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[Granite26]

Hey all,

I'm looking for a cheap (I.E. not 100$) copy of alien crossfire.  I don't mind paying a few dollars for it (10-20), but all the actual CDs are going for stupid high numbers.

Anywho, I would also welcome suggestions for more games in that vein.  Underdogs seems to think Master of Orion is similar, but I don't.  (Obviously the space 4x games, and the Civs and MoM, anything else?)

Thanks in advance!

[Captain Hat]

I did a search for it but I don't think you're going to find it anywhere for any price below $60 without resorting to illegal means. Sorry 

[Aqizzar]

Don't bother pirating Alien Crossfire - it used an ironclad CD check system, so you'd have to buy a disk or you're just out of luck.

Master of Orion 2 was actually a lot like Master of Magic.  It's as slow paced as every other old game, but it's pretty fun if you get into it.  It was also made in that interregnum between DOS and Win95, and doesn't like working in Windows or DOSBox, but I've gotten it to run.

I've been playing Sid Meier's Colonization a lot lately.  It was an economy heavy prototype for Civilization, with so many differences and details that's it quite entertaining in it's own right.

[Gigalith]

There is some sort of collection out there that has a bunch of games--including SMAX. If you can find someone selling it on ebay, you might be able to get it for a sane price.

[Granite26]

Master of Orion 2 was actually a lot like Master of Magic.  It's as slow paced as every other old game, but it's pretty fun if you get into it.  It was also made in that interregnum between DOS and Win95, and doesn't like working in Windows or DOSBox, but I've gotten it to run.

Yeah, no, I love MoO2, and MoM gets installed on almost every PC I get.

I was just wondering if I'd missed something coming out.

[Ampersand]

God, Alpha Centauri brings back memories. Vastly superior to any of the Civilization games in my humble opinion. I own both it and the Alien Crossfire expansion pack. Unfortunately I've lost both CDs over the what must be 10 years I've played it, though I still have them both installed. That said Aqizzar must work for Firaxis, hint hint, nudge nudge, say no more.

[Aqizzar]

That said Aqizzar must work for Firaxis, hint hint, nudge nudge, say no more.

As much as I'd like to be an plant for the Man, no I'm just complaining.  I lost my Crossfire disk years ago, and I've never been able to play it since.

[Rhodan]

Actually, I'm pretty sure Alien Crossfire can be pirated.
I bet if you look around really hard you can find out how.

[Sergius]

The only iron-clad copy protection that exists is the one that nobody bothers to crack. There's a bunch of games I know that never got cracked...

But yes, Crossfire can be cracked just fine, the problem isn't the copy protection, is that the expansion installer itself don't overwrite the files correctly and corrupts the exe files, and then you have to copy them manually

[Sean Mirrsen]

I don't know what version it is (100 megs seems too small for a game+addon, something was probably ripped), but I found it on www.old-games.ru.

edit: ah, yes the movies were. There are links to repacked archives with movies in the comments section, but I don't know whether they will work for you "foreign" people or not.

[Ampersand]

For those of you who are not in the know, I'll take a little time to explain what game we're talking about here.

Anyone who's played the Civilization games knows that one of the eventual endgames is to construct a spacecraft and settle a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is the story of what happens next. The settlers propelled away from an Earth that is steadily collapsing at the seams, dreaming of a more unified future for humanity. However, the settlers are divided into factions after an accident aboard the space craft, and each independently commandeers colony pods to settle scattered regions of the new world, Planet, on their own.

The game should not be thought of as 'Civilization: In Spaaaaaaaaaace', however. There are many, many more layers of depth. Rather than unlocking new units as technology progresses, you unlock new body types, weapon types, and special abilities and any unit can be equipped with any combination of these, leading to the player driven creation of extremely specialized units. There are no mountain tiles, rather the terrain has a hight map, so that a colony can be built on any tile, including ocean tiles with the proper technology, and the size of mountains and hills effects weather patterns. Elevation also effects the amount of solar energy you can harvest.

The most interesting new dynamic is, of course, your interaction with the native wildlife.

Another distinction from Civilization is that there is a storyline about the transcendence of humanity to be followed from Landfall, to the eventual endgame, should you choose to look into it. A lot of Nietzschean philosophy thrown about. There are also distinct landmarks scattered across the randomly generated planet, and finding them is useful for various reasons. The Alien Crossfire expansion expands on everything I've mentioned.

Also, the flavor text and voice overs for all of the technologies is extremely good and terribly interesting.

[Dwarf]

For those of you who are not in the know, I'll take a little time to explain what game we're talking about here.

Anyone who's played the Civilization games knows that one of the eventual endgames is to construct a spacecraft and settle a planet orbiting Alpha Centauri. Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri is the story of what happens next. The settlers propelled away from an Earth that is steadily collapsing at the seams, dreaming of a more unified future for humanity. However, the settlers are divided into factions after an accident aboard the space craft, and each independently commandeers colony pods to settle scattered regions of the new world, Planet, on their own.

The game should not be thought of as 'Civilization: In Spaaaaaaaaaace', however. There are many, many more layers of depth. Rather than unlocking new units as technology progresses, you unlock new body types, weapon types, and special abilities and any unit can be equipped with any combination of these, leading to the player driven creation of extremely specialized units. There are no mountain tiles, rather the terrain has a hight map, so that a colony can be built on any tile, including ocean tiles with the proper technology, and the size of mountains and hills effects weather patterns. Elevation also effects the amount of solar energy you can harvest.

The most interesting new dynamic is, of course, your interaction with the native wildlife.

Another distinction from Civilization is that there is a storyline about the transcendence of humanity to be followed from Landfall, to the eventual endgame, should you choose to look into it. A lot of Nietzschean philosophy thrown about. There are also distinct landmarks scattered across the randomly generated planet, and finding them is useful for various reasons. The Alien Crossfire expansion expands on everything I've mentioned.

Also, the flavor text and voice overs for all of the technologies is extremely good and terribly interesting.

Yup, the game really has its philosophic parts.

Can anyone explain to me what transcendance is? I don't quite get the wiki article

[kcwong]

Can anyone explain to me what transcendance is? I don't quite get the wiki article

This is from my memory.

The fungus and mind worms on Alpha Centauri is like a neural network the size of a planet. However, before this neural network can archive sentience, the fungus and mindworms die off (IIRC something triggers all the fungus and mindworm to reproduce too much). That has been repeated for many times... until human's arrival.

To save themselves from the overwhelming amount of fungus and mindworms, the humankind used all the generators they have built to send a lot of data into the planet's neural network... that huge stimulation worked at preventing the fungal population bloom, and the planet finally archive sentience.

With their technologies developed on Alpha Centauri, some human decided to upload their minds into the planetary neural network, referring that as the next evolutionary step.

Hence they name it "transcendence".

[Dwarf]

So, would we still have a physical form or do we all play a giant MMORPG?

[kcwong]

Oh, and IIRC when the humans pump data into the planet's neural network, their original idea is that the stress would kill it... but the planet survived and welcome humankind with open arms.