It has been an awfully busy week here in the TAC Office. My primary concerns were to define the new structure of the Tactical Staff, to set the new requirements for battle submission, to update the Tactical Manual to reflect these changes, and finally to release the results of the FCHG Competition along with the winning battles. I'm pleased to report all of this has been done !
Once again, I guess it will be a long report... hopefully it should be shorter next week now most of the big work is done ;-)
1. Structural changes of the Tactical Staff
The Tactical Staff is in charge of beta playtesting and is to make sure new battle submissions meet EH quality requirements, and eventually bringing some correction. Looking at the backlog in submissions, it was obvious the former structure of the Tactical Staff needed to be changed. Upon an initial proposition of mine and after a week of comments, suggestions, brainstorming, discussion with the member of the Tactical Staff, the new structure has been adopted. As a resume, the Tactical Staff is now splitted by game platforms, and more responsability is given to the TCCs, who are now to make the beta testing/correction assignements for their platforms, i.e. the duties of the TCHC except all that deals with awards, which remains the task of the TCHC. "Beta periods" are also suppressed, which should allow more flexibility and efficiency, as people had to wait for all playtesting results from a period to be compiled before a new one could begin. A complete description of the Tactical Staff organization is available in the updated Tactical Manual (http://www.tiecorps.org/tac/tac-man).
2. New battle submission requirements and procedures
People need to pass the appropriate IWATS mission creation course to
be able to submit custom battles, the same way pilots need to pass SM/2
to be Squadron Commanders, or IWATS Core to join the fleet. In addition,
mission creators are required to submit along with their creation a pilot
file to prove they have playtested it. Playtesting/debugging/correction
is 60% of the time of ANY creation work, should it be programmation, writing
or... mission creation. This painless change for good and average mission
creators should avoid to see buggy and unplayable battles being submitted
and wasting the time of the Tactical Office. Most of the time spent on
submissions was on these unplayable battles; a reminder, the Tactical Staff
role is NOT finish the work you may have felt lazy to do.
All new requirements and submission procedures are available in the
Tactical Manual. Please follow EXACTLY these procedures when you will submit
new battles, otherwise it will simply be ignored.
3. Submission ban
The submission ban will be lifted on Saturday 15th (in SIX days), in order to let the Tactical staff the time to assimilate the new structural changes; they are already working on the already submitted battles. A complete list of battle currently in the TAC Office will be released once the ban lifted. All new submissions should follow the new submission procedures.
4. Tactical Manual updated - http://www.tiecorps.org/tac/tac-man/
All the above changes are in the Tactical Manual, which has been updated to version 1.5 with many additions. The Tactical Manual contains all information related to custom mission requirements and submissions, to the structure of the Tactical Staff, as well as the Emperor's Hammer cheating policy, mission editors and authorized game updates. It is a must see for anything related to official Emperor's Hammer custom missions, should you want to fly or create these missions.
5. FCHG Competition Results
Last July, the Tactical Office organized a mission creation competition,
the best submissions becoming FCHG Battles. After some long weeks of rating and correction, it is my pleasure to
release you the results of this competition. Due to the quality of some submissions, it has been decided to release under "FCHG
Battle" status the top 2 battles in each category. Without further waiting, here are the results:
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(IS-PR) |
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CPT Wes Janson |
LCM Grazioli |
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(IS-SR) |
RA Lohr Zadash |
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(IS-BR) |
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MAJ Darksaber |
All battles have been released and available for download from the Emperor's Hammer Battle Center (http://www.tiecorps.org/battles/).
For these who may wonder, TIE Battles have been rated and corrected by VA Troutrooper, XvT/BoP Battles rated by FA StarLion and corrected by LC Marcin Szydlowski, XWA Battles rated by COL Arso Slyth and corrected by yours truly.
The Tactical Office has decided to organize such a competition twice a year, for the Fleet Commander's and Emperor Hammer's birthdays. Sorry, it's a bit late this time due to the change of command ;-)
Thanks to all mission creators who have participated in this competition. Others submissions will be either released later this week or queued for review by the Tactical Staff.
I recommend everyone to fly these battles, which are from the best mission creators of the fleet !!!
6. New battles released
More battles to fly, the Compendium has reached the 300 battles online mark !! The new objective is to reach 2,000 custom missions online.
New battles:
- TIE-TC 183 - Defection of Kunasagi
- TIE-TC 184 - Chronological Influences
- TIE-FCHG 2 - Shadow of Time
- TIE-FCHG 3 - The Perils of Diplomacy
- BoP-FCHG 1 - Brothers in Arms
- XvT-FCHG 1 - ASF Combat Collection
- XvT-TC 17 - The Burning Season
- XWA-FCHG 1 - Race Through Time
- XWA-FCHG 2 - The Forgotten Legacy
I will strongly recommend you to fly the new XWA battles, they are
great. "Race Through Time" features a wonderful plotline, which every fan
of the "Back to the Future" movies should enjoy; I really had fun flying
this one. "The Forgotten Legacy" is a bit a prologue to the new EH Timeline,
as it deals with the mysterious Katana Fleet and Thrawn's return... based
on a GA Ronin's story released in december 1999.
7. Bug correction and battle updates
Some authors have asked me if they could update their released battles. Of course !! Actually, authors are the only ones authorized to submit corrected versions of a battle (of THIER battle) except people assigned by the Tactical Office. The only requirement is that bugs corrections by the Tactical Office since the initial release must be included in these updates, and that the potential maximum scores reachable can't be lower than they were (to prevent unreachable high scores). Read the "bug" section of the Tactical Manual for more information.
8. Cheating
Well, the SO does a nice work yelling about this subject, nothing to add.
9. No CA:TAC2 sought
No ! No ! No! Don't ask !
10. TACA Appointed
Lieutenant Samuel Shadd III, former TCHC, has been appointed TACA. His duties will be to search the web for new stuff, tips in mission creation domain, and to do some quick playtesting or spelling/grammar correction for me. Shadd has already done well in finiding a way to display an Imperial logo instead of that crappy Rebel one in custom XWA battles ! More information in his own report, attached.
--
o)[x<>x<>x||:[>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
TAC-PROF/FA Striker/CS-3/SSSD Sovereign
OoR/GoE/GS/SSx2/BS/PC/ISMx6/MoI/MoT-12rh-2gh-71bh/IS-2BW-1SR
LoC-PSx49/DFCx2/MoC-BoC-23B-13S-8G/CoS/CoL/CoB/LoAx5/OV-3E [LGNR],
SBL(Sith)
{IWATS-AIM-ASP-CBX-GFX-ICQ-IIC/1/2/3-M/1/2-RPG-RT-SM/1/2-TM-TT-VBS-XAM-XTM-XTT}
IWATS Professor, XWA Mission Design Course - http://iwats-xam.cjb.net
From: Lieutenant Shadd
To: FA Striker
Subject: TACA Weekly Report #One: 09/07/01
Many new and potentially useful utilities for the X-Wing series games
have been found in the past week. You will find them listed below with
a short review.
TIE Mission file format specs
The complete specs for the LucasArts "TIE Fighter" mission file format.
These are two Delphi/Pascal
This is something that to me, might as well be a foreign language. But
I do realize the importance of what this might mean for mission designers, or if a project was under taken
to produce a higher quality of mission editor for TIE Fighter. This could be a major break through for the
TIE Corps. Below are all related web site addresses for accessing this and many other files for editing of the
various X-Wing series games.
http://www.code-alliance.com/
XWA CBM Viewer
This application allows you to view XwA *.cbm file and save them to
bmp.
Although certainly not new, I am not sure that such a utility has been
given much attention in the TIE Corps. The usefulness of this, and its counterpart utility "CBM Viewer 1.1" allow users to extract and file the .CBM files
from XWA. Quite possibly allowing them to be edited into custom .CBM files. I
have opened several .CBM files and played around with them somewhat. I am not talented
with graphics, so someone with those talents most likely could have more
use out of this. (more information on this later in the report)
Author's website: http://www.code-alliance.com/
CBM Viewer v1.1
This viewer can display the images and animations from these files and
write them to Windows Bitmap files.
This utility, much like "XWA CBM Viewer" before it, allows the viewing
of .CBM files in bitmap format.
It has its advantages, and disadvantages over its predecessor. The major
improvement is the allowing of watching the animated CBM files (as if in game).
Author's website: http://www.ailis.de/%7Ek/winprojects/cbmv/
XIS 2.3
After almost two thousand downloads (yikes!) of XIS 2.21, I made a lot
of little additions that I'd been meaning to make for some time, and a few others based on feedback I've gathered from the
web. While I'm at it, I'd like to mention that I do have a forum set up for XIS feedback and suggestions. Changes are as follows:
New commands: InstallFilm, InstallFrontRes, InstallMissionVoice, InstallMovie,
InstallResData.
This is one of the most useful utilities I have seen. The uses it could
have for the Emperor's Hammer would be limited only by what the Science
Office would allow us to use it for. The major potenital for this is for
custom made OPTs. This utility allows the user to quickly, and simplely
install a custom opt. With out haveing to personally edit the .exe files
or do anything other than double click on a ".XIS" file, which automaticly
starts the install process. The SCO could use this for so many things,
from opts to install custom made CBM file and even mission wavs. As you
can see above, it will do a good many things for XWA users. The ability
to make a more custom, and Imperial themed atmosphere to XWA would be a
major breakthrough for the TIE Corps, and the Emperor's Hammer as a whole.
Right now we are but barely scratching the surface of making custom missions
and battles for XWA. The depth this single utility to add to our battles
and free missions is simplely amazeing.
Author's website: http://www.flyingtemple.com/
XWA Pilot Editor ver 1.2
This Utility allows you to edit your pilot statistics, it also allows
you to backup and restore the file.
Another useful pilot viewing utility, all though handy there are better
utilitys currently available. However I would like to note something of interest about this one.
I am not sure what I had done, or how to recreate what I done. I had tested it out on a blank
pilot file I had made for a battle I am making. While in game, in the "pilots quarters" where
useally all of the items collected during the XWA SP game is there, this time for whatever reason
they was all gone. With two exceptions. I am not sure how, or why but I will continue
to experiment with this and attempt to find out how it happened. Perhaps, there is a way after
all to make those items appear as "rewards" during a custom battle.
XWA Pilotfile Viewer 3001 ver 2000.08.21
This software is used for viewing almost all data stored inside XwA.Plt
files such as score and nuber of kills. You may also edit the pilot name, missions completed,
rank, rating and the Kalidor Crescent status.
Perhaps the best pilot viewer availble. With this utility you can quickly
and easily view all scores, and conditions of a XWA pilot file. This one was made by
our very own CM Mycroft, formerly of Ranger Squadron onboard the ISD Immortal. The
TAC manual currently has XWAPV 3000 up for fleet use, I would highly recommend
the replaceing of that file with this one. It is a much much updated version and much
more user friendly. I can not say enough good comments about this one. Squadron
CMDRs will love this one!
Author's website: http://home.bip.net/mera.larsson/XWAPilot/
Death Star II Super Laser effect tutorial
Learn how to create your own mass destrucion weapon with AlliED.
Although "old", it has rarely been used in a custom battle. (in the
EH anyhow) Useing the tutorial, I've attempted to rather crudly make a test mission
useing the SOV patch, with the DS super laser fireing. It works, however I
am not quite statified with the results. It fires as soon as the mission starts,
not giveing the player much time to be able to view it, or truely "soak" in the experience.
I will continue to work with this and hopefully in the near future release
a free mission with the SOV actually fireing its "big gun". This is yet another very
useful idea for talented mission creators to adapt for their missions, and to add
another effect of realism when useing the SOV.
Custom CBM files "Crests"
These "crests" as they are called, replace the gold icon at the start
of a XWA briefing. Although the currently available crests are mostly for use
by Rebels, there are two which would be of use to us loyal Imperials. The Imperial
Crest and a CBM of Courscant, or "Imperial Center". Attached you will find a
picture of a breifing for my upcoming XWA Battle, with the gold icon replaced with
the Imperial Crest. However useful, there are some drawbacks to this. There is
but only the one Imperial CBM, and it can only have one name. Thus making it impossible
to say that you are stationed on different motherships at the start of
a briefing. The alternative to this, I believe that would perfectly is that instead
of doing as the Rebels and haveing the name of your mothership at the start of a breifing
simplely use a name like "TIE Corps" or in my case "Imperial Navy". This will keep the
continuity of the battle intact and add that much more to the Imperial theme we all want for
XWA. Installition of this custom Imperial Crest CBM is quite simple. Just copy the file
to the correct folder in XWA and then rename the listing in the front.txt file to the name
you wish to use in your battle. Then in AlliED select "Phantom Squadron". I had
already contacted the creator of this CBM file and he has granted me permission to use his
file so long as I give him credit in the battle readme file. I believe this to be a big
development for XWA custom battles/missions in the Emperor's Hammer and the TIE Corps as
a whole.
Container and Platform Guide
These are two small text files with information compiled from the X-Wing
Series games and the stragy guides and the Farlander papers and Stele Chronicals,
on Containers and Platforms currenly in use by the Empire and the general public commonly
found throughout the galaxy. The information they provide is quite useful for custom
battles and free missions to provide them with more realism.
Changing item/medals/pop up descriptions
It was by chance that I discovered that one can edit certain files in
XWA and change the descriptions and names of most of the objects seen in the concourse and the pilots
quarters. In the files:
front.txt
you can find the approiate lines to rename/edit to your likeing for
your battle/free mission. It would be possible for the creative to include items found in the pilot's quarters
in a story accompaning the missions with the descriptions changed to reflect the creators story. I've been
attempting to experiment with having the items appear after a custom mission has been completed but have
as yet not had any luck with it. I have read where others have also tried this, and had about the same
results as I have. It may be something in the .exe that controls just when they appear. However, as mentioned
earlyer with that one pilot viewer something happened after I had used it that caused most of the items
and medals to not be shown with a custom battle. As you know, with a custom battle/pilot file all of
the items/medals (except that one kalidor) are shown. For now, simplely renameing certain objects and thier
pop up text msgs will have to do. Although "small" when taken into the full scope of things, this does have the
effect of adding to the atmosphere and theme of a mission/battle.
The XWA UPgrade Project
The XWAUP, is a graphical upgrade for XWA. They are going through the
OPTs one by one and upgradeing their textures to more modern standards. They have four patches currently
up for download.
Rebel Fighter Patch (RFP
All patches are but graphical upgrades to the game. Although not compatible
with others in multi-player (unless both players have the patches) it is a major improvement for
the single player game and with the use of the XIS installer, it is a breeze to install these patches. Of interest
to the TIE Corps, is the two current Imperial Patches.
So concludes this weeks report.
Respectfully,
FM-TACA/LT Samuel Shadd III/Koph 3-2/Wing VI/SSSD Sovereign
(review as copied from the host website)
http://code-alliance.com/~editors/xwing/docs/tie_specs.zip
Tie_Specs.Zip BY Jeremy Lee (Deck Officer)
modules containing constants and structure definitions, not to mention
quite a few useful comments.
These are the most complete TIE Fighter mission specs out there, as
they contain a wealth of information that has been discovered long after the most popular/complete TIE Mission
editors were discontinued.
http://www.code-alliance.com/main_xwing.htm
http://www.code-alliance.com/xwing_doc.htm
(review as copied from the host website)
http://www.darksaber.freeserve.co.uk/filemisc.htm
XwA CBM Viewer is Copyright © David Lovejoy (StealthJedi) 1999
(review as copied from the host website)
http://www.darksaber.freeserve.co.uk/filemisc.htm
CBM Viewer version 1.1 is Copyright © Klaus Reimer 2001
(review as copied from the host website)
http://www.flyingtemplecom/download.php
Readme dialog is now resizeable.
Error-checking added for the most common XMOD creation problem: zipping
up the wrong directory as a whole.
Added the option to leave out any string changes (so you can keep your
original ship descriptions, etc.).
Fixed a minor bug in the backup system where TAB data would be preserved
between installs in non-international versions. This has been (somewhat
sloppily) remedied by creating a blank TAB file if one doesn't exist. It
seems the current backup/restore system still has some weaknesses. During
an uninstall, it will not remove the directories created by InstallMissionVoice,
though it will remove the files themselves.
(review as copied from the host website)
http://www.darksaber.freeserve.co.uk/filepilot.htm
XWA Pilot Editor ver 1.2 is Copyright © SBC_Nemesis 2000
(review as copied from the host website)
http://www.darksaber.freeserve.co.uk/filepilot.htm
XWA Pilotfile Viewer 3001 ver 200.08.21 is Copyright © CM Mycroft
2000
(review as copied from the host website)
http://www.snoobathewookie.com/tutorials/tutorials.htm
You will learn how this effect can be achieved and how to make it look perfect, even if looked from any angle.
(review as copied from host website)
http://www.snoobathewookie.com/crests/crests.htm
By: Richard J. Scott
Not currently up for download
family awards.txt
http://www.xwaupgrade.com/
Imperial TIE Patch (ITP)
Imperial Fighter Patch (IFP)
Weapons Patch (WP)
You should see the work they have time. It is amazing to see these
bieutiful opts, and even more amazeing when you realize your still playing XWA. They have even made custom cockpits
for all of the Imperial Fighters, and also to my knowledge plan to make custom cockpits for all fighters and the
shuttle. The IFP comes with the Missile Boat, Assault Gunboat and the TIE Experimentals, and as a added bonus Darth
Vader's TIE X1. Of note is that this patch fixes the XWA s-foil problem, and dual warhead problem (in SP), with
out the use of the old s-foil patch. I believe these patches would be of great use to the TIE Corps (well those whos
computer can run them). No stats have been changed, only the textures. For example the Missile Boat looks just
as it did in the old TIE Disk and cutsences from TIE. You have to see the Missile Boat and Gunboat cockpits to truely appreciate
them. They are remarkable, as equally so are the TIE cockpits. It is truely something the work they have done.
OV-2E
{IWATS-AIM-CBX-ICQ-M/1/2-RT-SM/2-TM-TT-XAM-XTT}