Stargate EaW and 2020 so far...

October 4, 2020

Hello everyone,

2020 … it hasn’t been easy for anyone so far.

Let’s not discuss this whole COVID-19 situation… We simply hope that everyone in our community is doing ok!
Besides that we want you to know something else: We’re still here. Our project is still alive. We still want to share our dream of a Stargate RTS game with you. And we’re slowly but surely getting back to working on it.

Our last major update (besides some minor fixes) was the release of the ground skirmish open beta on the 15th of December 2019.
One could say it was the last big effort before many of our team members needed to shift their attention elsewhere.
However … a few of us were able to keep going in the quiet.

Thanks to those we are now able to round up a more then considerable patch for both the open beta and stable version!

This patch further improves ground skirmish by adding new units and abilities (Wraith foremost), improving balance and visuals and fixing several minor and major issues with ground battles in general.
The fix for the long standing bug with the Wraith Queen not spawning in the Pegasus Prelude tactical battles is also included.
Furthermore, it adds a new ground skirmish map - Yus Homeworld - and slightly improves the mods’ performance, especially the load time on startup.
Lastly, as usual, we continue improving our description texts: Thanks to community member Boriss for all his work on the English texts, and AbkanST for his work on the Russian translation and darkyuri for his work on the Czech translation.

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Art:
Models and Effects:

Added new model for the Wraith Queen
Added Iratus Bug model
Added mortar grenade smoke trail
Added TurnL and TURNR animations to Wraith_Land_Unit_Chimera.ALO
Added PRS_INTERDICT_FX proxy to Goauld Artillery Hatak
Increased the visibility of the Field Commander buff particle
Improved idle animation of the Wraith_Land_Unit_Harvester.ALO
Fixed Wraith bomber shadow
Fixed Wraith_Land_Unit_Harvester.ALO muzzle bones and attackidle animationIcons:
Added Icon for Wraith Worshippers
Added radar icon to offensive and defensive turrets
Added new ability icons for Wraith Ghosts and Cruiser Bombardment
Added unit icon for Iratus Bug as well as an ability icon with Iratus Bug for Michael
Improved all ground building radar icons and gave them contours for better visibility
Improved icon of Wraith Soldier and Elite Soldier to be able to distinguish them more easily
Adjusted scale factor for every ground building radar icon
Changed Space hero Apophis to now having a different icon than the ground hero
Replaced the of the Artillery Hatak with the new one used by the actual ship (resolves #3008)
Implemented workaround for Projectile_Dirt_Collide being spawned with the field commander buff projectiles
Fixed missing Regeneration Alcove icon

Code:
General:

Made the game no longer load the vanilla config file to prevent it from loading a lot of un-needed stuff. This should give another performance boost
Created a new template for ground buildings and made basically every ground building use it. This helps making the code a lot cleaner and prevent potential errors
Fixed invalid Fire_Cone_Height in HP_BAAL_F_SBH_00 and HP_Wraith_Rebel_Starbase_M_WP_00 making those hardpoints work properly again
Removed LAND_OBSTACLE behaviour from transportation rings
Unified land/space retreat messages, added custom messages for every faction

Pegasus Prelude:

Fixed the Wraith Queen not showing up in tactical battles
Fixed Wraith scout being buildable twice
Fixed Wallus not spawning fightersSpace Skirmish:
Made Unit_Space_Replicator_Cruiser use the correct template and re-added shields that accidentally got removed.
Fixed Wraith Corvette ability not ignoring cloaked unitsGround Skirmish:Goauld:
Increased fire rate for the Kull to make the unit appear more authentic. DPS untouched.

Tauri:

Fixed the Shield Malps’ shield not protecting properly from enemy fire
Nerfed F-303
Changed Ranged_Target_Z_Adjust of the Tau’ri Radar Station to 10 so it can be correctly hit now
Fixed grenade ability errors
Added an additional ability for reducing reinforcement time to Tau’ri Inhibitor

Wraith:

Added new units: Wraith worthshippers and made them recruitable on the Indoctrination Camp structure available on the outpost buildpad
Added less ugly ghost model to the queen.
Added new ability Wraith_Cruiser_Bombardment to Wraith Queen
Added new ability for spawning an Iratus Bug Nest to Michael
Added TURRET behav to all walkers to enable TURN animations
Added a tag for Wraith Jammer allowing it to prevent bombing runs in a certain radius
The Harvester can now kill infantry by running over it
Improved the handling of the Wraith stun bomb: Added new particle effect and added Recharge_Seconds to the ability which allows the timer “ticking back” if aborted
Changed Mantis to use an in-code turret. This allows for all barrels to be used
Switched Seeker to hover template/walk locomotor to improve the odd movement behaviour
Improved Brutes walking into each other
Increased Idle_Chase_Range to 350 for the Brute: as a melee unit, it wouldn’t react to being attacked in some cases
Increased Fire_Cone_Width for Harvester AI guns
Coded harvester head as turret so it looks at enemies when firing
Tweaked harvester movement animation rate to avoid moonwalking
Fixed non-working ghost ability for the Wraith Queen

Sound:

Added new speech sounds for the Wraith Queen (English only)
Added new authentic engine sound for the Goauld Probe
Added new sounds: shields on/off
Added (currently unused) Zat open sound
Replaced vanilla Stealth SFX with Jumper stealth sound
Removed vanilla retreat sound

Level Design:

Added new land skirmish map: Yu’s homeworld!
Increased Anubis Homeworld lake height to prevent units from being hit while being in water
(Re-)moved the hill on M4X-337 which would cause units to get stuck frequently on spawn
Removed fire-obstructing hill on M4X-337
Fixed missing “spawn garrison” on outpost markers on Tagrea and Othala
Fixed units getting stuck in middle landing zone on Haktyl
Fixed missing Othala space map preview in game due to “Othalla”-“Othala” filename inconsistencies
Fixed skydomes being cut off on large ground maps

Text:

Added improved English texts by community member Boriss
Updated several mod translation files, especially Russian (Thanks to AbkanST!) and Czech (Thanks to darkyuri!)
Fixed some issues in the English textfile
Added text for Wraith ground unit Ghost and for Wraith Queen’s ability Ghosts and Cruiser Bombardment
Added custom retreat texts for every minor and major faction
Adjusted description for Ancient Dreadnought and Moros’ Flagship
Rephrased some PP GC event texts

Besides the patch we had quite a few #guess-the-map contests on our Discord server.
The following maps have been guessed correctly so far:

Chulak