Official News - page 2

FEDTERM PLANET PICTURES

by Hazed

When you first look at the systems page, the picture shown is of a hyperspace link. Yes, that's what a link looks like from up close! When you click on a planet, as well as showing you its information, the program will show you the planet's picture, if there is one. The new version of FedTerm comes with a set of pictures for the Sol planets, and just like the FedTerm character pictures, you need to make a picture for your own planet and distribute it to other players, while getting hold of the pictures for your friends' planets.

And, just like the character pictures, we've made swapping pictures easy by setting up a planet picture gallery. Right now there are three pictures in the gallery for the planets Marina, Phlax and Rigel 4. You can download them by right-clicking on one of the pictures on the gallery web page, selecting Save As from the menu, and saving it to the planets sub-folder of your FedTerm folder.

To make your own planet picture, draw or find an image that represents your planet. You need to crop and resize the picture in a graphics or paint program so that is the right size: 172 x 172 (that's 172 pixels square) and save it in .bmp format. It needs to have a filename that matches your planet name - ie marina.bmp or rigel 4.bmp (yes, the filenames can have spaces if your planet name does!) Put it into your FedTerm\planets folder so that you can see it when you display your planet, and email it to feedback@ibgames.com so it can be included in the gallery.

It doesn't have to be the realistic shot of your planet from orbit (although all the ones we have so far are taken from this viewpoint) but it could be a picture of what your planet's landscape is like, a city or a building, a person from your planet or even your planet's flag or emblem. Let your imagination run riot!

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