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Saturday, December 19, 2009

BACK TO WORK ON F&E

Steve Cole reports:

Federation & Empire is well known as the favorite of my game designs, and it's on the schedule for the new 2010 edition to come out in February 2010 (or, at least, as soon as I can get it done). After finishing Captain's Log #40, F&E 2010 was the next thing on my big project list, but I stalled for two weeks (while cleaning up my office and files) before starting on it.

When I did start, I found a renewal of the pure joy that comes from creating this game, and now the people around the office are heard to say things like "He won't do the press release because he just keeps working on F&E."

The first step was to move the text of the old 2000 edition into new software. This was something of an adventure, and included manually retyping all of the "white text on black bars" headers since the new software does them in a totally different way. (Yes, both programs have style sheets, but I avoid using these as doing the same product over and over, and doing endless expansions and modifications, as we do, the style sheets inevitable self-destruct and cause problems.) I set myself a goal to complete one chapter per day, and I met that goal only with Jean Sexton hounding me for that day's chapter. Some of the chapters, like 300, 400, and 500, took eight or nine hours. Others, like 800 and 900, took a couple of hours.

The second step was the single biggest change in the 2010 edition, the elimination of the CEDS (Carrier Escort Damage System) rules which were a wonky kludge forced upon the game system by the shortage of counters. (The new die cutter gets 280 on a sheet that used to hold only 216, so we had room to eliminate the carrier group counters and just have the individual breakdown ships. The counters are the same size, but the equipment the new die cutter uses doesn't require such wide "bar" between the groups of counters.)

Now, I'm involved in the third step, getting all of the new and changed rules from Captain's Log into the book. This is something of a challenge, and makes me deeply regret that I did not do a 2005 edition since I cannot figure out how anybody plays this game having to look up rules changes in eighteen different issues of a magazine. So far, I have done the files from CL22, CL23, CL24, and CL25. At the urging of Jean Sexton, I have set a goal to do two issues of Captain's Log per day. With fourteen issues left, and discounting Sundays and Christmas, you'd think I would be done by December 28th, but for that to happen i will have to "triple up" some of the days. Jean arrives on the 27th for her annual visit, which will consist of eight days, sixteen hours each, doing nothing but the long-delayed Federation book for Prime Directive.

After Jean leaves, I will start on future steps of F&E 2010. One of these is the "core changes step" such as the auto-kill rule. One of these is "whatever style sheet stuff Jean Sexton makes me do". One of these is "adding cross references to the stuff in the expansions." And the other two are "go through the two BBS systems and process every post by everybody who had something to say". (One BBS is used by the staff, the other by the players. The staff, at least, know to avoid witch hunting, i.e., proposing new or previously rejected changes.)

Getting F&E 2010 finished in time for a release date in February is going to be a challenge. It might just happen, but if not, we'll make it in late February or early March. I'm torn there. I don't want to admit the possibility that I won't get it done in time for the February release date (when other products are already scheduled for release) but I also don't want to release F&E 2010 before it's finished.

Remember the company slogan: "We will ship no game before it's tame!"

But then, there is also the company motto: "We do what we have to do. Not what we want to do, and not what we know we ought to do. But what we have to do."