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I am back playing SWG on live servers. SWG now have a quite nice setup for storyteller missions. You create your own story, deploy mobs/debris in a area and create a story with it. Then you later take your friends and play the quests you setup. Also took some images from our city set up in storytell...

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To be clear, this is not in any way an attempt to make rules and regulations to swg canon, but to allow for a framework of RP'ing. feel free to interpret it however you choose.

This Guide is a courtesy to All  Role-Players in the SWG canon community. I belie...

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With the pace of development on Canon accelerating, we have decided to release the official Canon content timeline that will underlie bi-monthly (every other month) story arcs and affect player experience in a number of ways.

Since we will be executing a classic SWG starting point (1 month after the destruction of the first Death Star), Canon players who are avid Star Wars fans (aren’t we all?) already know how the over-reaching story will go, at least for the first 4 years of live SWG Canon as the story of post-Episode IV through Episode VI plays out.  Yes, we are actually going to let everyone play it out in real time, though players will not take direct part in movie content.  Remember that the original idea of pre-CU was based on you creating a “background” character of Star Wars and, while living in the same worlds as the movie characters, not taking direct part in movie-based content; and instead creating your own life and living in the “untold stories of Star Wars.”

The first 3 years of live Canon (called Phase I) will entail the time of post-Episode IV through Episode V.  The 4th year of live (Phase II) will represent the year between Episodes V and VI.  Each timeline Phase will be broken down into its respective years.  Years will be broken down into three 4-month Acts, and each Act will consist of 2 parts.  The result for the players is every-2-month/bi-monthly story installments/arcs.

From the 4th year on (Phase III and beyond), we remain with total freedom as to how story content on Canon will be handled.  I will say, though, that we will most likely let Expanded Universe content (mostly novels) guide our creativity, while at the same time granting freedom to allow the events on Canon to shape our own, unique, living expanded universe; one which results directly from players’ actions on the server.

Does this mean the Empire might win the Galactic Civil War after the 4 year movie timeline?  That doesn’t seem very canon-like!

Yes, that means the Imps very well might “win” or dominate.  If they couldn’t win the war, we wouldn’t have a sandbox MMO.  The option to become a Rebel will never disappear, so I don’t foresee a time when there is not at least one strong band of Rebels on Canon (to say the very least).  For the Imperials, this means that the guard against insurgency must never be let down.

As for the above not seeming to be canon-like or to respect the Expanded Universe timeline, I have to make sure we are all clear on why this server is named “Canon.”  The principal issue myself and other avid Star Wars fans had with live pre-CU was the fact that there were too many Jedi running around.  As long as it was a possibility for players to become Jedi, too many people would pursue that aspect of the game and simultaneously ruin the accuracy of the events and take away drastically from the aspects of the game that were originally intended to be the major focal points: like the Galactic Civil War.  On Canon, the GCW and its implications are central parts of the game.

The bi-monthly story arcs will vary greatly in style, complexity, duration of player involvement, rewards, and in any other way deemed necessary by the story department.  Some installments may be very simple, yet important tasks required by the players.  Others may require several hours or occasionally even days to complete.

Each 2 month story installment will feature certain “stakes,” which outline the rewards that will be given to the players of the winning faction who participated in the story arc plus the perks and penalties dealt to the winning and losing factions respectively.  This is designed to encourage a high level of player involvement in story installments.

Two months may seem like a long time between over-arcing story elements to storyline-driven players.  Content on this server, ever since I founded the idea, is being designed to be more fluid and alive than using only automated storyline events that provide the same experience for virtually all players involved.  Instead of doing monthly automations, Canon players will get the bi-monthly, automated “chapters” as outlined already.  Time in between chapters will be given story life by the Live Events department, of which yours dearly is the head of.  I intend to put together a dedicated, mature, imaginative. and dynamic team of content professionals for the overall benefit of our community.  We are in no way committing to any certain schedule or number of events, but you can rest assured that you won’t get bored on Canon.

Remember that a direct result of this acceleration of development on Canon is a need for additional staff.  If you have a talent and time to offer this project, private message me (if you are talented the creative/artsy aspects) or Kinshi (if you would belong in the technical division).   

Check the website often for news, and things have sped up around here.  Remember that it is not too early to get to know the community and even begin forming player associations and guilds.  I am personally interested in seeing how this community handles the first 6 months of live, because much of the artisan-based industry and major factional moves will be decided by then and we will see who the big players will be in terms of those who the most organized.

Additionally I’d like to thank Kinshi for the update on NPC city player housing, which I consider to be one of the breakthrough aspects of Canon.  The ability of a player to be a property owner in a classical Star Wars city is simply an awesome idea and a genius move on Kinshi’s part.  I would like to mention, only for clarity’s sake, that not every NPC city will allow player housing in the foreseeable future.

It is also a good time to mention that we have made the decision that the launch and subsequent months of live Canon will feature only 2 of the original planets (one staring planet and one harder planet).  There are major good reasons for us to do it this way.  One of the main ones will be to initially consolidate our smaller player base to a smaller game.  We are not committing to a certain schedule to opening up the rest of the planets, but it will be done in a fun and creative way.  We have decided that Tatooine is the best choice for the starter planet.  The more difficult planet will remain a mystery to the community for now.   

I haven’t spoken about finances for a while either.  Our project is based on community collectively supporting itself by everyone who can donating something so that no small group or individual has to pay for much by themselves.  If you have any extra cash, keep this project in mind.  We could use it more now than ever, as development has started trucking.

As founder of Canon, I’d like to thank you for reading this update.  This is truly a defining point for our community in several ways, so stay connected and involved.  Things are just now heating up around here. 

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Hello Canon players!

Today Canon celebrates its 1st anniversary!  I would like to thank and at the same time congratulate all 500 of us on becoming a force to be reckoned with among the Pre-CU SWG communities out there in 1 very productive year.

Here's a quick throwback to our first post ever...by none other than myself: http://www.swgcanon.com/index.php?topic=4.0

As we move into Canon's 2nd year of existence, players are going to see some big changes, most likely in the following order (#4 is dependent on a lot of things coming together, but I can promise we are going to do everything possible to make it happen this year):

1.) Anniversary/Ending 2010 Update with official release of exclusive Canon features and rulesets
2.) The launch of a larger-scale private Canon testing phase
3.) Established Canon community members becoming part or full-time staff
4.) A semi-public Canon test center (name of TC is not yet released to public), meaning players will be able to submit a short application for a Canon test center account to help with quality assurance testing.    


It is important that I take the time to relay breaking news from http://www.swganh.com  

Organized quality assurance testing is now back underway at ANH, including myself and many other dedicated testers working hard to ensure you the players get the most stable pre-CU experience available anywhere.  For those interested, here is the official announcement/meeting notes concerning the matter:

http://www.swganh.com/anh_community/viewtopic.php?f=26&t=671&sid=bf7ac9fab198f8623d6ae503143f94f5  

There is much more coming very soon here at Canon, so check back soon for more updates!

See Canon's 1 Year Anniversary Statistics here:  http://www.swgcanon.com/index.php?topic=313.0

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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