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lets take a count..i see only one other person posting anything in this thread...be counted!!

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*** RNN UPDATE***
 Imperial Forces Attack Civilian Refugee Camp in Bestine !!!

  Early this morning a force consisting of several Imperial Marine Platoons launched a horrific attack on the refugee camp outside Bestine. Elements of the 4th and 7th IMP smashed through the defenses of t...

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Hello, everyone and welcome to the August 2010 Community Update for the Canon server!  I'd like to start off by welcoming the many new players!  If you haven't already, please take the time to read the Canon FAQ here: http://www.swgcanon.com/index.php?page=FAQ 

It is an exciting time now for this project for several reasons.  Most exciting for our community is the fact that we are moving ever-closer to launching an official Canon Test Center.  There are several important things, though, that we want to inform the community about.  Kinshi and I have jointly worked up this update to make sure the community is up to date on what is going on here at Canon.  Enjoy!


Kinshi's Internal Development Update:

We are currently documenting the process for creating static spawns, primarily for setting up spawns of factional NPCs at the various military bases, as well as identifying which variations of NPCs to place. The process also involves re-evaluating the stats of the NPCs, and the weapons they carry and is a major part of Canon's customization. Getting this documented now as it is a fairly large data entry project. There is also work here in preserving the data we enter as the ANH code does not yet support database upgrades, so we have to build our own SQL queries and save them for use when new versions of the database get released.

Also we're learning more about region and spawn customization (and spawning things in general). One of the key elements in SWG is defining 'regions' and what properties those regions have, one example is defining a region as Special Forces required, another might be city limits, or no-build zones.

Last, but not least, I am working on some 'back-end' things, namely figuring out what it will take to link Canon forum accounts to game accounts (so there would be no need for another registration process) as well as working out our bandwidth usage projections for a hosted test center.


Canon Treasury & the "Canon Founder" Badge:

With an internal testing phase already underway, Canon is at a changing point in its life.  As its first birthday approaches, Canon's numbers climb ever-closer to the 500 mark.  The time has come for dedicated Canon players to give their full support to this project to ensure a smooth transition to a server community with a public test center.  Yes, that's right...it is time to talk about launching the Canon TC.  You can read more about funding and donations in the sections below.

What is the "Canon Founder" badge?  Great question!  We have decided that players who decide to donate to the Canon server between now and the end of our 1st phase of fund raising will be the only players ever to receive in-game badges labeling them as "Canon Founders." 


Ask the Team (community@swgcanon.com):

It is my pleasure to announce that we have now set up a community mailbox for Canon players to use as a drop box for questions they may have for the administrators and staff of the server.  Any type of questions are allowed, though for good reasons we may not be able to answer them all in the fullest if it's best seen fit to keep details of certain aspects of Canon secret until launch.  We will periodically post "Ask the Team" answer threads that address the best and most frequent issues.

If you have something to ask the Canon team about how the server will operate (professions, missions, quests, events, player cities, or anything else), email community@swgcanon.com and ask your questions!


Financial Outlook & Donations

The time has come to discuss the financial future of our server.  Kinshi is currently doing and in-depth analysis of bandwidth and numbers of available simultaneous players.  As a community server, the Canon Test Center will most likely not launch with an enormous number of simultaneous client sessions.  For that reason, our financial future is extremely bright! 

Since its inception, Canon was intended to be a community-driven server both creatively and financially.  In other words, the community should collectively share the financial burden in a way so that no single person pays too much money to play this game.  As server administrators, we donate huge amounts of our personal time to setting up an environment that will create some long-lasting Star Wars Galaxies memories.

Moving forward, we are finding ways to ensure that the Canon server remains up-to-date and on par with the playerbase.  The primary method of doing this is maintaining a responsible budget and careful planning for an uncertain future.  In the beginning, we are looking at a relatively modest budget to cover somewhere between 150 - 200 simultaneous client sessions/players.  This is a small number of players compared to commercial games, but Canon is flexible and able to grow as much as the community wants it to.  Remember we are talking about a live public test center; not a live game yet.

Looking back, I am amazed at the amounts of money SOE made from this game just in the pre-cu era.  It is staggering, to be honest, to do the numbers on all of us that gave them $15/month per account.  Here at Canon we need a much smaller (but dedicated) group of people to come on as dependable sponsors.  Even a core group of 15-25 people (out of our almost 400 and growing) could support Canon financially and launch the TC by simply donating close to the former $15/month per person we all paid Sony for years. 

We would like to begin asking the community for financial support in order to build a small surplus of money that will allow us to bring Canon alive!  If you are interested in making a donation or becoming a dedicated donor for our server, email community@swgcanon.com with any questions or comments. 

You can reach our donations page here: http://www.swgcanon.com/index.php?action=treasury


Open Staff Position(s)

We are officially posting 2 open staff positions.  Applicants can send resumes, applications, or anything else seen fit to community@swgcanon.com

1.) Website Developer/Administrator

Requirements:  experience in PhP/.NET, Apache, and MySQL databases

Duties:  1.) ongoing work with the server team to integrate the Canon website and game, and 2.) website content data entry and design, 3.) various miscellaneous duties


2.) Data Collection/Entry Specialist

Requirements:  1.) proficiency with data entry, organization, and following instructions, 2.) lots of spare time available for working on the project, and 3.) a respectable knowledge of the Star Wars universe and the time period the game is operating in. 

Duties:  1.) large in-game data collection projects, 2.) data organization, and 3.) various other tasks

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Yup its true, actually for a couple weeks now An actual server where someone can log in, walk around, shoot a rill in the face and survey some resources.

Its still pretty raw, and a ways yet before we are ready to host a public TC, but this server is the test bed for many of the ideas we have been discussing in the forums.

The SWGANH implementation currently has one planet available, Tattooine (the ANH team is currently working on figuring our heightmaps for the other planets). The Blue Frog is also implemented (and will prolly be around for a while).

One for the first things were are working on is on factional spawns, where exactly we want them, and what type of NPCs they should be, their strength and weaponry (basically database work)..plus its also a learning experience as we become familiar with the SWGANH code base, and learning how best to implement it.

The private TC isnt much to look at, but it gets the job done

Toshiba Tecra M5 running WS2008 SP2
Intel Core Duo T2400
4 GB DDR2
320 GB 7200 RPM internal SATA drive
1 Gbit/s ethernet (though currently hosted at my home via Wave Broadband which is only a 1Mbit/s upstream connection), the public TC when its time comes, will be hosted by hosting vendor Optic Fusion.

Some of the other things we are doing with the private testing at this stage...

1. Learning how to easily/quickly roll out new builds of the SWGANH mmoserver code
2. Learning how to accept new DB updates from SWGANH while maintaining our own custom DB changes. (getting version control in place for our customizations)
3. Increasing our familiarity with the SWGANH mmodatabase (as the database is where the real magic lies)

For those that did not know, SWGANH, recently had their 'official' Open Source launch over the weekend (June 26th) which also marked the opening of the True Galaxies Public TC (TG is not directly affiliated with SWGANH, just another community of preCU enthusiasts like us)

Yours truly is also serving as a contributor to the SWGANH project, helping them with server documentation, and code documentation and design efforts (currently working on Artisan profession design documentation).

Very busy time for the project all the way around and SWGANH is the team to watch this summer..they are a pretty motivated bunch, and I have seen so much get done in such a short time, its pretty awe-inspiring.

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Hello everyone!  It has been quite a while since our last formal update, so I am dropping in to give you a bit of news about our project.  We have implemented a new discussion board that is solely dedicated to community ideas and feedback about how the Galactic Civil War will work on the Canon server.  This is an exciting time for our members, new and old, to weigh in with their opinions to actually affect server policy and management.  We want to know what you want to see happen in the war between Imperials and Rebels!  

As time passes, you will gradually see us throw more ideas at you guys for feedback, so please take the time to give us your opinions.  We are open to any ideas as long as they fall within the guidelines of the server.  If you need some ideas to get you started, go ahead and stop by the GCW forum and read what we have posted up to this point.  If you have a fresh idea that hasn't been touched on, start a thread and tell us all about it here: http://www.swgcanon.com/index.php?board=26.0

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Hello Canon players!  I thought it was time to give an update on the development of this project.  As we head toward summer, things are going to get hot around here.  The core development team is working hard to continue getting prepared for the launch of the server.  Here is an update on what each of us is currently working on:


Keep an eye on the website and forums for updates often.  We will be adding new stuff periodically.  Remember to spread the word about this server.  

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Hello everyone!  February was a very uneventful month here at Canon for a number of reasons.  In terms of updates and community news, that would mostly be a result of my son being born in late December coupled with my excessive college schedule.  

I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to Canon as well as welcome all of our new community members that joined throughout February.  Please make them feel welcome.  

A few reminders:  Keep the referrals coming in!  This is the best way to build up a balance of Canon Credits that you can redeem for in-game items once we go live.  This is also the #1 way to help contribute to Canon if you can't make a donation to our treasury to help fund Canon.

Also, please take the time to explore the Canon Planet Guide in the left pane of links and you can explore the starting planets' city guides and see all-original screenshot work done to help players less familiar with the game.  

One of our goals for this new month (and springtime in general) is to promote the Canon server and Pre-CU Star Wars Galaxies to NEW PEOPLE.  Remember that people who were kids when SWG released are now adults and probably still wish they could play Old Trilogy SWG!  So get out there and let people know this is happening and how exciting it is.  Rest assured that you will see much more action around here this month, so be sure to stay tuned for future updates this week.  

Sincerely,
Zetlaux