Fed II Star - 2005 Review of the Year

DECEMBER

POs were given a command to let them exile unwanted players from their planets, and then pardon them again if they decided to forgive them. One experimental player decided to find out what would happen if he exiled himself... he ended up unable to fly back into his system, and therefore unable to pardon himself. Whoops!

Bella continued to tweak the way planetary exchanges worked, and zeroed all the planet treasuries. She announced she may have to do this several times before POs become proper Founders.

Financiers who messed up were allowed to declare bankruptcy and revert to Industrialist.

New code was added to allow players to become a Fed II sponsor. By donating some of their excess slithies back to the game, they got their name on a web page and were given access to a private location in the game.

The Fed II Star closed down for the holidays, but Bella went into over-drive and in the last two weeks of the year produced a torrent of new code: the ability to give objects to other players, a way to find out the names of staff members in the game, a more fluent way to talk to mobiles using the 'TELL' command, and a way to find out who owns a company. POs got the power to get rid of unwanted factories and depots, and the commands to open and close a system were changed (making them easier to understand). SpyNet split off information about financial dealings into a separate SpyNet Financial report. Finally, the Galactic Administration lifted its restriction on buying arts factories. Phew!

As if that wasn't enough, Bella came up with a new version of FedTerm that added sound effects.

Mac users also got a Christmas present, in the form of the Mac version of the Workbench, courtesy of Filbert. Cue much jubilation and singing in the streets, as non-Windows players were given the chance to design their own planets.

Catspaws was appointed Queen of Role-playing, and some new objects designed to aid role-playing were added to the game: a butterfly net, a wishbone, a top hat and some catnip.

The Sol planets Binary, Cube and Jade were removed from the Solar System. Binary and Cube showed up later in their own systems; Jade has yet to make a reappearance.

Santa's Grotto opened up allowing players to get toys from the lucky dip tub, sit on Santa's lap and go for a sleigh ride. Hazed came up with another fiendish scavenger hunt. The year ended with Diesel throwing yet another of her parties for the new year, and a massive conga line danced its way through the Solar System.

Boy, what a lot of excitement!