Dreighton Offline

Marking a milestone

04/13/08

Recently new raw material equations were tested and then released to the game. Equations probably sound boring to most of you, but this could easily be the most important release for the Star Wars Combine this year. It will open the door for other long awaited improvements, namely R&D, repairing ships and thus combat.

The changes made some small changes to existing ships and buildings necessary, but we went to great length to find equations that reflected the statistics we already use instead of forcing drastic changes on all users.

The revised statistics and the release of the new raw material equations is alos a result of the first Star Wars Combine developer meeting we had in February, so it underlines how the quality time developers put into the game paid off for all users.

Star Wars Combine Dev Meeting

02/15/08

The first ever Star Wars Combine Developers Meeting is under way. 9 core team members (Veynom, Black Knight, Khan, Dreighton, orion, DeMeer, Togan Jano, Cam Antilles and Gitane Demone) are meeting in Berlin for a week in real life to work on the Combine, get to know each other better and share their kowledge to improve the all over standards of our work.

I can't tell you how excited I am about this meeting. Creating something like the Combine with a team of volunteers from around the world, all of it based on internet communication. Yet I have been to some meeting and know well enough how a real life meeting can advance things. Half an hour of real life conversation can sometimes solve more than four weeks online.

Another thing that I am really excited about is that I could convince MySQL to send us a consultant to work with us for one afternoon, and it has indeed been a great expereince. It was also a unique opportunity to optimize our performance and to enhance the qualification of our team. We are extremely thankful to MySQL for their support that they so kindly offered to us, because they felt we might be a project they like.

This is clearly a meeting to get work done, to make visible progress on our game, and we are working on it every minute we have. But I was also looking forward to spending time with fellow developers. So far we had a good time, despite our tight work schedule. At the end of the meeting we will have to make an assessment, if meetings like this are a good way to improve our work and if we may do it again in the future.

The meeting is covered more extensively on our website (http://swcombine.com).