Alpha Centauri 2

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri & Alien Crossfire => The Theory of Everything => Topic started by: Supernaut on April 18, 2025, 08:38:35 pm

Title: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Supernaut on April 18, 2025, 08:38:35 pm

Hi. I've got the GOG Planetary Pack and have been playing merrily for years on different PCs. But suddenly my copy of Crossifre has gone wonky. It loads OK but my cities and units aren't visible (which is kind of a problem). I have reinstalled and still get the same problem. SMAC seems to be working fine. I don't think I did anything to my PC so can't figure out what's caused it. Any ideas?

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: MysticWind on June 10, 2025, 12:53:19 pm

How did this thread get posted during the outage

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 10, 2025, 01:42:00 pm

It appears the hacker went away -last active the day before the OP here- and then something happened to the server for a while...

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-Stumped as to the OP's problem, but these things are often fixed by a reinstall.

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: MysticWind on June 10, 2025, 06:55:26 pm

How did the server recover, did your ISP resolve things?

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 10, 2025, 07:38:57 pm

I do not know, and would only get an unhelpful auto-reply if I bothered to ask.  Those guys suck, and we'd have left iFast for Digital Ocean in 2013 if I had my way.

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Geo on June 16, 2025, 10:47:00 am

The forum is back?
It's a genuine miracle!
Let's travel forward!!

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Green1 on June 23, 2025, 09:50:22 am

Quote from: Buster's Uncle on June 10, 2025, 07:38:57 pm

I do not know, and would only get an unhelpful auto-reply if I bothered to ask.  Those guys suck, and we'd have left iFast for Digital Ocean in 2013 if I had my way.

This is/was a legit problem happening around that time. A Windows 11 update makes SMAX crash when it loads up a map. Digging further, it's an ancient bug with SMAX brought out by the recent update. Vanilla SMAC is unaffected.

EA, Steam, and GoG are AWOL on this because the only ones with knowledge of the ancient texts were all on here and CFC. A few on reddits and various discords.

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 23, 2025, 01:06:00 pm

I see I missed that the OP had already tried a reinstall.  I better ping Petek, king of installation troubleshooting.  I should have well before now, anyway.

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Green1 on June 23, 2025, 02:04:45 pm

Currently, according to various discords and reddit, the ONLY way of getting around it short of booting from a Win 10 or earlier computer is installing Thinker Mod and a bit of fiddling. But I may be behind on times.

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 23, 2025, 02:15:00 pm

Well Petek pinged via email anyway.  You never know.

Supernaut, he'll ask what operating system version - example, I'm in Windows 11.  It would be great if a solution that didn't involve spending any money or pirating could be worked out for this crucial issue.

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Dio on June 23, 2025, 04:42:44 pm

A user on Reddit produced an alleged patch for stock SMAX about two months ago. I have not tried the patch, but a potential solution exists for the stock game.

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 23, 2025, 04:43:16 pm

Link please?

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Dio on June 23, 2025, 04:53:21 pm

Quote from: Buster's Uncle on June 23, 2025, 04:43:16 pm

Link please?

The user provided updates on their patcher in the comments.

https://www.reddit.com/r/alphacentauri/comments/1kazne5/another_windows_11_fix/

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Lord Avalon on June 23, 2025, 06:20:49 pm

It was mentioned on Reddit, but I'll add here: it's Win11 24H2 where MS made a little change which caused SMAX to crash. Supposedly SMAC works, though (I'm still on Win10, so I am not speaking from experience).

Alternatively there's the Thinker mod, which of course changes the game. Then there's creating a virtual machine and installing an older version of Windows to run SMAX, or a Linux + Wine situation (VM or not).

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Green1 on June 24, 2025, 08:54:09 am

Quote from: Dio on June 23, 2025, 04:53:21 pm

Quote from: Buster's Uncle on June 23, 2025, 04:43:16 pm

Link please?

The user provided updates on their patcher in the comments.

https://www.reddit.com/r/alphacentauri/comments/1kazne5/another_windows_11_fix/

You might want to mirror it.

A lot of people moved their stuff to github merely because github is stable and less likely to disappear if something happens to hosting. But even that can go away.

In the Cataclysm DDA community, there was a popular 3rd party tile set. It was so popular, 90 percent of the content creators used it and one of the first thigs people would do on install is get that tile set. It became iconic with the game and many would not play with default.

However, after years of drama between the developers and the maintainer of the tile set, the tile set maker erased everything. Drama that would be paragraphs to go over and I am sure those interested can go digging on Redits and Discourses. It was only because others had it hosted other places that others took over and you can still get that tile set and it's still updated.

Personally, I think GOG and Steam need to take action versus EA if they are selling a product that does not work with Windows 11 current version as is. If it wasn't EA, I guarantee it would have been taken off sale by now. Either that or say, "Only for use in Linux/wine, vintage systems, or Steam deck.

And as the game gets older, this will become more common. For instance, did you know because of ancient copy protection, the only surviving copies of the Commodore 64 version of Archon and Archon II are mostly pirated unless you have a bonafide, working Commodore 64 with 1541 drive that still works 40 years later?

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Petek on June 24, 2025, 09:32:55 am

Thanks to Buster's Uncle for pinging me about this issue. Great to see AC2 up and running again. Don't have much to add to the discussion. I installed Induktio's Thinker mod and Nathan Baggs' patch. Both allow SMAX to run (played a few turns with each). The most recent version of Baggs' patch may be found here: https://github.com/nathan-baggs/Adamite/releases/tag/v1.2.0. I hope that GOG will eventually issue a patch for the problem (Nathan Boggs sent them his fix). I know from prior dealings with GOG that they are very careful not to introduce new bugs in a patch (which explains why they disabled Alt-Tab in the game). That may explain the delay in their patching SMAX.

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Green1 on June 24, 2025, 10:17:38 am

Quote from: Petek on June 24, 2025, 09:32:55 am

Thanks to Buster's Uncle for pinging me about this issue. Great to see AC2 up and running again. Don't have much to add to the discussion. I installed Induktio's Thinker mod and Nathan Baggs' patch. Both allow SMAX to run (played a few turns with each). The most recent version of Baggs' patch may be found here: https://github.com/nathan-baggs/Adamite/releases/tag/v1.2.0. I hope that GOG will eventually issue a patch for the problem (Nathan Boggs sent them his fix). I know from prior dealings with GOG that they are very careful not to introduce new bugs in a patch (which explains why they disabled Alt-Tab in the game). That may explain the delay in their patching SMAX.

Yeah, occasionally I want To crank up a game, but last time I did it crashed to desktop upon planetfall. Yeah, VMs and all that and patches.

My bigger problem is with Steam selling this. In Steam, it's a lot more user unfriendly to install patches/mods without an installer. Possible, but most would just refund the game than go through that. Especially without steam workshop support.

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 24, 2025, 04:37:38 pm

Quote from: Green1 on June 24, 2025, 08:54:09 am

You might want to mirror it.

Definitely true, and now done. https://alphacentauri2.info/index.php?action=downloads;sa=view;down=384

It's a big file -had to switch to admin status showing for technical reasons to upload- in a format I'm not familiar with, so I'd really appreciate if anyone troubled themselves to download from here, try it and report back.  We need to get this right, and I'm not up to it today.

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Lord Avalon on June 24, 2025, 04:53:44 pm

Looks like you didn't get the complete file. And Adamite.exe is listed as 8.74 MB.

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 24, 2025, 05:12:26 pm

What do I do to fix this?  Do I have to run what I have, or can someone else upload Adamite.exe on behalf of the community, please?

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I got the same result on a second download try at the Github link.  8.74 MB. surely takes admin powahs to upload, so how do we get the file to me?

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 24, 2025, 06:12:37 pm

Petek - you've already got the working file and my email...

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Petek on June 24, 2025, 06:34:18 pm

Emailed you a zipped copy of Adamite.exe.

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 24, 2025, 06:37:53 pm

Both your recent emails landed in Junk for some reason, so good you posted.  Received.

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 24, 2025, 06:41:41 pm

Okay, that appears to have straightened it out - please somebody test and confirm.

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Petek on June 24, 2025, 08:02:13 pm

Looks like it works. Here's how to use it: Download the zip file. Extract Adamite.exe to a convenient location (such as your desktop) and run it. After doing so, you should get a popup window that states Drag terranx.exe here. Drag your terranx.exe and drop it into this window. Doing so should create a new file in your SMACX folder named terranx_nb.exe. Use that file to run SMAX. You may get some warnings from Windows not to run Adamite.exe. Just click through the warnings. I scanned Adamite.exe for malware and no problems were detected.

Title: Re: Can't use SMAX
Post by: Buster's Uncle on June 24, 2025, 08:29:51 pm

Thanks.  I'm going to copy that into the description.

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I'm really glad about how this thread turned out; Mystic Wind wasn't wrong to ask a question where it came up, but I was feeling a bit bad about the OT -me not excluded- in a tech support/ask for help thread.  I'm not a huge proponent of topic discipline, liking it just fine when conversations are allowed to go where they want to -subject to the expressed wishes of the original poster- but it's just a good thing/appearance when calls for help are successfully answered.  Thank you to everyone for that.

Further discussion of site issues is best taken up in the Council Room folder, thanks.