Fed2 Star - the newsletter for the space trading game Federation 2

The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: July 24, 2016

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NEW VERSION OF FEDTERM WILL FIX BUGS AND REVAMP STATS PANEL

by Hazed

We plan to release the new version of FedTerm next Saturday. The reason for the delay is to do with the stats panel revamp, which I will explain below.

But first here’s the bugs that Alan found in the course of testing ship repairs, which have been fixed in the new version:

  • Pressing the key for the number 5 if the input line was empty generates the ‘BOARD’ command. This causes problems during the process of buying a ship when you need to specify the size of various things.
  • If you have logging switched on, FedTerm sometimes tries to write to the log file after you log off.

And here’s a couple of new features:

  • Your rank is now shown in the stats panel.
  • There is now an option for the exchange display so you can choose whether all prices should show up on the main display (as happens now) or just for commodities that can be both bought and sold. It’s on the ‘Options’ menu.

Stats Panel

Now, about the stats panel. The purpose of the revamp is to display more information about your ship, which will be needed when ship fighting goes in. For this revamp to work, it needs some changes to the information sent by the server, which Alan hasn’t quite finished yet. Without the server changes, the stats panel in the new version of FedTerm won’t work at all.

So the new version of the front-end, and the server changes, will be released together next Saturday. At that point you will be able to download it from the links at the end of this article.

What you do need to know is that when the server code is changed, anybody using any previous version of FedTerm – including old FedTerm – will find the stats panel doesn’t display at all. You will need to upgrade to the new version. If you prefer to keep on using the old version of FedTerm you can, it’s just that the stats panel won’t work; you will have to type ‘SC’ or ‘ST’ to get a listing of your score or ship’s status. If you don’t upgrade, you can turn the stats panel off to reclaim the unused space using the item in the ‘Options’ menu.

Download the new version next weekend

So next Saturday, if you are using one of the previous versions of new FedTerm, numbered 3.0 or higher, then you will be able to download the upgrade which just contains the new program file, from here: http://www.ibgames.net/fed2/fedterm/winupgrade.html.

If you haven’t yet switched to using new FedTerm, then you will be able to download the full installation here: http://www.ibgames.net/fed2/fedterm/winfedterm.html.

Mac Programmers Wanted!

This change to the stats panel means that the Mac version of FedTerm, which was already very behind Windows FedTerm, won’t display the stats info either.

The problem is that we have no Mac programmers – we don’t even a Mac computer to try things on, so we can’t make a new version of FedTerm for the Mac.

So this is a plea for anyone with experience at coding for the Mac who could help us to port FedTerm to the Mac to please get in touch. Email us at feedback@ibgames.com and don’t forget to put Fed2 in the subject line.

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