Web Fed News Yearbooks - October 1997

THE MONTH IN BRIEF

October 1997 saw the first news bulletin for Web Fed, following our migration from AOL to the Internet. We had a brand new team of NewsDroids, all shiny and efficient, to replace the old rust-heaps that were left behind when we moved from AOL.

Taking advantage of the flexibilities of HTML and hyperlinks, for the first time the Fed News was split into sections rather than being presented as one long document, making it easy for you to read just the parts you're interested in (and avoid the bits you think are boring!).

In October, the AOL backup files for the game were put in for the final time, meaning that you could adopt your Fed characters permanently, secure in the knowledge that everything you did would be saved and would count. At this point, Web Fed officially went into beta-test.

A problem with planets meant that the Workbench Checker suddenly got more picky and was failing planets it previously allowed to load - which wouldn't have been a problem if the Workbench hadn't been out of action, so those affected couldn't fix their planets.

Limbo came to Fed... the way planets loaded into the game was changed to the current system, with players coming into Fed while it was still loading in the planets. This drastically speeded up the length of time the game took to come back after a crash.

Icedrake started awarding prizes of free time to excellent planets (even though Fed was free at the time!). Nobody won a Walrus of Merit, but the first Carpenter award went to Xre's Xess. Scaramouche started his round-ups of new planets, as well as warning about dangerous, deadly, deathtrap worlds which should be avoided.

We announced the Battle of the Game Designers seminar, a discussion between Alan Lenton, designer of Fed, and Jim Dunnigan, designer of many strategy and wargames and of the multi-player game Hundred Year's War. You can read the transcript of this session at http://www.ibgames.net/stuff/battle.html.

COOL COLORS

People who are using FedTerm to play Fed have been experimenting with changing the color of the text and the background - after all, plain old black text on a white background is oh so boring!

One of the most cool and happening color combinations, that has taken the fashion world by storm, is lime green text on a purple background. It may be hard to read but it looks too, too divine, and we understand that many top designers are modelling next year's fabrics on the look of the terminal.

All we're waiting for now is a version of FedTerm that lets you add texture to the screen, so that descriptions of space can be rendered on black velvet; encountering a marsrat with be accompanied by a feeling of rough spiky fur; and a visit to Diesel's Executive Services will of course give the sensation of - yes, well, never mind!

FROM THE POSTBAG: AN ILLUMINATING QUESTION

A puzzled NewBod writes:

"What's a lamp for?"

Scoff you might; what fool doesn't know that a lamp is what enables you to see in a dark location?

But perhaps the questioner genuinely has no knowledge of the concepts behind the use of bright lights for illumination. We would imagine that the questioner is some species of alien that has excellent night vision and therefore doesn't have any problem seeing in the dark. Or perhaps he, she or it doesn't see in the way we would use the word; perhaps they sense their surroundings using radar, much like a bat, or some other sense that we could not possibly comprehend.

FROM THE POSTBAG: FILLING THE TANK

Someone who cares how things work, rather than just accepting that if they push a button something happens, asks:

"What kind of fuel do ships use?"

Modern spaceships are fuelled by propellants (so-called because they propel the ship along. Original, huh?) The props are in a pressurized liquid form and injected into a crystal lined combustion chamber. Rods made of Xmetals extend into the chamber and provide the heat to initiate combustion. The rods are controlled by GAs-chips, which determine the temperature and combustion intensity needed by interfacing with the pilot's controls and spacial density sensors outside the hull.

Bet you wish you hadn't asked, now!

DEPARTMENT OF RUMORS, LIES, UNTRUTHS, FALSEHOODS AND PANIC
By Hazed

Goodness, the rumor mill has been working overtime recently! The demons of fear and panic have been surging through Fed DataSpace, spreading confusion wherever they go as hysterical players believe everything that is whispered to them, no matter how silly.

So, in order to scotch some of the wilder rumors - and some that do sound strangely plausible - here's the absolute, unvarnished truth.

Trust me, I'm a demi-Goddess. :)

Rumor 1
If I don't log into Fed and claim my character in the next ten days I will lose my planet.

Nonsense. Nothing can take a planet away from a PO; once you've linked a planet into the game, the only thing that can destroy it is if you die dead-dead at which point the non-existence of your planet becomes somewhat academic.

The ten day limit refers to your planet closing for business if you do not log into the game for ten days. When you do come back again, you can open your planet up using the ONLINE command and carry on as before.

If you do not log into Fed at all for three months then your whole character will be deleted.

Rumor 2
We will be putting the AOL backup files in again so that everything I have done for the last month will be lost.

Nonsense. The only reason we would have now for putting in the AOL backup files again is if something went so drastically wrong that not only were the current data files mangled beyond all hope of recovery, but the backups we take had been corrupted/stolen/kidnapped by aliens too.

Whatever you do now in Fed is permanent, it is getting saved, it won't be wasted. This applies to the silly things you do too, of course.

Rumor 3
The rank of Senator is intended to be some kind of super-Duke that will control a group of duchies.

Nonsense. Senator is not a rank for Fed players, and it will never have a role in the actual game-play. It is intended for members of staff who do not need special powers in Fed, like the Navigators and Hosts do; for example, people who work for us doing marketing or administration or whatever.

It's also used for promotional characters such as Scaramouche the planet rounder-upper.

That there is some confusion at the moment about the role of Senators is understandable. Long ago, in the old Aries version of Fed, players could become Senators, but when we moved Fed to AOL we rearranged the way ranks worked and made Duke the final player rank. Now that we are moving to the web, some of the old Aries Fed players are coming back to the game with memories of what it was like in an alternate universe, where Senators were players too - in fact, some of those returnees were Senators themselves!

But that was then, and this is now, and we don't have any plans to add more player ranks above Duke; Senators now are simply a convenient rank for our staff who don't want to play, but who don't need any management tools in the game.