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Welcome to my fiftysecond public report as a Science Officer, not as late as usual (Was stuck in a TIE Cockpit last week :P). Onwards to the news:

Science Office News:

1. Our IO has finished the database coding on the Imperial Alliance site (YAY, thx Lenvik!), it should be up the moment we regain access to the SCO site on emperorshammer.net or get alternative hosting for it (besides minos) and I finish the intro text :)
2. Imperial Alliance beta is progressing, as expected there's all kinds of weird bugs not noticed before - mostly to do with different OS and hardware settings... This is why we have the beta of course. Next beta package should be out to the testers soon.
3. I've started on making the first group of missions for Imperial Alliance, to be released with the demo game after the beta is over. These will not be one storyline but basically 4 training missions per flyable fighter, much like X-Wing and TIE Fighter had. Should be a good training for our pilots, and me before I start on the big Campaign for the full release >:)
4. Other news is that the IA mission creation course has been proofread and the moment we get the questions done we'll be forewarding it to the TO so we can actually have even more missions by the time that demo game is released.
5. To make that even easier, I've started work on project to make an ONLINE "skirmish" editor for IA, much like XWA has but it in the end it should save all created missions to a database for download by everyone. This will not have the same options as full editor but it will make everyone able to create missions easily and make it possible to run "Imperial Storm" like things using IA.
6. On the coding side Den has added features that will make AI use ions and that ions actually have the effect it should have. Plus other features... like rotating wings and R2 units for X-Wings.
7. On the 'art' side I've almost completed a high-poly model of the TIE Fighter interior as seen in the movies, just putting in the chair at the moment (no, sorry, no pink dicefor the moment). This cockpit is of higher detail then the XWAU one even and will be available in 3 options: no cockpit, 2D cockpit (for slow pcs) and 3D cockpit.
8. In other news: i got myself a $10 joystick and will be releasing some xvt/tie/xwa patches the moment i also get my cdrom running again or replaced. >:)

Science Office Status:

CA:SCO: Fleet Admiral Darkhill has been working making updates to the IA and ImpED code to remove bugs andmake everything more "Star Wars". He has also made quite a few craft for IA.

SCOA: CPT Tim has hopefully been working on the new ISD for IA.

Site: The Science Office site can be found at http://sco.minos.net. The http://sco.emperorshammer.net site is still up but we lost access to it, so files there may get outdated. IA site has been completed by IO/AD Lenvik; looking for hosting for that and the SCO site.

Command Staff Objectives:

Continued patch development and platform resource: EHSP 3.0 versions for XvT and BoP basically have been compiled and will be released the moment my cdrom works again so i can get some testing done.

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: Received more craft graphics from LC Zeth.

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). All other projects are currently on hold while we get this thing done some more.

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!

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