Progress Report: June 2023

[Linken]

So this is going to be a pretty short report, but I hope the following news makes up for it.

OPERATION: KNIGHTFALL

At long last, Knightfall is complete! Yep, you heard that right. It's done!

As of typing this our testers are currently hard at work finding any and all bugs that can be found before we release. In the meantime, my own personal efforts are now shifting toward other things so we can bring forth a complete update.

This mission has truly been a labor of live from many of us on the SWGL team, and after years of waiting, we will finally be able to deliver!

NEXT STEPS

So the next steps going forward before release will include the following, but won't be limited to:

• Upgrade audio in pre-existing missions, currently You Have Become a Rival and The Tragedy of Darth Plagueis will be receiving these upgrades first
• Fix bugs reported in other missions and make other adjustments for continuity. For example, Yaddle will be removed from the final level in Qui-Gon's extended ending for Duel of the Fates.
• Add a whole lotta characters.

There are a few other things I'd like to accomplish but I'm not comfortable sharing right now as I cannot confirm if those things are within my skillset to complete at this time.

This marks the end of the report. If you want to stick around and learn more about what's going to happen with the original mission released back in 2019 and why this remake took so long, you can learn these answers down below.

If you don't want to read anymore, I completely understand and as always I thank you for following the development of Star Wars: Galactic Legacy, and may the Force be with you.

WHAT ABOUT THE ORIGINAL KNIGHTFALL?

Our first ever version of Operation: Knightfall was released on August 12, 2019 and we understand that some people may prefer the original version over the remake, or at the very least may want to still play it.

We completely understand this desire, however for the time being, with the release of this update, Anakin's POV of the original Knightfall level will be made unavailable.

The reason for this is because during production of the remake, many scripts that were used in the original were rewritten and overwrote the original scripts, so for us and our own builds, the mission no longer exists.

However, before releasing and final packaging for the update occurs, I will be taking the current public build of this mod and will extract the original mission and will commence a full refactor of the mission during development of the next update, which should bring about the long-awaited remake of Father vs. Son.

The plan for the original versions of these missions will be for us to create a new category of missions called "Legacy Missions". These will feature archived or outdated missions that we still will allow you to play, but will no longer be supported in any capacity, so all existing bugs and the like will not be addressed.

So to summarize, the remake of Anakin's POV along with the current Clone Trooper and Cin Drallig POVs will be made immediately available in the Knightfall listing, and the original version of Anakin's POV for Knightfall will be re-released with the Father vs. Son remake update as a legacy mission.

WHY DID KNIGHTFALL TAKE SO LONG?

So here comes the opportunity to address the elephant in the room; what took Knightfall so long?

In August 2021, we made the first official announcement that a remake for Operation: Knightfall was in development. Darth Voiid, the man, myth, and legend who created the original wanted to do a remaster for many years, long before we split away from Knights of the Force 2.1.

After the split occurred and several months had passed, Voiid and Lwkill began production on the remake, with the first screenshots being shown in August 2021's progress report.

At that point the mission's foundation was moreorless completed, and as the months went by, more and more developments and progress were made and we were all very excited to have it released.

In the December 2021 progress report, I had mentioned that the mission was undergoing final testing, and then in the February 2022 progress report I mentioned that it and the Deathstar Rescue missions were blocked due to several factors.

As time went on, news about the mission dwindled and eventually became non-existent. 2022 for us was a time of great reflection, as we all realized we had announced so many missions, but had delivered on none of them. A practice which we refuse to repeat going forward.

Though final testing was done on Knightfall as said, what we uncovered was sadly a very buggy mission which was easy to break in multiple instances. Silly things like characters doing idle animations in cutscenes, missing sounds, and some placeholder stuff would've been easily rectified. But on top of this, the mission lacked stability and could not be completed in a single playthrough, which was unacceptable to us and required more work than we thought possible.

Starting in September, things took a turn for the worse as Voiid's own personal life was hit with drama and he lost all desire to work on the mod. As a dear friend of his, I completely understood. In addition to this, my own dedication to the mod was suffering as I was forced to leave the Father vs. Son remake I wanted to make so badly to work months on new menus that the "leader" of KotF 2.1 demanded we change because on the top layer they looked identical despite working in very different (and actually functional) ways.

My own dedication to the mod dwindled and I found myself spending more time playing Red Dead Redemption 2 or really any other game. But eventually those changes were made.

Near the end of 2022, Voiid was still away and I realized at that point how long Knightfall was taking to make. So I made the decision to continue the development on my own and allow Voiid the opportunity to gather himself mentally.

However, my own drama hit when I lost my job in late January 2023 and I was forced to move out of my previous residence. This hit of my own stirred me into a major depression and I lost all want to work on the mod except for very small pockets of time over the past several months.

Though my own personal situation has not improved too much, somehow I was able to find it within me to continue work, eventually working several hours a day to eventually deliver our final product.

This really has been a huge labor of love and a project that all of us on the team are very proud of. Voiid and I are doing a lot better thanks to your support.

Finishing up Knightfall was a very helpful experience for all of us and taught us more and more about the best practices we feel are best moving forward as we create more content.

We hope to move Galactic Legacy along at a better pace than before and we will be making sure to NEVER allow for any mission of ours to take longer than a year (or at least not make you wait longer than a year after we announce).

If you made it this far, then thank you for taking the time to read this stuff. As always, thank you for following the development of Star Wars: Galactic Legacy, and may the Force be with you.