SWGEmu Wiki

Star Wars Galaxies Emulator (SWGEmu)

Star Wars Galaxies is a massively multi-player online role playing game introduced by Sony Online Entertainment in the year 2003. It is the game this project focuses to recreate at a specific milestone referred to as Pre-CU, or Pre-Combat Upgrade. The Combat Upgrade was a set of game changes which radically changed the game-play, to the dislike of thousands of players. These changes led to the founding of this project, in an attempt to "recreate" the game as it was during the Pre-CU era. Emulator can be defined as "to try to equal or excel; imitate with effort to equal or surpass" (Dictionary.com). At SWGEmu, Emulator refers to the software the SWGEmu team is building. This Emulator is meant to imitate Sony Online Entertainment's server-side software, which hosted the galaxies of Star Wars Galaxies during the Pre-CU era. | Source

Emulation Legality

SWGEmu doesn't distribute any of Sony Online Entertainment's copyrighted material, so it does not break any copyright laws. SWGEmu works very hard to stay within it's legal right to produce it's software, and will do it's best to never include copyrighted materials, or infringe on any software patents. Every bit of code developed at the SWGEmu project has been written from scratch by freelance developer's committing their time and effort to the SWGEmu project without the benefit of financial gain. SWGEmu's software is written through a process known as Reverse Engineering. By applying the Scientific Method, SWGEmu's developers observe game-play, and then attempt to recreate it's experience through programming. | Source

Core3 and Engine3

In 2005, Sony Online Entertainment (SOE) made extensive changes to the game known as Star Wars Galaxies (SWG). These changes, which came to be known as the Combat Upgrade (CU), radically changed game-play, and fueled outrage towards SOE for implementing such changes against the wishes of their player-base. In response to this event, a few disgruntled players banded together to form what is now known as SWGEmu, with the defined goal of creating server emulating software in an attempt to restore the Pre-CU era of game-play.

As more and more players found their way to SWGEmu, the development effort began to grow into more than just a vision. By , the milestone referred to as Zoning-in had been successfully achieved. This demonstrated to many that SWGEmu was a dream that could eventually come to fruition. Some time later, features such as character customization, clothing, combat, and very rudimentary creatures had been programmed into a server core, later dubbed Core1. This marked the end of progress on Core1, as it was determined that it's architecture would not allow it to progress further.

Shortly after Core1 was abandoned, a few developers, attempted to revisit the server software, and revitalize Core1, naming it Core1 Rev-Z, after the unofficial developer zstars, whom spearheaded the operation. Though this effort didn't make much progress, the developer Antman, had begun work on his Core2 project, which was starting to show promise. However, server architects !TheAnswer and Oru had a better design in mind, and called for the separation of game-play logic, which would be confined in the server core, from general server powering logic, which would evolve into the now proprietary Engine3 software. From this ideology, Core3 was born. Core3 - Engine3 | Source

SWGEmu and the SWGEmu Magazine Relations

/m/SWGEmu is not an official SWGEmu magazine. This magazine and its moderators are not here to discuss the legality of Star Wars Galaxies Emulation and the decisions made for moderating the magazine are being done in the best interest in mind for the entire Star Wars Galaxies Emulation community as a whole.

AGPL

AGPL is a set of requirements that any server using Core3 (SWGEmu's code) must abide by to fulfil the requirements to run a server. These requirements are set in place by SWGEmu and are based upon having all server work be open source and available to the public (like Core3). Servers that don't follow this do not share their work and go against what this community is built upon. The servers listed below will only be for servers that are AGPL compliant and in full accord with SWGEmu. SWGEmu AGPL Instructions

Non-Emulated SWG Servers

This magazine is for the discussion of legally emulated Star Wars Galaxies Servers. Servers using copyrighted software are forbidden from discussion on the /m/SWGEmu magazine based on rule #3. Servers using copyrighted intellectual property are considered illegal and by definition not emulators.

Project Status

You can check the general status of the project by checking here and the current weekly updates as well as the project's Gerrit.

Jump to Lightspeed

In September of 2019 it was announced that Jump to Lightspeed (JTL) would not be apart of the SWGEmu 1.0 release of Core3. Instead, much like the live version of the game, Jump to Lightspeed would be a post-release launch so the team could focus on ground based portion of the game. As of September 15, 2019 a JTL Special Interest Group was formed to aide in the development of JTL and finish the systems needed for a post-1.0 release. SWGEmu JTL Statement - | Last Updated: November 16, 2020

SWGEmu 1.0 Milestone

SWGEmu's mission statement is to "maintain a community, develop and release vanilla* code of a Star Wars Galaxies Server, Publish 14.1 (or as close as we can get to 14.1) for use of anyone who wishes to use it." and to "form a team that will deploy a server (SunCrusher) that embraces vanilla, yet builds upon it..." The 1.0 milestone and the release of SWGEmu's SunCrusher server is a long-term goal which be available and a release date given once the project is ready. SWGEmu's current focus is to improve Core3 and Engine3, providing many post-14.1 features and tools to preserve fair gameplay amongst all players. | Last Updated: November 16, 2020