Firstly, I'd like to thank GA Ronin and SA Kawolski for my promotion to FA, as well as all those who have congratulated me in the past week. Its great to know that what I'm doing is being noticed.
1. New Star Wars PC Game - Star Wars Battleground: Lucas Arts has announced the creation of the new Star Wars RTS game in partnership with Ensemble Studio, the creators of the Age of Empires series. Unlike previous experiments in the stratergy market, such as force commander or rebellion, this Battleground will be created useing an existing 2D game engine from a highly popular series rather than a new engine developled by Lucas Arts. Hopefully this should lead to a more entertaining and successful game than previous stratergy releases.
Battleground is being created using the 2D Age of Empires game engine, which will be adapted by Lucas Arts personell for the Star Wars universe. Additionally, content for the game will be created by Lucas Arts, while beta testing & balancing will be a joint affair. Few details are available on the game intself, with no unit, storyline or setting announcements to date. However it has been stated that the game will span all 4 films released to date.
Current release estimates are for Fall 2001
Press Release: http://www.lucasarts.com/static/pr/lucasartsensemble_pr.htm
Interview: http://pc.ign.com/news/31839.html
2. SCO Policy Guide v1.0 Released: The new Policy Guide, containing items such as the requirements for patch approval & patch ownership requirements has been posted. It can be viewed through the Office link in the sidebar of the SCO website or directly at http://sco.emperorshammer.ca/office-policy.php.
3. Fleet Manual: Finally the end of picture collection is in sight. I have 3 craft's XWA screenshots to be taken and for a number of meshes to be rendered, which will go with the 236 images collected so far to form a much more graphicly rich fleet manual. Uncut these images form 10.5 meg uncompressed, and I've reviewed somwhere over a thousand images filling 33.8 meg of compressed zip files.
I'll be putting medal recomendations for all those who have assisted into tiecorps.org this week with the aim of making a full announcement of these awards next week once they have been approved. In advance, I'd particularly like to thank CM Gidda, FA Kessler & CM Arathar for their invaluable assistance in gathering images.
4. SCOA Wanted: Yep, the Science Office is hiring again. I've decided to take on a Science Office Assistant to aid with news collection & misc duties. Primarily, the new SCOA's role will be to perform a daily check of several major gaming and editing news sites and to post details on any relevant items to the Science Office web site. Secondarily, the new SCOA will be asked to aid in various occasional duties such as patch testing, document reviewing & idea formulation.
The requirements for SCOA are as follows:
* Must be able to check several (6-12+) major web sites at least once a day.
* Must have a good command of the English language, able to type news items without typos or spelling errors.
* Must have a 24 hours email response time.
* Must be trustworthy and familiar with EH rules & regulations.
* Must have some familiarity with slicing terminology in at least one field or platform.
Applications should be emailed to Kermee@softhome.net, cc'ing darkhill@emperorshammer.ca with the subject of "SCOA Application". Applications should be sent no latter than Monday 12th March 2001, all applications will receive a confirmation of receipt. Please do not just list yourself as fulfilling the requirements but actually explain why you would make a better SCOA than someone else. Also note that bugging me on IRC about who has applied or what decisions have been made will not improve you chances.
As a reminder, you can allways find the latest news on Star Wars Games, Patches & Science Office happenings at the SCO web page (http://sco.emperorshammer.ca). If you've found newer, submit it as news!
FA Kermee, Fleet Science Officer.
[ http://sco.emperorshammer.ca | sco@emperorshammer.org ]
- SCO/FA Kermee/CS-10/SSSD Sovereign {Legionnaire}
- GOE/GS/SS/BS/PCx3/ISMx13/MoI/MoT-ghx2/LoC ISx10/MoC-GoC/OV
- DJK (Krath)/Ektrosis of Taldryan WR-PM w/1/DC-KC
- {IWATS-IIC/1/2/3-M/1/2-SM/1/2-XTT-TM-XTM-VBS-GFX-RT-RPG-PHP/1/2-CBX}