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Old 04-17-2009, 11:48 PM
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Communications Director (On Leave)
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Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Australia
Posts: 2,096
Bi-Weekly Update for 4/17/2009


Bi-Weekly Update for 4/17/09
1) Update Overview (TOC):
  • Missions!
  • Creature Handler
  • Structures
  • SunCrusher Milestone Change
  • Creature AI
  • Quality Assurance Applications
  • The Development team is Recruiting!
  • Regarding Forum Moderation...
  • Recent Events Summary
  • Phase Testing Results (This Week)

Body:

Missions!

An "SWGEmu Mission Terminal" will be spawned in Theed by the Bluefrog & ST's. The first wave of missions will be basic and will NOT HAVE REWARDS. They will essentially ask you to go kill a few creatures and report to an NPC. If things run smoothly, Ramsey will add lair destroy & item delivery objectives as well as open up another terminal in anchorhead.

Please do not complain about mission design for early testing stages - they are geared to make sure objectives work & update correctly.

PreCU-style missions will follow. Mission distribution will be limited to select terminals so its easier to manage content and guarantee spawns. Ramsey will be spending Friday (4/17) merging the his mission branch with the stable TC one. Tasks ingame will be updated once missions go live. Please report any bugs you encounter on the bug tracker: http://swgemu.com/bugs . Once the boring basic missions are out of the way, the fun & interesting ones will roll out - but we need bug reports!



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Creature Handler

Preliminary work on Creature Handler has begun, with MrTopas working on basic AI commands (including attack, follow, stay and guard), creature evolution (babies grow up into adults, cute huh), as well as the storage and calling of pets.

The next week and more will see the development of:
  • add the pet to the loot permissions
  • learning the name
  • baby/growth
  • pet healing
  • grouping
  • taming
  • creature handler xp
With Creature Handler as one of the few hurtles feature wise before a more complete SWGEmu core, this development is certainly a milestone to be proud of. The ability to manage pets as data pad items will also pave the way for future expansion into Bio Engineering and Droid Engineer, two eagerly awaited crafting areas.

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Structures

Structures, one area of the core which has been elusive for a number of months, seems to be coming to a conclusive endgame with cRush finalizing his Installations and Housing code this weekend. With internal testing commencing on Saturday, and the finalization of basic housing by monday, the code can be expected to hit the Test Centre early next week, hot off the press and ready to be tested.

cRush's Structures code is the third of its dynasty, boasting improved cleanliness, a smaller set of includes, improved stability and higher expandability. It is a reflection both of the dedication of a number of individuals into Structures over the past months (including McMahon, Tow'lin, Malthol, TAFirehawk, Kyle and others) as well as cRush's perpetuating coding skills and borderline-OCD sense of perfection.

We are all looking forward to diving head first into a much more complete and more compliant world of structures, including housing, over the next few weeks. We are also looking forward immensely to cRush's future coding projects, which will undoubtedly be as stunning as this. Kudos and cheers.

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SunCrusher Milestone Change

The Milestone we had originally introduced for SunCrusher has been extended another two months, to now fall on June 30 2009. This is due mainly to the fact that all of the major feature implementations on the horizon will need to be tested thoroughly, and their stability will have to be ensured before we are comfortable using them on SunCrusher.

Things are moving along very well. We have a few major rewrites to do for code cleanup, and a good bit of feature polishing that should happen much faster when the school year is over. We will never commit to any release date, but these assembla goals are what we are shooting for as a team, however, we will extend dates if needs be.

Note that this is not an extension of a deadline, but rather an expansion of what SunCrusher should include. Some tasks listed "post-SC launch" will now be folded into the SunCrusher release. Along with all the other areas mentioned in this update, these include:

Complete Object Restructure
A system of templates has been devised by TheAnswer and Kyle, whereby data is converted from the SOE Client into LUA scripts, to allow a true and correct template for items. This will be part of a complete object system rewrite, from scratch, using all that has been learnt from the first system.
What does this actually mean? Well, it means that 90% of item bugs will be avoided before they even come up.

Crafting Manager Restructure
Kyle is also going to be totally restructuring the way objects are created in Core3. His new crafting manager will effectively mean every item has a "schematic" of sorts, from which all other types of that object are based. Areas such as loot and quest rewards will be generated based off of these schematics also.
These changes will ensure that objects are universal, and nothing is out of place. It will work wonders for cleaning up loot and missions.

Remember that SunCrusher's launch criteria is:
Quote:
Sun Crusher will be launched when the development team is 100% ready and confident that we can provide a mostly uninterrupted, mostly permanent, and mostly complete server.
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Creature AI

We're developing a better AI system in Core3 which will be robust, smart, and entertaining to interact with. It will not make the game "harder" or radically different, even thought it will have the potential to do so. Creatures will have the ability to make decisions on their own, posses a generic motivation, receive orders from superiors, patrol habitats, call for help (ex. alert nearby ST's on the radio of your position, temporarily changing patrol schedule), etc etc .
An aggro range (..not a big step from pokemon grass) and random movement directions are rampant in current MMO's, which is not where we should be in 2009. The AI system will start as a replacement for what we currently have running and we'll build upon it over time.

On top of normal AI, It is now possible to write NPC dialogue in script. This feature will be documented on trac under "Systems". Examples will be shown with the upcoming Mission-related NPC's. This will allow future NPC conversations, including generic and custom ones, to be written easily and quickly, paving the way for more realistic commoners and rudimentary quests alike.

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Quality Assurance Applications
from the Head of Quality Assurance

As many of you already know, we had been accepting applications to join the QA team. On Monday we closed the application process and are now moving to interviews. Those applicants who have made it to this stage will hear from us very soon to schedule an interview. If you do not hear from us by Saturday then assume you did not make it into this stage.
Thank you to all who applied.

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The Development team is Recruiting!
from the Head of Development

We have a few mini projects that have been neglected because the current team is overwhelmed by other tasks.

Be familiar with the Developer Standards and Expectations

Note that we are making an exception to section A. If you are interested in working on the following projects, you can apply for a developers position simply by sending a PM to either kyle or Ramsey. We will then setup a quick chat with you over IRC, to get a feel of who you are and how you can best aid the team. We will brief you on your particular section and be available for consultation on code structure. Aside from that, there should be little need for a "training session". These projects require little oversight if you are somewhat familiar with the structure of Core3 and have a solid background with C++.

New dev team members will start by working on one of the following projects:

1) Misc Bug Fixing
There are a huge amount of miscellaneous bugs floating around on the bug tracker. We need someone that is willing to go around and fix some of the the major / normal priority bugs. This job requires a lot of code sleuthing and can be done if you are familiar with the structure of Core3. You will be exempt from responsibility of Travel bugs.

2) Professions - Beginning Game
Work closely with the QA team to make sure there is no missing/incomplete/buggy code for beginning game with professions. The idea is to be able to play the beginning game without the aid of blue frogs - you do NOT need to worry about other systems aside from the profession code itself.

3) Travel
cRush is extremely busy with harvesters and player housing, so it would be nice to have someone tackle the travel system so he doesn't have to worry about it. The travel system needs to be cleaned up and bug free. Be familiar with the Travel section of the code.

4) /bug
Small project, but it would be nice to have the /bug command handled by Core3. Any packet work, if not already done, can be done by Ramsey.

Projects (1) and (2) are of highest priority. If you would like to help with any of these tasks, please PM either kyle or Ramsey on the forums

We are looking to get new members onboard ASAP!

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Regarding Forum Moderation...
from the SWGEmu Moderators

We continue to use and enforce the infraction system on the forums. Please be advised, that insulting other members, +1 posts, trolling for reactionary posts, and off-topic posts are against our terms of service that each member agreed to prior to posting.

In addition, we've recently seen an increase in profane/ugly IRC behavior.

We do not want to give infractions or ban people! However, we must enforce these policies to continue to provide an open forum and IRC for both new and veteran users to participate in and enjoy. There is no favoritism or special allowances for seniority.

Let's try to be more respectful of one another and productive with our posting and chat in public channels.

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Recent Events Summary
from the SWGEmu Events Team

The EC staff has hosted numerous successful PVP events and have many more planned. The participation has been outstanding! I have been trying to have a bi-weekly major event that will have a morning event and a repeat in the evening. This is to allow more opportunity for the players outside the United States to be able to participate. The turn out for the 4/11 event was amazing! The next major event will be on 4/25, and I am planning on a 12:00pm CST and a 7:00 CST time. We are attempting a continuing story with these events and the small skirmish events during the week, Stay tuned for updates on the war!!

We check the forums several times a day, and ALL ideas are read and appreciated. There is also an Event Feedback thread that we would like to see being used for constructive criticism. If you have an idea on how things could be improved, that is where you need to be posting.

We would also like to thank the community for the support they have given us for these events. Our goal as a team is to make this the best experience in online gaming anywhere! Thank you.

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Phase Testing Results (This Fortnight)

Reports Made: 232
Reports Resolved: 288
Most Popular Categories: Miscellaneous followed by Crafting

Please note we are no longer accepting reports regarding harvesters until cRush's structures update is pushed to TC, at which stage we will take as many CURRENT ones as you can muster. However, at this stage it is not worth us taking bug reports for a system which is about to be updated massively.

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Developer Perspective ("Round Table")

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramsey
After committing missions this weekend...

I'm going to spend this week fixing any bugs that may arise with missions, updating docs, and scripting more missions to test various objective types. Most bug reports assigned to me on Mantis have fixes in another one of my Core3 copies, but I'll worry about merging those with STABLE later.

I'll have extra time to get started on basic AI as well. The Source Engine does AI very well and some of their concepts will probably be applied to our system.

We really need to get new developers onboard, please PM either kyle or myself if you are interested in joining.

I am also, slowly, writing the Articles of Incorporation SWGEmu can file as Non-Profit Organization. We may have to change the name of the organization, in which case it will "own" SWGEmu, since Incorporating with the name "SWGEmu" could raise some red flags at LA's IP department.
Quote:
Originally Posted by MrTopas
In the last weeks I was working on the vehicles and pets. The changes to vehicles are completed and will make adding creature mounts easier.

Pets made a great progress so far. They can be stored and called from the data pad and the basic pet AI is completed. The pets understand the owners commands and can attack, follow, stay and guard. Baby pets grow up to adults. To complete the first stage of the pet development many sub systems, like healing, damage map, and more, need to be modified.

Novice creature handler could be added in the next week, if I have some spare time.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Uli
Hey, haven't written a round table for a little while.
Will probably busy for a few weeks now but here is some work on houses for people who do not check out the future server ideas.

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h1...i/feba39f0.jpg
http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h1...i/eae10577.jpg

And cRush's favorite.

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h1...i/d93742c6.jpg

Anyway there are more screenshots in the thread i made about it.
This does also mean that any and all buildings from NGE can be imported to Pre-CU they do require some alterations, things such as the Star Destroyer could be imported from NGE easily as well as the space station.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PanchJr
I have been busy removing as many combat bugs as possible and tidying up the code. During the process I have found the possible cause of various other bugs and where possible have tried to fix them. There is one issue with creature agro which has manifested itself during my changes.

In the next two weeks I will fix the remaining agro bug and improve the agro system so that the attacker that has done the most cumulative damage becomes the target of the creature. Once this is done and I have tested all my changes the code will be committed to SVN. Once this is done I will look into fixing the bugs where I have discerned the cause.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jer
Hey everyone, since being added on to the team, you probably haven't seen me around quite as much as I would've liked. I've been pretty occupied with school, among other things. But I know our ECs have been busy lately thinking up some great events, and I look forward to helping with those as well as being altogether more involved from here on out. See you all around.
Quote:
Originally Posted by CSR Team
Hello Nova players!

Thank you for your outstanding conduct in the effort to provide a proper testing environment for the relentless squishing of bugs!

We would like to direct you to the @bug feature, available to all players, that will allow you access the bug reporting system of SWGEmu.

*PLEASE NOTE* You must create a NEW login on this system! You may use your same account name, assuming is has not been taken by another.

While we appreciate the /tell's to CSR's (and please do not feel inhibited to continue to reach out to us) reporting a bug is the MOST effective means of drawing developer attention to critical issues.

Thanks for the support, and let's squash some bugs!
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Closing:

"You can't always get what you want, but if you try sometimes, you'll get what you need" Mick Jagger sings. Ask an economist and you will be told that needs drive an economy and wants make it grow. Ask an artist, and you will be told that wants are the colour inside an outline of need.
It is true what the Rolling Stones penned in 1969, and it applies more so today than possibly ever before. In an economic climate, as it is so often referenced, where needs are met with a struggle and wants are discarded, I think we have all learned that you can't always get what you want, perhaps the hard way.
If you want something, are you greedy for gaining it? I don't believe so. Superlatively, however, is the fact that you must respect needs and put them above wants. Greedy men are men who disregard the needs of others, and instead chose to fulfill their own wants.

We all want SunCrusher, but what does it need to really work?

Until next time.

--Team SWGEmu
__________________
Max
Communications Director (On Leave)


www.swgemu.com | max@swgemu.com

SWGEmu is a non-profit, open source community project.

Last edited by Ekaika; 04-18-2009 at 11:39 PM.