Issue 16 »Special Edition« October 2004
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 English Version http://www.egosoft.com/x/xnews/200410_44SpecialNews.html |
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 Deutsche Version http://www.egosoft.com/x/xnews/200410_49SpecialNews.html |
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| Golden Joystick Awards: | Vote on the best PC Game of the year | ||
| X²: The Return - Quickmenus: | Vote on mouse or joystick | ||
| Area 51 Finds...: | Something New! | ||
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Before The Vote: A Very Short Note...
The next few days are all about votes. Bush versus Kerry, Mouse versus Joystick and X²: The Threat versus the rest of the world.
Just a short end of the month issue this time, but we are planning to release X-News X-Tra very soon that will have a lot more community news and interviews and an article that will take a look back at five years of the X-Universe and what’s happened in the X-Universe community during that time. But first things first: so sit back, relax and enjoy your journey through X-News Issue 16!
Jon Handby |
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... on the best PC Game of the year
We still need your vote!
The initial nominations for the Golden Joystick Awards 2004 have now been whittled down and the shortlists drawn up. We are delighted to be able to tell you that X²: The Threat has been short listed for PC Game of the Year along with only 5 other games.
If you haven't already voted in this final round then please click on the link above to do so. The competition includes the likes of Doom 3 and Far Cry, so every vote from members of our community counts! You can vote from wherever you are in the world, but the competition to win free games is open to UK residents only and usual Dennis Publishing rules apply.
Please note that if you vote more than once then all your votes will automatically be discounted.
Jon Handby and EGOSOFT |
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Vote on mouse or joystick
Many people in the past complained about our menu system being too filled with text and hard to hard to get into for new gamers who did not go through the (sometimes hard) school of X-Beyond the Frontier.
This brought the idea for a particularly important new feature of X²: The Return. The Quickmenu will be a bar at the bottom of the screen, made up from large icons. You can scroll through this bar right and left to see the options of one menu level and up to get into submenus (or down to return).
This way we hope to clean up the interface of X2 and make it look much more like a game and less like a complicated simulation.
The advantages: Quickmenus are quick (hence the name ;). Opening and navigating from one level to the next is much faster than navigating through the old menus. Quickmenus are small: The quickmenu bar will always obstruct only a small area of the screen whereas the old menus always obstructed most of the screen space. Quickmenus are pretty: Instead of reading a lot of text the player will soon learn the meaning of the icons and enjoy the fast way of navigating.
How is the quickmenu controlled: Now comes the interesting part and actually the reason for this whole article, because we want to ask YOU for your opinion on this subject in a vote. There are two fundamentally different ways the quickmenu could be controlled. Mouse cursor or keys. This has been an almost religious subject of discussion here at EGOSOFT in the past. Do we want to have a mouse cursor in X games?
I don’t want to influence you for one or the other. The same system of the quickmenu bar can either be controlled with one highlighted icon that can be navigated with the cursor keys and digital joysticks, just like the old X menus worked OR it could be controlled with a mouse cursor. This cursor would only appear once the quickmenu is opened (e.g. by pressing the right mouse button) and you would navigate from one level to the next by clicking on icons.
So who do you want for president? Mouse or keys? Vote here: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=67708
Will I have to use them? Finally a word for the conservative among you (and I’m not talking about politics anymore now ;-) Yes the old menu system will still be available as an alternative. Since X²: The Return CAN be installed as an expansion (which means it can import X²: The Threat savegames), you can set it up to be as compatible with the old game as possible. And this includes the old style menus and keyboard controls.
YOU can be the swingstate. Election 2004: Mouse or keys?: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=67708 X² for the golden joystick: http://www.egosoft.com/redirect.php?link=cvg US presidency: http://www.egosoft.com/redirect.php?link=jibjab
Bernd Lehahn |
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Something New! X-News reveals more secrets...
Jon Handby |
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The Uninteresting Bit!
If you would like to get in contact with us, then feel free. E-mail: X-Universe-News@egosoft.com |
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Publisher EGOSOFT info@egosoft.com
Editors in Chief Darren Astles - Great Britain Michael B. - Deutschland
Issue Editor Jonathan Handby
Staff Greg "Abyss" Kingston
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With Thanks To Bernd Lehahn
Translation and Proofreading CBJ
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