Summer News - Ultimate Empire at War mod for Star Wars: Empire at War: Forces of Corruption

Good Morning all - I started writing this at a quarter to two in the morning, must have finished by about 5(!). The life of a med student demands that I spend the daylight sleeping, you see. It's been a while since you've had news from me, besides my feature on the Munificent, since I've been learning about too many random diseases and drugs this year, which meant I had to take a lengthy holiday from UEaW, but I'm back, with news for you.

Firstly, I'd like to give a quick bulletin about where the mod is at. We basically have now got all but 2 or 3 (and only 1 of these is essential to V1) models into the game and coded, with working game infrastructure and tech advancement. So what is taking us? Well, there is much more to a mod than just sticking in a load of content, giving it function, guns et cetera. At the moment, there is only really Shimrra and I working on UEaW - Shimrra is grappling with creating new AI that is both more challenging and has to cope with working across four eras and I am trying to make a new GUI and balance 4 eras worth of gameplay, and we just don't have the manhours between us to make it go any quicker.

I've been posting a few shots of new media recently, to demonstrate mainly that we have a playable, albeit unbalanced and AI-deficient game frame made, in which there are 4 functioning eras and working tactical content (I refrain from showing Galactic content, which is also functioning, due to development secrecy and the pending new GUI). The amount of interest we've received from these demonstrations of our pre/alpha build has been impressive and greatly re-assuring - just a few weeks ago we received our 250,000th page visit on Moddb and our 700th watcher, and have continued to grow since then - thankyou to all our fans on Moddb.

These two points tie in nicely together, for a few reasons, however:

Firstly, we wish to recruit two new Development Assistants to aid us in our efforts, freeing up Shimrra and me for more movement towards V1.

Secondly, we want to resurrect our forums and community. For a long while due to perceived inactivity and lack of available manpower for PR, many have left, leaving only a few of our loyal and older fans behind.

Thirdly, we are looking for volunteers who wouldn't mind donating their voice to the mod. We have a small team of Voice Actors who have provided many voices already, however we still have many opportunities for extra sounds across all eras and, more importantly, the entire New Republic needs voicing - if you ever wanted to be that E-Wing pilot or the captain at the head of New Republic MC90, we'd love to have your help.

All these point towards our forums, into which a lot of work has gone recently, from tidying up excessive stickies to re-drafting the board rules. All details of and the place for applications to the positions I advertised above are found in the Join the UEaW team forum, and I would encourage any fans who feel they are up to a challenge to look and apply if they meet the requirements - the positions advertised are not exceptionally complex or requiring of experienced modders, and we really want to get fans involved, so this is your chance to both contribute as well as start modding and probably learn.

I post a lot of media to Moddb, but there is some which is only posted on our own website, and consultation about mod features and content with our fans only occurs on our boards so there's a lot to miss out on if you're not there with us, including your say in the finished product - keep watching our Moddb and contributing to the wider modding community by all means, but we'd love to see fans visiting us at our own home!

Otherwise, it's good to be back. Until next time, folks - and I hope it'll be relatively soon!

LTCC (Doktor von Wer)