User Guide

ine the future for themselves — to create their own future utopias and try them
out against other competing visions. Thence also came the idea of “factions,”
rival groups to challenge players with opposing and contrasting ideologies.
Thrown into this mix are the uniquely science fiction elements of exploring
and terraforming an alien world. Since we were trying to create a plausible
future history, trans-lightspeed galactic travel seemed a bit unrealistic. We
chose instead to start with a near future situation which with only a little extra
optimism could actually happen — a human mission to colonize the solar sys-
tem of our sun’s nearest neighbor. It seemed likewise implausible that upon
arriving in the Alpha Centauri system humans would discover a thriving com-
munity of five or six intelligent quasi-humanoid alien races, so we stuck with
human factions to provide rivals and opponents. But alien ecologies and mys-
terious intelligences are cool, so we’ve incorporated them into the game as
external “natural forces” which serves as a flywheel for much of our back-story
and a catalyst for many player actions.
With Gettysburg taking up most of our time, we spent Alpha Centauri’s first
year working up a prototype of basic ideas. Artist Mike Bazzell provided enough
preliminary art to get us going, senior programmer Jason Coleman perfected
our system code, and lead designer Brian Reynolds hacked a game and some
AI together. Sid had a spare fractal algorithm he wasn’t going to need for
Gettysburg, so Brian took it up to Canada for vacation and finished the world
generator on the shores of the St. Lawrence. We were playing “games” of Alpha
Centauri by fall of ’96, and by the following summer we were working on the
multiplayer engine. We invited veteran game designer Doug Kaufman, with
whom we’ve often worked, to join us as a game balancer and become “the first
man on Alpha Centauri.” You’ll find Doug’s ideas well represented throughout
the game (the disengage rule, long range bombardment, and energy loans, to
name just a few), and he’s the guy you can thank when you try some bizarre
new strategy and lo-and-behold the game understands it.
Around this time we also began doing some research on the scientific realities
involved in interstellar travel. A few tentative posts on the Internet later, we
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