Bi-Weekly Update for 1/14/09

[Max]

1) Update Overview (TOC):

• DevChat January 09
• Heightmaps Progress
• Item Storage, Containers, and Dropping
• Structures
• Badges and Active Areas
• Ranger and Scout Traps
• Combat Revamp Updates
• Crafting Progress
• Cloning Facilities and Item Insurance
• Slicing
• Minor Changes

2) Body:

DevChat January 09

Thanks to everyone who participated in the developer chat! We were almost overwhelmed with questions from 7-8PM EST! Unfortunately the Dev Chat Bot was not functional for this session, but we managed with Thrin and Saromus serving as fill in Question Masters.
Thanks again to cRush for putting together yet another successful monthly session. We will continue working on ways to improve efficiency and vet out some good solid questions and answers we think people will find most interesting.

If you'd like to read the log of the chat, it can be found here.
We will be holding developer chats on the second Saturday of each month, so if you have a question that you would like answered, feel free to join in next month. If you do not know how to be a part of the developer's chat, read the instructions found here.
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Heightmaps Progress

Hightmaps, one of the elements of Core3 which has consumed Ramsey, TheAnswer, Oru and Link for months has finally taken a major turn towards implementation. With the groundwork laid for non-optimised hightmaps in the preceding months, work is coming to fruition in January as Link and TheAnswer have begun capturing hightmap data from all of the SWG planets, and converting them into usable formats. Once this process is complete, hightmaps will be implemented into Core3 for preliminary testing.
Link, TheAnswer and Oru have put in astounding work to allow such a large magnitude of data (in the realm of multiple gigabytes) to be loaded and handled by Core3 and Engine3 in an intelligent and efficient manner.
With hightmaps nearing a usable stage, so many other anticipated features will begin to make large steps. Housing, NPC AI, Spawns, Camping, and many more major systems all require usable hightmaps to function as intended. One of the most anticipated of which is Creature/NPC/Mob movement, which now functions as it should! Exciting news from this early stage of hightmap implementation already.
Watch for more news on the progress of hightmaps very very soon.

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Item Storage, Dropping and Containers

Farmer_John has stunned the SWGEmu Team and Community alike yet again with his massive implementation of Item Storage, item dropping, and storage containers. This gargantuan breakthrough has solved one of the major question marks involved in the development of Structures: How to allow items to be properly dropped inside of them. Countless hours and cups of coffee later, and with the assistance of TheAnswer, Farmer_John unveiled his Item Storage system.

Currently implemented on TC:Nova is the ability to drop items, pick up items, use containers (such as backpacks) and basic versions of many of the necessary GM commands concerned with these. Currently in the works is Stage 2 of Farmer_John's Item Storage system, which includes item permissions, player structure item dropping, and the permissions necessary to bridge the gap between player item storage and player structures.
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Structures

McMahon has been hard at work again, and has progressed Harvester development to an almost fully functional stage! Correct lot use, energy use, structure re-deeding and structure naming have all been fixed or implemented since New Years. With both hightmaps and crafting proceeding nicely, other branches of structures such as Deed Crafting and clean structure placement and cells will fall into line. Architect is high on the list of crafting professions to work on.

Stay tuned for more info on harvesters and housing. (Factories will get love too)
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Badges and Active Areas

Many would have noticed the little quirk of your character shrinking to "Critter in a Can" size when moving in front of a special area in Theed. Luckily Bobius' development skills are on par with his sense of humour, and he successfully wrote and implemented the code for Active Areas (the areas around POIs, Cities and other special places) and Badges. All badges should now be working around the galaxy.
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Ranger and Scout Traps

MrTopas, one of the Open Source Contributors from the community, has been working recently on Scout and Ranger traps, as well as the Mask Scent ability. This all came together on Christmas Eve, when MrTopas' work reached SVN and has since been tested and patched accordingly. Kyle and Tek are working on making traps craftable as we speak, so that they can finally be tested on TC:Nova from start to finish; crafting to use.

Work on camps has also begun, with preliminary framework being pushed onto TC yesterday.

Thanks to MrTopas for his hard work, and we look forward to seeing more work from him in the new year.
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Combat Revamp Updates

The Combat Revamp, one of the branches of Core3 which has been a major source of both excitement and headache for the SWGEmu Team over the past three months, is starting to come together into an operational version. Since October, Panchjr and Dannuic have been working tirelessly, but not alone, to rebuild combat from the ground up to be as accurate to Pre-CU as possible. The original combat code for Core3 had certain flaws in its design which did not allow for the changes and expansions that needed to be made. Panchjr set out to change this with a brand new code base.

Since day one, every change made to the Combat Revamp code was tested and documented by the Quality Assurance and Profession Representative teams. This has allowed Panchjr to squash bugs before they are able to entangle themselves deep within revision upon revision of code. We're happy to say that using this process, the results could not be more pleasing.

After merging the most recent Combat Revamp branch with the most recent Core3 trunk (and dealing with all the tribulations involved) Panchjr is ready to push the Combat Revamp onto TC:Nova, effective immediately. From now on, all changes to the Combat Revamp and its code will be made onto the Trunk directly, so bug fixes and new features will see their way onto TC:Nova very quickly.

All of the QA guys, Reps and developers involved need a fine round of applause, a loud toast and a firm massage. None more than Panchjr, who has committed himself week in week out to this quest. We've learned that if our email inbox doesn't have a Panchjr update in it by the end of the week, there's something wrong with our computer. Well done.

Happy testing.
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Crafting Progress

After making numerous breakthroughs for crafting in December 2008, Kyle has been working tirelessly to update the crafting system and allow schematic creation to continue once again. Kyle this weekend completed his new and improved Schematic Editor, which allows the SWGEmu Team to create, tweak and fix crafting schematics for easy implementation. Data entry has already begun.
Watch for more news as schematic data is compiled and new schematics are tested and implemented into Core3!
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Cloning Facilities and Item Insurance

Cited as one of the major aspects that needed implementation before the launch of SunCrusher beta, Cloning Facilities have been added in full working fashion. You may now go to your cloning center of choice and store your data there to forego the cloning wound penalties incurred upon replication. Simply walk up to a Cloning Terminal at the facility of your choosing, pay the clone data storage fee, and you will be all set. Though this elimintates the wounds you would receive upon cloning, it does not reduce item decay. In order to not receive wounds, you are required to clone at the facility which you stored your data at. If you clone at a different facility, then wounds will occur. Closest facilities now function as intended as well, and all static cities have one, as well as a few other locations. Don't forget, in order to use your clone data storage facility, you must be on the same planet!

For item decay, however, their is insurance available! Item Insurance can be bought for individual items, or all at once at an Insurance Terminal, conveniently located within your cloning facilities. Currently, items are insurable for 100cr each. Upon insuring an item, it will receive an (i) icon overlaying the icon in your inventory. Upon cloning, the (i) will disappear, and your item will only receive 1% item decay, compared with the normal 5%. Item Insurance is good at any cloning facility!
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Slicing

Rejoice smugglers! The true slicing system has been implemented! Now, using special slicing tools, you can upgrade your weapons and armor in true retro fashion. Be sure not to cut the wrong wire, though, and shunt the power node with a molecular clamp! Locked containers and terminal slicing coming soon!

Thanks to cRush for these two exciting updates, which brings Smuggler, the Clone system and the whole game experience closer back to true Pre-CU days. He will be continuing his work on extending old systems to make them true to Pre-CU over the next two weeks.
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Minor Changes

• The mood bug was fixed. Now everyone won't look so grumpy (Thoop)
• Drag Player Corpse implemented (Anakis)
• Can now remove players from consent list by using /unconsent and selecting the player from the list. (cRush)
• Cloning Facilities now setting Combatants to On Leave, HAM not regenerating after cloning. (cRush)
• Squad Leader profession systems have been started upon (Link)
• Server MOTD (message of the day) now editable (Link)
• Players now clap when watching entertainers (Thoop and Link)
• XP framework implemented (Dannuic)
  And heaps more.....

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[Max]

3) Developer Perspective: ("Round Table")

Originally Posted by cRush

I have been pretty busy in the last two weeks implementing a lot of changes. I cleaned up a ton of code in Player and CreatureObject, and basically made changes in 60% of the files contained in the core. Furthermore, I added in CloningFacilities and Item Insurance which will really be helpful in the early stages of SunCrusher. Also, bringing back the true Slicing menu will help smuggler's feel a little love. More to come in that regards.

I will now move forward and fix some systems that have been disconnected, or disabled. Further, I plan on implementing a few smaller features that have been requested, including the long awaited Zabrak ability, Equilibrium. Much more exciting stuff to come. Thank you SWGEmu community for your undying support!

Originally Posted by panchjr

I merged the Combat Test code back in to the main trunk. Unfortunately because the two codebases had diverged significantly during the time combat was being worked on this has resulted in some bugs and some of the new features had to be disabled until they can be made to work with the new code.
We are busy squashing the bugs and re-working disabled fetures so that you can enjoy the new combat code properly. Please bear with us during this transition period.

The biggest thing I have learned from the combat upgrade is that although working on the code in isolation made things easier, the problems encountered when integrating it back in to the trunk nearly outwieghed the benefits.

Originally Posted by kellina

Creatures/NPC Scripting Team:
The past couple weeks the Creature/Npc scripting team has been working on converting all the city npcs that should be attackable like all the creatures that are roaming around the citys as well as the factional npcs. we should have these all finished up the next couple weeks.

And we are continuing to work on adding more caves/dungeons as we can get to them.

CSR/EC Team:
These past couple weeks we have receaved many CSR/EC apps and are reading through all of them, we have gotten alot of really good ones as well as some ok ones. depending on how many more we get this week i might close the apps up at the end of the week. We have gotten about 60+ so far and thats alot of work to sort them all out and figure out who would be best fitting. But we will get them done and we are very excited to get the ball rolling on training our new CSRs and ECs.
Thanks for all those that have applied we should have our list of people in the next couple weeks.

Originally Posted by Thoop

On behalf of the SWGEmu development team, we could like to thank all of the members of L'Aasin's Resource Mapping Project. They have spent countless hours gathering data from live and putting it into an easily readable format for us to interpret and implement. If you see any of the following people on TC or anywhere else, tip them a few credits or give them some free items . They have helped an enormous amount with their efforts.
Thanks to:
Corbaer
Iraxen
Karric
Kronik
L'Aasin
NadeaAheda
RadioFlyr(Vendel)
SturmTiger
Tarquinas_born(Jule)
Viper
Wulf(Kalrir)
Xavia
Zcoretri

Thanks to anyone else who's name I forgot, and thanks to all of the people who offered to lend their time to the project. It is very much appreciated.

Originally Posted by Link

Not too much has been going on with me recently. I have been helping squash some bugs, coordinating stuff for the height maps a little and just started work on Squad Leader. I just finished the "System Group Message" skill.

Oh and I was hoping someone would have asked about height maps at the dev chat. I wanted to tell everyone the news that with height maps, mob movement works now

Originally Posted by Kyle

Things in the crafting world have appeared to be at a standstill to the outside observer, but we are ready now to really get underway. Here are a few teaser screen shots of the work being done, and having been done the last little bit.

Originally Posted by Max

Hello Everyone!

It's been a big month (or more) since our last biweekly! Can you believe it? It feels like it was up only yesterday. So much has happened, in fact, that some things had to be CUT from this BiWeekly to spare everyone's brains from exploding.

Something I was a bit sad about was the fact that I missed New Years as I was on a plane between Australia and America. Time zones did their little dance, and I celebrated New Years 2009 (not once, but twice) at 37 000 feet going at 950 kmph. Hence, sadly, between Airport and Transfers and 777's and bad food, I missed the posting of the End of Year Announcement. That was bad enough, until I checked my email and realised that I'd missed out two people's personal comments about 2008.
I therefore present to you, without further a-do, MrTopas and Kaigeos with their 2008 End of Year Comments:

I apologise deeply to these two guys. They've spent far too much time to be forgotten, with only my excuse of a 19 time zone change and a difference of over 60 degrees Fahrenheit.

I'd also like to welcome two new Developers to the team. Anakis and MrTopas have been active and excellent open source contributors over the last few months, and we feel that offering them a formal Developer position is well deserved. Thanks, congratulations and welcome Anakis and MrTopas.

Until Next Time, Have a good day.

Max

P.S: Happy Birthday Davin!

4) Closing:

If you have watched CNN lately, you would have probably seen stories and pictures that say two things: change and death. and change. and death. Why these two things are so commonly put together is really beyond reason. Change does not mean death. January 09 brings change: it brings a new year, the end of a decade, a new US president, ten million new babies around the world, and the mulching of fifty five million American christmas trees. None of these things are deadly. To resist change is to resist life, not preserve it.

Every week that passes changes us that much closer into what we all want to be. Speculation will always be abounds as to what could happen here, or there, or when, or then, but no one can ever tell you what will happen tomorrow. No matter what, we want to make sure that we are prepared for what ever we may need. For developers this could be a flexible and expandable combat code, for testers this could be a customisable bug reporting website, or for players this could be a new server designed especially for them.

The next few weeks sees the team polishing current systems, finalising new ones, and fixing all the bugs possible so that Sun Crusher can be launched bug free and stress free. Sun Crusher will be one of the biggest and most exciting changes to this project ever, and we're absolutely hyped.

Spread the peace. Nothing's worth fighting over.

--Team SWGEmu

[Vlock]

First! (my first first lol!)

AWSOME job guys! keep it up!

[Rook]

Simply amazing.

Keep up the good work.

*tips hat*

[Rippster]

Best update evar!!!

Thanks for all the hard work guys!

[djbully]

My mouth is watering and i'm crying with happiness!!!

[KroniK]

Its getting ever so closer. Fantastic work as always.

[mijom]

awesome read, thumbs up!

[RegularJohn]

This made my day. You guys are awesome.

[Blue]

looking good... but does the trap part mean traps are working? because i tried them yesterday and kept getting your trapping skills are not good enough or something like that at master ranger...

[monkay1407]

Awesome job, as usual guys. The amount of implementations, and fixes in the past 4 or 5 days has been very exiting!!

[Clad]

"The next few weeks sees the team polishing current systems, finalising new ones, and fixing all the bugs possible so that Sun Crusher can be launched bug free and stress free. Sun Crusher will be one of the biggest and most exciting changes to this project ever, and we're absolutely hyped."

So very exciting!

[Biophilia]

exciting updates, and a well written post too.

[Me'ne]

Wow, everything is moving so fast now.. Its all very exciting. Great Job devs!

[nostyleguy]

Love the progress. thanks for all your hard work guys