What is the name of this alien world? Is it ALPHA CENTAURI?

[Cantauri]

Many many moons ago there were ample discussions in various places about an open source re-make of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.(AC) None came to fruition that I was ever aware of other than one beta that was abandoned well over a decade ago.

However, I noticed on the Freeciv roadmap https://freeciv.fandom.com/wiki/Coding that the 3.0 release is set to incorporate an "Alien World ruleset".(Which can already be plugged into 2.6) What is this ruleset??? Does this alien world have a name? I saw that it is called "Alio" and has some assets, but nothing that really pointed to AC. https://freeciv.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Alio

I almost brushed it off as just minor tweaks to have fun with a bizarro earth schema, but then I found THIS: http://forum.freeciv.org/f/viewtopic.php?f=12&t=31&start=10



That's AC! That's it! That's not just Civ! Right? Cities in the deep ocean, unique tree graphics on the land, (some)space ship looking units, very strange looking swamps, and what are those green dot things? Maybe I just want to see the space ships floating(flying) and they really are not, but those are floating. I looked at some actual AC screenshots, and it is clear that there is still plenty left to do if that is the trajectory.

Will FreeCiv move in this direction? I hope so! It's long overdue. I haven't played AC in years but now I really want to.

[Corbeau]

Alpha Centauri without ground elevation and especially without fungus ain't no Alpha Centauri.

If anyone would be in for a PBEM of the original, do let me know.

[cazfi]

Alien ruleset is set on Deneb 7.

[Corbeau]

Roadside Picnic!

But I hate it when such explanations are offered as excuse for having to re-research the technologies. At least Alpha Centauri did it well.

[cazfi]

(Which can already be plugged into 2.6)

The first freeciv version for which alien ruleset was available was freeciv-2.4 (actually, there was a version for freeciv-2.3, but only in freeciv-2.4 engine development enabled it to become the distinct ruleset it aims to be). Originally alien ruleset started out as a test bed for freeciv-2.2 gen-movement (terrain nativity for terrain classes, instead of just land/sea/air moving units) feature development.

[Blake00]

Nah that's not really SMAC. The tile graphics are from Civ 2 Test of Time Scifi Lalande 21185 scenario. Mostly from the earth like planet that you start on.

The units and city graphics are unknown to me, not ripped from Civ or SMAC.

Cities in an alien ocean was definitely a SMAC thing though.