<salute>

Welcome to my fifty-eight public report as a Science Officer, not quite on time again... *g*. Onwards to the news:

Science Office News:

1. Multi Player in Imperial Alliance has progressed so far that we've made a change of plan: We'll now release a MP based "stripped" demo which will have the follow features:
   • 12 Player Dogfighting melees in several environments
   • Team vs Team combat with up to 8 players
   • Up to 12 Player Co-Op missions that can also be flown Single Player
   It will however not have the more advanced features the second "demo" will have, as in a concourse, techroom, Single Player missions and a missioneditor.
   The Multi Play demo will be released within a month or two. (Ack! I set an ETA!)
2. Further development on IA has been the upgrading of all the SP missions and the creation of some more MP ones, and a lot of testing and bug fixing the MP game... We should be releasing a full beta to the testers before the MP beta, as that will also allow them to test that.
3. AD Den Darkhill has basically started a development log on the IA site news, which he spices up with screenshots... A good thing to keep track of if you're interested in the game.
4. Which reminds me: If you want a spot in the beta testing, contact COL Malidir, WC of Wing XI. We're always in for fresh blood to wipe out in a melee >:)
5. I cannot texture any OPTs because ACEDXF requires "paletized textures" in Open GL and apparently my new ATI card doesn't support that. The solution is that I'll be rebuilding my old PC soonish... This should allow me to get some patches out soon after.

Science Office Status:

CA:SCO: Fleet Admiral Darkhill has worked hard to code in especially the MP section of Imperial Alliance and has tested these improvements often.

SCOA: CPT Timmay has last been sighted under a bridge.

Site: The Science Office site can be found at http://sco.emperorshammer.net and http://sco.minos.net. The Imperial Alliance site is located at http://ia.emperorshammer.net - which includes the ImpED site/course at http://ia.emperorshammer.net/imped.

Command Staff Objectives:

Continued patch development and platform resource: Been creating the cockpit for the TIE Protector and TIE Sentinel/Shadow, should be released shortly.

Get a release candidate version of Imperial Alliance released: Updating a lot of MP code and missions.

Upgrade and add to the Fleet Manual: On hold till I get time/help to fix the database.

Science Office Projects:

Cockpit Project: With most craft now working and updated for TIE95, XvT and BoP I have started on adding custom cockpits to them. These should make it clearer to the player that he's actually is flying a different craft (instead of just seeing a GUN or T/D cockpit). The craft inside the EHSP are all provided for now, loose patches that have been processed already are: the Plt/F, the V-W, the S/Y-W, the TOS, the M/GUN, the ISP-6, the T/Pr and the PHX. Working on the next few.

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). Most 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 #vsd_sinister. 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 #vsd_sinister, #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!