As far as I recall, there used to be a somewhat servicable Widescreen Mod for Alien Crossfire- I don't suppose anybody thought to backport it or throw together something similar for vanilla SMAC?

The closest thing I could find was to edit the ini file on the Widescreen Gaming Forums. There may be glitches but it does seem to work fine with GOG's version.

Edited to reflect that it does indeed work with GOG's version of SMAC.

Actually, i have just tried the fix from the link in the post above and it seems to work properly for me (the game looks exactly the same as in the screens from expansion, there's no invisible buttons and no buggy UI). So either is GoG version different, and therefore compatible with the fix, or it's just me (I'm playing the game in 1366x768, which is 16:9 BTW).

I've tried it with clean install from GoG, and with unofficial SMAC patch (http://www.gog.com/en/forum/sid_meier_s_alpha_centauri_/expansion_included/post18) and it works with both.

The "DirectDraw=0" trick worked perfectly for me. Only when you win (or lose) the game there is a small glitch that fixes itself after you close the window.

Thanks Kastore & Ryhstic_One. I've edited my previous post to reflect the fact it works fine!

hmm, it doesn't seem to work for me

i installed the unofficial path from here http://www.civgaming.net/forums/showthread.php?t=7511 , edited the "Alpha Centauri.Ini" file in the (for me) default "C:\Program Files\GOGcom\Sid Meiers Alpha Centauri" folder, (using admin privileges, so the changes are saved) by adding DirectDraw=0 directly under the "[Alpha Centauri]" header, but the game still runs in its tiny resolution (which makes it almost impossible to look up something in the manual while you play).

does anyone have an idea what could be the problem?

that did the trick! unfortunately you can't alt-tab at all after that, but i'll use it anyways.

The DirectDraw=0 method worked perfectly fine on my notebook with Win Vista on board. The resolution is 1280*800 and I have both the game and the menu looking great :)

What is more - alt-tabbing works as well!

It's also important to run the game in administrator mode - the "DirectDraw=0" only worked for me when I ran the game as an administrator - it also allowed the game to populate the ini file with lots of settings it did not previously contain, so might be worth doing even if you do not want widescreen.

EDIT: I should add though that when I have widescreen mode enabled the game crashes whenever I scroll to the bottom edge of the map, which is a shame.

The DirectDraw thingie worked perfect for me...'part from the fact that the game sadly crashes each time I put my mouse at the edge of the screen to scroll. Alas! This was why I bought the game again to begin with- I'd already got it working in 1024 x 768 from my original CD.

Gah. Really, gah.

If you *don't* install the game to the Program Files (or the Program Files (x86)) folder, then you won't have to run it as admin.

This does not work for the Mac version. Any suggestions?

EDIT:

Figured it out. In addition, you have to launch the Wineskin app and set the screen resolution to "current resolution." Looks great now!

I wonder if it's just oddball resolutions that cause the game to crash. I had the same issue on my laptop @ 1366x768 resolution. I changed the resolution of my display to 1280x720 (i.e. 720p, one of the common resolutions w/16:9 aspect ratio), then the game does not crash. Strangely, the game's load/title screen has lines across it, but it's not an issue while playing the game and the game no longer crashes.

Thanks for this. Joined GOG last week when I heard this game was here and on sale for as cheap as it was. But wow, is it ugly. Found out about this forum and will try any of the suggestions I see here to make it look slight better with modern monitors. Gonna try when I get home tonight. Thanks for the tips in this thread and some of the others even though just replying in this one.