THE IMPORTANCE OF CHECKING YOUR PLANET
by Hazed
Some people have no interest in designing their own planet – they just want it to be linked into the game so they can promote to Founder and start tampering with the exchange. For those wannabe-POs, the automatic planet linking feature which lets you select one of the stock planets and get it linked into the game at the next reset is a goddess-send.
Alan plans to expand this facility so it can be used to link in subsequent planets as well, but that’s a very complex job that requires him to restructure the way the game stores the data about star systems. He’s still working on this, in between bouts of developing the new location editor, but until it’s ready to go even those who have no creative spark are forced to use the workbench to make planets.
Therefore, everybody who wishes to have more than one planet in their system should be aware of the importance of checking your planet files for errors before you submit them to us.
I’m not talking about typos in the descriptions – I’m talking about errors that will stop the planet from loading into the game, or will mean players can’t land on it when it does load.
To root out those problems, the Tesla planet checker is your friend. It’s a separate program that is part of the workbench. You tell it which folder your system’s file are in, and it loads them in and checks them to make sure there’s nothing nasty that might upset the game.
You must use Tesla to check your files before you send in the files. The first thing I do when I get your email is to use Tesla on them myself, and if it reports any errors I will simply chuck the files back to you to fix. This delays you getting your planet into the game – and even worse, it pisses me off.
I realise there are some people who can’t use Tesla for various reasons, and if that’s the case then when you submit the files please tell me in the email that you are unable to check the files; then I will be more lenient, I’ll refrain from shouting at you and I will (if possible) fix any errors I find for you.
But unless you are one of that very small number of people, check your files before sending them in!
You can download Tesla from the workbench page of the website. It’s available for Windows and the Mac.
