The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: July 15, 2007

Official News - page 2


SLOPPY JOES, PART TWO

by Hazed

Last week, I wrote a slightly crabby article about errors in the second planets people had been sending in to link into the game. When I gave the news a final proof-read on Sunday, just before publishing it, I wondered if perhaps I was being a bit harsh. Maybe I shouldn't allow my annoyance to overflow into my writing. Perhaps criticizing the customers isn't the best business method to adopt.

But I thought, hey, I'm the demi-goddess, I'll be crabby if I want to be.

And then at Sunday's reset another batch of second planets linked into the game, and a whole heap of errors showed up. This time, the errors were not things that were a danger to the game, but they caused embarrassment to the owners as they prevented players from trading on the new planets.

Naming no names - you know who you are (and probably so does everyone else) - we had one planet where there was no link between the landing pad and the rest of the planet. We had one system where the location of the new planet's orbit was not where it said it was. And we had one system where the orbit for both first and second planets were set as the same location - so in effect one planet was hiding behind the other.

These errors are not the kind of thing the Tesla planet checker can - or should - detect. That program is only concerned about things that will stop the planet from loading completely, or be a danger to the game. It doesn't ensure you got everything right (and it certainly doesn't include a spell-checker).

Now, I don't expect everyone to get everything right on their planets first time. There is a lot to get right, and it's easy to make a mistake. But before you send your files in, it pays to give everything a final check:

  • Check you have got the orbit and landing pad information correct in the map information.
  • Check that for movement links that are not the standard compass directions (ie up, down, in and out) or for moves to non-adjacent locations, you remembered to go and set the movements.
  • Check that you put the bar flag on your bars, the exchange flag on your exchange, and the hospital flag on your hospital.

And, of course, run the files through the Tesla planet checker to look for the really serious problems!


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