Friday Feature: The Friday Feature Archives!

Below you’ll find an index of all of our Friday Features over the years. There is a wealth of great information, so be sure to take a look!

Friday Features: The Archives!  
Homeshow Winner June 202307/07/2023https://www.empireinflames.com/?p=2029
Housing on EiF06/09/2023https://www.empireinflames.com/?p=1968
Smuggler 10105/19/2023https://www.empireinflames.com/?p=1955
Looking Back at Five Years of EiF05/06/2022https://www.empireinflames.com/?p=1789
Heroic Vendor Rewards2/25/2022https://www.empireinflames.com/?p=1724
Getting to Know Melee Skill Trees in EiF12/03/2021http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=1689
Schisms of the Force Dev Q&A!7/23/2021http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=1597
The Force5/28/2021http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=1519
Empire in Flames New Player Guide and FAQ5/14/2021http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=1467
Powerups: Cornerstone of an Empire4/23/2021http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=1432
EiF Armor Crafting 1014/17/2021http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=1390
Axkva Min! An EiF Spin!10/11/2019http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=1177
Creature Handler Revamp6/28/2018http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=1168
Galactic Career Day5/31/2019http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=1157
Last Six Months! Whew!4/05/2019http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=1141
Anniversary Memories4/27/2018http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=947
A look behind the scenes3/30/2018http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=893
Emotions in EiF3/9/2018http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=842
Searching on the Bazaar Terminal2/23/2018http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=814
THE Road Map for EiF2/9/2018http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=807
Food and Drinks2/2/2018http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=802
Base Busting EiF Style!1/26/2018http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=795
Factions!1/20/2018http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=779
A Chat with Sandarie1/12/2018http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=771
Commands in SWG1/5/2018http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=763
The Anatomy of an Invasion12/29/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p756
Welcome to Empire In Flames11/10/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=714
The Staff of an Empire in Flames12/15/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=732
Political Power12/1/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=708
Combat in Empire in Flames, or How I Spent My Summer Vacation11/24/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=698
A Chat with Wefi11/17/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=680
A Chat with BluePyros11/10/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=667
The Friday Feature Archives!11/3/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=659
EiF Combat10/27/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=647
A Chat with Kelta10/20/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=638
A Chat with Abi/Gail10/13/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=628
RP on EiF10/06/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=623
Invasion9/29/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=609
A Chat with Anishor9/22/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=599
Loot Kits/Recyclers9/15/17http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=595
A Chat with Halyn9/8/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=586
Heavy Weapons Y’all!9/1/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=560
oops…8/25/2017 
Teaser!8/18/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=541
Old Content – Racetracks8/11/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=535
Badges8/4/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=527
Macros7/28/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=514
Creature Resources7/21/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=505
Player Events7/14/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=492
Port Jato7/7/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=474
Player Goods and Services6/30/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=461
Server Hardware6/23/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=456
Player Cities6/16/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=433
EiF Character Builder Beta Testing!6/9/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=424
Enter the Cats!6/2/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=415
Decorating in Empire in Flames5/26/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=391
Planetary Factional Alignment in EiF5/19/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=376
Pauleh Plays!5/12/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=361
By the Numbers5/5/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=330
Bonus Posts!  
Question and Answer Time with the Devs!5/2/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=291
Racial Bonuses5/1/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=282
Professions and Skills5/1/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=271
Housing in EiF4/27/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=245
Empire in Flames Contact and Social Media Information4/22/2017http://www.empireinflames.com/?p=216

Friday Feature 3/30/2018: A look behind the scenes.

Staff just sitting around, shooting the sh… breeze early Monday morning before I left for my weekly client trip…

Halyn: Kelta and I won’t be around from Thursday through Monday. It’s the Easter weekend and we want to take the kids to the farm.

Sandi: *in a panic* So can you help me plan something for Sunday?

Abi: *instantly pipes up* Do an ‘easter egg’ hunt

Sandi: What would the Easter Eggs be?

Abi: Storyteller containers outside of cities.

Sandi: Those only last 8 hours…

Abi and Sandi go back and forth attempting to work out how to implement it. What can the community get, how many, how do we prevent people from exploiting? How do we make it fair for everyone?

Anishor pipes up with rewards suggestions, his first comment on the event:  Lightsabers…

Abi works up a proposed list of rewards, over which Sandi drools.

Halyn in the meantime continues to do his own thing, like putting in announcements when a new character is created and extending storyteller items to last for 48 hours.

Abi: Wait, why are we doing an Easter egg hunt? We’re going to have April Fools stuff, iirc.

Halyn: I don’t know what we’re going to have atm.

Sandi heads to the airport. She reviews the conversations in the various Discords, notes the incredibly boring topics the staff has been talking about, which includes the backpacks she doesn’t care about in the least. As her eyes glaze over and she skims the text about the new housing, a few other things, she throws in that she wants a stuffed tauntaun, for which she is teased repeatedly.

Sandi and Abi talk more about how to implement an Easter Egg Event, which she’s now calling the E3. Halyn keeps working on content, tossing up occasional screenshots.

Tuesday morning: Sandi goes off to a client and returns to…

Halyn:    soooo
               I decided to run with your egg hunt thing
               but I’m putting together a screenplay
               screenshots shortly
               the big thing will be getting waypoints to put egg containers at

Sandi holds her breath, looking through the text on breaks and finds a screenshot of an NPC announcing the Great Galactic Egg Hunt!

She notices it’s a bit like the Junk Dealers; you’ll be able to trade the found eggs for stuff. She literally squees loudly, hoping the people in the room next to hers at the hotel don’t call the Front Desk to complain.


The Arcon Multinode Agricorp is sponsoring their first Easter Egg Hunt!

Sunday, April 1st (after the patch in the morning Central time

The event will last 72 hours from when it launches.

The representative for the Arcon Multinode Agricorp can be found in Pandath on Taanab, who will provide instructions on how to find the Easter Eggs.


There are 102 Easter egg containers available, 6 in each of the targeted cities.

Taanab – Pandath
Corellia – Coronet, Doaba Guerful, Kor Vella, Tyrena
Talus – Dearic, Nashal
Naboo – Moenia, Kaadara, Keren, Theed
Rori – Narmle, Restuss
Tatooine – Bestine, Mos Eisely, Mos Entha, Mos Espa

You can hunt eggs on each of your characters.

What would a Friday Feature be without a teaser of a few items which will be available?

NOTE: this is the first time these items are being made available. They will all be available in the future with upcoming content.

 

 

Friday Feature 9/8/2017: A Chat with Halyn

Halyn and I got a chance to sit down virtually and talk about him and Empire in Flames. Well, actually, Gail and I wrote up a list of questions and Halyn answered them! The first way just sounded more cozy. *broad grins* Enjoy!

Sandi: Which versions of SWG did you play? pre-CU, CU, NGE?

Halyn: All of them!

Sandi: If you played in the pre-CU live, approximately how long did you play in the pre-CU?

Halyn:    I started in October of 2003 and played until the game shutdown. I had a couple breaks in there of a few months at a time, and periods where I was more and less active, but largely played from almost the beginning all the way to the end.

Sandi: Which server did you play on?

Halyn:    Starsider from beginning to end. I had an RL friend who rolled there first, and the RS guild started there as well. I never had a reason to go elsewhere.

Sandi: Which classes and which was your favorite?

Halyn:    Pre-CU, I largely played a weak combination of classes – pistoleer, smuggler, creature handler, ranger, and a few others. At the time, I wasn’t interested in min-maxing. I had fun in particular as a smuggler, and generally had one smuggler characters from mid-pre-CU all the way through the end of the game. During the early CU, I played a smuggler/commando which had some hilariously awesome potential until SOE nerfed cross-classing weapons.

Sandi: How many accounts did you own/manage?

Halyn:    Only one actively, but I wound up inheriting a number of accounts that I kept running. At peak, I had four accounts I was paying for before my then-girlfriend started playing and took one or two of them off my hands.

Sandi: What type of gameplay style do you most enjoy?

Halyn:    One we don’t have yet – space!

Sandi: What’s a typical gaming session for you, what activities?

Halyn:    On days I’m not wearing a dev hat, I log in and decide which character I want to play with. Sometimes I run missions, but I often spend more time now days just touring the galaxy and seeing what other EiF players are doing. Even with a small population, some amazing things are happening in-game, with deco that’s breath-taking and cities that are amazing.

Sandi: What do you most enjoy about SWG?

Halyn:    It may be cliche to say at this point, but it’s the sandbox. There’s a sense of freedom in the game – I can go anywhere I want, do anything I want, and it’s a legitimate gameplay experience. I can decorate a locale, ride a narglatch across Naboo, race a swoop on Tatooine, fight stormtroopers at a starport, or conduct some seedy business on Port Jato.

Sandi: What do you enjoy most about Empire in Flames?

Halyn:    Seeing other people enjoy the work we’ve put in is number one. Number two is working on new things that other servers haven’t done, like our extended selection of species and the upcoming GCW system.

Sandi: When you are not ingame, what do you enjoy doing?

Halyn:    Hunting, reading, and being a father to two wild boys who love Star Wars as much as I do.

Sandi: What do you do outside of EiF / do for a living?

Halyn:    I’m an author (check Amazon!) and run a small computer business out of my home. It’s enough to keep the lights on and food in the fridge.

Sandi: What is your role with EiF? What does that entail?

Halyn:    Lead developer/owner. As such, I’m often knee-deep in the muck of code, working on new features. It also means I screen patches and additions submitted by the rest of the team, make tweaks, and ensure nothing breaks. I also manage code merged from SWGEmu’s development to make sure we stay up-to-date and that our customization remains compatible with new upgrades. In other words, I do at least some of almost everything on the backend.

Sandi: If you could have ANYTHING instantly in EiF, what would it be?

Halyn:    JtL. Everything else on my immediate want list our team can handle from scratch, even if it will take a while.

Sandi: What gives you Developer’s Crack?

Halyn:    There are few things I like more than seeing players enjoy a new feature we’ve worked hard to implement. We introduced new races with the client patch, and I love seeing them already in use! Cat mounts started as a whim, but anyone who has some creature handler skill seems to prefer them over speeders, and it’s extremely satisfying to see them racing around.

Sandi: Feel free to add anything else!

Halyn:    I’m grateful for the players here. I know new content has been slow in coming, but the steady player community here is an awesome thing to see and participate in. I’m grateful for our volunteer team, too – Sandarie and BluePyros in particular have taken a huge amount of work off my hands, which lets me work on all the new features I’ve dreamed off.

Halyn:    I’m hoping in the next few weeks to start previewing bits of the Galactic Civil War system. It’ll be unlike anything else on a SWG server, with new features that will continue to shape EiF into the most unique SWG project around!

Patch Notes: Client Patch 8/30/2017

The much anticipated CLIENT PATCH arrives tomorrow! Patch notes follow down below. The brand spanking new EiF Launcher will be available to load up the patch, as well! Instructions will be available. I’m sure you will all be grateful  I didn’t add my *squees* and *happy dances* throughout these notes, you’ll just have to guess at which ones are my favorites!

  • 4 new player races:
    • Devaronian Females
    • IG-100
    • Mirialans
    • Zeltron
  • New creature mounts have been introduced! Note that not all variants of a creature can necessarily be mounted – only the largest, toughest versions of some of these animals can carry a rider.
    • Narglatches
    • Gurrecks
    • Greater Sludge Panthers
    • Tusk Cats
    • Gualamas
    • Bordoks
    • Blurrgs
  • Entertainer Missions have been reworked using the new Fame system, which replaces the old Image Designer line in the Entertainer Profession. Entertainers with more fame can command higher payouts, particularly for gigs that require travel.
    • Fame-enhancing clothing and attachments will be coming at a future time.
    • Fame is not retroactive for already-established entertainers. The SWGEmu code that should force an update does not work, and we are investigating and will patch as soon as we have a solution.
    • Only a single entertainer mission can be taken at a time.
  • Munitions crafting has been re-added to the game. See the next Friday Feature to learn more about the Heavy Weapons revamp.
    • Weaponsmiths now have a number of new cores and components to craft to create heavy weapons.
    • Grenades, mines, and rocket launchers use explosive cores.
    • Flamethrowers and acid rifles use tanks.
    • Heavy beam weapons use capacitors.
    • Light lightning cannons use static cores.
  • Armor slicing has been re-added to the game.
  • Races that previously lacked customization now have basic morphs and palettes available, including:
    • Abyssin
    • Cerean
    • Duros
    • Gungan
    • Iktotchi
    • Kel Dor
    • Kubaz
    • Togruta
  • The first stage of the GCW has been implemented. All planets participating in the GCW now have factional troops present. (See this Friday Feature!) Planetary control scripting is still in process and has not yet been enabled, but is coming soon.
  • Port Jato, an underworld-themed player hub, can now be visited via friendly smugglers who take cash in advance. These smugglers generally don’t like being found anywhere near law enforcement, but can likely be found at the watering hole of criminal-infested hives of scum and villainy.
  • Devaronians and Kel Dor no longer appear headless when wearing hats or hoods.
  • Paintings now have backs.
  • Cats can now swim.
  • Ubese armor jackets now correctly offer chest protection.
  • Two-strap bandoleers now use the correct color palette.
  • Up to six missions can be taken from a standard mission terminal.
  • BER rates on harvesters have been changed from pre-CU BER calculations to NGE BER calculations.

Sandarie
Community Manager

One Happy Twi’lek!

Friday Feature 6/2/2017: Enter the Cats

Star Wars Galaxies has long struggled with the idea of obsolescence. An Empire Divided launched without any player transportation – only shuttles – which meant characters spent a lot of time on foot, hoofing it to distance POIs after landing at the nearest shuttle.

Creature Handler mounts were the first to cut into that, with a handful of mounts available to everyone (well, everyone who had befriended a Creature Handler!): carrion spats, kaadu, lesser dewbacks, and lesser bols quickly became a common sight; larger mounts, like the giant carrion spat or the larger dewbacks, were sources of pride among the Creature Handlers.

Then came the speeders.

Creature mounts quickly fell out of favor, even among the Creature Handlers. Fast-moving swoops became ubiquitous; even the slower speeders, like the Speederbike and the X34, barely saw use. Speed was king.

And it’s hard to blame players. Creature mounts were clearly obsolete, and have remained so ever since. Even NGE mounts like the rancor were a novelty, not a serious mode of transportation.

That changes on Empire in Flames.

The Clone Wars CGI cartoon actually demonstrated Talz riding narglatches. Not only were they a viable mount, but they kept pace with the Republic force’s BARCs!

In SWG, creature handlers running missions often use cat creatures for just that reason. Cats in various forms can almost keep up with a swoop. That said, creature handlers still generally resort to driving a swoop themselves, since the mountable creatures are too slow to be efficient at running missions.

Adding cat mounts to Empire in Flames has to walk a fine line – on one hand, they need to be valuable and useful if we expect players to actually seek them out, rather than just use the same old swoops (and improved speederbikes) that are already in use. On the other hand, creatures aren’t killed off in the same way speeders are blown up; if they’re too good, we essentially kill off the speeders market.

How do we walk the fine line?

First, by speed. Cat mounts are slightly slower at natural speeds than a swoop; at /gallop the speed boost makes them slightly faster.

Second, by skill. Only the largest cat types can be used as a mount, and none of them are available to non-creature handlers. Your CL10 cowardly gurreck or BEed narglatch? Don’t expect them to carry you across the planets. While the list has not yet been finalized, powerful wild cats like the narglatch matriarch, grand wrix, and greater sludge panther are strong enough to carry a rider.

Coming soon in the client patch!