Official News page 3

WHAT'S NEXT?

by Hazed

So now that the business code is all complete, what's Bella going to be working on next? Since Danny Droid did so well quizzing her about the disappearance of Syndicrat from the ranks, I thought it'd be perfect to find out her plans. It didn't seem too happy at the thought of investigating Bella's thought processes for a second time, but after I drew its attention to the hatstand in the corner of the room that used to be Floyd the Droid, it summoned up some enthusiasm.

To my surprise, it returned in less than an hour with the information I had requested, looking smug. "It was easy," it reported. "I caught her in a garrulous mood. She'd had a couple of Rigellian green gin and tonics, enough to make her talkative, but not so many she became incoherent. Besides, I may have given the impression that I was making notes for a new biography I intended to write about her..." it winked a sensor at me. Clearly this was a droid who would go far!

"Anyway, she said that now businesses are out of the way, she will be sorting out the things you can do at the Plutocrat level. She explained that was a major piece of work in itself. I got the impression she wanted people to realise just how much work she put in - being Mistress of the Universe isn't just a case of waving a magic wand to make things happen, she said.

"After that, she'll be filling out the game with all those things that were promised, but got shelved along the way - like a proper stock exchange for Financiers, events and proper mobiles for planet owners, and of course the legendary ship fighting." This was good stuff, and just what I'd sent Danny out to get.

It shuffled through the rest of its notes, and then showed me a couple of direct quotes we could use. Bella had told it, "In addition, there is quite a lot of reworking of the underlying code to make it easier to insert the new code and make the game easier to maintain... (In the trade we call this refactoring.)

"Add to that a complete rewrite for FedTerm so that it runs the same on Windows, Mac and Linux, and you can see that it will take slightly longer than two weeks (maybe next Xmas...)."

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