[wookieejedi]

It's been a few months since our last official forum update, so all of us at Fate of the Galaxy want to share what we have been working on during the summer. A highlight list includes the following:

• Added new hit animations, laser textures, and muzzle flashes which more closely matches the OT visuals. Huge thanks to Kestrellius for all his work in both creating these effects from scratch and coding in new FSO engine features to allow things to work correctly. He has updated the lasers and laser hits so far, and is continuing to work on updating the secondary visuals now. In our opinion these are the most OT movie accurate effects we've seen in any game. 
• Added debris fields for FREDers to use, including highly generic debris that looks like it is straight out of the Star Destroyer trash chute (we mean that in a good way!) along with detailed ISD debris. There are almost 30 pieces, many of which can be flown though, so there are many opportunities for mission designers. Massive thanks to Dark Visor for modeling, UVing, and texturing those–they turned out great! 
• Updated so players can now set all options in-game! In other words, no more having to fiddle with command lines (you still can use the command line if you are an advanced user). This update allows users to set everything from joysticks to graphics options such as shadows, AA, and more all in-game (though the advanced graphics options do require a game restart to take effect). We also ensured this update of new in-game options still works and plays nice in VR mode. 
• Updated the first 3 interconnected campaigns with additional cleanup and polish, all in an effort to reach our public released goals.
• Updated to the most recent FSO version to leverage robust new optimizations developed by Lafiel that speed up many aspects related to turrets and lasers, along with him adding multithreading for collisions. All of these updates allow FotG and other mods to have massive battles run at much better framerates! For example, a 170 capital stress test mission went from 30 FPS to nearly 60 FPS. 
• Updated AI with improved collision avoidance and more strategic and better looking attack pattern management. With the AI updates in this and previous updates, they really are potent and quite useful to have your back and follow your orders! 
• Updated Project Alderaan with many fixes, polish, and cleanup updates. 
• Updated and fixed many other components with cleanup and fixes, which are too long to list here. Here is quite a saga of the bug hunt if anyone wants some extra reading:  https://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=99617.msg1921394#msg1921394 Huge thanks to Lafiel for tracking these down and fixing them, they were one of the last blockers to release! 

Community Connections
As always, we want to highlight all the awesome work done by the FSO devs, too. They have continued adding code cleanup, bug fixes, optimizations, and multiple other updates that FotG uses. Just to name a few,  Lafiel fixed multiple bugs (see above) and provided number optimizations including added multithreading for collisions, more performant decals/particles and more all of which allows all FS mods to have much better framerates in super large missions; Goober added multiple enhancements and cleanup with FRED, AI code; Taylor identified and fixed many multiplayer related bugs, and MJN refined and fixed many HUD related bugs. As always, there’s many other devs adding great fixes, features, and other enhancements, too.


Moving Forward
Once again, thank you all for your sustained enthusiasm and support! The only big milestone left before we can release is having FSO release 25.0 stable (which is ideally not far away). We are so excited to share the game with you all once those are completed. In the meantime, here are some new screenshots. May the Force be with you!

Video showing some of new hit effects:
https://www.moddb.com/games/fate-of-the-galaxy/videos/new-effects

Example of one piece of new ISD debris.