I was just thinking, as it has been a long time since I've even touched JED and so on, how exactly has JK editing been improved since 2003-2004?

There used to be many threads like "what would you do if JK's source code was released", and I've gathered up some suggestions from the threads I have stored. So what i want to know is that, are they possible and are they possible in both JK & MotS?

My old list of things I wanted to see was:
-MP3/OGG music support
-MP3 as sound effects
-High-res textures, JPG/TGA-support (no limitation to 16-bit or 256x256 and worse
-Serious Sam-like blending of sectors and brushes
-No adjoin limit
-No thing limit
-Dynamic lighting

MP3/OGG music has finally been coded in, as well as the removal of adjoin/thing limit, I presume. For the latter, I don't remember was it ever enabled for MotS...

However, now here's a grand list of suggestions from the past:

Suggestions by SavageX378, posted June 13, 2003
- An improved particle system that can use sprites for the particles or rounded circles instead of those crappy squares.
- Tranlucency on sprites would be nice.
- A built in match making system
- OpenGL support
- 32-bit color support
- texture sizes that can go beyond 256x256.
- weapon system where the slots and ammo types for each weapon was NOT hard coded.
- templates that don't have to be written into the level just to work in the game (aka, templates should be global. Sort of like how static.jkl does it except it win't need trigger messages to get them to work on all computers in a MP game)
- surface deformation effects on models (hence, single mesh models that have polygons that can stretch when the bones move)
- bone system for models (to work with above)
- textures on models that can animate ONLY on the model instead of having to animate a texture global to get that effect to work.
- ability to attach models onto models on ANY limb isntead of just the right hand or whatever is set as the right weapon joint.

Suggestions by Emon, June 13, 2003
-Segmented and bolted skelatal system
-Ragdoll physics
-Per-triangle collision on every surface in the world
-Shaders
-TGA and JPEG file format support
-Brushes to be used with sectors, current space partitioning is sufficient
-Option of compiled data formats for increased efficiency
-Bump-mapping
-Radiosity
-Lightmaps
-Stencil shadows
-EAX
-High resolution textures
-Latest OGL and D3D support
-32-bit color and Z-buffer depths
-Various other improvements such as increasing rendering efficiency with more modern algorithms and methods

Suggestions by GBK, June 13, 2003
-Improvements to the Heap() code.
-FindSectorAtPos() funcion.
-Fading translucency in models.
-Colored dynamic lighting.
-Configurable, controllable, stable dynamic lighting.
-Better control over the player . . . IE, functions to set the 'player' to another object, (kinda like setting the cam, only setting user control and everything...)
-Configurable detail limit.
-Model scaling/morphing functions.
-Improved collision detection.
-Mp3, OGG, MIDI, PNG, JPG, Mpeg, AVI support.

Suggestions by Shred18, posted June 13, 2003
-increase the amount of stuff that JK can load into memory, thus fixing the 14 player model limit "bug", as well as a host of other things.
-Along with targa support, support for alpha channels! Oh yeah..

Suggestions by Jon`C, posted June 14, 2003
- Stencil lighting
- 32bit texture support (with alpha channel)
- Shaders
- Lots of nifty procedural stuff in COG
- Deformable architecture
- Patches
- Remove all static limits
- DF GOB/LEV support

Suggestions by Sol, posted June 14, 2003
- lightmaps (For people without pixel-shaders)
- Per-pixel lighting (ala Doom III for people with decent video cards that support the latest verion)
- Ragdoll physics
- IMPROVED AI
- Also goes with above, having full control of what to do with characters, (ex: you might want a character to walk into a room grap something then walk out, then using that item in combat or something similar)
- Better paricle effects
- 16bit and 32bit colour depths
- Any sort of culling to improve rendering
- Of course latest D3D and OpenGL support
- Envrioment bump-mapping
- True reflective surfaces

Suggestions by Mystic0, posted June 14, 2003
32 and 24 bit texture support
Shaders
Volumetric Fog
Light maps
Decals
Alpha blending
Improved COG
Matchmaking service
Better animation system
Better dismemberment
Stencil shadows/Detail shadows/Blob shadows
Better saber system that looks more like the movies
Pixel shaders
Bump mapping
Fur
Any other DirectX 9 feature


As you can see, some of those cannot be achieved without the source code, but the point of this thread was to list up things that can be done now, and maybe give you (and me) inspiration for things that could be implemented.

Yes, I was bored enough to make this thread.

It would make a dandy sticky, too.

Few of these things could be acheived -WITH- the source code. Writing the thing from scratch would be simpler then shoe-horning modern technigues into eight year old code.

There's a cog to fake that with 3dos, but then SavageX knew that already since he used it himself (I don't know if he knew about that in '03...)

Bin swapping. With the Exception of weapon slots 1 and 0 (aka 10), you can swap the values in the bins so the correct value is displayed in JK. Certainly a SetAmmoBin() verb would be much nicer...

There was an algorithm for this in the Datamaster, but I saw a much simpler one on the forums not too long back. I forget where it was though, and who wrote/posted it... :\ Again though, a verb would be much nicer.
This verb actually does exist in mots -- I know that's not the same as having it in JK, but... JFYI

Well, here are the posts I have made that sort of relate to this stuff.

Here is my cog for FindSectorAtPos:
http://forums.massassi.org/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30303

Here is my description of the Heap verbs (they were being misused before, and seem to work quite well if you know how they work/don't work :P):
http://forums.massassi.org/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=28336

Bin Save/Load (just the demonstration, nobody ever asked for more):
http://forums.massassi.org/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30129

Lighter plugin (geometry based lighting instead of light maps)
http://forums.massassi.org/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=27295

The thing limit/sector limit patches are here:
http://www.hellraiser64.com/JK/

Basic collision detection in cog:
http://www.jkhub.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=18&sid=2726ad3f533310710764aaa8066762b5

Vector compression for multiplayer:
http://www.jkhub.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=37&sid=2726ad3f533310710764aaa8066762b5

Dynamic light range:
http://forums.massassi.org/vb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30544


Most of the things on those lists aren't possible, or would require lots of work just to cram it in there and be able to access it through the JK engine. It would be better to just make a new engine. But, if you could do that, you would probably not have the time to spend to make a jk clone...
I've tried some of those things, like getting 32-bit rendering and opengl support. I wasn't able to get 32-bit rendering in game, though I was able to get opengl rendering as a wrapper around the directdraw/direct3d interfaces. The performance was about the same, it looked the same, but it was forced into rendering the same stuff as you normally see in JK because JK transforms all of the vertices in advance before sending them to d3d.
An alternative would be to write a program that does the rendering outside of JK and gets the necessary information from JK's memory. I tried that, and it works well for simply walking around levels, but getting the other stuff in like models and animation would probably be a lot more complicated.

Most of those are in Quake 3, HL, and their predicesors. I look at the things we've done with JK and said "Cool." That's it. I wouldn't expect half of those things out of JK. It's just a better idea to do with what we have.

JediKirby