Bi-Weekly Update for 12/5/2008

[Max]

1) Update Overview

• Stress Test Details for 12/6/08
• SVN Lock and Conversion status
• Mission scripting updates
• In Game CSR system
• Crafting Status
• Structures and Containers Updates
• New Creatures, Skill and Loot Table Updates
• Minor Changes

2) Body

Stress Test Details for 12/6/08

Specific Testing Goals & In game tasks are as follows in the current event plan. Note plans are subject to change:

1. Everyone will meet at the Ewok Lake Village on Endor @ -604 -4939. Go to the Research Outpost on Endor via shuttle, then use speeders to get to the village. Speeders will be available from the Blue Frogs for the Stress Test.

2. A short speech will be given by Ramsey, Kyle and the staff.

3. There will be spawns that need clearing in locations X and Y, so groups will be formed and equipped. Imps go to X, Rebs go to Y. There is a reward to completion of this mission. Kills will be tracked and the top 10 players will receive special rewards.

POINT X will include Rebel faction NPCs

POINT Y will include Imperial faction NPCs

Both X and Y will have a variety of other high level NPCs. Groups are advised.

These mission areas will be picked up from mission terminals, and reward NPCs will give the groups the rewards from kill tracking.

4. A PvP Event will be held on Yavin IV, Massassi Temple. Each faction will meet at an Enclave. Imperial at the Dark Enclave (5072 309) and Rebel at the Light Enclave (-5575 4907).

5. After that, do as you like and recoup in the cantina in Theed. Staff will stay around for as long as possible to answer questions and talk.

These plans may change over the next few hours as we finalise preparations. We hope the day to be as exciting as possible - with all the great events planned and people attending. For the sake of it being such a fun occasion, stay within the normal SWGEmu Rules. We don't want to have to give people a 2 hour lockout to make them miss all the action - that's not what the day's about.

Cheers and see you there at 6PM EST Sharp! Watch the Community Service Announcements and Event forums during the course of the event, as well as IRC (get in early for a spot!) to stay up to date as to what's going on.

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SVN Lock and Conversion Status

Oru, TheAnswer, Bobius and the team have concentrated over the last two weeks on a huge conversion on the Open Source SVN. Over a series of 9 revisions (939 to 948) Core3 was "stringified", the engine was updated, major crashes were fixed and many code fragments were cleaned up. The SVN is now open once again for submissions and already many updates you see in this biweekly have been made.

Please note that due to the Stress Test tomorrow, most of the features mentioned will not be put on TC until after the test is complete. This is to ensure absolute stability on the day.

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Mission Scripting Updates

Ramsey has greatly improved the action system for mission npcs. Mission saving has been added and is really easy. Mission NPC's, actions, and missions are now fully scriptable.
Some of the new mission features will be available during the Stress Test, with the factional and elite hunting events. Watch for some of them on the Test Centre next week.

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In Game CSR System

Ultyma's work with the In Game Holocron and CSR reporting system, his debut work after restarting his coding tasks, has begun. Players can now report bugs and harassment in game through the Holocron (Ctrl+H), and the Knowledge base / FAQs are now available from it. The bug tracking system is in the process of being integrated into our Bug Tracking system at swgemu.com/support, and should be available soon.

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Crafting Status

Crafting development has been put on hold for the time being, as Kyle finishes and concentrates on his College finals. Whilst development may have stopped, the break throughs have not. Kyle recently discovered a large chunk of usable data, notably ingredient information, embedded in the client. This will allow crafting to get back on its feet and expanding faster than ever upon Kyle's return to the crafting scene. Watch for details in early January.

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Structures and Containers Updates

McMahon and Farmer_John have worked extremely hard on structures, containers and their middle grounds over the last month. Items can now be dropped and picked up in/from structures. Nested storage, containers, backpacks and other wearable storage objects are all functional also. Coupled with McMahon's work on house placement, Bobius' work with working no-build zones, housing and other player structures are closer than ever to implementation.

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New Creatures, Spawns and Updated Loot Table

Kellina, Learningdisease and Kaigeos have been working on new creatures, creature skills and spawns. The Geonosian and its respective mobs were added on Tuesday, all creatures for Dantooine were added on Monday, and all creatures for Naboo, Corellia and Rori were added last week. Special thanks go out to Kaigeos for his exceptional work in creating most of the creature LUAs mentioned here. He's been committed to creature spawns for weeks, and reports that he has just completed all creatures for Tatooine. He will be moving on to expanding the Factional NPCs next.
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Minor Changes

• @help now launches the SWGEmu support website (Ultyma)
• @commands now replaces @help's previous functionality (Ultyma)
• Creatures spawned by staff should now function properly (Bobius)
• @requestStartingLocation now launches the Starting Location selection menu (Ultyma)
• CSR Commands have been fixed after becoming dysfunctional last week. (Ultyma)
• The Combat Overhaul's Armour Equip system has been completely rewritten to allow full normal functionality. This includes armour covering more than one part of the body. (Panchjr)
• New characters' hair has been fixed (Bobius)
• Un-Equipping factional items should now no longer give incorrect error messages (Bobius)

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[Max]

3) Developer Perspective ("Round Table")

Thrin:
I'll be restructuring the QA team and how we operate with more details out to staff by Sunday. I will also be pushing finalized trainer placement fixes for the three major planets, Tatooine, Corellia, and Naboo by next week as well. The Quality Assurance team will be hard at work for the next few weeks with the mass uptrend of patch's being submitted now that trunk is open again.

I will also be ironing out features already in place, the Quality Assurance team will assess Login, and character creation to make sure everything is in place and the system is working 100%, whatever features missing or problems will be streamlined to the developers and fixed ASAP so we can start to really nail down a solid base to SWGEmu

Farmer John:
Working on Item storage and dropping
CSR commands: @whoDroppedThis <target item> (only works on player dropped stuff)
CSR commands: @poofObject <target item> (only works on player dropped stuff)

Items can be dropped in structures now.
Picking up works as well.
You can drop stuff and pickup nested storage (containers)
Backpacks, containers and other wearable containers working

This is part 1, part 2 will follow with these additional features:
Dropping restricted to player structures
Cell permission considered when dropping
Admin rights in structures to pickup

Ultyma:
As my return to the emu I bring a few things:

1. New Player Starting Location Selection
Players will be prompted when creating a new character to select your starting location.
This will be the way it works from now on until I can get the tutorial working.

2. In Game CSR Systems
- Bug reporting
- Tickets
- Harassment Reports
- Knowledgebase.

I have added and begun work on all of those and we are working on integrating the in- game bug reporting with our bug tracking site.

3. Added all unknown zone packets.
When I came back some things just weren't working properly, so I took a look at a log and found out that we weren't replying to a few key packets. I have since remedied the situation and things should be more stable.

4. @help now launches your default web browser to our support site. In the future we will be adding more commands to help you out in this regard. (@commands now does what @help used to do.)

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5. Closing Statements

As the end of 2008 draws nearer, and another year passes in SWGEmu's history, we must think of what has been accomplished and what is to come. SWGEmu continues to grow with more momentum and promise than ever before.
Over the past three years our amazing community has grown to nearly 60,000 members. Our common love of Pre-CU and our determination to bring it back to life have sustained us all over time, and this is why our BiWeekly updates are so important. We want to make sure you are all well-informed, so you can play a part in this historic event.
As we approach 2009, sometime around Christmas, we'll be sharing with you our intentions for the project in the coming months in an End-Of-Year Wrap-Up. As always, be sure to keep an eye on our Bi-Weekly Updates and other important information in the Forum Announcements.

To those of you still with us, we appreciate your support more than we could ever express. To those of you we haven't seen in a while, we want you back! Please check out the Forums and join us in IRC again! Community was the backbone of Pre-Cu, we all know that. Without you, it just doesn't work.

So a big 'Thank You' from the Developers, Administrators, Moderators, Community Service Reps, Quality Assurance Reps, Profession Reps, Client Developers, and loyal followers of SWGEmu.

Thanks for a great year, and for many more to come.
Regards and have a great day.

--Team SWGEmu

[Valkyra]

Good stuff!

[Jay]

Can't wait for tomorrow.

Barring some weird complication, see you all there tomorrow!

[Max]

P.S, - Sorry for the delay with this BiWeekly. Everyone is super busy with the Stress Test, Especially Ramsey who is probably pulling an all nighter as we speak. Please give them time and space to prepare for tomorrow. All questions regarding the stress test can be made in the Stress Test thread, or in the "The Stress Test is ON" thread in Community Service Announcements.

[Morial Tomiras]

Cool, looking forward to not attending....

[Lord Christoph]

Is that 6 pm central I.E. 5 pm pacific?

IDK if there's a standard for noted times so if someone could fill me in on that, that would be great.

[nostyleguy]

awesome stuff. i find it funny the post closes by thanking us, when all the thanks should be going to you guys

[Ekaika]

It's hard to explain how much work goes into a week like this, with the Bi-Weekly and the Stress Test coinciding, as well as typical development (and real life).

Please understand how much time it takes to prepare the code for special events, and to coordinate the work of so many, spread out all over the world. We appreciate your support folks, let's have some fun tomorrow

[siamesekat]

Here's to a sucesfull test.

[Ekaika]

Originally Posted by Lord Christoph

Is that 6 pm central I.E. 5 pm pacific?

IDK if there's a standard for noted times so if someone could fill me in on that, that would be great.

"We will be holding a major stress test on the SWGEmu Core3 TC December 6th, 2008. At 6PM Eastern Standard Time (5PM CST, 3PM PST, 23:00 GMT)"

[Seaseme]

ThAnks to everyone for being such an amazing community. Your support is mind blowing. This would all be for nothing without you.

[Vrej]

Awesome logo, awesome update, awesome work. It's awesome all around.

Thanks again SWGEMU crew, you are bringing back some of the best gaming memories I have ever had. We would be nowhere without you guy/gals.

Looking forward to the stress test. I will be sure to bring at least 2 people to help contribute.

[Max]

Originally Posted by Vrej

Awesome logo, awesome update, awesome work. It's awesome all around.

Thanks again SWGEMU crew, you are bringing back some of the best gaming memories I have ever had. We would be nowhere without you guy/gals.

Looking forward to the stress test. I will be sure to bring at least 2 people to help contribute.

Props to _DM_ for making the concept image for that little logo banner.

[MikeCool]

Nice Bi Update guys, finally. See you all at the Stress Test.

Nice backround there you got max.