Bi-Weekly Update 7/14/08

[Ramsey]

1) Update Overview: (TOC)
-New CSR / Support System
-Crafting 2.0
-Welcome new Profession Reps!
-TC Status
-Starting Location Changed (Theed)
-Cave Implementation
-Friends list added
-Missions
-Major Core3 Changes
-Image Designer
-Stat Migration
-Client Dev Status
-Small Changes


2) Body:

New CSR / Support System

SWGEmu is implementing a Support site that contains an updated Knowledge Base, bug ticket system and important guides. The new ticketing system and Consulting Support Representatives (CSRs) are implemented to assist developers to address bugs in a more efficient manner and allow developers more time to concentrate on coding rather than address in-game issues.

This site will be kept up to date and should be easier for players to locate important information such as Rules and Policies, set up guides, and questions concerning SWGEmu. Please take a moment to sign up on the site and review the Player Rules and Policies and the contents of the Knowledge Base. Changes, suggestions and updates to the Knowledge Base can be PMed to Serpentkaa via the Forums.

The Player Rules and Policies are now in effect. Players are asked to bring all actions and toons into compliance with Player Rules asap. Starting Monday, players can report immediate infractions of the rules using either the ticketing system or through the IRC channel #swgemusupport. The CSRs, headed by our Team Leader Kellina, will idle on this channel when on-duty and are available to assist with immediate in-game issues.

The CSR Team

Kellina - CSR Team Lead
ekaika
learningdisease
Megatron
Serpentkaa
Tolbat
Vashman

Please begin using this SWGEmu Support site to report all bugs. Over the next few months, we will be "cleaning" up the bugs that are currently posted to the Test Center Forums and moving a compiled list to the SWGEmu TC Bug Compilation Forum. This will require a step by step change over before we are using the SWGEmu Support site exclusively. Players are asked to help with this change over by taking a few extra steps.

If a bug is already posted on the SWGEmu TC Bug Compilation Forum, do not re-submit the bug through this system. Before submitting a bug, take a moment and review bugs that are already submitted on the latest bug thread found in TC Bug Compilation Forum. Players should check the latest bug thread that is identified by the date. The player only submits new bugs to the support site if the bug is not on this thread. The Test Center forums will be locked against new bug posts; however, the CSRs will be updating the latest bug thread on TC Bug Compliation Forum so that players can see what bugs are already reported.

note: CSRs Currently Do not have in-game rights however they will in the future and also a new GM System is being worked on.

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Crafting 2.0

Commits; 439, 440, 441.

The next revision of the crafting system has been committed. While it is still in it's infancy as far as getting all the calculations correct, there are a number of things that have been added. Crafting stations and crafting tools now work as they should. Experimenting requires the proper tool as well as proximity to the proper station. Components are now usable in crafting. While there is NO math for this yet, it is possible to pick up Weaponsmith and craft an entire DLT20 and then kill something with it. Also, there was a bug where people could spam commands and rack up instant xp, which has been addressed. More importantly, I am about 99% sure that I have settled on the final format for the scripts, meaning it is now time for people to get involved in learning the scripting format and making new schematics. I am still working on a schematic tool, that will be released one of these days, but it will be especially helpful for people (cough cough* Profession Reps) to be pro-active in learning the scripts now. This release is not a complete release, from all the testing, it is stable, but it is time to find the bugs.

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Welcome new Profession Reps!
New Profession Representatives Chosen!!!!

Thank you to all that applied as it was quite a challenge picking some of the positions with multiple good candidates.

Artisan: tek
Politician: Baylor

Chef: Sperg
Dancer: kaeilea
Image Designer: Aremathiea
Musician: Accain
Pikeman: Hiddukel
Smuggler: Davickk
Tailor: Zennor

Full List of Reps

Please welcome the new Reps....and EVERYBODY please participate in the Prof Forums

----------------------

TC Status:
We know the TC has been a bit behind in terms of how frequently it is updated with revisions. In the next few days, I'll push Oru to update it to the latest svn. This will mean that the changes implemented in the last 40 revisions or so will come to the TC, but you can expect frequent downtime due to bugs that are bound to come up. Keep in mind a DB wipe will be part of the update process.

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Starting Location Changed (Theed):

Commit 424.

It's about time. Kellina has setup the appropriate testing environment in Theed (Bluefrogs, Shuttles, Cloning etc). New characters after the TC update will start in Theed.

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Cave Implementation

Commits; 427, 429, 431.

Caves have been curned out every week by the Cave Implementation group. Not only are the scripts well done by the community & leadership, the bug reporting and collaboration in the Cave Implementation fourm is very impressive. Make sure you drop by their forum sometime and help where you can.

Caves produced in the last two weeks include; Dantooine caves with Crystal Hunters (assorted types), Deathwatch Bunker (disabled until all endor caves are done - still present though), and script modification to increase the level of agressiveness.

----------------------

Friends List Added:

Commit 434

The friends list now works and community functions such as; /addfriend, /removefriend, and /findfriend. Please test these features extensively and report any bugs found. Thanks to kyle and Movealong (aka Farmer_John).

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Missions:

I (Ramsey) completed a basic version of the mission manager. I am currently working on the _final_ two components of the manager being; state management (mission progress) and the scripting interface.

Looking ahead: I have come to the sad realization that the restoration of missions will require SWGEmu to launch yet another community project to collect data from missions that were on live pre cu. Mission titles and descriptions are saved on the client and can easily be gathered using an automated tool, the location/coordinates of NPC's and other objects involved must be retrieved by a human.

I do know that the majority of the missions presented to players on live can be replaced by ones developed within the community. So instead of attempting to restore every single mission that was on live, I am planning to commit more resources toward educating people on how to script their own missions, and do it well.

Whats to come in the near future:

Critical Pre-CU missions will be gathered in a mini project I will be starting a few months from now. The effort will eventually shift to restoring less important missions once our primary goals are attained.

I expect to have the mission manager done and out on the TC soon. Simple test missions are planned to test various aspects of the manager, and will eventually bloom into issuing more complex tasks. I do not want to commit to a date for all of this, to make room for whatever may come up. I can say that I am on track so far on the state management portion of the manager as of right now.

Like I mentioned earlier, I am planning on committing more resources towards making it easier for people to jump into scripting missions. I wan to narrate a mission building video and releasing that around the time the content gathering for critical live missions starts. The video will essentially be a developer's commentary and guided tour on the inner workings of missions and how to add them to the game.

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Major Core3 Changes:

Oru will be introducing a new and more powerful scripting language to the project within the new few months. The scripting change is probably going to be one of the biggest changes to the Engine before Core3's v1.0 release. We'll be providing a more detailed update to the scripting system in future BiWeekly's.

Oru has also increased the connection limit in the public Engine3 library to 20 connections.

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Image Designer:

Commit 438.

McMahon has had a busy 2 weeks. All Image Designer functionallity has now been added and is subject to intense testing. Make sure to use our new CSR / Support system to report bugs (like you should for anything else from now on ). Image Designer skills follow patch 14 rules. If you are looking to modify profession rules on your future server, keep in mind we are open source and a rule change is not a hard thing to do.

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Stat Migration:

Commit 438.

The completion of Stat Migration has an interesting story behind it. SWGANH assisted McMahon in the packet work for Stat Migration. It really is nice to see developers from different projects working together to complete a feature. Thanks go to snow from ANH !

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Client Dev Status:

Client Devs been a bit quiet recently but were still working away!

Only thing I can show what I'm doing is this:
http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h1...i/c04df97e.jpg

Thats a "Kamas" skirt on mandalorian leggings its not much but its something (Thanks to Laam'inui for the skirt textures)

I have been posting several things over the forums such as pictures (first taste/example of dual wielding and also some more vehicles) Hopefully Davin and Valky will post screenshots of some of there work soon, I might be adding the newest vehicle soon (Yoda's Levitator) when I can.

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Small Changes:

-Waypoints are now working (again). (Cave Crew:Farmer_John)
-Aggro ranges have been updated. 24m when outdoors, 10m when indoors. (Kyle)
-Lair explosion fixed. Lairs are now complete! (panchjr)
-Updated Marksman skills and introduced the ability for admins to spawn fireworks for events (Kellina)
-Bluefrogs can now give you a Mineral Surveying Tool.

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[Ramsey]

3) Developer Perspective: ("Round Table")

Ramsey:

I am looking forward to seeing how the new CSR system will unfold. I'm really hoping that it will make testing on the TC easier and a more enjoyable experience. I'll try to dig into the ingame knowledge base packets and see if I can sync the web support KB with the ingame one - it would be extremely cool if that were to work out.

As for missions, I think I've covered most of the things planned for mission in the short and long term. If you have any concerns/questions about missions, leave me a message in IRC. I'll respond if I'm around.

Kyle:

It's been a surprisingly busy 2 weeks since the last update. Every single day becomes more and more exciting. The momentum that this project is gaining is astounding to me. I will be preparing for my summer finals for the next 2 week, so I may or may not have much for the next update, but then it is back into full swing.

panchjr:

Having sorted out exploding and removing lairs from the zone. I am free to move on to other things. Currently I am working on a @spawnLair command for admins to enable better testing of lairs.
There is still quite a lot of work to be done on lairs, examples being multiple mobs from one lair, searching lairs and the lair mob spawning routine is simplified compared to live.

If anybody is interested we need to start putting together the lua files for lairs, at the moment we ony have Dewback and Womp Rat lairs implemented. Most of the data is available in the spreadsheet put together by members of the Creature Handler forum. It just needs someone to convert the data into lua files. The basic structure of the lair lua file is fairly simple but will be subject to change in the future.

If anyone is interested they can contact me, either by PM or on irc in the #opendev channel.

sytner:

After a busy few weeks in real life, I'm back to work on the world snapshot editor. If current progress continues, it should be ready for internal testing within the next fortnight. The first public release should come a few weeks after that once any outstanding bugs are fixed and additional features added as deemed necessary.

One issue I'm currently having is how to properly include scale in the quaternion values, although it's not an important feature (due to floor plan and collision problems caused by scaling objects in SWG), I'd like to have it working and would welcome any help in figuring it out sooner.

Do feel free to contact me if you have any other questions/suggests with regards to the editor.

Bobius:

My two-month hiatus is almost over. All the campers are gone, and my staff leaves at the end of this week. Now that the kids are gone, I've had a little more free time to sit down and code. I'm currently working on revamping the gm command system (the @commands). I've come up with something a little more elegant and efficient than an if-else sled. The new GameCommandHandler will also take in effect the new CSR system. Instead of having a single level of administration (admin or not), the system will be flexible, allowing multiple categories of users that can have permissions to certain commands.

I hope to be finished some time tonight, so look for the changes in the near future.

4) Closing:

The #1 thing to look forward to this week should be the update of the TC. The TC is currently on revision #400, and I'm pretty sure it's going straight to rev #440. That's a lot of changes being made to the server in one reset, and it will show how effective this new CSR system will be. Try to be on the TC as much as you can, and bear with us during the inevitable down time (which is being used to fix bugs).

Finally, if you haven't noticed, we have been trying to make the project more accessible for testers in order to restore Pre-CU. Please voice your opinion about any of the project's operations in the forums. A lot of the changes being made come directly from community input, every voice really does matter.

The next two weeks are going to be big, and we just can't wait

-Team SWGEmu

[Ramsey]

- Reserved -

Devs/Staff: Feel free to add to the round table.

[Serpentkaa]

Whoot! Great progress guys!

[Saromus]

internet wasnt fast enough

nice job good week it was

I guess i should say ill be the one compiling the bugs in the TC Bug Compilation Forum. If you noticed half the threads of bugs got deleted by accident, :/ me and kellina messed up a few times sorry to everyone, but its a fresh start

[Maxkaos]

I love the bi-weekly update!
Thanks!

[Awock]

Awesomeness

[npor311]

Great job!

This is awesome stuff!

[Valkyra]

I didn't feel as though this was important to be included in the bi-weekly, but here's what I've been toying with...

http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k9...enShot0011.jpg

http://i86.photobucket.com/albums/k9...enShot0012.jpg


I've been trying to implement pre-pub 9 weapon (including lightsaber) trails into publish 14... It's a little complex but I am learning a LOT about pixel_ and vertex_program's.

Also I haven't been working on Kashyyyk as much, since Synter's WS editing tool will be going into internal testing rather soon, which with it I will be able to place objects/structures MUCH more easier than I currently can.

[Saromus]

valky stop pew pewing innocent stormies

or is it slash slashing

[CarpusKelpy]

Schwing! This is an amazing amount of progress...thanks for the great update!

[Cyron]

great job cant wait for that db wipe

[_DM_]

+1 great update!

[hinch]

pre-cu missions were pre-generated titles/body contents and the way points to the lairs were randomly generated ie: not pre-programmed. if you remember the lairs didn't spawn until you were within a certain distance from them and the terrain geometery updated its self to create a level platform for most lairs.

also further distance = more cash as well as mission difficulty effecting the payout.

oh yeah and you couldn't take the really difficult missions unless you were in a group which is what lead to solo groups.

[Andewa]

Great news!