Bi-Weekly Update for 10/13/08

[Ramsey]

1) Update Overview
-Donation Tracking
-Combat Branch Improvements
-Faction Features
-Creature Scripts
-Deliver Mission Enabled
-Crafting and Data Collection Progress
-Travel Updates
-Gameplay Fixes
-Profession Representative Team Re-organization
-New Event Coordination Team
-Jeff Freeman Memorial


2) Body

Donation Tracking:

Kyle has developed a neat little donation tracker that can be viewed on the main forums page. We hope this tracker will give the community a good idea of what we need to meet our monthly maintenance fees. If you have any questions about the tracker, please don't hesitate to ask.

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Combat Branch Improvements

As we've mentioned before, we forked core3 into a separate branch that. One which contains all stable test center code, the other is focused on overhauling the combat portion of the code to be much more organized and easy to use. The overhaul will also make combat much accurate and inline with original PreCU combat (equations and all). The combat branch will eventually be merged back into the stable core3 branch when we feel it is ready to go. If you are at all interested in viewing the code changes for the branch, it is freely available on the SVN under "core3/branches/CombatTest".

We would also like to mention that the SWGEmu Jedi team has been working on specific Jedi functions for Core3 and has been an invaluable part of the combat overhaul. It is hard to have a focused test center with Jedi being an option at this point in time, and the team has made it much easier on that front.

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Faction Features:

Bobius has added a ton of faction related features into the game. The faction rank system (w/ points) is now functional and will appear as normal on your character sheet. NPC's affiliated with a faction will now attack players AND other NPC's opposing factions (video below). This is a huge step in the way the SWG game world on Core3 will shape up to be. These changes will, of course, drop into upcoming AI features.

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Creature Scripts:

Kellina, along with the Caves research team, have continued to add/update Creatures scripts. A plethora of revisions have been dedicated to refineing and balancing creatures. If you would like to view the specific changes, see the following revisions; 763, 780 (DWB), 782, 783, 786, 787, 789, 806.

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Deliver Mission Enabled:

Basic deliver missions will hit SVN soon. The secret box mission will be the only one available, if there are no related crashes with that then multiple scripted deliver missions will be available.Test away!

Screen. The NPC will, of course, be placed further away from the terminal.

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Crafting and Data Collection Progress

Kyle, Tek, Tow'lin and the Schematic Team have been working hard over the last two weeks, and into the future, on entering all the schematic data into the database, so that crafting can be implemented ASAP! This has not been without help, however. We'd like to extend our thanks to thebrodieman, Minard, RainerS, Eladi, Karrion and many others who assisted with data collection and filling in huge tailor and architect spreadsheets.
We're glad to report on the crafting front that Doctor/Medic schematics are coming along very nicely, the Architect schematics are being filled as we speak, and Armorsmith and Artisan are also top priorities as they too start to really take shape.

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Travel Updates

Bobius' hard work on travel has really begun to pay off, with the galactic travel system nearing full Pre-CU operation. Every starport has been enabled on the TC, with ticket terminals and droids that were once missing now in proper order.
The Quality Assurance team, as well as several distinguished community members have been working with Kellina, Bobius and Thrin to fully document every ticket terminal and shuttleport across the galaxy, and note what fixes needed to be made. Almost all of these have been fixed, if not, please report the bugs using support!
Unfortunately Talus' Ticket vendors are still on strike (refusing to sell tickets), but this too will be fixed soon.

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Gameplay Fixes:

Here is a list of gameplay changes that do not necessarily require a topic of their own, but are still very important in fine tuning the precu experience. Not all, but, a lot of it was done by kyle, kellina, Thrin, farmer, and bobius. Thank them if you see them around on IRC

-Bothan minimum height set to 1
-Aggro settings now take into account Zone changes
-Creature spatial chat now easier to do
-Burst Run and Meditation now takes into account the current player state/position.
-Patched exploit that allowed a user to change status to guild leader
-Various planet map improvements

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Profession Representative Team Re-organization

In an effort to better match the progress and work being done by the Devs and Community, we have re-organized the Prof Rep Team. The "new" Rep Team is composed of a smaller group of individuals with broader responsibilities across multiple professions, ie grouped by category. Each person on the Rep Team will be working simply as a "Profession Representative" and thus available to everybody in the Community for any profession even though most will specialize in one or two areas. We hope this brings greater involvement of the Reps as well as better two-way communication throughout the project.

As we work through the details of this major change, we will be focusing on the new Combat Code with panchjr, crafting tasks with Kyle and a general cleanup/update of the Prof Forums. The list of Prof Reps might change over the next few weeks, but here is the current list for the community to contact. PLEASE NOTE: the category following each Reps name is just a general focus point but all of the Reps and TAfirehawk, Rep Team Leader, will be involved in every single profession.

Sirius - GCW/Melee Combat
egoa - Melee Combat
Maximilius - Ranged Combat
Tolbat - Commando/Ranged Combat
WickedHangover - BH/Ranged Combat
Tow'lin - Crafting
Nefyr - Crafting
learningdisease - Crafting
Lorrianna - Merchant/Crafting
vorta - Scout/Crafting
Iakimo - Scout
Samcuu - Medic
Aremathiea - Entertainer
kaeilea - Entertainer


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New Event Coordination Team

SWGEmu would like to announce the creation of a New Event Coordination Team. This team, under the leadership of Kellina, will be working with the CSR team to bring the Test Center new and exciting events: Beach Parties, Cantina Crawls, Story Telling, as well as the always popular PvP Events (minus the debugger hopefully) and much, much more.

The "ECs" will be answering tickets and helping in SWGEmu's IRC Support Channel: #swgemusupport

New ideas for events are always welcome, so feel free to contact any of the team members with your ideas and questions. So join us in welcoming the new EC Team:
Baylor
Egoa
MrBlonde

As the server grows we will be adding more to the team.

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Jeff Freeman Memorial

In observance of the death of Jeff Freeman, we have erected a memorial in the memory of him in the center of Theed.

The NGE which, as we all know, was a change motivated by corporate greed - not the creativity of the employees. Jeff Freeman (age 39) worked at SOE as a designer of SWG until late 2006 and received much of the public blame for the NGE blunder. About two weeks ago, he committed suicide for "troubling personal issues" according to his brother. We have the utmost respect for a character like Freeman who under the stressful clash between; his beliefs, the requests of his employer, and the scrutiny of the community, made choices that brought us PreCU. The pressure he had to endure probably required him to distort the vision of PreCU we all came to know and love, which, as one could guess, made Mr. Freeman's latter years at SOE an unfortunate heartbreaking experience.

We have the ability to infinitely love one another, something most of us do not exercise enough. His death will always be a reminder to seek the beauty of others who cannot see it in themselves. May he rest in peace.