Science Office Report
Mail | News | Status | Objectives | Projects | Finish | Other Reports

 

"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government."

<salute>

Welcome to my fiftyfirst public report as a Science Officer, incredibly late (though also just a week since the last one.). Onwards to the news:

Science Office News:

  1. Big news this week is that the stand alone beta of imperial Alliance has been completed! This means we now have a version that doesn't need FS2 anymore and which basically is its own game (not a mod). From here on we will replace and upgrade parts we added in quickly to get here (like parts of the concourse) and test and configure a lot. (like craft stats.) According to planning we should have a "demo" for you all to enjoy in a month or three, four.
  2. Alongside of this we have started our "Closed Beta" in Phantom Squadron on the ISD Immortal. The selected beta testers will firstly of course just play the game a lot to find and report bugs but also help in development, by the way of things like voice acting, storyline writing and mission creation... but also in figuring craft stats so they are more as in the X-Wing series.
  3. For mission creation we now have a course ready, which has been proofread already by our testers. The course explains how to use ImpED, our mission editor, and also functions as help-file for this editor. The editor and the course are included in the game as well (because the editor uses game models and stats.) but will be submitted to the TO later today for inclusion at imperialacademy.org. Should be fun to already have some graduates by the time the demo is released...
  4. ...Because this game is really community-based: We can expand/improve it indefinitely, but for missions, voices, pre-briefing animations even we'll be reliant on the same systems we have always relied on within the EH to get us more missions and such: TAC, COO, WO etc. The full version (after the demo) will have a campaign however.
  5. In other news there are the EHSP versions 3.0 for XvT and BoP, which will add a few more craft, T/Ph, PES, GSP, A/FRG and MC-90 (So about all our battlegroups can fully appear). It also makes the R41 and T-W flyable (with their own cockpits, just like the T/Ph and PES by the way) and adds a new datapad based on that of Imperial Alliance... of which you can see it as a preview. Currently the release is on hold however, cause my joystick stopped working so I can't test anything :(
  6. The same problem is currently holding up the release of the TIE Praefect and Mu-2 Shuttle patch releases... guess instead I'll just start making a lot of IA missions >:)

Science Office Status:

CA:SCO: Fleet Admiral Darkhill has been working very hard to get the stand alone beta done and compiled and wrote our last report. Excellent work!

SCOA: CPT Tim has been a bum cause he's been working too much in RL ;)

Site: The Science Office site can be found at http://sco.minos.net or at http://sco.emperorshammer.net. Updated the links to the gimmie server and other such matters. The site at emperorshammer.net still needs its database installed.

Command Staff Objectives:

Continued patch development and platform resource: EHSP 3.0 versions for XvT and BoP basically have all their files done and just need to be compiled and released.

Get a release candidate version of Imperial Alliance released: The Closed Beta has started using our first "stand alone" version - one that doesn't need FS2 anymore... meaning we have really gone from a mod to our own game.

Upgrade and add to the Fleet Manual: The Fleet Manual got a fancy Flash intro by TO/AD Stuart and some minor other upgrades.

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).

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 endermbind@gmail.com for official SCO mails.) I’m practically always online at #sco, #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!

<salute>
SCO-TCT-TCS-PROF/FA Ender mBind/CS-10/SSSD Sovereign
MoH/IC/GOE/GSx2/SSx8/BSx4/PCx7/ISMx17/MoI/MoT-64rh-64gh-38bh/IS-1SR-4GR-3PR/LoC-TS-Rx1/DFC-Rx1/CoS/CoE/CoLx2/CoB/LoAx22/OV-5E [LGNR] {IWATS-AIM-CSS-FLA-GFX-ICQ-IIC/1/2/3-JS-M/1/2-MP-OPT-PHP-SM/2-TACS-TM/1-TT-XAM-XML-XTM/1/2-XTT}