EARTHDATE: January 22, 2006

OFFICIAL NEWS
Page 1

Bella is continuing to work on the tools needed to allow planet owners to upload their files to the game without having to send them to feedback. This is going to be done using a stand-alone program called Tesla, which will act as both a planet checker and as the uploader. It's a long way from being finished, but even in its current version is proving to be very useful, because it checks your planet files for some of the things that are important to the game, and tells you if it finds any problems.

In fact, even though it's only an alpha version, Bella uses the program on all planet files which are mailed to her, and if a planet fails the check she'll send it back to you to fix the problems. So we are now releasing the Windows development version of the Tesla program, which means you can run the checks yourself before sending in your files.

Tesla loads in the files for a planet and checks that the map titles and the launch and orbit locations have been filled in correctly. It has no way of knowing whether those location numbers are the correct ones, all it cares about is whether they are in the right format. It also checks for movement links that lead to non-existent locations, and it will warn you about one-way links, too.

Tesla makes two kinds of report. Warnings are things that you may have got wrong, but the game itself doesn't object to. One-way links fall into this category. You can have one-way links on your planet, although it's not a technique you should over-use; but it's easy to put one in accidentally, so Tesla will warn you if it finds any.

Errors, on the other hand, are problems that mean your planet will not load into the game, so they must be fixed.

You can download Tesla, and read the instructions on how to use it, from the Workbench web page.

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