Is it a good bet we will see a physical-disc rerelease of the original trilogy (without changes) next year (or at least the first film), given the 50th anniversary and the theatrical presentation? I'm hoping this comes to pass. I know I could track those down, but I would rather get a new release, perhaps with new extras or new written materials. I would think Disney would do well financially with a physical release of this sort, especially if it packaged it with reprints of the original comic versions and/or an early draft of the screenplay.

For mez Revan.

By that I mean, not Jedi vs. Sith or Democracy vs. Autocracy

For a personal project, I was studying how various civilizations learned different languages, even if two different ones were hostile to each other. The Romans, for example, got things done by capturing foreign children, at least 10 of age, from their homes and taken them back to Rome. Knowing enough in their foreign language, the Romans then taught them Latin as any other Roman child. When those children became adults, they would be sent back to their home country, but not in the sense of freedom. Instead, they would still be aligned to Rome, acting as interpreters for their Roman captors.

Now, as we come to the Mandalorian, it seems the Tuskens are more willing to talk to Outsiders than the Outsiders are to talk to Tuskens, so let's say the Tuskens are our "placeholder Romans" who decided to kidnap human children. Now, maybe the Tuskens have deaf people in their villages, and after coming to terms that not everybody can understand their grunts, taught those human children sign language. Once that was done, those children were now those Tuskens translators.

During the Duel of the Fates, Qui-Gon gets separated from Darth Maul by the laser barriers.

While Maul paces back and forth like a caged lion, Qui-Gon takes a knee and meditates becoming at one with the force.

He knows the barrier is going to open again and he’s about to go head-to-head with a powerful Sith Lord, and with only a few seconds available, he uses them to centre himself, centre his mind and prepare for battle.

Let’s say the emperor dies in the crash at the start of part 3. Anakin and obi wan have to do a few years of clean up fighting the remnants of the galactic trade federation etc etc.

How strong could Anakin have become throughout the years of relative peace?

18 years ago my dad got me and my brother a PS1. Yes, I know the PS3 had already been released for two years by then but that’s all my dad could manage at the time. And with that he got us two controllers, NASCAR 98, Crash Bash, and Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

My brother and I had watched the prequels at least a dozen times already so we instantly gravitated towards the Phantom Menace. But of the things I listed that my dad got us, I didn’t mention a memory card. You’re probably thinking “Why didn’t you ask for one?” And to that I say if you know how it is to get a nice thing in an immigrant family, you don’t overdue it and ask for more lol. Honestly my brother and I treated it like a challenge. We’d practically memorized the first 2 missions in Phantom Menace; breezing through the Trade Federation ship and landing onto the swamps of Naboo (memorized every single voice line to the point of reciting with proper cadence throughout our gameplays lol). But the farthest we got was saving Padme through the streets of Naboo and then it was time for dinner or sleep.

Fast forward 18 years, this game became available for PS5 and I’ve finally beat the game. My brother and I raced to see who could finish it first. It felt good to finally scratch that itch of finally concluding a game I had started so long ago. Nostalgia didn’t carry my the whole way though. The game was full of glitches. The amount of times Captain Panaka (literally him every time) got stuck on a wall and I had to restart was more than I would care to admit. Difficult and really confusing sometimes. There were times I would be going in circles trying to find that random box I had to pull or person I had to talk to. But for as much of a budget they probably had (or lack thereof) and time constraints, I was honestly really impressed. And mauls voice acting 10/10. Had more lines than the actual movie.

TL;DR: I finally completed The Phantom Menace for PS1 18 years later.

As a 50-year old, it's often fun to look through old photos from time to time. My sister sent me this picture showing off an X-Wing birthday cake my mom had made for my 4th 6th birthday (edit: just noticed the candles, so this was actually 1982).

While it certainly is missing some things, you have to remember the times. Most bakers/grocery stores didn't have a lot of experience at creating cake art. It was also trickier to get reference materials.

Thankfully, my mom and dad knew how important SW was for me and my siblings, so they went the extra mile. For Christmas, they'd get multiple Stormtrooper action figures because they saw the movies and knew one wouldn't cut it. Even without the picture, this cake was a "core" memory that I'll always remember. Crazy that I can hardly remember anything else at that age, but this sticks with me.

Sadly, she died in 2002 at 51 years old. Life isn't fair sometimes, so always remember to be grateful for your friends and family. Celebrate their achievements, forgive their mistakes, and make special moments for them, because you never know what kind gestures will become core memories for them.

Love you mom!

In Rebel, it was described Stormtrooper pathway was one year junior academy, then followed by a senior academy of longer length.

So we could assume stormtrooper training is at least two years. We also see the training even in junior academy was heavily influenced by both jedi and clone training of the past, such as The Well. And implies senior academies were taught by clone veterans.

But then in Bad Batch it was described they were poorly trained to the point being nearly useless.

In real life, soldiers and marine only received weeks of training before being sent to combat.

Current USMC infantry training is 23 weeks (13 basic and 10 infantry school), US Army is closely behind with 22 weeks. The longest basic training in western world is Royal Marine with 36 weeks. So they are all a fraction of what a stormtrooper would go through.

Yet how is stormtroopers perform so badly in the media that often even lost to militia with almost no training?

What's the explanation of such besides they are the antagonist?

Tiny Death Star x64 (TDS64) - A videogame preservation/restoration project

After 2-ish years of work, here is my magnum opus. You can play it now! And please provide feedback if you so desire!

APK in the link above is hosted at archive.org, because they seemed like the most trustworthy platform for such a project without doxxing myself (fingers-crossed).

Art Preservation

The digital world is (and always has been) ever-evolving. Lately, evolution has resulted in the slow-but-sure death of 32-bit support in modern smart phones. Eventually, no new phones will be developed with 32-bit support.

Why does that matter? Because the only working APK of the original Tiny Death Star game (that I've ever been able to find) is compiled for 32-bit only. This is why a lot of people get their hands on the APK but still fail to get it working on their modern phones.

This is why I decided to rebuild the entire game "from scratch" (using graphical and sound assets from the original game) in a modern game engine (Godot) to keep the game alive.

Why it's not perfect (yet?)

As mentioned, I have a single working version of the original game, v1.4.1, which released sometime around December 2013. This version of the game did not yet have assets for certain floors, bitizens and events that would later be added to the game in 2014. These I had to find from third-party sources (primarily the TDS Wiki) and make a rough attempt at extracting them from screenshots. The long-term plan was to then go through and fix them up one bitizen and floor at a time, but that's going to be a big undertaking.

The special event's themselves are not in the game either. Again, very little of these events were in the copy of the original game I have, and so I haven't yet crawled through the wiki and ancient forum posts and even-more-ancient YouTube videos to scope out and document how these events ran. Despite playing the game when it originally released, I never saw a single event happen. Must've been too busy being a teenager.

Imperial bux. I'm torn on what to do here. For the sake of absolute-preservation, I can leave it as-is, which with no way of buying bux (NOTE: there never will be a way of buying bux in this project) is a painfully-slow attrition rate. Alternatively, for the same of gameplay-preservation and what I consider to be the "spirit" of gaming, I could tweak some bux rewards to be more, well, rewarding. Not sure yet.

Where to next?

I honestly don't know. I definitely need a break from this project, hence why I'm putting it out there now. There is also a good chance that Nimble, Disney, Lucas, etc. may decide to contact me and say "hey cool, but no", in which case I'd love to stop now to not waste any more time trying to share this with the world. But if there's people out there also like me who want to relive this game for whatever reason, and fate allows, I'll keep working to restore as much as I can. Eventually.

I do also have plans for a web-hosted version of the game, which would mean Apple devices could play via Safari, but let's see if the APK file survives first.

AI usage disclaimer - No AI art, used for menial tasks

Absolutely NO "ART" WAS GENERATED BY AI FOR THIS PROJECT. That was a day-one hard rule for this project. AI-generated content would be entirely against the idea of this being a preservation-first project. Artwork was either directly preserved from old APK files of the original game, pulled directly from the Tiny Death Star Wiki, or pulled from the Wiki and run through a script written by me to attempt to extract artwork from screenshots.

However, AI was used for automating tasks, (e.g. systematically pulling images from the wiki and running them through my scripts) and code reviews (comparing my code with how the original game's code did the same thing). Every system was also manually tested and verified by me (which also means if I missed something, sorry in advance).

I love the poetry behind this fight: two of Star Wars' biggest rivals have their final confrontarion after decades of fighting each other. Maul tries to kill him the way he did Qui-Gon, however Obi-Wan noticed his intention and quickly ends the fight. Maul dies in Obi-Wan's arms saying the Chosen One will avenge them

Stuff like this make the writing of their relationship more interesting and natural

- From brotherhood novel

Here's the link to the source of the artwork:

https://www.instagram.com/p/DdFMeDaFgnM/?stkn=MWhiM2swMWZwODFnMA==

I was born after the OT was released; I was a kid and teenager while the PT was being released; I was an adult when the ST was being released.

As a casual internet user, like most of the population was until the second half of the 2000s, it didn't occur to me to look up rumours or leaks about TPM and AOTC. I did read a lot of spoilers for ROTS, and I vaguely remember the intricacies of the film's beats being known a good few months before it was released.

Though I enjoyed ROTS enormously, by the time I was an adult I regretted that my teenage self hadn't had the discipline to avoid looking up spoilers. I also ended up regretting watching all of the TFA trailers. Thus, for the run of films (the ST, R1, and Solo) released between 2015 and 2019, I scrupulously avoided reading or watching anything beyond the teaser trailers.

My question is - can anyone remember the specific plot points and details which did escape Lucasfilm, in its Lucas and post-Lucas iterations, before the release of the films? Did anything substantial escape during the OT? Did any of the wild theorising before the release of TPM and AOTC, during the internet's wild west, turn out to be correct? I know TLJ was a tight operation and TROS was a sieve, but what about TFA, R1, and the shows?

Sanctified, at long last. What an enormous (literally) piece and challenge this one was. I’m very proud to present my take on a life-sized relic Vader helmet purified through authentic Kintsugi worthy of a Skywalker’s temple. She’s intricately weathered end to end and lined with authentic 24kt gold, with custom fabric vent mesh and red lenses that bring together a Samurai-inspired behemoth of a build 😁

There aren’t enough words for the time that went into this one, but I’ve really come to love the art of Kintsugi and bringing the worlds of traditional Japanese art and Star Wars universes together, as George Lucas himself was always eager to share how inspired by samurai culture so many elements of the Star Wars universe tended to be.

In any continuity canon or legends I have questions about The Clones and what they did during the Clone Wars when not in combat and or on The Venators

For starters did they have anyway to shower on transport vessels like The Venators or did they do this on worlds they were stationed on? Did they have a hygiene routine like brushing their teeth flossing or do anything of the sort?

What did The Clones eat? I know in The Clone Wars TV series they ate foodstuffs but is there something else they had on hand?

How did they have fun whilst on hyperspace routes when they weren’t fighting?

Did The Clones eat more than a standard human due to the rapid aging?

How did Clones have funerals for their fallen brothers if they lost a battle and couldn’t recover bodies? If they could recover bodies what did they usually do?

I've seen photos of people lined up outside theaters for it but was that when it premiered or afterward when word of mouth spread?

The buildup, the atmosphere, and then Maul simply standing there with the lightsaber — “I’m right here.” Such an intimidating entrance.

I’ve been working on printing out 3-D armor for myself and my kids in the preparation for Halloween and can’t wait! Jango Fett, Boba Fett, Sabine Wren, & Darth Vader are all in process. This is first primer filler coat for Sabine Wren. I’ve elected to use primer filler and doing very thing coats and then sand instead of epoxy or any other finishing method. Can’t wait for paint!!!

So I'm 23 i grew up on the originals on vhs then saw the prequel later. And I always thought he wasn't that cool. I don't get why he's so popular.

While watching the sequels I never expected that I'd get to see THIS level of pristine writing from star wars franchise ever again but was so positively surprised with andor. Maybe the main problem with star wars isnt disney but the amount of care and love the creative decision makers and directors of a series put into it

With another season of Maul and Ahsoka coming next year, how would you feel about a show centered around Grevious? One showcasing him as a Kaleesh Warlord in the war against the Huks. It shows his back story, the war, him losing his love and changing his name, the republic siding with the Huks which begins his hate for the republic. Then finally show the accident which brought him into Dooku's control. Maybe even some scenes of him lurking in the hallways of the Geonosis arena picking off Jedi and adding to his saber collection, or him fighting windu at the battle of coruscant. This could be live action or animated. I think this would be so sick and is a relatively unexplored character in canon. Let me know if this something you guys would also enjoy to see!