As the subject says, for anyone who has bought it or if any GOG emissary can tell me, can it run in a window? That's the only thing that stops me from instabuying this.

Thanks!

From my experience with a CD copy: No. Additionally alt-tabbing does horrible things to the colors of the desktop and other windows.

(The program runs fullscreen, reduces the screen resolution and changes the color depth.)

Great game, but a fullscreen game.

Ah yes, that was my problem with it (since I also own a CD copy, long lost, but with the manual still half intact). I was hoping that GoG made it possible to run it in a window.

Well, if you've got a virtual machine kicking around you could always run it in that and then window the virtual machine. Win7's XP mode would work.

Alt-tabbing should be okay.

But then I'm doing it with SMACX so that might have helped it. It behaves like a background while you alt-tab so it is cool, with some windows staying on top while you still play.

I haven't found a way to run it in windowed mode, but (for me) I've found something better. By setting DirectDraw=0 in the .ini, the game will launch in what seems to be borderless windowed mode, using my monitor's full 1680x1050 without doing any sort of stretching. There are some black areas in the bottom of the UI since the UI wasn't designed to cover so much real estate, but it's a beautiful playing experience. It seamlessly switches focus to other applications without breaking anything.

FYI, you may have to start up the game at least once (and endure the painful monitor resizing and wonky colors that result) in order to get it to generate a "Alpha Centauri.ini" file before you can add directdraw=0 to it.

EDIT: it's not a real borderless windowed mode, as it won't minimize properly, but it's otherwise perfect for someone like me.

EDIT2: As the poster below notes, he can only get it to work with the XP installed. I just downloaded it from GOG and installed what I got from them. I don't have the XP installed and it seems to work for me. So it looks like your mileage will vary with this particular fix.

This only works with the Expansion Pack installed, for the record.

Don't have the game, but I'm also interested in this topic. You can try DXWnd to force it to run in a window. Install the game, run dxwnd and go to configure. You can try the normal settings, but I prefer to set the correct resolution in the window size field (I guess 1024x768) and to use the "patch all modules" option (at the bottom). Otherwise you can play around with some settings, maybe this will help. When everything works fine you can create a shortcut.

DXWnd: http://www.nynaeve.net/?p=52

Not true - unless there's some difference between the disc version and the GOG version. I've been running it at 1920x1200 for a few years with that ini file change, and I don't have the expansion.

This is where having an old WinXP install CD and VMWare Player (their free version) comes in really handy. I just set the VM desktop resolution to be 1024x768 and SMAC now effectively plays in a window.

For anyone having a problem with the directdraw=0 line in the ini file, take a look at the following link:

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=352236

Basically - your ini file probably has a video mode specified somewhere else inside it which will override the directdraw line.

That *is* a surprise- every account I've seen elsewhere suggested that it didn't work properly at all.

Looks like I was misinformed. Cheers!

I even tried this very recently with a smac version and it didn't work just like the widescreen website said it wouldn't. The menu's were all wrong and it was unplayable.

That said, I tried the same with the gog version, and although I haven't been able to play a game for more than a few minutes yet, the menu's seemed to be in the correct places.

I did read about a compatibility patch for Smac i didn't know about before though, perhaps that was incorporated.

I've tested the directdraw=0 setting a little bit more and it had worked fine, until i scrolled screen by moving cursor to the left or upper edge of it. This, sadly, caused the game to crash. But other than that i've found no issues so far.

This worked perfectly for me. I had to set DisableOpeningMovie=1 in my Alpha Centauri.Ini. Make sure you do not set DirectDraw=0.

In the Standard Windowed Patcher Configuration, I left everything default except for:

- Enabled Force 16-bit Color - may not be necessary
- Set Window Size to 1024x768