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Old 12-31-2008, 10:08 PM
Ramsey Ramsey is offline
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Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: VA, USA
Posts: 714
Developer Perspectives

Quote:
Originally Posted by Anakis
I started coding for SWGEmu in September of this year. Since then, I’ve implemented forage, medical forage, and a randomized weather system. I’ve also reworked the Teras Kasi meditate and powerboost skills to fix bugs and make them behave more like they did during pre-cu. At the present time I am working on force of will, the Teras Kasi incapacitation recovery skill.

My focus thus far has been on skills and features and I think that’s what I’ll continue to work on as we begin 2009. I’ll also step on some bugs here and there. Thank you all for supporting this project. We will deliver what you have been waiting so long for.
- Anakis, SWGEmu Developer
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bobius
2008 has been the year of SWGEmu. While many know that this project has existed for a few years, what they may not realize is that Core3, the current version of the source code, was only open sourced in December of 2007. This means our current code base is only a little over a year old, and I'm wowed by the progress that has been made. I encourage all of you to check out [revision 20] and see exactly how far we've come. I joined the development team in April 2008, since then, our repository has changed over 700 times, each time adding a feature or fixing a bug. That is the power of open source.

I am thankful for the past 8 months that I've been allowed to contribute to this project. Now that we're about to make the next big leap forward in this project's history, I can not really express the excitement I have for what is to come.

What is Bobius working on?
I've just finished the framework for Active Areas. Active Areas, allow us to trigger certain events when a player enters or exits a certain area. This will allow us to make more dynamic events, implement features such as badges and sarlacc poisons, and bring new content to the table (think ambushes). The problem with active areas has always been coming up with a method of tracking player movement without adding extra overhead. I'm happy to say that I believe that we've come up with a way to add these features, while only adding the overhead equivalent of spawning a single creature to the planet. Check out the fountain outside of the cloner in Theed. I've set up an active area stress test there. If all goes well, you should start seeing more dynamic areas soon!

I'm also working on faction stuff. Pretty soon all creatures will have assigned factions. You will be able to gain and earn faction points for things other than the Empire and the Rebellion. This also means that other NPCs will interact with each other as they should. You'll see hutts attacking imperials, thugs attacking policemen, etc..

With missions, lairs, and player housing getting ever closer to completion, I can also start finishing my work on the GCW. Expect to see Imperial and Rebel missions and factional bases as soon as the underlying framework is complete.
- Bobius, SWGEmu Developer
Quote:
Originally Posted by cRush
I came to project in July of 2008 with the mindset to make a difference here at SWGEmu, and hopefully motivate others to do the same. Although, I have been programming for roughly 11 years, my experience with C++ is rather young, as this is my first real project with it. Fortunately, I spent nearly three years with the RunUO project coding in C#, and making major core modifications to that system. I found that the experience I gained in that endeavour, coupled with my 7 years of web development and strong object oriented design skills, have proved invaluable in overcoming the overwhelming sensation of the massive scope of this project.

My contributions to this project are with great reward, as I have learned quicker than I could have ever hoped possible with traditional training, and I have opened windows to many new areas of thought in this process. I adapted to the C++ language in about a week, and through the help of some of the existing developers, was up to speed and contributing before I knew it. Now, over six months later, I am proud to take my place among a community that has helped recreate a dream that a corporate giant told us was impossible.

My first major contribution to the project was the implementation of Medical and Doctor skills, but since then I have added in many small bug fixes and optimizations that have helped in the creation of other systems.

Moving forward, I look to continue to help polish up the code base and push for the release of TC:SC as a stable working beta copy of our hard work. With food, drink, and spice on the threshold, awaiting a few other systems completion, I have much still to offer the project. Furthermore, as the project nears completion, the much awaited PCP project will resume, and I do plan to head that project once again. I know many of you are interested in being able to contribute, and as soon as we are ready to continue in that direction again, we will be sure to inform the community about this project.

I just want to thank all of the other developers and staff members for all of the hard work they have put in to maintaining the professional image that we strive for here at SWGEmu.com.

Finally, I want to thank the community for sticking with us and believing in us. None of this would be possible without your support. Look forward to 2009 being even more productive than 2008!
- cRush, SWGEmu Developer
Quote:
Originally Posted by Dannuic
Comments
I am relatively new to the team, joining in the later half of this year, and I have been working on mostly adding new stuff to the server. I started out with a couple of simple things like adding secondary color customization (which I think actually found it's way off trunk). Secondary color led naturally to fixing a large quantity of entertainer bugs/feature fixes, and of course dice to round things out. Eventually, I implented experience and training onto trunk after rigorous testing on CombatTest, thanks to Thrin and his team.

In the immediate future I intend to do some cleanup and bug removal, because that is something that is currently necessary before anymore major additions are added. After it seems appropriate, I plan to work on adding pets sometime in 2009. I'm sure some other major projects will surface later in the year, and hope that we can get some phenomenal input from the community as people test out our work. The faster bugs and unintentional features come to our attention, the more able we are to work them into what we are doing.

And with that, I'd like to thank the community for the feedback I have seen, and I hope that we, as a community, are able to put together what is shaping up to be an excellent product. It's exciting.
- Dannuic, SWGEmu Developer
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kellina
SWGEmu CSR/EC Team:
The CSR/EC Team would like to thank you all for a wonderful year, we have been working hard at keeping the peace, as well as offering support on the forums, irc and our support site.

We are also working hard at continuing to plan events for all those to enjoy. Please remember that we have a forum and irc channel (#swgemuevents) if you would like to discuss anything that would interest you for a event.

Also a heads up to those who enjoy the events on TC, there is something rather large in the works, so keep your eyes peeled.

With the latest news of our Sun Crusher server we will be in need of more CSRs and ECs to cover the TC (Nova). Our team is fairly new, yet it is very important, keeping the players and the developers up to date on what each other is thinking/doing. As we expand to our new Server, more CSRs and EC will be incorporated.

We have created a CSR/EC application for all those to feel free to apply, the last day you can apply will be Jan 31st.

CSR/EC Application <- Click To Apply.

Current CSR list:
Kellina – CSR/EC Lead
Ekaika
Learningdisease
Max
MrBlonde
Tolbat
Vashman

Current EC list:
Kellina – CSR/EC Lead
DavinFelth
Towlin

On Leave CSR/EC list:
Aremathiea
Serpentkaa
Sperg


We would like to thank everyone for a wonderful year and are excited to experience the days/months/years to come!


Creatures/NPCs – Caves/Dungeons:
We have come a long way with creatures on the TC, currently we are finishing up the skills for the last of them which should be done in the next week or so. Our next step is finishing up all the city NPC spawns and converting any creatures/npcs that are inside of cities to attackable objects.

Once all the creatures/npcs are complete we will be moving on to getting lairs all finished up, as in getting each creatures lair scripted and working.
Once lairs are complete then everything will be ready for Missions and random spawns etc.

We are also going to continue to finish up all the rest of the caves/dungeons/instances as time goes by, and new features permit us to do so. So keep watch for those.

I’m very excited to get to this point, that means we will have full world spawns! And will be great on the new Sun Crusher playable server once it’s up and running.

Thanks to all those that are and have been part of my Creature/Npc – Caves/Dungeon Team Keep up the good work! (Kellina, LearningDisease, Kaigeos, Hashman) and I would also like to thank those that have helped in the past. (Farmer John, Macrona, Kasea)

Loot Table:
The loot table is a ongoing project, and is huge! we are continuing to work on it and get it as close to pre-cu as possible. currently we have just about everything that could be crafted/looted available, but as time goes by and items are made craftable we will be removing things and tuning/finishinig it up to how it was with a few tweaks.

Thanks to the loot table team for all the work you have done! Keep it up!
(Kellina, Farmer John, Hashman)

- Kellina, SWGEmu Developer
Quote:
Originally Posted by Kyle

2008 has been a enormous year for SWGEmu. A full year of open source has yielded many talented individuals doing various things for the project including scripting, artwork, writing, coding and researching. I have been on the dev team since the moment it went open source, and before hand with the Launchpad development. 2009 means three major things for the work that I do.

1) The completion of crafting for all professions.
2) The birth of more realistic AI
3) The revamp of Launchpad Enhanced to be much more community friendly.

Crafting

There have been a number of breakthrough's in crafting behind the scenes over the last few weeks / months. Vast amounts of new and old data have been merged together into a new database containing what seems to be approximately 80-90% of all relevant data needed to bring exactness to the process. The last portion already has a majority of the data collected and entry should begin again in the next few weeks. I am at a time now where getting this data together is an immediate priority, followed by getting it into core 3. I envision the completion of crafting to be an enormous turning point in this project.

AI

This is something I have be very excited to work on. When crafting is in and ready, we will begin working on making the creatures and NPC's move, plot, stalk, flee, attack, tank, kite, and perform a lot of actions to make combat much more engaging. There are a number of cool things that AI will do for the game to make it feel more pre-cu. This will be an area to watch with interest when we get started on it.

Launchpad Revamp

This is also an area of deep interest for me. The launchpad in it's current state has far surpassed its' original intentions and design. It is rapidly approaching 1 million hits on the status page (See the bottom of the TC announcements in the launchpad). The next incarnation of the launchpad will be with server administration in mind. It will be designed to make client file distribution easier for server administrators to customize the client required to connect to their server. The short list of potential features would include:

Custom installation distribution
Optional Online profile storage
Portals for community submissions of things like Loading screens, login backgrounds, launchpad skins and other custom content.
Tools to allow admins full control over many of these features as pertains to their own server.
A centralized location for servers to be listed, without requiring them to be physically associated in any way.

The launchpad is and will be further designed with the community server in mind so that any server can use it regardless of their size, status or location. In reality, regardless of even what incarnation of the client patch level, server codebase or other situations, the launchpad should be able to handle login, distribution, and many more features.

Thanks for the support, and I look forward to the coming months because of the exciting things coming down the pipe.

- Kyle, SWGEmu Developer
Quote:
Originally Posted by Link3978
Hey guys,

Long time no see. For those of you that don't know me, last January Ritter, Kyle, and I did a lot of work with crafting. With help from Ritter and Kyle, I wrote the first implementation of our schematic system. Some of you might remember that.

On to current things. I have just recently finished with all my post graduation stuff and am starting to get back into coding. I have just spent the last couple days working on fixing heightmaps. Player housing and correct mob movement should be able to continue being worked on now. I am currently trying to find something to work on ... might end up being cells/structures, but dunno yet.

Thank you all for supporting SWGEmu over the years.
Happy Holidays SWGEmu community!!

~Link
- Link3978, SWGEmu Developer
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nincb
Hello Everyone,

Most of you probably do not know me yet, so let me introduce myself. I have joined this project some time ago and I have been very impressed with the progress that has been done. I have started work on several areas of the code including finishing up bazaar/vendor. My main focus lately has been finishing up all of the packets which have not been fully documented, and that is pretty much almost completed. I have also been fixing/cleaning various other things.

As far as 2009 is concerned, I will probably move into the profession area (ie. Combat Medic). There are also various things which we have packets on but are not completely implemented that I will work on as well. I also plan on going over crafting in the coming months (although that is something that is pretty much finished). Another item on my schedule is working on documenting a lot of the existing code. Finally, there are also some client stuff that I will begin work on.

Again, as most will say...2008 has been a very successful year, and we want to remember 2009 being even better. To do this, I highly encourage everyone to take part in the community, even if it is not contributing things to the emulator code itself. Even just testing on the SWGEmu Test Center helps out a lot! Attend all of the devchats that run monthly, and be sure to always check back on our biweekly updates as well. Also keep an eye out on any stress tests / other events that are planned throughout 2009, the more people that attend the better!

With that, I hope everyone will have an excellent holiday season and I wish you all a happy New Year!

- Nincb, SWGEmu Developer
Quote:
Originally Posted by PanchJr
I joined the team soon after the project went open source. The first thing I found out was that writing code for such a large, complex project was nothing like anything I had done before. Luckily help was on hand from the original team.

Once I had familiarised myself with the code by doing various small changes, my first big project was the bazaar/vendor code which involved a lot of packet work. Once that was in a fairly stable state I somehow managed to get talked into looking at the combat code.

The combat revision is currently one of the biggest projects for the emulator. Every change to the code is thoroughly tested, by QA and the profession reps, and changes made as required. It also involves a lot of research to find details of how all the skills worked. The current implementation is much closer to what pre-cu was like than what is available on the test centre and getting more like pre-cu every day. You probably want to know when you will see the result of all this work on the test centre all I can say say is it will be added 'when it is ready'.

Here's hoping 2009 is as productive as 2008
- PanchJr, SWGEmu Developer
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ramsey
SWGEmu is now 4 years old as of yesterday (12/24/08). We've gone from a station server dummy server to an MMO engine powerhouse on the spare time of many generous individuals. We've finally began to make steps towards separating our testing environment from a playable PreCU and I could not be happier. Spending my late teen years growing with this project and to finally see what it has become feels amazing. I would like to thank all of the developers that have joined the team over the last few years and pick up the hard work that had to be done when the older devs like myself were plagued with other distractions

Of course SWGEmu's infallible community is why we are surviving today. It is nice to know that so many people have backed our efforts, even though we have been far from perfect, and have continued to do so coming into 2009. The final few turns to v1.0 are coming up on the road and I believe the fruits of our efforts will make the wait feel worthwhile. I have yet to play a live version of SWG and I am excited to enjoy the game for it's content, not the formation of bytes its sending over the wire in the background.

What I'm doing: I'm grinding through various actions for the NPC AI scripts. These npc actions will be what you use in the script to tell the object what to do based on certain rules. It sounds more exciting than it actually is. I'll be doing this through break
- Ramsey, SWGEmu Developer
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SWGEmu is a non-profit, open source community project.

Last edited by Ramsey; 12-31-2008 at 10:17 PM.