The weekly newsletter for Fed2
by ibgames

EARTHDATE: December 11, 2011

Official News page 2


HOW TO SEND IN PLANETS

by Hazed

If you want to have a new planet put into the game, or send in the files to make changes to an existing one, there's a few simple rules you need to follow to make sure the process goes smoothly.


1. Remember to put Fed2 in the subject line of your email.

If you don't, your email will probably get lost in the morass of spam that fills up the ibgames inbox. If you do, the mail filters will identify your mail as real, genuine, important stuff and won't bin it.


2. Check your files.

Before you attach the files to your email, please run them through the Tesla planet checker. This will check for common errors and allow you to fix them. When I receive files, the first thing I do is to use Tesla, and if I find any errors I will just chuck the files back to you for fixing.

You can download the latest version of Tesla for Windows here.


3. Only send one planet at a time.

If you are adding a new planet to an existing system, just send in the files for that one planet. If you have two new planets to go in you will need to separate them out; submit the files for one planet, wait until it goes into the game, then send in the files for the other planet.

Similarly, if you want a new planet added, and you also want to update your existing planet files, you will need to send those in separately.

The reason for this rule is that putting a new planet into the game is a complex process and if we try to do more than one at a time, mistakes get made.


4. Remember the Friday deadline.

Planet files are put into the game on Saturdays and Sundays. To give me time to check them before I pass them to Alan to do the business, I need to receive them on Friday. The deadline is midday (eastern time). If you send them after that they may have to wait for another week.


So follow these simple rules and you should find your planets go in without too much delay.

Incidentally, here's an interesting little fact that gives an insight into how Alan works: he uses a kitchen timer to ensure he doesn't forget to put planets into the game!


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