Let's see... Most of the improvements needed for the Jedi engine used in
Dark Forces were fixed with the version used in
Outlaws (1997, a few months before JK). A few of the games (such as
IJ & the Infernal Machine) fixed many of the things, but since I haven't actually taken a look at the game, I don't know what they forgot. From my point of view, it needs, in a generally receeding order:
- Support for more than two redering passes per frame. (The limit of one transparent layer). This was obviously a limit they intentionally put in, as A: You can see through a transparent texture through an area right beside the HUD pieces (as far as I know, they're rended in-engine, not blitted) and B: occasionally, I've been able to reliable see through as many as three transparent textures, though the transparency effect become innacurate here, and I don't know how to intentionally replicate it.
- Support for more advanced textures. The limit in the JK/MotS Sith engine is a standard 256x256x16 texture map. I'd like for 24-bit full color/32-bit full color+alpha textures, spheremaps (a big way to increase lighting realism), and perhaps detail textures. Also, increase in dimensions to whatever limit the graphics card can handle (most affordable newer ones cap at 2048x2048). Bumpmaps aren't really that necessary; they can be done without. After all, we're trying to discuss improvements to the Sith engine, not an ultimate engine.
- Elimination of adjoin HOMs. LEC was simply fairly lazy in adding the script for the portal-based engine, capping the maximum number of adjoins it will check through to arround 128. I don't want it changed to a BSP engine as DogSRoOL suggests, as using a portal-based engine is the most efficient and effective way to improve performance by culling unseen arcitecture. (there are other methods of culling, but they actually drain some processing power, reducing their effectiveness).
- Better lighting system. I'd like to see projected lighting availible, or an adjusted vertex-based lighting that could "stretch" the lighting to other verticies, making it more believable.
- Better particle system. This kinda goes hand-in-hand with the better texture rendering, as more advanced particles generally require a pass for each particle per pixel.
- Elimnination of all object/wall limits. with only 32768 walls for a single JK map, I'm finding challenges in getting the first third of my project (which I originally thought would be a single level) to fit on one map. Not only am I at 20,000 walls so far, and have yet to do, I need to make sure I don't go over 500 objects or so, and it looks like I'll rely only plenty of 3DO arcitecture for it.
- Rendered surfaces. MotS may have done this with the security checkpoints, but I'm not too sure, and I'd like to see it done in real time, to make good reflections possible.
