User Guide

Much still remained to be polished. Art Director Michael Haire designed the fac-
tion icons and created individual icons for each of our many technologies, facil-
ities and secret projects. Michael also did many of our scoring screens, as well as
prototyping much of our interface. Greg Foertsch created our “monument”
reward screen, and did much of our situational payoff art. And while all this was
going on, a college senior and mathematics major walked into his career coun-
selor’s office and said that what he really wanted to do with his life was “work
for a company called FIRAXIS Games.” And that’s how Chris Pine came to FIRAX-
IS. Chris did all the report screens on the HQ Menu, and we have to say we had
no idea how cool report screens could be until Chris joined us. Now if he’d just
give up this “Go” business and learn to play Chess like a normal Firaxian!
With Alpha Centauri pulling into the home stretch, Jeff Morris, our Quality
Assurance Director, kicked into high gear. Somehow Jeff managed to coordi-
nate testing between three different groups plus FIRAXIS itself, keep our net-
works running, and still find time to write our install program. Our old sister
company, Absolute Quality, with whom we shared office space for so long,
handled the on-site testing, and we must say that Dan Schlueter and his team
did an excellent job finding the serious problems in our software. Dan, along
with colleagues Jim Smith, Ted Paulsen, Graham Boyanich, Ray Lofton and
Charles Brubaker, stayed on top of things and helped us get the multiplayer
code stable in record time. Origin also contributed Rhea Shelley’s test team,
which did a most thorough job of combing through the software for the
things that are so easy to miss. Thanks!
We’d also like to thank profusely the 25 hardy volunteers who participated in
our public beta test. Particularly considering that their only pay consisted of
buggy early versions of the game, their enthusiasm and participation was out-
standing. We’d never done a public beta test before, but let me tell you we’re
sold on the idea now, since doing one gave us a perspective on our product
we could never have obtained in any other way. Among many other useful
suggestions, our beta testers insisted that we add Diplomatic and Economic
victories, and yes, even the dreaded Random Events. Thanks to everyone who
participated — you really made a difference.
A NEW SUN
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