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

The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: September 3, 2017

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REQUIREMENTS FOR COLONIZING NEW PLANETS

by Hazed

Alan is continuing to work on the code to let you auto-link a third planet into your star system. Every time I ask him about his progress he mumbles something about it being so complicated, but when he tries to explain the technical reasons why, I glaze over.

Meanwhile, a player was confused about the requirements for using the ‘COLONIZE’ command to link in a second planet.

The requirement states: “Your space map must have the link in location 460, and the location for the new planet (461) must be empty.”

His puzzlement centred around the meaning of the word “empty”. He thought it meant that there should not be a planet whose orbit occupies the space. But in fact it is more literal than that – it means that the space map must not have anything at all in that location.

If there is a location there, whether the description says it’s going to be the orbit for the new planet or whether it’s just vacant space with nothing more than space dust and cosmic rays, that means it is not empty, and the game won’t be able to do its magic to auto-link a new planet. The ‘COLONIZE’ command will fail.

It that happens, you will have to prepare the files for your new planet manually and send them to use to be linked in, or request that I make the files for you.

Empty really does mean empty!

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