Thinker Mod

Game: Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri: Alien Crossfire → (Windows, 1999)

Thinker: a mod for Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri: Alien Crossfire that remakes parts of the game engine. Its launcher, thinker.exe, starts the version 2.0 terranx.exe without changing it on disk and makes it load an extra DLL with the new code, written in C++; from there the project keeps rewriting functions of the original engine, such as game startup, the network code, and turn upkeep. It fully rewrites the production and movement AI, with minor changes to diplomacy, and offers better automation routines for player factions; it changes map rendering and the random map generator, adds new mechanics and dozens of options in thinker.ini for rules the game had hardcoded, more resolution options (fullscreen at desktop resolution or borderless windowed), and its own menu on Alt+T, and it includes Scient’s patches, with fixes for the original game. It also fixes game crashes on Windows 11 when ending the turn and when saving. A SMAC-in-SMACX mode lets you play something close to the original Alpha Centauri, without the expansion content. TCP/IP multiplayer works, though it’s less stable than single-player. It’s tested with the GOG release. Releases are published on Dropbox and, since April, on GitHub too; v5.5 came out on August 16. The repository and the download include modified versions of alphax.txt, the game’s rules and text file (in the repository, in German too), and, for SMAC-in-SMACX mode, the text files alphax.txt, helpx.txt, conceptsx.txt, and tutor.txt adapted from DrazharLn’s SMAC in SMACX mod.

You needYour own copy of Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri with the Alien Crossfire expansion for PC, with the official Alien Crossfire 2.0 patch (the terranx.exe from Scient’s v2 patch works too); version 1.0 isn’t supported. The files are extracted into the game folder, and the game is started with thinker.exe. Plus Windows.

Type

Mod

Game

Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri: Alien Crossfire (PC, 1999)

Platform

Microsoft Windows

Author

induktio

Stars

157

Last activity

2026-10-21 · 10 days ago

Latest version

v5.5 · 2026-08-16

Language

C++

Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri (GLSMAC) See all →