Bi-Weekly Update 5/1

[Seaseme]

1) Update Overview: (TOC)
-Lairs from PanchJr and Non-creature attacking/combat.
-Heightmap tool from Ramsey
-Blue Frogs from Bobius

2) Body:
PanchJr has setup the framework for attack non-creature objects, and then went on to implementing lairs!


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Ramsey has been working on a tool that will finally be able to retrive a heightmap from the game. The tool attaches itself to the client and injects x/y values, then reads the z value at that location. Tech stuff aside, this tool is almost complete and will be the solution to many of our features just waiting to jump on the TC (housing, better npc movement etc.).

Screenshot: http://swgemu.com/images/heightwoot.jpg

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Bobius is working on implementing Blue Frogs onto the test center. VIDEO below!




3) Developer Perspective: ("Round Table")

PanchJr:
I suppose I could be called the 'quiet developer', I don't say much just like to get the job done. I am also probably the oldest member of the team, I have been coding since the 70's

I joined the SWGEmu team soon after SWGEmu went Open Source and have been doing varied things since. My most noticable contribution being the bazaar code.

Currently I am working on changing the combat system to allow attacks on things other than creatures. I have now finished the coding of this and have done basic testing. Such major changes will need a lot of testing before they reach the test centre however.

Having set up the framework the first non-creature objects I have implemented are lairs.
As you can see from the screenshot this is now working.

I am now looking at sorting out all the things that go with lairs. I can get lairs to spawn mobs (including babies) at startup but spawning creatures when the lair is attacked is causing problems. Also I need to work on the creature agro code to work properly in lair groups, so still plenty to do.

Once this is working, as intended, I am tempted to look at implementing a simplified pet system as a stepping stone torwards a full implementation of creature handler.

I will be requesting information from creature handlers and others that remember how lairs and training worked pre-CU I had some CH in my first character's template but never went master (he was primarily a Wookie Musician).

Ramsey:

It's a relief to finally see some closure to the height map problem. We still have to figure out how we are going to load/stream the huge maps, but at least getting them shouldn't be too much of a problem from now on.
I had originally started on attempting to generate a heightmap from the terrain files used in the client. I learned a LOT from doing work on that, but the amount of time and effort to do research on each and every single portion of a .trn file was enormous. I started working on it in July of 2007 and eventually gave up on it a few weeks back.

About a week ago, we were talking about ways to load a huge height map and other ways to obtain the z values. The idea of making a "trainer" or tool that reads client memory for the z values dawned upon me as a plausible solution. I haven't written any tool of the sort since Halo 1 came out for PC's (2003?) so I had to relearn the art. Anyway the tool finally started coming together in the past couple of days, and now all that is left to be done is have it call the Z update function. Injecting new x/y coordinates changes the position of the character, but the client doesn't update with a new z coordinate. I assume that the client has a move function that calls a Z update function. An easy way out would be to simply have the tool hold an arrow key down to make the client call a z update, but not move the character off the x/y coordinate we set for it. I'll be trying various things later on in the week as well as, obviously, finding the offset of the z update function and calling it.

So...yea. Heightmaps have almost been conquered! +0.5

Bobius:

In the past few weeks, I’ve mainly been working on squashing a few of the bugs that have been reported. Those fixes should be coming to TC soon. None of that is very exciting, I’m afraid, but what is somewhat exciting, is what I’m working on now… Blue Frogs…

For those of you who don’t know, a Blue Frog is an NPC that we can put on the Test Center, which gives out free gear and trains certain professions. Having a Blue Frog is very beneficial for testing purposes in several ways. For instance, as it stands now we have all characters spawn with everything they could possibly need to test every feature in the game. If we add more items, players need to create new characters to get those items. Now with the Blue Frog, you can just go and get a set of crafting tools, if you want to test crafting, or a set of weapons if you want to test combat.

Blue Frogs are not only useful for new players. Sometimes when we fix bugs in the game, it causes items that were created before a specific patch to be unusable. Instead of having you create a new character, we can just make that item available on a blue frog, so you can replace it. Blue Frogs also let us specify certain professions, in which you can be trained for free. This will let you test specific professions without having to grind the xp for them (once xp is put into place of course)

Anyway, enough with the talk. Here it is.

Youtube sucks for video quality, so a higher resolution video can be found here.

They should be completely finished by the end of the week.

McMahon:
The last few weeks I've fixed about half of the outstanding "bugs" in musician. I've also managed to get in "Building Types" which has allowed me to restrict Shock Healing + Mind Wounds to actual "Cantinas/Hotels/Theaters." The framework and implementation for Medical Centers is also there to help with the Medical/Doctor professions.

Next on my plate is going to be implementing Dancer/Musician Buffs - I'm currently doing a lot of research on this and could really use any additional community help. If you're interested in helping, I've been trying to get feedback/information from the Profession Testing forums. The Entertainer forum is at: http://swgemu.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=64 and specifically the buff research thread is at: http://swgemu.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10443

Your help is extremely appreciated - I have to admit I never played an entertainer on Live - so all I really have to work off of is previous posts/and support from the community.

4) Closing:
Where does this update leave us:
Well, the game is starting to mature more and more every day. It's amazing to see how far we have gone since going open source. With heightmaps, we'll soon have housing on the TC. Lairs now means we'll start to focus on possible missions. Blue frogs, a more friendly test center environment. The possibilities are endless, and really everyone should be excited and look forward to what is coming to the TC. Remember to keep an eye on the assembla/trac timeline page located here: http://public.swgemu.com (click on trac->timeline).

We would like to thank the people that regularly sign on the TC, and be as active as they can. Even idling helps us while you are away. The TC has seen stable numbers and we are hoping those numbers keep rising. In fact, the reason some of the bug fixes haven't made it to the test center recently is because the server has been up, without crashing, for over 10 days!

Finally, we'd like to bring some more attention to one of the newer features on the forums; the ability to search for people by their original character name and galaxy. Please read this post for a short how to guide explaining how this feature works.

Hope you enjoyed this biweekly update, we look forward to writing the next one!