 THE MONTH IN BRIEF
Duke puzzle news: still nothing.
FedTerm32, the new front-end for
Windows 95/98, was released to almost universal approval.
November saw the introduction of a
handicapping system for events. Running for a three month
trial, the intention of the restrictions was to stop the
same old, same old people winning all the events, by
putting an upper limit on the hours a player could win
each month.
Another restriction on events
involved a bug which someone found, allowing unfeasibly
large hull strengths. Officials attended each fighting
event until the bug was fixed, to check that nobody had
taken advantage of the bug to soup up their vessels.
A new section of the news was
launched: Malachie's Puzzle Review did just what the name
suggests, it reviewed puzzles on player planets. Free
time was offerred for those which impress, either to top
up the PO's own hours or to offer as a prize to the
solver of the puzzle.
The deathtrap planet situation
rumbled on for a bit, with more grumbles coming when the
rules on what you could do on your planet were tightened
up and IN and OUT were no longer valid directions in
space. By the end of the month, however, the fuss had
died down and players found something else to get up in
arms (or equivalent) about.
FED
BABY
Congratulations to Kekele (an
ex-Navigator) and Scrooge (an ex-GEnie Fed player) who
met in Fed, married in real life, and now have a baby
girl born on November 1. Altogether now... aaaaah!
DEATHTRAP
PLANETS: A PARADOX?
I received a letter from a player
whose name I have lost (sorry!) commenting on a paradox
in my views on killing other players dead-dead. A few
weeks before I banned deathtrap planets, this appeared in
the news:
'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.'
The player commented:
'A bit hypocritical, don't you
think? Not that I disagree with you on the
despisability (quite a word, eh?) of DD traps, and I
understand that the difference is between randomly
killing innocents dead-dead and assassinating
obnoxious snerts. I just thought you'd appreciate the
paradox. :)'
Yes, it does look like a paradox.
But times change, attitudes change, players change and
what is and is not acceptable changes. In addition, I
think there is a big difference between
"assassination" as we meant it back in the days
of old, and trying to kill people with a deathtrap
planet.
First, assassinations were only
ever carried out on obnoxious players. In those days
there were no Hosts or Navigators, and no rules of
behavior in Fed. Policing the game was left to the
players themselves, and this was one of the methods used.
The kind of players who found themselves on the wrong end
of an assassination attempt where those who used foul
language, or those who came into the game and boasted
that they were the greatest and were going to kill
everyone.
If anyone had tried to assassinate
an ordinary, non-obnoxious player, then other players
would have immediately warned the victim they were in
danger, thus foiling the assassination attempt.
A successful assassination requires
you to use your powers of persuasion to make the victim
do something fatal. This needs a fair amount of skill,
and a lot of time. Sometimes several hours would go into
it. So there was plenty of time for other players to put
a stop to it if it was felt that the assassination wasn't
justified.
Each time a player carried out an
assassination, the same amount of skill and time had to
be put in. Each assassination was personal. The method
used was crafted to fit the victim, and the words of
persuasion used different every time.
Compare that to a deathtrap planet
world. There is nothing personal about someone dying
dead-dead on a deathtrap world. The PO has spent a little
time designing the planet, opened it for business, and
then just left it sitting there like a minefield to kill
anyone unlucky enough to come along. There is no
individual effort. It's not aimed at anyone in
particular. The PO is probably not even online to see the
death happen so they don't even get the satisfaction of
watching.
Assassination went out of fashion
in Fed back in the GEnie days of Fed, and I certainly
wouldn't condone it being used against new players now.
But back in Compunet Fed it was part of the culture and
part of the game.
PLAYER
PLANETS
by Alan Lenton
The recent dispute over 'dead-dead'
planets in the game has prompted a number of people to
ask me about player planets, so I thought that I would
write a short piece about their origin for the news.
Although player planets were a
relative latecomer to Fed, it was planned from the start
that they would be there. At the time I wrote the bulk of
the game I was working for a UK consumer network for
Commodore 64 owners. What I saw on that network, which
had extensive features to allow the members to create
their own areas, convinced me that people who were online
had a lot of talent and creativity. All that was needed
was a non-technical way to enable them to use that
creativity, since few of them were programmers.
At that time, most of the extant
multi-player games were MUDs of one sort or another,
which tended to emphasise the fighting aspect. What I was
proposing was unheard of! The perceived wisdom was that I
was mad to allow the players the freedom to write their
own chunk of the game. Everyone expected us to die
ignominiously as vindictive players killed off all of our
paying customers. My own view was that this was merely a
variant of the old 'coal in the bath'* argument, and that
if you gave people a stake in their own area, few if any
of them would abuse it.
Happily, history proved me correct
on both accounts - player planets did allow people's
creativity to come to the fore, and for many years no one
abused the opportunity they had been given. Indeed, I
would argue that some of the planets produced by
Federation players rival the best produced by commercial
games designers. Allowing for the possibility of
being killed is an essential part of the suspense
building that goes with such design, although, of course,
it is perfectly possible to build planets that have no
death locations.
Sadly, the last few years have seen
the rise of a group of mean spirited people whose only
idea of fun is to spoil the enjoyment of other people by
killing them dead-dead, thus wrecking all the work those
people have done to build up their characters. It's
unfortunately that the original sceptics should be
vindicated in this way, but I suppose that eventually we
were bound to suffer from this sort of childish
behaviour.
Obviously, there is no way that IB
can tolerate the sort of situation where its paying
customers leave the game because of the action of a few
players. This is what has lead to the present
restrictions on what you can do with player planets. I
think it's a sad state of affairs when we have to make
such restrictions because of the abuse of player planets
by just a few percent of Federation's player base..
Alan Lenton
* 'coal in the bath'.
When the first subsidised housing was being build for the
labouring classes, there was absolute consternation at
the discovery that it included bathrooms. Various
worthies thundered denunciations claiming that if you
gave the lower classes baths they would keep coal in
them! Needless to say such die-hard reactionaries were
proved completely wrong.
SEX
CONFUSION
I spotted this message on the bar
board recently:
I am petitioning for Fed to
install a new code. One that makes every rank's sex
distinguished so there are no more mix-ups about if
that person is a man or a woman. Please keep your
support with me.
What a fascinating insight into the
seedier side of Fed life this is. I couldn't help
wondering just what prompted the player to start his or
her campaign. One can only assume that he or she had
approached someone with a view to engaging in a sexual
act, without realizing that the person was not of the sex
they actually desired.
If so, one has to wonder why,
having made this discovery, one of the couple could not
have availed themselves of the very cheap and painless
sex change services offered by hospitals throughout the
Galaxy. With gender-bending so simple, what does it
matter what sex your prospective partner starts out -
they can become whatever you want with a mere snip of the
surgical scalpel.
RANK
STUPIDITY
Following last week's report of a
bar board post requesting different rank names for boys
and girls in order to eliminate confusion, Twokook
contacted the Fed Chronicle office to admit that it was
he who felt the lack of gender identification for all
ranks could be a problem.
We asked him for all the gory
details of the encounter which had prompted his forlorn
post but he very selfishly refused to pass on the
details. What about the public's right to know, we asked,
but he wasn't having any of it. His private life, he
said, was none of our business, and if we persisted then
he would talk to his very good friends in the management
of the Chronicle and get them to instruct us not to
mention his private life ever again.
Later, the subject came up on
Channel 1 about just what the different ranks for girls
could be called. Someone suggested Tradeswoman, but Hazed
pointed out that the male rank was not Tradesman but
Trader, so that wouldn't work.
Industrialess was one suggestion,
but some of the girls objected to the Less part of the
name.
Technocress was decreed too much
like something you would put in a salad - mustard and
technocress.
Hazed suggested that she had always
felt a female Squire should be called a Squirrel.
In the end, nobody could agree, and
the conversation turned to something more interesting!
CORRECTION...
In last week's news, we printed the
following paragraph:
Following last week's report of
a bar board post requesting different rank names for
boys and girls in order to eliminate confusion,
Twokook contacted the Fed Chronicle office to admit
that it was he who felt the lack of gender
identification for all ranks could be a problem.
We would like to apologize for the
error in this statement, which was caused by a faulty
chip in one of our type-setting droids. We hope the
mistake did not cause too much distress to those
involved. We would like to set the record straight, and
say that the name mentioned should, of course, have read
Twolook.
Only joking, Twokool!
COPING
WITH INTERNET LAG
Last week, there were big problems
on the Internet, which affected me badly. One day I just
couldn't connect to anything in the US (as most of you
know, I'm based in the UK). There was obviously something
blocking the Internet pipes across the Atlantic.
Why am I telling you this?
Because I was able to find out what
was happening, and where the problem originated, using a
very nifty piece of software called Neotrace. It's such a
good program that I want to recommend it because I think
you'll find it useful too.
Neotrace gives you a graphical
representation of your connection to an Internet site,
showing you what other computers you are passing through
on the way, and how long it takes for information to pass
to each of those computers. So if you are having problems
with lag, or you cannot connect to Fed at all, you can
use Neotrace to identify where the problem is. This is
very useful - and besides, it's fun to watch it do its
stuff, too!
You can download a copy of Neotrace
from http://www.neoworx.com. The program is shareware,
which means you can download it and evaluate it for free,
and then if you like it and want to continue using it,
you can register and pay for the program.
To use Neotrace to trace your
connection to Fed, type in federation.ibgames.net
as the node you want to check. You will find that the
final step in the connection to Fed will show up as
having failed, because of our security, but although our
machine won't respond the link between our machine and
the last node is a very low latency connection, so you
can still trace the connection right from your machine to
ours.
Note that Neotrace and the company
that has produced it are nothing to do with ibgames; I'm
only telling you about the program because I think it's
good, and I think you will find it useful.
FROM
THE POSTBAG: MEDAL-PINNING
Your Demi-Holiness
On stardate 211056 I became the
victim of a most cruel prank. I emerged from stasis to
find myself staring at my maker. She smiled, impishly if
you ask me, and proceeded in her vain attempts to stab me
in the midsection with a most vicious-looking device.
"Congratulations," she
said as she continued her stabbing motions, "This is
your 1,000th game."
"That's all very well," I
replied, acidly, "but when you've finished trying to
perforate my epidermal layer, you might take the time to
realise that your efforts will be fruitless."
You see, Your Demi-Holiness, Bella
(for it was she) was trying to pin my Long Service Medal
to my chest. "What is wrong with that?" I hear
you ask. "You should be proud of your
achievement," you extol. Tut tut! You, who were so
careful when writing the bible which is the Manual,
should know by now that not all of us in Federation HAVE
a chest to pin a medal to!
Not wishing to remain in my
new-found role as the Creator's pincushion, I thrust out
my equivalent and she pinned the medal to that, and there
it shall dangle as long as I am insured.
I bring this to your attention in
the hope that no other "sternally-challenged"
being in Federation suffers the indignity of having their
blow-hole probed with such a deadly implement as a Long
Service Medal. I mean, how did The Vile Cryptosporidium
cope with an inch and a half of needle-shaped cold steel
being plunged into its nether regions?
Yours in pain
Ephemerides
Baron (and very nearly Baroness during this incident)
of Astrology.
Dear Ephemerides,
Our Illustrious Leader, Bella, is
fully aware of the various races that inhabit the Galaxy
that we call home. But she cannot be expected to remember
the body configurations of each one. Surely it is your
responsibility, as a mature intelligent adult of your
species, to inform Bella that you do not have a chest and
that the medal she so generously awards you should
instead be attached to your... well, whatever the
equivalent would be, in advance of the ceremonial
pinning.
Bella does tell me that she will
endeavour to pay more attention in future to the
anatomical arrangements of the recipients of her medal,
but you must understand that as the creator of the
universe she is extremely busy and cannot concentrate for
long on the affairs of mere mortals.
So, while I am sorry for the
distress you were caused and hope you have sustained no
permanent injury, I must insist that Bella is not held
liable for any damages caused, and any attempt to lay
blame at her feet, or to clame compensation, will be met
with the full force of the best scumbag lawyers we can
buy!
Regards,
the demi-Goddess Hazed
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