Christmas Issue 26 - December 2007

Editor's Note

An introduction...

Hello and welcome to this Christmas Edition of the X-Universe News, it is our 26th issue so far. As you surely have noticed by now, we constantly fail to issue our newsletter on a regular basis, though we always promise to do so. With so much going on in the background, working on our next X-Universe project, we have to prioritise; so little time for the news. This time was no different but every cloud has a silver lining and we are happy to announce that another of our projects is about to be completed and we proudly present to you the "Uplink-Update" for X³: Reunion and X²: The Threat. There’s more on that in this issue.

Just a few weeks ago our forums celebrated their fifth anniversary and even with some of the "ancients" of the forum disappearing from time to time, our community has silently grown to nearly 260,000 registered members. It’s no surprise that a little survey by Egosoft about multiplayer features in games like the X-series would draw a lot attention. As it is one of the most discussed topics in our forums and even though it is not directly related to any current project, we still would like you to visit our forum and give us your opinion! In keeping with the festive season we try to answer some popular questions about Christmas in another Egosoft-FAQ article.

We hope you enjoy this newsletter and wish you all a Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous 2008!

vass

Seasons Greetings

Egosoft wishes you a Merry Christmas.

The end of the year draws near; a year in which things seemed a bit quiet for the X universe, but all the while future X titles were under steady development. And now we are proud to present the free extension "Uplink" to you at the end of this year. And we promise to continue to work with the same passion that you show in playing and criticising our games. Your enthusiasm is our motivation and great things are yet to come...

We wish all the readers of X-Universe News, all X-gamers and all members of our great community a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Egosoft

Uplink Part 1

The Update is here!

Right on time for Christmas, we have yet another final update of X³: Reunion for you ;-). Even better: this time it also offers along with it another very VERY last update for X²! I want to tell you a little bit about a very special feature here:

X³: Reunion 2.5 "Uplink" is the name of the new feature to upload your game statistics to your Egosoft forum account. This sends all information about your current savegame to the server so you are able to compare your achievements to those of other players

Who is the best trader? Who crushed the most Xenon? Who built the most factories in Argon sectors and so on... Soon all these questions will be answered by our new online statistics service for X³: Reunion and even for X²: The Threat. We have tried to make it as simple as possible: just install the update, load a current savegame (it’s best if it is not "modified" or else comparing the statistics would not be very meaningful), export the data and finally upload them to your account at egosoft.com.

In addition to the new "Uplink" X³ 2.5 brings new possibilities for scripters and the release of the new mission development tool, the ‘MD’ (Mission Director) that we announced some time ago. See below for details.

Have fun with X² und X³ UPLINK!

Bernd Lehahn

Uplink Part 2

The Update in details

The "Uplink-Update" for everyone

The update is done and the website is prepared. Now you are invited to help us to put the website through its paces and polish it where needed! We ask you to export your best savegames using the new functionality (it will create a special file in your default save folder) and upload the created file at http://www.egosoft.com/games/x3/uplink_en.php. If there are any problems with the upload or the statistics, please let us know! Besides the online ranking of unmodified savegames, you are also able to upload ‘modified’ savegames to compare them with others. Modified games will not appear in rankings. The difficulty level and game start chose will not be taken into consideration. There are plans, however, to add filters to the website for easier comparision.

The update also fixes some small bugs in X³.

The update will be offered in different versions, though you need the Bala Gi Research Missions (version 2.0.02) to be installed. Alternatively you could install the cumulative update version "1.x ->2.5". You can, of course, use your existing savegames with the update as long as you play a standard game. We tried our best to maintain savegame compatibility but we cannot guarantee this for heavily modified games.

The "Uplink Update" for scripters

A few script commands, which did not work properly until now, are corrected by this update. Additionally some new commands are added to the Script Editor. For example, commands to check the state of blueprints at the Player Headquarters - you can now check if there is a certain blueprint available already and you can add or remove a blueprint from the station. Other commands influence the behaviour of NPC pilots by setting their aggression and morale levels. The complete list of changes and new command can be found in the "ReadMe" file which normally accompanies our patches.

The "Uplink Update" for modders

Actually the plan was to release the mighty tool with the next project, now Egosoft decided to backport it to X³ and offer it to the community with this update. It is a tool to customise your game even better than anything possible until now. So it is surely of interest to all gamers and certainly scripters, but modders will welcome it the most, because they are no longer bound to the Script Editor, which is quite complicated to use in that regard. Now you can easily add new missions to your game or modification. The tool is called "Mission Director" (or simply MD), and was announced some time ago. You can develop new missions outside the game (unlike the solely-in game Script Editor), using a scripting language based on XML. A small guide with easy examples will be released soon™. Additionally an interview with Toastie about the MD’s early days was prepared but has been postponed for our next issue...

The "Uplink-Update" for X²

In X² the update "just" brings the export functionality of the player statistics. There will be no bug fixes or extensions. That is why its version number is 1.5. Nevertheless we hope you will use the online ranking as much as possible; maybe it might give some of you the urge to fire up X² again and start from scratch or dig out your old savegames.

As always you can download the updates from our download section.

vass

Egosoft FAQs

The big Egosoft Christmas Survey

It is Christmas, so we thought it’d be right time to tell you how the Egosofties spend the holidays. Therefore we asked all Egosoft employees the most important questions about Christmas. And almost all of them took their time to write us some short answers. We say thank you and wish them all happy holidays! We asked them the following questions:

1. Who are you and what is your task at Egosoft?
2. Where are you going to celebrate Christmas this year?
3. What is your biggest wish for Christmas this year?
4. When do you usually exchange the gifts?

Here are some of the answers:

1. Bernd Lehahn - Managing Director
2. At home with family
3. I struggle hard to avoid a boring answer here, but “A healthy family" is really the only thing I can come up with.
4. Christmas eve. My son and daughter will be very keen, waiting in front of a closed door all afternoon.

1. Chris "CBJ" Burtt-Jones - Engine Programmer
2. At home with my family.
3. Peace on the forums. ;)
4. Next morning. Any earlier would be seen as very impatient in the UK!

1. Owen "Xenon_Slayer" Lake - Mission Developer / ‘allround Egosoft Noob’
2. At home in Portsmouth before the big move to the office.
3. Just my family and friends to be there :-)
4. Christmas Morning. The only morning worth waking up early

1. Michael "BurnIt!" Baumgardt - Interface & Webprogrammer
2. At home, with my family
3. Peace on earth ;) But I guess I'd settle for CBJ's wish as well
4. 24.12.

More answers can be found in our forum in the topic to the newsletter.

vass

Credits & Contact

The 'move along' nothing to see here bit!

If you would like to get in contact with us, then feel free. E-mail: X-Universe-News@egosoft.com

Publisher

EGOSOFT info@egosoft.com

Editors in Chief

Michael Baumgardt - Germany

Issue Editor

Dorian Krause

Staff

Bernd Lehahn ;-)

With Thanks To

Bernd Lehahn

Translation and Proofreading

Toastie - EN

SymTec ltd. - DE

To Unsubscribe

If you don't want to receive the X-Universe News any more by email, then you can change your profile on the website, just log in, go to your Profile and uncheck 'receive XNEWS by mail' - Edit Your Profile