Gather around children, and I’ll tell you a story. Long ago, in the 1990’s, when classic computer game Civilization was only in its second iteration, Sid Meier and Firaxis released a far-future spinoff of the game called Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri.
This new game envisioned the colonization of a distant planet by a set of competing human factions whose colony ship had broken up in orbit. (It was essentially a continuation of Civilization’s science victory, which ends with the colony ship leaving Earth for Alpha Centauri.) It took the Civ model to a new place, literally and figuratively, with advanced technologies, interesting new factions, alien life forms, and a unit design tool. It was fun to play and I spent many, many hours on it.
The game was also set up in such a way that an enterprising player with a modicum of technical skill could modify the game. This feature sparked my imagination, and I proceeded to rebuild the game from the ground up, so to speak, designing seven unique factions to replace those in the default game. I created logos for the factions, rendered CG) base graphics, and new leaders (two of whom were portrayed by friends and one by yours truly).
In the gallery below, you’ll find a selection of the sprites I created, including a photo of myself possessing much more hair than I do now.
- Institute logo
- Syndicate logo
- Paradigm logo
- Disciples logo
- Proteans logo
- Institute seabase
- Institute diplomacy view
- Disciples base
- Disciples diplomacy view
- Covenant base
- Covenant diplomacy view
- Syndicate base
- Paradigm base
- Totality base
- Totality base w. fortification
- Some weird guy