[Admin] Welcome and Check In

[vyeh]

Hi!

Welcome to Civilization Gaming Network, featuring stable and organized content for Civ and SMAC players!

That is our aspiration:

• stable: this site has been around since 2000, is not dependent on advertising revenue and buster, the owner, has promised that CGN will continue as long as there is interest;
• organized: we moderate between current posters and future readers;
• content: we are the home of the SMAC Academy and scient's unofficial patch;
• Civ: purely aspirational
• SMAC: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri and its expansion Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire.

We are one of the four large English-speaking SMAC forums. (The others are the Apolyton Civilization Site Alpha Centauri Forum, the Civilization Fanatics' Alpha Centauri Forum and the WePlayCiv Alpha Centauri Forum.)

Feel free to PM me with any question or concern!

I hope you will just start posting. Introduce yourself in this thread or start a new thread with a question or comment.

regards,
vyeh

[buster]

I thought we had it written somewhere but I forgot where.
We never had much in the form of formalized rules, but in short they were.

• No advertizing.
• No agitation (religious / political etc.)
• No harassing of members / rude behaviour

It would be left a lot up to the mods to judge border-cases. For instance we had no policy against people stating their personal opnion or belief as part of a discussion, and the point where a it stops being a discussion and starts being a campaign is not always clearcut, but the mods generally were very well able to to regulate that.

Most bannings we had because some member started harassing some other member or mod and just went on and on despite warnings. It was rather few though (maybe 5-10 total in the the whole life span).

The general idea was not to regulate the discussion or tone or opinions and only to step in when it was getting nasty or personal or if the user was not there to take part in the community but rather to plug some site or conviction.

We did not demand a reverent tone towards mods or admins and generally the mods were encouraged to not get personally caught up in discussions / attacks but to try to look at from outside or above, which they generally managed very well.

Users who felt they were incorrectly banned or warned could appeal to one of the admins. This happened a few times but if I remember correctly the mods decisions were upheld each time.

We did have to get rid of I believe two mods who would tend to get caught up in discussions that would turn more and more peronal and nasty rather than to stay above and oversee such matters. Somehow some people are magnets for this kind of stuff and this is no good in a mod and absolutely no good in a site manager. Exaggerated self-importance and modding don't mix in my experience and from what I have seen a major reason for constant fights on a site are that the mods loose sight of their main purpose (which is simply to facilitate discussions by preventing abuse) and try to dictate or demand respectfulness or such.

Like a judge - a mod has to be impartial and able to see all sides. He is of course allowed to have his opinion and to express it (as long as it is clear it is his personal and not the sites' opinion), but he should be able to keep his personal opinions seperate from his mod duties.

In general I believe a mod should be rather good natured, aloof and invisible and only step in when needed and then no more or harsh than needed for abuses to stop and things to return to normal.

[vyeh]

Quick Start

Welcome!Here is a quick start to the Unofficial SMAC/X Patch project, other SMAC forums and CGN.

The Project

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri / Alien Crossfire Unofficial Patch released!

Version 1.0 of the Unofficial SMAC/X Patch, which fixes bugs in Sid Meier's Alien Crossfire and, now, Alpha Centauri, was released on May 7, 2010. Brendan Casey (scient) leads the project, which began in February 2009 at Apolyton and moved in July 2009 to the Civilization Gaming Network.

Until now the patch was only hosted at CGN; however, WPC, which recently relaxed its rules on hosting altered executable (.exe) files, also hosts the patch. The Unofficial Patch may be downloaded from CGN or WPC.

Brendan Casey will continue developing further versions of the patch at CGN, however, CGN and WPC will share publicity and distribution.

Other SMAC forums

In addition to WPC, there is CivFanatics, home of the Comprehensive Datalinks Update.

Civilization Gaming Network

Originally Posted by buster

Our main function I believe has been to provide a stable and sane alternative so that the larger sites were not able to act like total monopolies with users interested in civ / smac having nowhere else to go.

Approach this forum like the game:

Originally Posted by SMAC manual, p. 3

put down this book, start up the game

Just start a new thread or reply!

[scient]

Hey all, I just wanted to pop by and let everyone know I haven't abandoned AC community. I had to take leave of absence for awhile for personal reasons (this included my work on PST) and have only come back recently. I do plan on updating my unofficial patch in coming months. Just as soon as I finish a few things I've already 90% done with in Planescape. I guess this thread is mainly to say hi and to let everyone know to keep reporting bugs because I'll definitely look at them. I'll try to be more active on here than I have been (yay like 2 posts!). Also, everyone should thank vyeh for keeping me up to date and encouraging me to get on here.

[Dale]

Hey scient, just so you're aware you'll find the online SMAC community over at WePlayCiv. They'll be very happy to hear from you and throw support your way.

[GooglyBoogly]

Welcome back. I'll PM you a new copy of my results from the bugtest of your release (as per the aployton PM) since the link I sent you must have expired long ago.

Thanks vyeh for hassling scient

[scient]

Originally Posted by Dale

Hey scient, just so you're aware you'll find the online SMAC community over at WePlayCiv. They'll be very happy to hear from you and throw support your way.

Sure, I think I did register and posted once or something. I'll add it to my opera speed dial next to CGN.

Originally Posted by GooglyBoogly

Welcome back. I'll PM you a new copy of my results from the bugtest of your release (as per the aployton PM) since the link I sent you must have expired long ago.

Excellent notes, will go through them while porting fixes over to AC and looking over my code.

Originally Posted by GooglyBoogly

Thanks vyeh for hassling scient

[Petek]

Hi scient,

Glad to see you back! I'll be most glad to test your patches and provide feedback. I suggest that this forum (CGN) be used to host the patches, since the owner (buster) agreed to do so. However, the WePlayCiv owners agreed to allow links from their forum to here, so we could certainly publicize your work over there.

Petek

[scient]

Originally Posted by Petek

Hi scient,

Glad to see you back! I'll be most glad to test your patches and provide feedback. I suggest that this forum (CGN) be used to host the patches, since the owner (buster) agreed to do so. However, the WePlayCiv owners agreed to allow links from their forum to here, so we could certainly publicize your work over there.

Petek

Sounds good. Almost got installation all setup. Suprisingly, I haven't run into any issues with getting it to run on new system (win7 x64).

@GooglyBoogly: Is v1.3 latest for your update to conceptsx/helpx? Also, did I ever mention typo I found on line 2048 of helpx?

original:
"^The interceptor needs to be stationed at a baseor airbase. Use the "

[GooglyBoogly]

yes, 1.3 is the latest release. While I did incorporate your suggestion (and some others) I still don't have enough changes to make a release worthwhile. I was kind of hoping you would release your patch, then I could release mine to document the changes in-game along with it.