• Sekie

    by Published on 01-23-2013 12:30 PM   

    SWGEmu End of Year Update 2012

    January 2013
    SWGEmu Team








    SWGEmu End of Year Update 2012









    Table of Contents
    • Project Update
    • Staff Updates
    • Quick Stats
    • Staff Round-Table
    • Closing



    SWGEmu Project Updates

    Hardware Upgrade/Changes:
    Major Additions/ChangesStaff Updates

    SWGEmu is Recruiting!

    As always, SWGEmu is an ever-changing and growing organization where new talent is always being sought out. We especially would like to mention the need for more developers, please see this thread for more information.




    SWGEmu Internship Program, please see this thread.



    Quick Stats

    Developer Code Commits:
    • Total Commits: 6,220
    • Total Lines of Code (LoC): 3,795,044
    Registration Statistics:
    • June 17, 2012 - 599 accounts registered
    • January 05, 2012 - 16 accounts registered
    • June 2012 - 8519 accounts registered
    • January 2013 - 1844 accounts registered
    • 2012 - 53,482 accounts registered; average 4456.83 per month
    User Activity Statistics (Users online in one day):
    • Most users online: July 19, 2012 - 3362 users
    New thread statistics (Posted threads):
    • June 2012 - 6729
    • March 2012 - 1082
    Most viewed thread: Project Status List
    Most replied thread: What are you listening to right now?
    Most popular forum: Basilisk Trade Forum



    Staff Round-Table

    TheAnswer - Lead Developer
    Quote Originally Posted by TheAnswer
    Its been an exciting year, we have reached the end of liberator milestone, launched basilisk and are enjoying a relatively stable and playable server.
    It was a fun and tough journey since we decided to scrap pre-or code but I think in the end we can all say it was worth it.
    It gave us the the needed framework to be able to code all the major systems in game. Sure there are still issues but we have never been so close to having a full working pre-cu server back.


    We hope that the upcoming year will be as exciting as this one and be able to finish the remaining big systems like AI and bring back long lost professions like CH and DE.


    There is still a lot of work left, especially in the data department and math tweaking but I encourage anyone who has free time to jump in and help us.


    There have been more than 2600 code commits this year, millions of lines of code changed and countless hours of work invested in a game that we all are trying to revive.


    I would especially want to thank any developer who helped us through this year, some may have left but their code was essential and is used everyday by our players. Kyle, cRush, oru, loshult, dannuic, bobius, elpete, elvaron, kellina, valkyra, zingzing, polonel, itac, tragD, mrotindo, anakis, lordkator, moncai, bluree, ivojedi, silurian, rommelrommel, cebot, galameed, metal, trick77, becker, bert, boogles, smashley, dtemplar5, kitek, tjay, aceblade, benoit, brocktoune, harvardace, xela, zraii, kreen and anybody else I missed.


    Thanks to countless community members who helped us with testing and debugging code on nova, to countless volunteers who are helping the community in support every day, to our moderators, to our event coordinators. Without their patience there would not be a basilisk server.


    Thank you for supporting our servers through donations and thank you for helping us bringing back a lost game back to life.


    Happy new year everybody!

    elpete - Developer
    Quote Originally Posted by elpete
    I have played SWG since beta. I recall the long queues of launch and the background music playing for what seemed like hours trying to connect to the galaxy. That music is still haunting when I log in. I quit soon after the hologrind hit live.




    Some friends from a gaming community, that originated on Bria, had talked about the game. I didn't think there was any way that someone could write their own server and have it worth playing. I was bored one day and ran across my CDs. I installed, logged in and was amazed at how functional it was.




    Once I got high level enough, I came across a couple things that were not implemented yet. Things like combat spam messages, faction missions, and I realized that faction bases were not implemented yet. Most of my play time was spent with the GCW fighting at bases and GTEFFing around the planets. Naturally, I was drawn toward implementing features I used back in live. Unfortunately, that was about 10 years ago and it seems I have forgotten about as much as I remember. Some of the bugs and missing features got me wondering if I could start contributing. I got the development environment up and running and started digging through the code.




    I started off fixing some easier bugs. Fixing the simple bugs sparked some interest into how more of the game mechanics worked. I did a couple bug fixes for cities, and implemented armor and weapon faction perks. This exposed me to a lot of the game mechanics.


    Once I felt comfortable enough, I gave GCW bases a shot. It has been a lot more grueling and time consuming than I could have imagined. I've made a good bit of progress but it's been pretty time consuming. I was able to use functionality from other game mechanics for most of the work.


    Most of my time has been spent on faction, GCW, and cities.


    I am amazed at how much was done to get the game into this form. I couldn't imagine the effort that it took to get all the low level functionality in there. From what I can tell, most of the core functionality is in game and it's just a matter of connecting the dots to get a lot of the low hanging fruit working.




    Thanks to all the staff that have been helpful in coming up to speed (although there is a still ton to figure out) and thanks to the community for keeping this alive for so long.





    TLDR: I've been doing a little work on cities by fixing some election stuff, tax stuff, and structure stuff. I've also been workign on GCW bases and hopefully they'll be done soon.

    loshult - Developer
    Quote Originally Posted by loshult
    So has another year passed, a very busy and fun year according to me. We reached the End of Liberator milestone during the spring and launched Basilisk a few weeks later. It is fun to see at a first glance how close we are to have SWG back as it was pre-cu. If you take a closer look you can however see that there are still a lot of things to do but the main features are up and running and working really well.


    I started the past year with the implementation of all different mission types on the terminals. They are all up and running and they are working without any major flaws. A few modifications are needed to bring them back to be exactly like they were on live. Destroy missions are missing lairs, player level calculation is a bit off, bounty missions are missing targets and maybe a few other tweaks.


    After that I implemented a generic way to handle quests (a series of missions) that can be used for theme parks and other quest lines in the game. To test the quest logic I set up the rebel theme park. It was fun to see that the generic logic worked and that other people in a few days of hard work could get the Jabba theme park up and running without any major issues. The last month a few other quest lines have also been developed using this generic theme park logic and it works really well.


    Through out the year I have tried to support any community member wanting to help out with the development as much as I can and I appreciate all the time and work you put in to help out bringing the development forward. Please continue to ask questions, develop things that you thinks is fun and submit patches on Fisheye. I hope that we during 2013 can get a few new developers from the community!


    During the beginning of 2013 I will focus on bringing the npc and creature spawn logic closer to what it was, starting by enabling the newbie spawns around the starter planet cities. I also hope that we during 2013 will see the same amount of progress as last year and that we take a big step closer to 1.0.

    Naik0i - Quality Assurance
    Quote Originally Posted by Naik0i
    I've been around the EMU on and off since Feb of 2011, due to the hectic nature of life, i've really not had a chance to play steadily up until around August of this past year, and I've only been on the staff for a couple of weeks now full time after a month or so of an Internship.




    Even in the short time that i have been involved with the staff so far, The amount of progress and work that i have seen over on TC:Nova has been amazing. Just in the past month we have seen: Population of MANY of the POI's, major Mayor and Politician fixes, fixes to certian creatures to make their stats more correct to live, Bio-engineer tissues for tailor, Commando flamethrower and Acid specials, Frankly there's too much here for me to list without making this into a more of a novel than it already is.




    But the big highlight of this past month for me has been Faction bases. So many hours have been devoted to this aspect of the development it's unreal. All of the hours of research, testing, reporting, breaking stuff and fixing it back has been by far the highlight of the year in SWG for me, Base busting held a special place in my heart back during Live, and everyone involved in the development of this want to make sure that without a shadow of a doubt, that the bases we are preparing for you all are the absoloute best work that we can do.




    2013 Will be a big year for SWGEmu and i couldn't think of any other way that i would like to be a part of it by testing out new things that we are implementing, researching it exhaustivley until it's just right, and seeing the excitement from the community as it is released to you all on Basilisk.

    Scurby - Quality Assurance
    Quote Originally Posted by Scurby
    I started playing SWG at launch. I added another acct every 4 - 6 months until i had 6 accts. I was totally overwhelmed by the enormity and complexity of the game and set out to learn as much of it as I could. I immersed myself in it until NGE. After that I maintained vendors for about 3 years. I never tried for Jedi. Likely never will.


    I joined the SWGEmu community about a year ago. After playing for a few weeks it became obvious to me that a lot of work and dedication had been put forth. And that a lot more needed to be done. I decided that the best thing for me would be to assist in any way I could. I logged onto Nova and volunteered to help any way I could.


    When the opportunity arose I applied and was accepted to the QA team. I take this as a great honor and I am very proud to be a member of such a great team. I came prepared to get a job done and made some friends in the process. Funny how that happens.


    Since I joined QA the work has been a joy. With bases being tested, and all the new caves populated, and testing events on Nova it has been a busy time. The community has been very helpful with testing and research. The sheer volume of players that have contributed in the last month alone is very impressive. From new reports on Mantis to all the new patches submitted it's obvious that many people love this game.


    I'm excited and optimistic for the new year. I look forward to the challenges and the hours of sleep I am sure to sacrifice. I encourage all players to use Mantis (Bug Tracker) and Trac Timeline. And ask questions.

    Renala - Event Coordinator Leader
    Quote Originally Posted by Renala
    Hi guys,


    As many of you know, I have recently come back into staff, and it is good to be back. The EC department is now it's own department again but they are still very active in the support department and will continue to be so. We look forward to many more events in 2013.


    Happy New Year everyone!

    Kreen - Event Coordinator
    Quote Originally Posted by Kreen
    It's been a pretty big year for the Event Coordinators and all of us here at SWGEmu! In 2012 we've had some of the biggest updates in the history of the project, and I'm excited for what all we've got in store for 2013!


    This year we officially announced our Player-Sponsored Events where YOU the player can team up with us and bring your events to life! From the trial of George Lucas to cantina crawling, intense fighting, hunting, shopping, and wild parties, we've seen a lot of great ideas from you guys! I want to encourage you all to continue submitting requests and to keep thinking of new and inventive events!


    Also this year the Event Coordinators underwent a big change with the transition to the Basilisk server and our new admin commands. For those that don't know, the commands which we use to create and host events went through several changes from the old Liberator and Nova servers, just like many other features. Of course, there are bugs and problems that need to be fixed, and we're working hard to do just that! If you've got some coding experience, but don't know where to jump into (it's a big project!), you should consider looking at submitting some patches for the admin commands!


    Speaking personally, I've been amazed at the support we've been getting from the community at events recently. Though it may appear fun and games, being an Event Coordinator is pretty tough work. We're constantly typing, managing system messages, IRC channels, tells, and every sort of prop placement all in just a few minutes. The feedback we get from you guys, whether it's the "Hey great event" post on the forums, or the smiley face message I get in-game, all counts and makes us enjoy what we're doing. For all those people I've never got to reply to, thank you!!


    Finally, I should remind you all that the Event Coordinators can be pretty fun out-of-game too! We all have quirky personalities and we'd love to chat with you guys more often. Though we can usually be found in #swgemu on IRC, you should definitely join #events. The channel's there not only for talking about event ideas, but also for getting to know the staff and having a bit of a party!


    I hope to see you guys there, and at some of our big events for 2013!


    <3 Kreen

    KarlDeux - CSR Leader
    Quote Originally Posted by KarlDeux
    What a wonderful year!


    We've made a lot of changes to enhance our game-system quality in what support refers. We decided to close our #support on IRC and enable our own kayako support back-office. That made us more competitive and reduced our response time to just few hours instead of days. But that couldn't have happened without help. Our interns are doing an amazing job and the EC team has been helping a lot to handle tickets and to help people with issues too. Also, we've had an amazing Dev team that helped us to be more efficient by removing bugs and giving us much needed in-game tools.


    I really can't say anything else but thank you for playing with us, thank you for helping us bring SWG back, and I am proud to be a part of this awesome community.

    Vlada - Lead Moderator
    Quote Originally Posted by Vlada
    In terms of development this has been an amazing year, we left the old broken pre-OR code behind and moved on to our brand new awesome code, launched a new playable server and broke several records in the process. We also upgraded our support services a few times and we upgraded both our website and our game server box.


    Staff wise, 2012 was really not a good year, we lost a lot of great people, that were a huge asset to this project. Real life won again and we lost friends and coworkers, our brothers in arms to it. I will list only a few and apologize to those that weren't listed


    Xavia - Development Director, QA Leader, Founder
    Odwill - Community Director
    Kyle - Director and Developer
    cRush - Lead Developer
    Ellyssia - Support Leader
    Ilipah - Community Director
    Aceblade - QA Leader
    TAFirehawk - Site Services Manager

    bigevil - Moderator
    Quote Originally Posted by bigevil
    We can all see things truly taking shape this year. We have very far, and I have truly enjoyed the ride. I was deployed overseas and away from computers for a lot of the time, and my friends here had to sincerely take up the slack. Thanks all!


    It’s been an exciting year watching the talented folks we have volunteering making stride after stride towards accomplishing end goals. The various teams have been working very hard to resurrect what we all know, remember, and love. To the Devs, QAs, CSRs, ECs, and the rest helping keep the lights on, great efforts indeed.


    I have been very happy seeing so many people get involved at different levels. We get a ton of emails, PMs, and forum thoughts that have brought up lots of issues and ideas that have helped keep the train on the rails. Please always feel free to contact us with legit concerns. Your inputs are vital.


    We are making great strides together towards something special. Something we will all enjoy when the time comes. Thank you always for all your community support, feedback, commentary, and camaraderie in working towards what we all want. Here's to a great 2013 and getting to where we all want to be. Feel free to keep contacting us with your questions. Cheers!

    Closing


    We would like to thank each and everyone of our community members. You have stuck it out for the longest time, kept us on course, never giving up hope that we will reach our goal. We've made a lot of progress in 2012 and with your support, we hope to do much more in 2013.


    Again thank you everyone for your continued support and we hope you all have a happy new year.








    ~The SWGEmu Team