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Welcome to my forty-sixth public report as a Science Officer, incredibly late (*cough*, sorry… as a trade-off I'll post a few in a row >:)). Onwards to the news:

Science Office News:

1. My last report noted the fact that we lost our messageboards at the infiltrator-wing.com domain, we have since long been using the new one at http://www.ehnet.org/mb/viewforum.php?f=122&sid=b2dc2ad6db4986284939c144e6b0105e - go there for all your Imperial Alliance questions and information.
2. Thanks to the help of Shinobi, Archnagel and Zeth (and myself :P) I've been able to add a lot of additional graphics and craft profiles to the Fleet Manual. The patch archive has been updated to link these new profiles.
3. The Fleet Manual will see another major update soon, with the addition of 3d viewable DXF files to all craft profiles. Thanks to LCM Blacksun for helping me with the java. These DXFs, a comon 3D file format, will also be downloadable for graphics and OPT creation. (Though you'd have to texture them.)
4. Thanks to the research of Spearhawk and Werdna we will be able to give Imperial Alliance a 2 sided radar as the X-Wing series have, the single FS2 syle radar will still be an option however. Spearhawk even received a Bronze Star from us for his excellent trick to split the radar in Imperial Alliance, to make it look more like we are used to.
5. More funky updates are being done to Imperial Alliance, we'll have a fully new beta out soon to show you. It will still need freespace2 for now.. but Underdogs has put that back on their site anyway. ;) (obviously i didn't just tell you that... or that the old (current) beta is at http://www.minos.net/~sco/test/ImperialAllianceb30.zip :P)
6. On the inside I've been preparing a large competition for you all, which has been submitted to the CS and will start on the release of the next News Letter. Be prepared, it should be good fun!
7. My fatherly advice ofthis week: ALWAYS do the FULL installs of the spacesim games. On several you're not even able to do custom missions without it, and on about all your patches will not work.

Science Office Status:

CA:SCO: Admiral Darkhill has been working on a newer version of our IA .exe's mainly including the split radar and the updated interface screens.

SCOA: CPT Tim has been UV mapping craft and generally debugging them (Craft can now fire unlinked shots as well.) for Imperial Alliance

Site: The Science Office site can be found at http://sco.minos.net or via the redirect http://scienceoffice.isCool.net. The mirror can for now still be found at http://www.gimmie.tudelft.nl/homes/blok10b/ender/sco. Fleet Manual has seen updates in craft pictures and types.

Command Staff Objectives:

Continued patch development and platform resource: Continued modelling and texturing on the Doomsday Class Corvette, Torpedo Sphere and Rebel Cockpits for TIE Fighter.

Get a release candidate version of Imperial Alliance released: Added split radar, added a.large amount of interface screens, remapped several ships.

Upgrade and add to the Fleet Manual: Added many craft pictures, added many craft and researched displaying 3D models some more.

Science Office Projects:

Imperial Alliance: With the release of the freely available source code of FS2, we have started on making a Star Wars game out of it. We can freely distribute a finished game as long as we have all our own data files (graphics, sounds, models etc). About all craft from X-Wing have been added and most of the interface has been replaced. Multi Player has been completely integrated, now working on making physics more like in our other games and replacing more interface screens.

Finishing up:

I think that's it - If I've forgotten anything or if you have comments, suggestions or corrections, let me know via email or look us up at #sco. Don't forget that all the projects are described in more detail on the SCO site.

(use only mindb_ender@hotmail.com for official SCO mails.) or ICQ (9706474). Preferably do not mail large files to me, but DCC them via IRC I’m practically always online at #science_office, #emperor’s_hammer and #tiecorps using the nick MindB_ndr (or variations.)
 
All my SCO reports are available online as well: you can reach them on the SCO site but they are on the TIE Corps site, CS reports, as well.

Until next time, good luck and have fun!