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Welcome to my fifty-sixth public report as a Science Officer, completely on time due to direct threats from my superiors *g*. Onwards to the news:

Science Office News:

1. I've added some custom cockpits to patches for TIE Fighter 95, X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter and Balance of Power. These should improve the playing atmosphere for you don't just see the generic T/D cockpit anymore when flying them. Patches updated are the TIE Praetor, Phalanx Interceptor Gunboat, Toscan Fighter (TIE95 version still coming up) and Shadow Class Y-Wing (ditto.). In the process I've been making notes to create a cockpit editing tutorial: Its quite easy to do as long as you have _some_ graphics skills.
2. After several failed attempts at registering #sco and #science_office and the loss of X in #tac the Tactical Officer and Science Officer decided to combine forces and squat one of the TCBGs ships instead: The VSD Sinister wasn't being used anyway so we moved to #vsd_sinister. This will function as a combined place for both TAC and SCO matters. Advantages should be that members have just have one place to go with any flying bugs or questions and the loss of silly people that kept joining #sco asking about Linux and #tac about whatever... uhm... whatever language those guys were talking. Registration is currently pending.
3. TAC/AD Frodo has gone through the entirety of the compendium fixing all the patch comments. They are now all directly linked to the patches needed and outdated patches have been removed. A comment would be that if you see that you need a loose craft patch, you also need to have EHSP installed. Great work by el TAC!
4. The TC pilot profile importer for Imperial Alliance now has been fully implemented into the game, including pop-ups etc. Its now possible to easily create a pilotfile based on your TC profile, with the right rank, (merit) medals and FCHG rank. A screenshot can be seen at the Imperial Alliance site.
5. Following that, the pilot management screen in the barracks section of the game has been completely redone/redesigned - leaving just 7 screens we need to create new renderings/designs for (out of... many). Soon after those are done we'll probably go over to the next phase, the demo game.
6. I still need help from any PC wizzzards out there because I cannot texture any OPTs because ACEDXF requires "paletized textures" in Open GL and apparently my new ATI card doesn't support that. If anyone knows how to fix this, please contact me... as its quite essential to further patch development in general.

Science Office Status:

CA:SCO: Fleet Admiral Darkhill has finished the TC Profile importer to IA and has finished the Pilot Management screen. Is working on the last "POD" bugs in MP and seeing if we can make the game read and use the battle compendium straight (selecting and downloading battles from inside the game!).

SCOA: CPT Timmay has sent the new and improved ISD model in to Den.

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: Created and added custom cockpits for the T/Pr, PHX, TOS and S/Y-W.

Get a release candidate version of Imperial Alliance released: Finished TC Profile importer and Pilot Management, updating some MP code.

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

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 #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!