Alpha Centauri By Brian Reynolds December 9, 1998 With only a few weeks left until our "master date," Alpha Centauri is finally in the home stretch. In this industry, there's nothing more rewarding than working on a project that is clearly "coming together" to become something big, and that's definitely the feeling here at Firaxis Games right now. The gameplay feels well balanced and addictive (we've had some early "hey is that the sun coming up?" casualties), our new polished interface is just about ready, the movies are the coolest we've ever done, and we've beaten the bug list down to a reasonable level. An even better sign, our 25 public beta testers seem really happy with us. Brian Reynolds, designer of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri Given the glaring omission of Net support in many of the previous games I've written, one news item that I'm sure will please our fans to no end is that Alpha Centauri's multiplayer mode has, to our considerable surprise, turned out to be not only stable, but lots of fun. Games like Alpha Centauri are quite difficult to take to the Net - turn-based and complex, with a vast variety of player options and opportunities for input, they don't fit too well with the "sure, we lose a packet here and there but who really cares" world of network play. But it turns out I didn't spend my college years doing parallel programming at defense contractors for nothing! We came up with a good algorithm and darned if the thing isn't working. Next: Simultaneous turns and diplomacy options       Copyright © 1998 GameSpot Inc. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of GameSpot Inc. is prohibited.