Has anyone tried this? I've still got the original CD of Alien Crossfire and so wondering if I could install straight over the GoG version of SMAC? And if it doesn't work straight out of the box anyone managed to get it working somehow?

Won't you try it please, and let us know how goes? :)

Oh yes, try it and let us know :) And will it still need DVD in the drive?

OK - yes it works! Though you need to run the 'terranx.exe' for the Crossfire 'mode'. (when I ran the original terran.exe the directdraw=0 widescreen fix glitches). Also, it does want you to keep the CD in the drive....

Yes, it totally works with the retail version of Crossfire. I installed Crossfire to the same location and ran SMAC as ADMINISTRATOR and it works great. Wouldn't work without ADMIN privledges for some reason. Crossfire disc had to be in the optical drive.

This is great news. :)

This begs the question: why didn't GOG incorporate the expansion if it's seemingly so easy to apply??

They didn't get the rights to sell expansion packs yet.

Can I ask how you got it to install? I can get the CD to launch the options screen to tell it to install but I don't get anything after that. I'm running Windows 7 64bit if that helps/matters.

Probably because SMAX wasn't very well-received. I personally like the features it add and simply ignore the alien factions it add (as well as some of the more "broken" non-alien factions (*cough*pirates*cough*)), but I know a lot of people don't like it.

I also know that some people have had issues running SMAX on modern machines, for some reason.

Either of them could be a motivation for not baking SMAX into the SMAC release. Hopefully we'll see a SMAX release in the future.

I have the Planetary Pack myself. Is there a way of just installing SMACX from that? Would be awesome if that worked.

Thanks

The PP has SMAC and SMAX joined together when you install, so you can't really get just SMAX. But if you install PP then you only need 2000/XP Compatibility patch and you'll be same as GOG version for SMAC with added bonus of having SMAX.

That worked quite nicely. Thanks!