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AOL NEWS YEARBOOK Earthdate February 1996 |
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AOL NEWS YEARBOOK Earthdate February 1996 |
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THE MONTH IN BRIEF It was a month of technical problems. Fed caught a bad cold and we all suffered through the resulting crashes. Commands that resulted in long, long messages - such as the SYSTEM command - were disabled to minimise the crashes while the TechDroid worked on a permanent solution. It was also a month of celebrations. Valentine's Day brought a special planet, Saccharine, and a nasty little imp called Cupid Stupid with his darts of lurv. ChasRoll organised a grand Mardi Gras parade with floats entered by many players. The winning float was designed by Raptoria - see the report below. A new mobile was added to Earth's hosital - the bodies. Those with a literary background should recognise them! Motherkins started her popular weekly bar crawls, visiting different planets in the Galaxy. LtleShaver was the first player to solve the fiendish Duke puzzle, and started his own duchy. Rehfeldt won a Walrus of Merit for his excellent planet, Rift. In contrast, a danger alert was issued against the planet Ganja, the world of death-traps. Word soon got round and visitors stayed away in droves.
We have been sent a lot of reports from Fed players that they are being approached by people who offer them "free AOL accounts" in exchange for large quantities of groats in Fed. These "free AOL accounts" are illegal accounts. If you are offered this kind of deal, take a capture of the conversation and report it to the Fed team, or direct to AOL by going to keyword: TOS. Do not use one of these accounts, even if you are given the screen name and password; use of them is a violation of AOL's Terms of Service. If you use one of these accounts, you may lose your own account as well, so don't be tempted to accept this offer. Don't risk your account and your hard-earned Fed persona!
In real life, do you sign a contract without reading all the small print and finding out just what you're letting yourself in for? Do you buy something without knowing how much you're going to pay for it, and what exactly you're going to get? No, you don't. And you shouldn't do it in Fed, either. You may find someone offering you a contract to purchase some goods - and if there are a con-artist, they may be trying to sell you a small amount of goods for a large amount of groats. So just check what you are being offered before you <SIGN> the contract, to avoid getting ripped off.
Just a word of advice to those designing planets... Now that you can have 1000 characters in a location description, you need to think about how you can make sure your text remains readable. 1000 characters can take up about 14 lines of text on a normal-sized screen; that's an awful great lump of text, and if you don't break it up somehow it's going to be very hard to read without players going cross-eyed. You really don't want to have more than 4 or 5 lines before you break the text up and start a new paragraph. There surely cannot be any location description that won't have a natural break in it somewhere. Remember that your main purpose in designing a planet is to make it something people are going to enjoy exploring. If they can't make sense of your text because it all comes at them in a big wodge, they may not bother.
The crowds have been eagerly awaiting the description of the 1996 Federation Pin-up Calendar's February hologram. While those of female persuasion were tickled to see a wonderful pin-up of SunKeeper last month, this month's model will surely find its way to many garage walls for the mechanics to ogle. Here it is: Above the month of February poses the infamous Freya. Seen reposing in a comfy chair that she has obviously just flounced into, this Hostess is certainly a sight to behold. Lounging in a skimpy set of red silk knickers, with her long dark hair trailing behind her, Freya seems to be casually surveying the room around her. On a small table at her side there is a steaming cup of coffee. The package next to the cup shows it to be some unidentifiable but exotic blend of beans. Lying on the table beside the coffee is a handful of pills - uneaten. The look upon Freya's face in this holo is a strange one - seemingly a cross between a vague expression and a bland smile. Undoubtedly she is about to make some sharp retort over the comms. And that is the holo for the month of February in the 1996 Federation Pin-up Calendar. Look for another holo next month!
Fat Tuesday was last Tuesday, and many party-goers headed straight for Bourbon. As well as the participants and spectators, also in attendance were the host and hostess, ChasRoll, Squire of Bourbon, and SaintFlame. One of the highlights of the evening was a major Jell-O party. Jell-O was served approximately every ten seconds! The seemingly inexhaustible supply of Jell-O continued all through the night. I'm sure we've all heard of the float contest by now, haven't we? Well, for those that want to know, here it is, the winning float: A huge float rumbles up with a tall, beautiful woman presiding. Her wide smile glitters as she flings trinkets to the ecstatic revelers. There are ten dancers around her, all dressed in tiny, sequined bodices, which sparkle and throw sparks back out with the beat of the drums. The dancers shimmy, shake and twist in perfect time. The float is covered with flowers of all colors, and paper mache trees that look alive. In back a ten piece band throbs out Latin African beats that never waver. A waterfall of blue gossamer material bubbles behind them, its faux material matching their vests. You leap up and snatch at the air, catching a fistfull of baubles thrown at you by the laughing Queen. This float was designed by Raptoria, and won the 10 meg prize. Overall, the celebration was a smashing success and next year's party is already being planned. Get a jump on the competition - start building your 1997 Mardi Gras float now!
Yesterday was GroundHog day, that time of the year when a small burrowing rodent is called upon to assess the available meteorological data, make a climatic evaluation and then form a prognostication about the upcoming season. Here is another explanation of the tradition in slightly plainer language: a groundhog will emerge from his burrow - if he sees his shadow there will be six more weeks of heavy ion storms around Jupiter; if not, the storms will abate sooner than that. So, tourists, gawkers and politicians looking for a photo-op were gathered on Mars to see Marsport Manny wake up. The crowd waited, breathless. Silence reigned. Then Manny's alarm clock went off. Once again, a hush fell over the crowd as they waited for the GroundHog's appearance. Manny ducked his head out of his hole, and was quickly scooped up by an over-zealous Greeter who whisked him off to the office block on Earth to get a permit. When the Greeter was finally relieved of the rodent and sedated, Manny was returned to his home on Mars. He peered around him with his failing eyes, searching for his shadow. He spotted a dark shape on the ground and chittered wildly. The crowd oohed and aahed as the meteorologists scurried away to report another six weeks of storms! It was later discovered that the 'shadow' Manny the GroundHog had seen was simply a drunken WaitDroid with a tarp draped over her. What this indicates about Jupiter's ion storms in the coming weeks is unknown.
1. Go purchase a Harrier Class
ship.
The Federation Team has received some interesting mail of late. We reprint here some of the more fascinating pieces.
I HATE THE GAME IT DOESN'T DO
ANYTHING
Hello ,I can't seem to get past the first page. To make matters worse I can't get out of that one page .(I can't get to the graphic game , where I ride my spaceship ,land on Mars, heck ,all I can do is look at words ,no graphics why)?Please contact me as soon as posible I really want to play your game instead of wondering why I can't get out of that first page. Thanks for you time .(Please give a very detailed letter with very detailed step by step instructions.
Hi this game is too hard please make it easeier And here is our letter of the week: hi. i died by that farting horse, pegasus. its shooting more people now. i got out of the hospital and am now at the place where u get inteelegence. from there, how do you get to the space port? And also,how do u get the puzzle from the inteelegence university? Citizens of Federation Dataspace will be happy to hear that Pegasus' chronic flatulence is being looked into. It is hoped that a change in diet will correct this malodorous problem.
Earlier this week, Matt4170 endured extreme hardship. The overlord of Utopia was subjected to the ridicule of his peers when he couldn't get it up. He complained that he simply couldn't get it to work. At first it appeared that the problem was that Matt hadn't read the guide. However, he claimed to have read every manual on the subject that he could lay his hands on. Several good Samaritans who had long experience in getting it up tried to help, but to no avail. Debate ran back and forth among the experts over whether it was a physiological or psychological problem. When Matt revealed that it was just a mini-, some thought that perhaps he had it up but had been overlooked because it was so small. However, closer examination revealed that he still had not got it up. Eventually it was discovered that Matt's problem was he had been trying to get it up alone. Butrflynet was kind enough to offer to check it for him, and with the help of some of the more voluptuous helpers Matt was finally able to get Utopia up. Although Utopia has been described by some as limp, flaccid, droopy or soft, early reports show that it is actually quite a nice planet and even has some hard bits.
In touch with his inner Alien Quazemodo has just gone south-east.
Your comms unit relays a message from Zorbot, 'is he really that stupid or is he RPing'
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