Incoming classified data...

[Forceflow]

We've got confirmation that one of our rebel spies has turned up some juicy information and is trying to get it to us as soon as possible...

2024-04-13_XWAU_teaser.jpg

Well, in all seriousness we figured that it might be good to keep you guys a bit more up-to-date on what's going on and provide some teasers along the way. We'll try to have some sort of regular updates in the future to hopefully built some excitement towards XWAU 2024 (formerly known as XWAU 2023, also known as XWAU 2022 ) There is no planned release date, yet. We do have a working early beta version that's being tested however. There are still a lot of things that need to be fixed, but one of the discussions going on right now is to maybe release a beta to the general public sometime soon™.

There are plenty of reasons why things are taking so much longer than expected. One of the biggest contributor is that the scope just got so much bigger. Especially tech-wise things have been absolutely crazy. So many new toys and shiny things to play with. Pretty much all aspects of the game have been getting upgrades that we never thought possible. That did however also come with pretty hefty performance hits, some of which were simply not feasible. So a lot of time had to be put into optimizing performance versus eye-candy.

Recently huge strides have been made to improve performance with those new features in place however, so things are again being shuffled around and tested. @Ace Antilles has built, rebuild, and rebuild the installer yet again countless amounts of times. Just the sheer number of files that he needs to keep track of is insane. Just to give you an idea, before a craft like the Z-95 consisted of a few files at most. Basic, exterior, cockpit opts, double that for a different variant, a material file if you wanted to be really fancy. Let's be generous and call it 10 files. Depending on how we end up setting things up that ship alone might come with 400 files, but it will be 100 for sure. (Granted, that one is pulling all the available stops here, but you get the picture)

Then there's the need to coordinate everybody working on stuff and fixing issues, making sure to not accidentally overwrite other peoples fixes and simply just desperately trying to stay on top of all the new and incredible tech-wizardry @blue_max and @JeremyaFr are coming up with.

And last but certainly not least a lot of older models are being redone, being reworked, tuned and generally optimized. Not to mention a whole bunch of completely new models are also in the pipeline.
So, to make a very long story short, stuff is going on
Again, we hope to provide some more updates and teasers to you regularly, so stay tuned and we hope you guys are as excited about what’s to come that we are.

[Porkins_BB]

This is great news! We are very fortunate to have a team like you guys working so diligently to make this game even better each time. I'm very grateful for everything you do!

[Ace Antilles]

To give some more numbers to what Forceflow mentioned.

Right now the XWAU installer folder contains...
3070 Files and 200 Folders!

That's just the folders. Not to mention the numerous scripts needed to make it work.
I've been working on this since XWAU 2020 was released more or less.

[PunkFriday]

AWESOME

[Rookie_One1]

Have to ask : B-Wing ?

[adambishop]

Amazing. Looking forward to more teasers and future releases.

[Erd]

Regular updates sounds like a treat.

[Hullbreacher]

excited to hear it! I'm so grateful to this intrepid team of modders!!

o7 pilots!

[EliteBane]

Really glad to hear about the new updates and tweaks coming! I am curious as to whether multiplayer is able to be updated or improved also.

[Meta-BH]

Damn, this is awesome. I've been willing to get back into XWA and TFTC, and this is just the cherry on top. Looking forward to it!

[Knight26]

Awesome news, just wish we could get some preview shots.

[Forceflow]

Analyzing incoming data-stream
It looks like the Empire is doing it again, a new Death Star appears to be built. But it's still not ready for battle so we have a chance to take it down before it is becoming fully operational!


This teaser is a bit more technical in nature, but I hope you'll stick with us through it. We'll show more stuff soon, but for now it's just us trying to keep you more up-to-date on what's going on.

The above video is part of the new concourse upgrade. It not only represents the amazing feat of being able to finally re-make the concourse with all HD elements, but also shows that with this new feature set we can actually include videos into the concourse. Before, all animations inside the concourse (not counting the actual video sequences for the game) where just a bunch of still images one after the other. While this was okay for low FPS small animations it's not really an option for full blown HD remakes. When first trying to include videos in the game it quickly became apparent that the required file sizes not only would be insane, but performance would suffer massively even on high-end PCs.
If we'd done it the old way using the same level of quality the animation above would have easily been 200MB or even bigger and load times would have been horrible. Even massively reducing resolution and optimizing the files would still result in bad performance and something like 90MB of files to load. (And note that this is a just a really short 3 second video)
As a video like you see above it loads much faster and is only barely above 12MB in size at full quality.
And this is just one of the many, many new features being implemented just for updating the concourse. Things have been in bug-hunting mode mostly the last weeks and bugs are being squashed faster than I can keep track off. So things are looking up, we already have a much smoother and better experience being tested.

It's still some ways off, but we are feeling ready to lock down the contents of the next big patch. It wont feature all of the HD concourse just quite yet, but most of the used areas should be fully ready to check out.
As always real life tends to get in the way of what we are hoping to achieve, but the team is making huge strides toward a great new release!

So stay tuned and hopefully we'll have another teaser ready for you guys next week!

Just one more thing to give you an idea of the absolutely amazing work the @MechDonald has put into the new concourse:

2024-04-21_XWAU_teaser.jpg

(Note that this is a sized down version of what you'll find in-game!)

[Darkton93]

Now THAT'S something! I'm guessing something will be released May The Fourth, even if it isn't this?

[Vince T]

Attention! News just in!

Rebel ships have entered the superstructure and are advancing rapidly towards the main reactor.

AccelTube1.jpg

[Tuskin]

The Falcon has working headlights??

[Vince T]

It does now

[rogue518]

@Vince T..... That is SWEET!!!! Overall, all looks awesome!


Sincerely, Rogue518

[Michal]

Wow! That is really impresive.
Thank you for the update!

[Meta-BH]

Holy macaronni that concourse

[CIDlord_1973]

I feel the need...the need for speed !!!
Yeah !!

[Erd]

Phenomenal job on the new concourse, the details are top notch and ooze that lived in star wars charm. I do worry though that in adapting the screen to widescreen, it feels too open and roomy for a yt-1300/2000 living area.

[smm2303]

Whats the Release Date? Its Awsome. May be someone should have custom missions also (additional) Movie based or another story based.

[Forceflow]

Whats the Release Date? Its Awsome. May be someone should have custom missions also (additional) Movie based or another story based.

When it's ready. I know it's frustrating but we don't have a good enough ETA to nail down a date yet. If all goes as planned we will have something to release soon. (Weeks, not months soon)
But don't hold your breath, unexpected things tend to happen a lot more often that we want

[Forceflow]

We are starting our attack run, hold on tight!


So, with the page and forum up again, we can continue with our little teaser show. Above you see another update to the Death Star run. There’s been a lot of enhancements both on the actual models and the effects themselves. The Falcon now comes with headlights that simply look glorious:

2024-04-27_death-star.jpg

There are plenty of other new models and enhancements as well. We are getting closer and closer to having all models updated. Some of which will certainly be included in the next patch, and some that will be added not much afterwards. Though certainly even a 100% completion will not be the end for us. There are plenty of models that either are currently being reworked or even being completely rebuilt.

The biggest add-on will certainly be the new concourse. While this is also still ongoing and we won’t have the complete release available right now, most of the areas in-game have been completely rebuilt. You’ve seen teasers before, but here’s another one to show you the new look and feel of it:

2024-04-27_concourse.jpg

That’s it for now folks, sorry to be a bit short, but with the server outage and other stuff going on this had to be a quick one. Stay tuned for more updates!

[darklord]

Looks amazing! Every time I start to think you have pushed this thing as far as it will go, you guys prove me wrong. Not bad for a 25 year old game you don't have the source code too