STAR SYSTEM DATA FILE CONVERSION
by Hazed
Last week I told you that Alan planned to run a conversion program on the game’s list of star systems, to split it up into individual files for each system. As I write this, on Saturday, that’s still the plan – so by the time you read this on Sunday it should have happened.
Unless an asteroid hits Chiswick in West London and takes out Alan’s computer! Or aliens abduct him in order to conduct detailed anatomical experiments. Or he steps through a portal into a parallel dimension.
This is the first tranche of work which needs to be done to allow POs to link in new planets without Alan’s intervention. The next stage involves changing the game code, then there will be testing – lots and lots of testing – to ensure everything works right. Fortunately, Alan is having a nice long Christmas break from his day job so he’ll be able to fiddle with Fed during the holiday period.
Meanwhile, on a related note, I should give you advance warning that next Sunday, the reset will take longer than usual so that Alan can take a full backup of all the planet files, so he has a completely up-to-date data set to use for testing his new code.
