Alpha Centauri Port for Linux?

Freud writes sent us an excerpt from a chat with Brian Reynolds, of firaxis where he was questioned about a Linux port. Brian says "Certainly a Mac version; I'm assuming a Linux version too though that hasn't been finalized. Which is kind of our fault because we expressed some interest (to EA) in doing it ourselves. Worked on it for a while, then got swamped with other stuff. So we handed it back to EA, meaning some time was lost while we were fooling around with it... Anyway, my guess is they will probably do one now. Seems like it would be an easy port. Mostly it was the network code that was going to require some work... " Well, an addict can dream, can't he?

Comments

This is the best news of the day..

[Wan]

This is great! I posted a few days ago that we should bug the firaxis people to port their games to linux. The kind of games that they make are perfect for linux and its users:

1. their games are intelligent and intended for adults.

2. their games doesn't need 3D cards.

3. their games, esp. alpha centauri, tries to be as "open" as possible. alpha centauri uses a text file that can be used to customize almost all aspects of the game. this is a perfect game for hackers (not crackers!)

besides those, i've been continually impressed with their supports. the patches (now at 3.0) are actually more of enhancements than bug fixes. they also put out an optional patch for people who are color blind.

firaxis has also been bucking the industry trends:

1. the in-box manual is much much better than the rip-off "strategy guide"

2. they don't put CD-check copy protection on alpha centauri, except the european version (because no retailer in europe would carry a game without some sort of copy protection). however, with 3.0 patch, they removed the CD-check. before the patch was released , a certain firaxis employee has subtly hinted in the newsgroups that the european players could get the US version of terran.exe to get around the CD-check.

as far as I'm concerned, any games from firaxis will get 5 moderator points from me automatically. (NO, i'm not a moderator).

Still doesn't explain it...

[roystgnr]

Most of this can be explaned as the use of MP3s for pretty much all of the sounds in the game. They're very processor-intensive little buggers.

That's actually not quite true - anything Pentium or better should have more than enough CPU cycles for decoding MP3s - the problem is that MP3 playing is both somewhat CPU intensive and real time, which means if your MP3 player doesn't have special priviledges and goes 10ms without running, it's going to skip.

Off topic: does anyone know which MP3 players for Linux can do a sched_setscheduler() when they're suid root? x11amp 0.6 did this, and on my system it made the difference between occasional skips and unskippable music - but x11amp 0.6 is getting old.

Anyway, Centauri should still have more than enough CPU cycles left over to animate a small sprite or two quickly, even if every sound effect was being decoded on the fly (and if they're not caching wav data of the small sound effects, they've got a coding problem right there). It honestly feels like the whole game is being run in an interpreter, like it's some Tcl/Tk or uncompiled BASIC app. That doesn't sound likely, but I can't think of anything else that might be sucking up that much CPU.

"Runs better on Linux"

[roystgnr]

If they do get a Linux port out, I hope they take the time to fix their atrocious speed problems. Don't get me wrong, it's a great game... except that it was running slower on my friend's PII-400 than it should run on a P166. I'm sorry, there's no reason that popping up an icon menu or scrolling across a 2D map should be anything less than instantaneous on a modern computer.

The lack of a Linux port (when Civ:CTP has one in the works) was one strike against my buying Alpha Centauri, but the fact that Centauri would be unplayable on half my friends' and relatives' computers was just as bad.

I'll probaby buy this version too!

[Sean Starkey]

I already have purchased SMAC for Windows. If a version for Linux is released, I probably would purchase a second copy for Linux. It wouldn't be too difficult to dump the Windows version.

Cast your vote for Linux games with your dollars!

To never reboot again...

Great

[NaTaS777]

Now we will have all of the Civ's for Linux! Im beta testing CTP and running the message board athttp://natas.kfa.cx/~natas/wwwboard/wwwboard.htm l and let me tell you that CTP is rocking! I ordered it from Software Ect yeterday hoping that this will help out the sales in stores. Anyway, I say we bug the people who make Diablo2 and have them talk to Lokisoft about porting it!
NaTaS