Bi-Weekly Update for 09/13/09 - End Of Summer Special

[Max]

Bi-Weekly Update for 09/13/09
End of Summer Special!

1) Update Overview (TOC):

• Preface - What's so Special About the End of Summer?
• A Froggy Affair
• Schematics for Success
• Seeking Employment!
• Are you going to eat that?
• You're going to have to speak up
• Excuse me, I seem to be a bit lost...
• I Feel it too...
• Epilogue - After these changes....
• QA Team Additions
• Community Team Reorganization
• Bug Fixes
• Quick Stats

2) Body:

Preface - What's so Special About the End of Summer?
From the Development Team

For a few months now, rumors have been surfacing on these forums and various community websites about a significant patch coming to TC:Nova in the near future. Now we unveil some significant improvements to TC:Nova, enhancing the playability of the game. The reasoning behind this: to provide our steadfast community with a playable server while we orchestrate the Object Restructure. Changes will be taking place throughout the week.

As it has been mentioned before, the Object Restructure will not make it to the public test center until it is significantly finished. This update is in no way connected to the Object Restructure and is solely a present from us to you, the community. We hope you will find enjoyment in the hard work we have poured into completing a significant portion of the gameplay.

You will find a selection of our favorite changes from this patch outlined here in this Bi-weekly. We hope you enjoy them all.

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A Froggy Affair

One thing which will surely be noticed by all is the fact that blue frogs have been completely removed from the Test Centre. Everything you should need to function in the galaxy will now be crafted by other players, or if brave enough, looted from mobs using the new and improved loot table featuring: lootable crafting components, magseal and other containers spawning loot, a more realistic credit payout from corpses, skill tapes / attachments being lootable and usable, a revision of every creature's loot items and drop rates to be more like Pre-CU and humanoids being the only creatures which drop credits.

Magseal and other containers will now spawn and contain loot in many of the caves and dungeons around the galaxy. They are extremely important for any aspiring smuggler, and you never know what treasures they may behold to be sold, consumed or used!

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Schematics for success

Crafting has undergone a massive growth over the summer. In short, all current schematics now actually work. A gargantuan collection of schematics has also been added. At last count, these included: All entertainer, scout, weaponsmith, armorsmith, tailor, entertainer, smuggler, chef, doctor, medic, and combat medic schematics. All fully in, all working, and all waiting to be made. A few early Droid Engineer schematics have also been added.

Also worth noting is that the requirement for identical components, which was causing problems in many advanced schematics, has been temporarily removed until factory crates are implemented.

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Seeking Employment!

Everyone needs a job, and Ramsey, Thoop, Dannuic and Kyle were more than willing to oblige. Mission terminals all across the galaxy now offer PvE missions with correct Pre-CU payouts, working as intended. Even more exciting, though, is the addition of complete, correct, and fully functional Bounty Hunter missions of both the PvE and Player variety. This addition sees the Bounty Hunter profession working effectively as intended as per Patch 14.1.

The spawns for mission lairs is now functional also, and it works in a random pattern, spawning different levels of animal and baby. Watch those kimogila lairs!


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[Max]

Are you going to eat that?

Chefs, en guard, don your hats and prepare to treat the galaxy to every craftable chef item, now working as they should, including all associated buffs and enhancements.

Looking for a place to put all those food scraps? Perhaps a friendly Junk Dealer could help you out. They are located all over the galaxy, and will now buy any junk from you for a fair and reasonable price.

For a more risque meal, perhaps a smuggler could assist you in procuring any of the now craftable spices. Smugglers can also slice mission terminals for higher reward payouts, now using all the appropriate tools. Thrillingly, Magseal and other containers are now working and able to be sliced! Get to it smugglers!




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You're going to have to speak up

Player's now start with their race's appropriate language choice on character creation and must learn other character's languages to understand them. Teaching and learning of languages is in and working as a result.



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Excuse me, I seem to be a bit lost...

The planet map (Ctrl V) is now fully populated, un-bugged and in action. All basic trainers are marked on the map. For elite trainers, see the following full list which is 100% accurate to our database: TC: Nova - Profession Trainer Locations

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I Feel it too...

What you felt it too? What was it? I dunno, You tell me. I have no idea....

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Epilogue - After these changes....

Exact details for when this patch will be published will be found in the TC Updates forum (under community news) and on the LPE. It will also feature a recap of the patch features.

After all of these exciting changes have taken place, a full database wipe will occur. This means every character, item, vehicle, do dat and widget on the TC will be permanently deleted from the server. It is a simple necessity of the types of changes we are implementing.

Also, vehicles will be disabled after this patch. Not only is that more realistic to the SWG beta, it is also to prevent a serious crash in one of the other features caused by vehicles. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Without the blue frogs, the economy will be very reliant on the crafters. They will be almost solely responsible for creating the goods that every character will need, from vehicles to guns to armour. Please, support your crafters. Without them, the game isn't much fun.

So that it doesn't take a month for anyone to grind up their template, we have raised the experience multiplier to 200%. This means that there is 2x XP on ALL XP types.

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QA Team Additions

The QA team has had applications open for a couple of weeks now, and we had a fantastic response. We would now like to formally welcome the following members to the team, who will be helping out test these new additions to the TC as well as the OR into the future.

• Aceblade
• Alex1tmac
• BigEvil
• Masterage
• Malmeister
• Obeo
• Tovo

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Community Team Reorganization

The SWGEmu Community Team has been restructured over the last two weeks to help enhance our service to the Community. The changes involved:

• The old CSR team is now the GM team. GMs will be more focused on assisting you in game, around the galaxy.
• All Community Staff now have blue names on the forums. The individual teams have not been merged, this is just a way of us being easier to find and contact.
• #swgemusupport on IRC and the support forums are now run by a more organised and dedicated Support team, which includes members of the community which are interested in helping out. See this thread if you are interested in helping out:http://www.swgemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27851
• The team structure has been reorganised as follows:
  http://www.swgemu.com/swgemu/images/max/community-flow-final.png

If you have a problem and need help, your first ports of call should be the Support Forms or the #swgemusupport chat channel on our IRC. If you have issues with your account, access or banning, emailing community@swgemu.com is the best way to find a solution.

As part of these changes we’d like to ecstatically welcome back Kellina as GM / EC Manager.

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Bug Fixes

• Talus is back open
• Bazaar preview now works for most items
• Profession trainers now have correct names
• Prevention method for the 1/1 HAM bug.
• Most Dungeons now have Pre-Cu accurate spawns. (thanks to Tolbat, Dame, Vashman, Obeo, Tristin and a host of other dedicated staff for this!)
• LD Corpse fix
• Ignore lists now work properly.
• NPC's no longer all say the same thing all the time.
• Locations on all planets are now accurately depicted on the planet map.
• All starting profession trainers can be located accurately with the planet map.
• Badges work as intended now
• Small fixes too numerous to list or remember.

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Quick Stats (Mid August- Start September 2009)

Bug Reports Made: 75
Developer Code Commits: 23
Total Files Changed: 178

Average TC Daily Logins: 1,756
Average Web/Forum Daily Logins: 1,806
Highest Simultaneous TC User Number: 269
Highest Web User Number: 2,988

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3) Developer Perspective ("Round Table")

Originally Posted by Webbwbb

Hey everyone, I have just started my first semester of college. It is quite an experience that is taking a bit of time to get used to. The application process went pretty fast for the first week but because I have just started school things have slown down in that area quite a bit. We are still looking for more people on QA and will soon be contacting some of the applicants. I appreciate your patience while waiting for our response.
--Webbwbb, QA Manager

Originally Posted by Dame

Hello from your new GM Team! We hope everyone has had a great summer and is ready for some heavy testing on TC: Nova! We'd like to point out as a reminder that /addignore is now available for use and that we hope it will give some of you relief for times when your ears get just a little bit too tired of yapping. We hope it will prove useful to everyone!

As for myself, I've just started back at school and have been working hard with the rest of QA to find any bugs or glitches in the new improved systems. Be sure to do your part and enjoy it after the developers and the rest of QA's hard work!
--Dame, Game Master

Originally Posted by cRush

Hi
--cRush, Developer

Originally Posted by El'layn

Hello all!

As you can see, the Events team has been very busy! Look for more diverse and exciting events now that we have more options available in game. Also, for those who might be interested, we will be beginning RP-events very soon. I can't wait to get large-scale storylines up and running on Nova! Thanks for coming out to our events and taking such great screenies and awesome movies.

See you all in-game!
<3 El'layn, Event Coordinator

Originally Posted by Dannuic

I, like many, recently started school again for fall, but I've still been working when I can on the project, mostly bug fixes on missions and a couple smaller projects here and there as we try to polish the large amount that has been added. As expected, we have seen a lot of bugs show up due to large system implementations (missions had a couple revisions before it got to the form it is now). In any case, I really need to get back to physics. Someone has to obey those laws....
--Dannuic, Developer

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4) Closing:

Over the past few weeks, aside from working on this update, I have been working mostly on the community team restructure. By more clearly stating communications goals for the future and current tasks, and making sure the whole team is involved in the development of community ideas, I'm hoping we can keep more in touch with the community and stay truer to our end goals. I have also been working on the early stages of building a complete documentation wiki for SWGEmu and Core3. Almost all pages (except things like policy) will be wiki-editable by the whole community. It will serve as a practical handbook for contributors, developers, future admins and end users. Its definitely in its infantsy, but the plan is to have a serious knowledge base by the end of the year.(Quick-Pic: http://image.ocdsoft.com/images/izta...q6a73j1jkd.png)

I'd like to re post a response I made in the (now defunct) Project Status thread to leave you with:

Originally Posted by Max

Hi Tropicana,

I understand your frustrations, I really do. I recently returned from an extremely busy time where I could not spend any time monitoring or working on the emulator. However, over the last week or two I have been working extremely hard on, among other things, an update which is at the moment the biggest update we've ever put out. It outlines exact details of "the patch", what's been going on in the OR, introduces new event themes, outlines some internal changes and gives a number of dev perspectives.

I hope you really don't believe that we want to keep you in the dark. It's perfectly true that over the past few months, between the OR and private lives, almost all of us have been less attentive to the community and have not held up the standards that we expect of ourselves, and you expect from us. For that, I sincerely apologize.

I hope that you have the faith in us, or at least the faith in me personally, to know that the intentions behind all that you see is open benefit, and that our lacking is a chink in our armor and nothing more. I seek to expression professionalism and perfection in everything we have done, are doing and will do, however none of us have done this before, and if we can learn a good lesson through failure; Fate I challenge ye.

Regards

And with that, I implore you to do a little dance, make a little love and get down tonight.... Down to the cantina that is.

Have a great two weeks, and enjoy the fruits of the update!

--Team SWGEmu

[Max]

Meanwhile, on Naboo.....

The first thing that greeted her as she keyed open the lock of her long-unused flat in Theed was the musty, cracked smell of dead nannariums. Kellina sighed; if the most pressing problem her home had was unrecycled biomass, then she could count the end of her training trip a success. Dropping her dusty pack just inside the door, she wound her way through the room to two slim, intricately wrought hooks on the far wall. This was always the hardest part: once this was done, she was home. She smiled wryly, and slipped her head through the battered leather straps holding her pike in place across her shoulders.

Careful not to hit the ornate ceiling with the head, she swung the pike to the front and gave the long, wicked blades a last loving polish with her sleeve. "Well, old friend," she said slightly mournfully as she replaced it on the hooks. "Its time for you to rest," Her LVA safely stored, she turned back to the dusty room, "and time for me to get back to work."

An hour later, the flat was looking livable again. The offending flowers had been taken outside, the windows were thrown open and the breezes from the waterfall swirled through her home. She had bought a tin of spice tea when she left Corellia, and she was sipping on her second cup as she settled into her chair and flipped on her datapad. It was time to see what the galaxy had been up to while she'd been off training. Besides, it was better than answering the three hundred unread messages the alert light in the corner was so helpfully reminding her to open.

Naked fighters draw crowds on Lok!

Of all the headlines to see first, Kellina thought as she skimmed the story. Nothing quite like fighting in your skivvies to add an extra dimension of concern to a brawl. She paged forward. This year's Death Race was a smashing, carnage filled success, it seems. The inclusion of the Geonosian Aklays seemed to make things difficult for all, but the winners somehow made it through: the first place winners were LoTrax, Dedaskalion and Faust, second place went to Corbaer and Romulis, and third place to Ma'el and Kendarian. She glanced over her shoulder at her pike and grinned: maybe she should give them a run for their money next year.

She kept reading. There had been an increased interest in big game hunting, with large organized hunts occurring on Endor, Lok and Yavin IV. It seemed from the holos that casualties were minimal, which was always positive. Mos Eisley had been attacked again by Tusken Raiders, but the citizens pushed them back, while increased farming on Dantooine had stirred up the Kunga Tribesmen. Both incursions had been successfully turned back, but the sudden appearance of large numbers of Nightsisters on Dathomir had almost overrun the small Imperial outpost there. That must have been something to see, she mused. Nightsisters were not the kindest of neighbors to deal with.

Last month, the Imperial Game Commission had placed a premium on krayt dragon hides. That would explain the sudden surge in dragon hunting on Tatooine and the subsequent large hunting parties. Several large outdoor events had been staged as well: the society pages were full of slightly embarrassing pictures from Learning, Inyri, El'layn and PhantomLeader's birthday parties. She had no idea how the Ithorian had climbed into the fountain in Doaba Guerfel, but it seemed like he was having a good time. It was his birthday, after all.

She took a long drink of her tea and stretched. As fun as it was to idle away time on the holonet, it was time to get to work. She keyed in her security code, and opened up the Imperial Intelligence documents. Next to her on the table, her tea slowly went cold as she sifted through the reports. The Rebels had been busy.

Somehow, they had managed to locate and activate several databanks from the wreckage of the Death Star. Most of the data had been recovered, but several Rebel agents had escaped with some of the data. Imperial Intelligence had tracked them to Tatooine, then recovered the datapads during a covert raid of Jabba the Hutt's Palace. Somehow, the Rebels located the Imperial regiment guarding the datapads, then engaged the troopers at the Oasis and stole them back. It appeared the Empire gave chase, following them to Corellia, then finally to Rori in an attempt to crush that particular cell. She frowned as she read the battle report. Something had to be done about the insurgents.

While on Rori, the Rebels had located a former Imperial operative and strong-armed him into giving up information on the Empire's shipping lanes. They had attempted to rob a storage facility on Endor, but were badly beaten as they escaped. Kellina read and reread the last report. The Rebels had last been seen on Dantooine: there was no doubt they had taken what they could and made their way back to their long-abandoned base in the north. She laid her datapad in her lap and leaned back into her chair. The base was in a strategically sound position, but it hadn't been used in months. It would take time for the Rebels to get enough manpower and supplies there to make that a viable position. So far, there had been no increase in traffic to the sector. If they were holed up on Dantooine, they were being quiet about it.

Outside her windows, the sun was slipping below the horizon, and the wind was slowly dying off as she silently mulled the reports. Sending a platoon of stormtroopers in to wipe out the cell wasn't an option yet, since the Rebels had a way of slipping out of even the worst situations. The Empire needed intelligence first: reliable, up-to-date tactical assessments of their position in the old base. There was only one person she could think of who could get them that kind of intel.

She pulled her comlink from her pocket. "Imperial Center, get me Ekaika Forge."

[dedaskalion]

OMFG a bi-weekly.

[Valkyra]

Enjoy you guys!


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Originally Posted by Max

The inclusion of the Geonosian Aklays seemed to make things difficult for all, but the winners somehow made it through: the first place winners were LoTrax, Dedaskalion and Faust

StK OWNZ-U!!!

[tamer]

thank you, you guys did good work, /momhug to all you

[Vlada]

Holy Mary, Mother Of God...

[corbaer]

/3cheers STAFF

"Hip hip hooorraaay!"

[miteofglut]

About time

(I kid! Excellent job guys, am I really looking forward to grinding? Gasp.)

[illipthgore]

awesome,good things come to those that wait :}

i feel my fortune telling powers kikcing in, i predict a very quiet time on the forums over the next 2 weeks :P}

[Tonedus]

Nice update, cant wait for it to go live on Nova :-)

[fettman]

Woot dare i say that us amature developers may get new toys to play with soon too LOL

[ivelios]

I think it will be great to get back on the grind. It kind of takes some of the fun out of the game when you just have to click on a gungan to max a profession and get a full kit of gear.

Also, now that mission terms and lairs are working, it will actually feel rewarding to go out and explore. Also the in-game economy will actually matter, for a change.

From a strictly developmental perspective, the fact that everyone will be running around grinding instead of just hanging around Theed all day will probably result in many more bugs being reported, due to the more thorough testing of gameplay mechanics.

A quick question (if anyone has the time to answer), how many credits will players start off with? How many did we start off with back in the day (does anyone remember)?

[dominius]

Awesome. Many thanks to everyone.

[Tosheden]

Yea this just made my day and it hasnt even started yet <3 Devs/Staff