. Unfortunately the company simply halted in 2001, and all copies of their games are impossible to find. It is for this reason that I’d actually recommend torrenting the title, though if you do manage to find a copy show your support by buying it. It is also unavailable for Windows (the expansion, anyway), except in a select few places. It was only distributed for one production run originally, and is extremely rare. It is still available in a few places, such as a “Laptop Collection” released by EA including a number of other games, as well as Alpha Centauri and Alien Crossfire combined into a “Planetary Pack”. As I write it looks like you can’t buy the game for less than $100 now, and that’s for a used Windows copy. Again I say torrents. If you can’t find a copy of the expansion, however, Alpha Centauri is actually still easy to get, as it’s disks are actually still being made. If you happen to be on MAC, the game is also available for your platform through a company called Aspyr.

If you do happen to get a copy, and you’re on Windows, note that on Windows XP, there’s a fix necessary to get the game to run properly:

Windows XP Note: If you are having trouble running Alpha Centauri on Windows XP, or you have a newer system with a 64 bit processor, try the following solution after installing the Windows XP patch.

Double click on My Computer
Double click on the C: Local Drive (your Hard Drive or the drive that the game is installed to)
Double click on the Program Files Folder
Double click on the Firaxis Games Folder
Double click on the Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri Folder
Double click on the Alpha Centauri.ini File (The file looks like a read me text file with a little gold symbol on it).

Once the file is open in Notepad, change:

ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=0

to

ForceOldVoxelAlgorithm=1

Be sure to save your changes, then run the game. You may still receive the error message. If it occurs, click OK and the game will load fine.

8/25/08 - Note that recently I’ve discovered that modern versions of Linux are having trouble with the old Loki titles. There are some fixes (none of which worked for me):

http://lordhedgehog.hedgie.com/smac/

http://members.shaw.ca/dan.mckay/LokiInst.html

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 11th, 2008 at 10:10 pm and is filed under game review, linux, mac, windows. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will appear immediately, but I reserve the right to delete innapropriate comments.