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A Few Words from the Editor...
Welcome to the 59th edition of the X-Universe News. We start the new year with the announcement of the free Update 4.0 and the new Home of Light DLC, which you can still pre-order at the unbeatable price of 7.99 €. Additionally, we will have an elaborate look on the new X Rebirth wiki and talk to two of its creators. Finally, we are happy to tell you about the re-opening of the DevNet Ideas forum, where you can submit and discuss your X game ideas.
Happy reading! - X2-Illuminatus
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New and exciting expansion of the X-Universe
EGOSOFT is very pleased to be able to announce the release of the new expansion "Home of Light" as well as update 4.0 for X Rebirth, both to be released in February 2016!
Home of Light (HoL) is an exciting expansion of the X Rebirth universe and makes the best use of the many new features of X Rebirth 4.0:
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(HoL) Much larger universe: The Home of Light expansion will bring three entire new systems, including the central Home of Light, known from the X3 games, with a massive new economy.
(HoL and 4.0) Bulletin Board System (BBS): The new BBS collects all currently available missions in space for an easier overview.
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(4.0) Trade improvements: Graphs showing market developments over time, a best deal finder and many UI improvements to make trading easier.
(4.0) New engine technology: Extend your ship with a Jump Drive and other new technology to travel through the universe quicker than ever.
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(HoL) Trade stations: A new station type allows you to stock large amounts of any wares you like. Buy up goods when they're cheap and sell when the price is high, or when your competitors' stations mysteriously explode.
(4.0) Customizable weapon upgrades: Craft weapon modifications to improve your favorite weapons.
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(HoL and 4.0) New enemies, new weapons, new missions, new and mysterious phenomena.
(HoL and 4.0) Many new secrets to explore in the outskirts of the ever-growing X universe.
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The Home of Light expansion can be pre-ordered NOW at a 20% discount
for just 7.99 € on Steam.
X Rebirth Update 4.0 will be released for free.
Coming in early 2016 will be the new X Rebirth complete package, including The Teladi Outpost and Home of Light for just 49.99 €. Available on Steam, GOG, or directly from egosoft.com.
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Knowledge is power
Since its beginning, the X community consists of many helpful users, who discuss the game mechanics and explain them to new players in our forums. Some users take this even further by writing down their experiences and findings in forum guides, FAQ articles or even by creating video tutorials. The aim is always the same: Improving the gaming experience for everyone. Another means to collect and present information, which allows working together like no other one, is a wiki. And that is what this article is about.
The new X Rebirth wiki is a place for everyone to collect information and to inform themselves about the many different aspects of X Rebirth. Originally created to host modding documentations, and to list and explain modding relevant changes within updates, the wiki has since evolved into a storage for gameplay related articles too. I asked Stefan Hett, UI engine developer at Egosoft and founder of the XR wiki, what his idea behind its creation was and how he sees its current and future development:
"Creating a wiki for the X games had been a long standing plan at Egosoft. The idea was discussed and brought up regularly during the development of X Rebirth and sometimes combined with the idea of an in-game encyclopedia (which was one of the features regularly requested by players). While we discussed different approaches, the decision was made to get the encyclopdia into the game and postpone any work on a potential wiki system for the time being.
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In house we've been using different ways of documenting our development process; going back and forth between different systems. One of these systems was a product called Confluence from an Australian company called Atlassian. While the early versions of Confluence focused on documentation functionality, Atlassian improved the product over the past years, extending it to a tool which can also be used as a platform for a wiki nowadays.
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With the work on integrating modding support for the UI in X Rebirth, I got the chance to revive our old plan and get the idea of a wiki system into something alife. As it's common with new ideas it's always questionable whether they will work out as intended in the end. That was quite the same with the idea of the wiki. So we were honestly thinking whether a wiki will actually be used by our community or whether it would end up dead. While most other development studios don't provide a wiki system for their players, Egosoft's belief is to work close together with its community. Therefore, it was a logical step for me to open up the documentation we put together for the modding of the UI and also allow the community to contribute content directly. Back then the main driving factor was to see how the community would react and to proof that we are on the right track, before we invest more resources on an official wiki.
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I'm very glad that I could win over Sparky Sparkycorp as a moderator for the English wiki. Without his commitment to the wiki, it would have hardly gotten any further than the initial UI modding documentation it was. He was the one who brought the wiki to the point where we could easily make the decision to integrate it more closely into our webpage and spread the word of it's existence.
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We hope that with this announcement in the X-Universe News and the closer integration into our homepage, more of our players will take a look at the wiki and not only use it as a means to get information but also to directly contribute to it and extend the content and details it already provides today.
Obviously, we at Egosoft have further plans to extend the Wiki and its capabilities too. We hope to be able to get several of these ideas we have into the Wiki system to improve its usability further and make it a more useful resource of information to everybody than it is already right now. Please do not hesitate to let us know about your ideas, feedback, or issues you might run into with the wiki by leaving us a note in one of these threads:
Of course, a wiki can only be successful if people contribute to it. That means actively writing, correcting and discussing articles to present as many pieces of information as possible in an easily understandable way. Among the users, who create articles, is Sparky Sparkycorp, who also moderates the English part of the wiki. When being asked about his experience with writing articles and his motivation for doing so, he told me the following:
"As my familiarity with Rebirth and community knowledge of it shared on the forum grew, I realised that it was starting to become harder over time to remember where I'd read or wrote something. I'd often find myself scratching my brains, trying to find an old link :)
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Fast-forward a few months and Egosoft announced the creation of the Rebirth wiki in the Scripts and Modding forum, alongside an invitation to join in. I felt it had potential to help with the issue of threads sinking down forums to become lost, and with the vagaries of my memory. With that in mind, I volunteered to help out.
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Over time, the Rebirth wiki has evolved to host links to many helpful sources of information on places like the Egosoft website, and has begun to host a few new guides too. It's been nice to see the growth and to be able to find and share links to the wiki on the forum when people have asked questions there. Seeing other people begin to add guides to the wiki and to collaboratively improve existing wiki guides has been particularly rewarding. In that regard, Snafu_X3 and solntcev deserve special thanks for being keen, early guide contributors and spell-checkers :)"
Just as Sparky Sparkycorp once contacted Stefan to help out with the wiki, we're asking you to contribute now. Whether you want to write own articles, correct or add information, or translate existing ones, every help is welcome. To get you started with the wiki, there is this article, which explains how to create and edit articles. If you have further questions or suggestions, please post them in the XR wiki support topic in the egosoft.com forum.
PS: If you are a native German speaker, Egosoft is still looking for a volunteer to moderate the German section of the wiki. If you are interested, do not hesitate to contact stefan AT egosoft DOT com.
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Submit and discuss your X game ideas
After what seems to have been a long deep sleep, the DevNet Ideas forum has been re-opened today. The Ideas forum is a place for everyone to submit their ideas for X Rebirth and future X series space games. Submitted ideas will be picked by the DevNet staff for further discussion and may hereby find their way into the X games one day.
Characteristic of the DevNet, posting is only allowed in English. Thus allowing users from different language forums to partake in discussions about the same topic. Additionally, DevNet moderators will ensure that discussions stay on topic. If you are not sure where to post or have problems with wording your idea in English, please contact a DevNet moderator for assistance.
If you want to submit ideas, then please sign up for DevNet base membership (Level 3, no NDA is required). Once you have done so, you should be able to see and access the Ideas forum. Before posting, please make sure you have read and understood the rules there.
We are eager to read your ideas and hope for many interesting discussions.
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