A civ vet explores Alpha Centauri (SMAC)

[T-hawk]

This thread is fine, I doubt haphazard would object. I'm not really interested in either mods or Alien Crossfire myself but it sounds like a great project.

I assume you're aware of the other modding efforts going on at alphacentauri2.info ?

[haphazard1]

Definitely no objections on my part. It sounds like an interesting project.

I still have a lot of unpacking and setting up to do in my new place, but with my move now (mostly) complete I am hoping to get back to Alpha Centauri. Sister Miriam and her Believers still need to be dealt with , and Yang is getting rather powerful as well.

[HansLemurson]

Okay, might as well post on this thread since the topic is about the game in general.

I've been working on a new mod/patch for Alien Crossfire. When playing the game again after a long break, I was wondering how the AI could be improved. Since we don't have source code for this game, exe patching is about the only way to go, however it's very slow and cumbersome. I figured out a way to make the game load an extra dll so now the patches can be written in plain C++. Avoiding any unnecessary assembly writing greatly speeds up this process.

So far the results have been pretty good in terms of changing the AI behaviour. I've created a patch for terraforming (lots of forests and boreholes now), new production AI for bases and a couple of other fixes. Selecting the stuff to produce in bases is maybe the trickiest to balance, so that probably still needs some tweaks before the first public release. But it will probably be quite soon.

This is really cool!  One of the big things that has hurt the replayability of Alpha Centauri for me has been the AI's poor performance.  They simply cease to be relevant due to poor management regardless of how many bonuses you give them.

I also heartily second the alphacentauri2.info forums, they have done some really great work on modding and tweaking the game.

[induktio]

It was mostly meant as a kind of pre-release announcement. I'll create a new thread for it when I think it's ready for public release. I've been using the databases created by scient & others to speed up the reversing work, otherwise it would have been much slower.

Some people don't want to play mods and that's fine. I've also been reluctant to try any "balance" mods that rewamp all of the tech tree and other values to make it better fit some other vision of good gameplay. The thing is, this patch includes zero modifications for alphax.txt or any existing factions. Instead, it tries to get the AI play better within the *original* ruleset. None of the tech tree is affected, but now the AI might reprioritize certain important techs, for example.

[Fluffball]

I think it was on the reddit SMAC forum that someone posted their interesting way of getting the AI to do better without modding the game. They used the editor (come to think of it, is that part of the base SMAC?) to give each of the AI a bunch of satellites. That way, as their bases grow, they get more and more bonus resources without being overwhelming at the beginning. It's similar to how Civ4 gives production and research bonuses to make up for inept terraforming/worker improvements.

induktio, are you using things like Vel's guide to try to get the AI to prioritize the "meta", or are you just simply having them do things they weren't before, like terraform? Would you go so far as using things like free market correctly, or is that even possible?

[induktio]

Almost anything is possible since we have the header files for all the important data structures now. That being said, the most complex function in the game manages the enemy unit movement and it's pretty hard to modify. It's easy to prevent the AI from building air units if it's in free market, but overall it's pretty hard to prevent the units from wandering off territory.

I suppose I could implement a configuration option for free satellites, since that is pretty easy to do. Currently the mod doesn't give them any other production bonuses except some free formers at the game start. If two AIs start from identical positions, it's not uncommon for the new ones to generate over twice the research output etc.

[bvanevery]

Anyone who actually gets results with binary .exe modding is impressive.  It's a lot of work!  I haven't been brave enough to try it, and at the rate I'm going, it may be a long time before I am.  I just burned 3 full time person months trying to mod "the more sane way", changing alphax.txt and the faction.txt files.  3 full time person months, yes you read that right.  That's a lot of work.  The results are my own SMACX AI Growth mod, which does improve the AI performance in some modest ways, but I can't change all the dumb stuff the AI insists on doing.  Takes binary patching for that.  Given the amount of time I just blew out of my life, I think I'm likely to leave it to others to slog at the code.  Or make my own 4X TBS game, finally, so that it's easy to code.