A Breath of Fresh Air into the Sails of Development

So as you might have noticed, our site has undergone a bit of a visual refresher. We felt it to be appropriate given the developments going on this past summer with the team and the mod. The new version of this site does away with the Subdreamer CMS we’ve been using the last few years and instead uses WordPress. Several features of the new design will be the ability for team members to add themselves to the roster of the team (avoiding the problem of having an outdated list) and posting individual developer blogs.

Two new team members have joined our ranks recently and have been instrumental in helping gather together what we’ve already produced and pinpoint what to focus on for finally releasing this mod.

Maestro, our new lead coder, has tremendous experience on the Source engine and has worked on a few mods before this. In the few weeks he’s been helping us he has made great progress on adding in several features we were hoping to have as well as fixing issues that have been troubling us for some time.

Watchtower is a close acquaintance of Maestro (and actually was the one to introduce him to us, the two have worked together on mods before) and has skills in level design, modeling, and texture design. He has been diligent in helping organize and prioritize the art assets and projects the various team members have been working on for the first release.

In terms of our current plans for the first release, we have a few gameplay modes that will be centered around an objective system that will change its overall required objective depending on the mode. Sub goals will also be present in most of the levels, for things such as opening shortcuts or activating defensive measures.

• Team Deathmatch: Pretty straightforward; kill the the other team as much as possible within the time limit.
• VIP (Very Important Person): Each round a player gets chosen to be the VIP, this could be Princess Leia on the Deathstar being escorted to the Falcon or R2-D2 getting to an escape pod on Tantive IV.
• Capture the Flag:  Capture the other team’s flag as much as possible within the time limit.
• Last Man Standing: Three to five minute rounds where teams attack/defend objectives in the map (Destroying/escorting objects, opening doors, making to an escape point). Players can be killed and remain in a state of death until the next round.
• Team Assault: Similar to Last Man Standing’s objective gameplay only with unlimited respawns , a longer time limit, bigger maps and more objectives to attack/defend.

With all these game modes players will choose from a selection of (for this first release) three classes, all with their own unique ability to bring to the battlefield and support their team mates.

• Soldier: A common grunt trooper with a good mix of firepower, speed, and armor. Can dispense ammo drops to resupply team mates.
• Heavy Weapons:  Higher firepower such as rocket launchers and better armor but lower speed. Can throw a special grenade that emits a partial shield to block progress of the other team as well as protect team mates from damage.
• Sniper: Armed primarily with a sniper rifle, this class has higher speed but lower armor. This class has the ability to use the Electrobinoculars to scope out hard to see foes in hidden places and report their positons to their team.

Finally, we have some new pictures of the projects our team has been working on, first up is Pene who aside from updated shots of his stunning Mos Eisley map (and some of the props used) has been working on one of the Electrobinoculars to be used in the Galactic Civil War era. Also DT being unhappy with his first version and always the perfectionist decided to redo his Stormtrooper model to a new one which impossibly outdoes the old one in quality:

So that concludes our first news post on the new site redesign. We’re going to try to make more frequent updates now, Watchtower has offered to do PR work.

We are still looking for people to join our team, texture artists and 3D modelers are a big must have at this time so if you’re interested don’t hesitate to fill out an application on our forums!