So, widescreen works nicely in the Mac version, and it's easy to do:

1. Find the "Alpha Centauri Alien Crossfire" app in "Programs" or wherever you've put it, right click -> "show package contents"

2. In here, find the file "drive_c/GOG Games/Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri/Alpha Centauri.Ini" and open it with a text editor.

3. Insert the line

DirectDraw=0

Directly underneath the line

[Alpha Centauri]

Save and close the .ini file

4. Back in the root of the SMAX package, run the "Wineskin" app and open "Set screen options"

You've got a number of possibilities here, I personally run with "rootless (windowed)" and "Virtual Desktop at current resolution". This gives me a nice 1680 x 1050 SMAX on my main screen and Skype etc. on my MBP screen. And you can more reliably alt-tab around this way.

Brilliant! Huge, beautiful SMAX. Enjoy :)

Incredible! Just tried this out and it works great! The game looks amazing at 1920 by 1180. The Main Menu is slightly stretched but once in-game it looks amazing.

It's almost enough that I might stop wishing for a new, updated SMAC!

Thanks!

Updated the GOG Wiki

I tried to use this method to set it to a windowed mode, but that failed miserably unfortunately.

Anyone else managed to do it?

I followed Espylaub's instructions and widescreen SMAC works great on my Mac. The only thing I did different was to set the game to my standard monitor resolution (1920x1200). I didn't bother running it in a window.

One other thing I noticed is that SMAC likes to switch resolutions every time it plays a movie, which is a bit of a pain when it happens over and over again. The wonder movies in the game are pretty fun, but after you've seen them once I recommend turning off movies in the preferences. As an added bonus, this will also disable the intro movie. Give it a try, at least. For me the game is a lot more pleasant to play without movies.

This resolution switching stuff can actually cause a bad problem, at least on my machine. After finishing a cutscene, sometimes when it switches back to the normal game window, most of the screen is cutoff. I suspect that only the number of pixels shown in the cutscene (which is at a lower resolution) is the same number that now show up back in the game screen, only in the upper left corner. This makes the game unplayable since you can't even see enough of the screen to get to the menu, etc., though it's still responding to input so I can Ctrl+S, Enter to save, then quit, then restart.

It's been a long time since I first got SMAX working on my mac, but I do remember having some sort of problem like that in the beginning. I remember I fixed it using advice from somewhere on this forum. At least I think it was here. I would scour this forum first to try and find an answer.

I know SMAX is currently working flawlessly on my MacPro with 10.6.8.