 THE MONTH IN BRIEF
The main feature of October was the
continued absence of the Duke puzzle, much to the despair
of just about everyone.
The daily maintenance was cancelled
at weekends, making it possible for the insomniac
obsessives amongst you to play from just after 8.00am
eastern on Friday morning right through to Monday
morning.
Hazed dropped a bombshell by
complaining in the news about deathtrap planets which
deliberately set out to kill players, and then announcing
that henceforth deathtrap planets would be banned. This
sparked outraged complaints from many players, including
those who were the owners of such planets, and those who
did not own DD worlds, had no intention of ever having DD
worlds, but wanted the right to have them if they chose.
Despite the furore, Fed minus the deathtrap planets did
not turn into a boring, safe place. Some of the things
Hazed wrote to justify her decision are reprinted below.
We announced that we were working
on a new front-end for Fed, FedTerm32, for Windows 95/98.
Players were excited by the plans, but worried that this
development would add to the time taken to fix the Duke
puzzle. We reassured them that there were two completely
separate development teams involved and the work of one
had no effect on the speed of the other.
We learned of the very sad death of
Kazi, Baroness of Maya in the Duchy of Lothlorien.
Halloween saw the usual spooky fun
in Fed, including a puzzle planet called Bewitch, and a
hunt for halloween pumpkins on the web site.
Ziggystardust was awarded the
highest accolade for planet design: the Walrus of Merit,
for his excellent planet Timeline. This was only the
third such award since the move to the Web so it is a
very high achievement.
Speaking of planets: Hazed offered
some prizes to those who solved the three separate
puzzles on her planet Scratchwood - see below for details
of who won.
SPY-PROOF
ROOMS? SURELY NOT!
If you do read Zargot's Meet and
Greet transcript you will note that he talks about the
GEnie version of Fed having had a spy-proof room. Since
the matter of spybeams became very controversial for a
short time just after we moved to the web, let me give
you the full story on the experiment with spy-proof
rooms.
There used to be a spy-proof room
on Castillo, in a bar which stood where Fedruckers is
now. At that time the bar was owned by someone called
Samantha, and its main decorative feature was a stuffed
horse's head on the wall, claimed to be that of the
original Pegasus. The head certainly had a malevolent
stare that reminded us all of the winged horse known as
the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the Galaxy!
Samantha's bar became the site for
the first experiment in spy-proof rooms. As a result, the
bar became the most popular place in the Galaxy, even
out-stripping Chez Diesel, much to Diesel's annoyance.
Then a very rich PO decided he
wanted a spy-proof room on his planet. Our Illustrious
Leader decided that there should only ever be one
spy-proof room at a time, but she saw no reason why the
franchise shouldn't be sold to the highest bidder. So the
spy-proof equipment was ripped out of Samantha's Bar,
which immediately lost its popularity, much to Diesel's
delight.
The successful bidder was Occy,
Overlord of Surf. He paid over a large fortune and the
spy-proof room was duly installed on his planet. It
immediately became the most popular room in the Galaxy.
The way the spy-proof room worked
was, it prevented anybody from turning a spybeam onto
anybody who was already in the room. However, if you were
spying somebody and they walked into the spy-proof room,
the beam would not cut out; you'd still see what they
were doing. The solution to this was to walk into the
room and then log off and back on again. However, not
everyone knew they had to do this, and even those that
did sometimes forgot, so occasionally you'd be able to
spy on people who were convinced they were speaking in
complete secrecy, which somehow made the voyeurism even
more exciting (even if they were really talking about
something very boring).
All this had a great effect on
Surf's economy. Occy had a record number of tourists and
in those days the tourist minutes were converted directly
into groats. But although he was happy, the experiment
had a very bad effect on the atmosphere of the game.
Because it was possible to do
things without being spied on, everybody suddenly decided
they wanted to do everything without being spied
on. Nobody had comm conversations any more. Nobody even
talked out loud. Instead they would huddle in the bar and
speak to each other using TBs. People were so paranoid
about being spied they would even go to the bar to look
at their planet digests. Some people never left the bar
at all, ever, doing everything remotely. But although the
bar itself was crowded, it was full of solitary people.
The game suddenly got very quiet,
and very, very boring.
So it was decided that there would
be no more spy-proof rooms, and when Fed moved to AOL we
did not allow any in the new version. And the Galaxy
started humming with conversation again!
SCRATCHWOOD
PUZZLE SOLVED
Congratulations to Blaze who was
the first to solve the Scratchwood puzzle - less than 24
hours after the details of the prize were announced in
the news! Quick work. She received the prize of 10 free
hours.
Not long after her success, Opus
and Willytherabbit also solved it so I gave them a
consolation prize of 5 free hours each.
Opus won the prize for listing all
of the locked and hidden locations on Scratchwood, many
of which involve climbing up unlikely things. No, I am
not going to list them all, or even tell you which was
the unlikely perch that most people managed to miss - you
will just have to find them all yourself.
Blaze won the minor prize for
listing all the businesses that Honest John is involved
in. He's got his sticky fingers in:
Repair Pit (H J Repair)
Honest John's Used Ships
Honest John's Insurance Office
Honeste Jonne's Olde Gifte Shoppe
Honest John's Amusement Arcade
Dr. H. John's First Aid Facility
Diesel's Pantry (prop. H. John, Esq.)
Motel Honesta
The prizes are now closed, but that
doesn't mean you should avoid the planet. On the
contrary; have fun exploring it and see how many secret
locations you can find.
EXPLODING
THE MYTH
I've discovered another urban
legend in Fed. You know, the story about something that
happened, that isn't true, but people swear really did
happen - not to them personally, but to someone they
know, or a friend of a friend. No matter how much proof I
provide that things don't work that way, still the
stubborn little story won't go away; in fact, the more I
deny it, the more people come to believe that I am
covering something up and that they know the real
truth...
Anyway, this week's urban legend
involves the TDX. Anyone who has explored Sol will have
found this volatile explosive, and may also have
discovered how dangerous it is when handled carelessly.
For those that haven't come across
it yet, I shall explain its properties. Think yourself
lucky that you don't have to find this out the hard way.
If you drop the TDX, it explodes.
With a big bang. A big deadly bang. And you go to the
hospital (or the morgue if you have neglected your
insurance).
When I talk about learning the hard
way, I know. Let me digress a little by telling you a
story from the very early days of Federation. Back in
days when there were only two ways to make money: doing
jobs, or giving objects to mobiles. I was Captain Pugwash
at the time, and one of my friends was Zugger. He wanted
to make money fast for some reason that I forget so he
asked me to collect him as many of the objects as I could
and leave them on the Earth landing pad for him so he
could get them later and sell them to mobiles.
So I scurried around and picked up
everything I could carry: the kalindra, the coat, the
novel, the pearls, the manifesto, and so on, and I took
them to Earth and dropped them on the landing pad. Then I
went back for another armful: the biscuit, the sandwich,
the jam rolypoly, the sargeur and the vandier from deep
in the Martian Ruins. And I took them to Earth and
dropped them on the landing pad. Then a third
inventory-load: the scope, the beaker, the TDX, the
klystron. I took those to Earth and one by one I dropped
them on the landing pad.
Yes, you're probably ahead of me
here. I dropped the TDX and I went bang. I did feel a
fool!
Anyway, back to the main story. The
rumor is that at one point, if you dropped the TDX in a
room it would kill everyone else in the room with you.
Now, dropping the TDX has long been
a way to kill other people, but you have to trick them
into dropping it themselves. If you read the Compunet
Newses in the Federation Archives you will lots of
examples of assassination of obnoxious players, and the
favored method was the TDX. More sophisticated assassins
(such as my good self, she says modestly) convinced
people that it was safe to drop the TDX on a soft surface
such as a carpeted floor.
But at no time has the TDX ever
killed anybody except the person who dropped it. Oh, the
idea has been suggested many times, and even considered
semi-seriously by Our Illustrious Leader. Trouble is, it
has too much scope for snerts to cause complete havoc.
So, although it's a nice idea that one can dream about,
it's never been implemented.
But still, some people out there
are convinced it used to be; that someone they know told
them it happened to them...
Ah, the power of the urban legend!
DEATHTRAP
PLANETS: WHAT EXACTLY IS BEING BANNED?
Just to make sure that we are all
talking on the same wave-length I will go into detail
about exactly what I mean when I talk about deathtrap
planets.
A deathtrap planet is that which
has been deliberately designed to kill players dead-dead,
by using a variety of tricks which either don't give the
player a chance to realize they have died and get
reinsured before they die for a second time, or that
stack the odds too greatly against visitors who take
reasonable precautions.
Just because a planet has death
locations on it, does not make it a deathtrap planet. I
am not banning dangerous planets, or trying to keep Fed
safe and risk-free. I like the fact that players can
design planets that are dangerous, and I think it's right
that people who do silly things should suffer for it.
You could choose if you want to put
death flags on 110 out of your 120 locations and the
planet would not necessarily be a deathtrap, so long as
it did not try to trick players into dying dead-dead.
IT'S A
DULL, DULL WORLD
Some people think that my new
policy will make Fed boring. No danger equals no
interest. But it is quite possible to design an exciting,
challenging, even dangerous world with lots of death
locations, without it being a deathtrap. There is no
either/or situation, where a planet EITHER slaughters
everyone DD who sets foot on it, OR is completely safe
and utterly boring. Only those with no imagination think
that the only way to make a planet interesting is by
making it a deathtrap.
WHY BAN
THEM?
Federation was never intended to be
a game where players could kill other players dead-dead.
Unlike other games, competition between players is meant
to be economic, not violent. Ship fighting was
deliberately designed so it was pretty hard to kill
anybody dead once, let alone dead-dead. Yes, the
possibility exists for players to lose their character if
they make mistakes but we felt they had to be
particularly foolish or careless to do so.
When we gave players the ability to
write their own planets we allowed a huge amount of
flexibility in what they could do on their worlds - far
more than most games allow players. We allowed POs to
have death locations in order to make exploring their
planets a challenge. Frankly, it never occurred to us
that any player would deliberately want to DD other
players wholesale, and we were quite shocked when the
first deathtrap planet appeared.
We view the existence of deathtrap
planets as players exploiting loopholes in the game to do
something we never wanted them to do, and never foresaw
they would want to do. While the problem was an
occasional one, we did nothing, but since we moved to the
Internet and started to charge for Fed, more players have
been putting in deathtrap planets, and more people have
been dying on them and leaving the game for good.
Removing deathtrap planets is about
making sure players only lose all their hard work if they
do something dumb, not because they happen to visit the
wrong planet.
FROM
THE POSTBAG: THE INCIDENT
Dear Hazed,
This is probably none of my
business, but I'm very inquisitive, and I'd like to know
all about "The Incident." Barb, FireImp,
KaiPanther suggested that I write you because you were
not forbidden to speak about it... If you don't want to
talk about it. Just a say no, and You'll never hear from
me again.
A Curious Player
Dear Curious,
Oh dear. The Incident is not
something I like to talk about. Even after all these
years, I still get a sick feeling in my stomach when I
think about what happened.
It's not so much The Incident
itself; it's the effect it had on all those poor innocent
people, who were swept up by the events, pulled along by
the current of horror, then washed up on the beaches of
despair and discarded like used pantyhose.
When I think of their suffering, I
weep.
And since it involved some of my
closest friends and colleagues; they were of course at
the centre of The Incident; some would say it was their
actions that caused it; and they too have tried to blot
the terrible memories out...
No, it's still too painful. The
scars are still too deep; the wounds too raw; the scabs
still itching. I cannot speak of it.
I am afraid your questions must go
unanswered.
Hazed
FROM
THE POSTBAG: INSTANT FACTORIES
This plea was received in amongst
the fan mail, death threats, writs and so on that makes
up the average Fed Chronicle postbag:
"Could you PLEASE post it
in the news that with the new factory system you
don't need to log out to start the fac, you just need
to set the wages and wait for the first 25 cycles to
pass."
Well, we always like to grant our
readers requests, if at all possible; we are well known
for going out of our way to cater to the wishes of our
public, and we see it as our public duty to cater to the
every whim of our fans.
So, without further ado, we take
great pleasure in informing you that with the new factory
system, you don't need to log out to start the fac, you
just need to set the wages and wait for the first 25
cycles to pass.
FROM
THE POSTBAG: RENEGADE MARTIAN
We were very surprised to receive
the following letter here at the Federation Chronicle
office:
Duke Puzzle Problems Solved
by Abraham Squire of Alliance
Dear Hazed,
It has recently come to my
attention that you are being misinformed by those who
call themselves experts or data programmers. It seems
my not being in Horsell, as was originally intended,
by you and your staff has created some sort of
problem for advancement. I would have contacted you
sooner if I had known. It seems that for some unknown
reason the time displacement beam is still partially
working. I have just finished reading your notice in
the official news publication, stating it would be
some time before the Duke puzzle was reinstated. I
have no intention of returning to Horsell even though
the Martians still want to invade. I have been
visiting your part of data space, ours is limited,
and I do so enjoy being out and about so to speak.
So, please inform Cryptosporidium that I cannot and
will not return no matter what you or he might offer
me. In no way am I trying to offend you or your
staff. So, unless you can come up with some other way
for players to promote then I for one believe that
without my presence in Horsell promotions to Duke or
Duchess are a thing of the past.
We Martians are not as vile as
you humaniods think. We can morph into all types of
beings. I personally have been a Dragon, Toddler,
Teenage adolescent (which was very hard on my old and
weary heart) and a rodent of the smelly variety. The
one very welcome side affect that has occurred is I
am now immortal. The beam totally stopped the aging
process.
Thanks again for all you have
done for me,
Abraham
(Martian that used to reside in Horsell)
now Squire of Alliance.
I felt bound to reply to this
disturbing letter in person:
Dear Abraham,
I am delighted to learn that
not all Martians are unpleasant. However, I have it
on very good authority that your pacifist nature is
unusual for that species. I assure you that the
Martians are, as we speak, preparing yet again to
launch their attack on our past in order to eradicate
the future in which they have died out.
I am afraid the defection of
one of their numbers makes little difference to their
efforts, and therefore we will soon see new Dukes and
Duchesses being rewarded for their bravery in foiling
the dastardly alien plots.
Meanwhile, I hope your fellow
Martians do not decide to turn their fury upon you
for having betrayed their cause!
Regards,
Hazed
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