Now if only I still had JK...

Don't you have to click the little "I agree" button when you install a game? Thats the EULA if I remember correctly. Course, its been a while since I've installed anything...

It's also hardly a binding contract Rogue Leader. They could throw "and by clicking yes you give us right of attorney" into the installation EULA, or the txt file EULA somewhere on the CD and it wouldn't mean jack-diddley.

Also, big companies don't necessarily use employees to search the internet for "bad" stuff relating to their products. Software that crawls through the internet (spiders, I believe is the common name for them) check for key phrases and key words and take note of anything that sets off its alarms.

Hell Raiser, is your friend willing to see if they can expand the visible adjoin limit, or surface per mech limits? Also you mentioned they thought they may be able to forward JK's rendering to a different engine; this would open up many doors.

QM

Forwarding rendering wouldn't require any modification of the executable, in theory. All that would be needed would be several DLLs with the same neames as the DirectX DLLs that JK uses. These DLLs would have the same function calls as the DirectX DLLs, but would take a different action (ie call the OpenGL DLLs).

That's what is done for the mousewheel thing my same friend whipped up.

Okay; if LEC prohibited reverse-enginieering to protect their coding secrets, what good would it do now? Games light-years beyond JK have become standard these days and I do not believe that ANYthing gleaned from JK's programming could be efefctively used in a new game (a mod for JK like TDiR is another story, as much could be gleaned for that purpose) with any real degree of success.

Also, since this is just a patch, would LucasArts even bat an eyelash? I doubt it. It'd be much like using Action Replay or GameShark codes on a console game system. Once you shut down the game, the .EXE file would revert to its normal state and would play EXACTLY as normal the next time if you didn't rerun the patch.

There is, however, one roadblock: the "do not disassemble/recompile/reverse engineer" thing in the licensing agreement. I can't name any games where a hacker has done this before, as I don't keep track of that sort of thing, but I don't really think it would be an issue, especially since JK is so old. Were it not for patches, mods, TCs, etc., people would have stopped even installing, much less playing, JK as soon as MotS and JO were released. Things like this enhance the gaming community and breathe new life into quasi-dead games.

The main issue here is not whether it's legal; as stated before, you signed no contract and there was no witness even if you did. And the issue isn't whether or not it breaks the EULA: the patch doesn't, but the method does. The main issue is this: would LEC even care? I doubt it, but I could be wrong.

Before ANYone starts calling me a supporter of illegal activites, read the post carefully. Everything I said is CLEARLY labelled as opinion and should be taken with a grain of salt, as I am often proven wrong in my views.

This is a great thread.... it opens oh so many doors of evil. Yay!

The way I see it is that this community is responsible for keeping Jedi Knight alive for this long. Seriously, I doubt as many copies of JK would have sold without a strong editing community like Massassi.... hell, it wouldn't have lasted past '99. With that in mind, LEC is indebted to Massassi. In the past 7 years, I alone have purchased 4 copies of JK... and it's not because I love "Battleground Jedi"... It's because of the countless mods and maps that Massassi has to offer.... I know I'm not the only one.

LEC should be grateful for every breath of life we inject into this elderly game... even if it does come in the form of license agreement breach.


Agreed. Whereas this patch is a step in the right direction (in terms of making JK more bearable to editors and comparible to newer engines), this is only a step. When this patch is finished, and it makes JK truly "limitless", it will be well worth the download. Not till then. Sorry, I just hate those damn HOMs!!!

And if you can throw colored lighting, dynamic shadows and an OGG player into the next patch, then we'd be in business!!.... or is it way too early to open those evil doors?

Those last things you posted are not things you can feasibly do by simply hex-editing the exe.

bah, I was joking.............. or was I?

Sounds great. I've been waiting for this.

Heres my mirror:
DjDTM's Mirror For JK PATCHER

About that legal thing... If you really are against the whole patch thing, just don't download it, and forget it, so that if the consequences ever do come, you won't have to face them, and you can sit back, laugh, and say I told you so.

Me on the other hand, I am going to download it, and use it, because I'm not a wuss.

Hehe, exactly what I thought. One should be wise enough to see that laws and rules are not made to last forever. And JK's license agreement is such a timed out and now completely useless "treaty".

A Debugger of some sort that lets you see what memory address a program crashed at, and showed you the assembly code from there. Then he just hex edited the exe to change the memory offsets (while knowing what it does in assembly code) to make things unlimited (inside the World Things: of the level.jkl) instead of 640.

LEC probably doesn’t care any more. They can only stand to gain by this. (An old JK editor might want to give JK editing a go again, and goes out and buy the last available copy to replace the one he lost a year ago)

yes, damned those binding contracts that you don't read and hit "I agree" on EVERY program you install.

I hate EULAs...to me its as if a developer is creating laws all on their own without federal or state approval.

Btw
Anyone (Hereafter referred to as "User") clicking the "Reply" button at the bottom of the page, collectively signs over their soul to Duo (Hereafter referred to as "Me") and agrees to the following.
2. You may not click View>Source In Opera (or anything else).
3. You may not walk on the sidewalk, or drive in the rain.
4. You may not modify anything for any reason. This includes moving dirty when you walk on it.

Oh and just so most of you know. All games that you "own" are actually just licensed to you. Unlike most other products you never actually own a game.
Just more communist bull from developers.




Oh and about that patcher. KEEP EM COMING! JK in OpenGL or with DirectX9 and Shader support plz!!!!

I clicked the one on the top
DEFEATED

Clicked on the top reply button AND used a mouse gesture to view source.

Owned.

You know, come to think of it, I'm kind of surprised more people aren't making a big deal of this. Sure it got posted on the main page but, this is revolutionary! I mean this really will change JK editing forever... so why aren't at least 12 odd people who edit JK flipping out and shouting for joy. It just seems that this thread was met with a bit of an understatement.

Because it's not revolutionary. It could have been done by a 12 year old hacker seven years ago. It's always been illegal, but now that the game is damn near dead, no one seems to care about legal business anymore.

I am guessing that the patch was not done before because it is very hard to look through assembly and no one (until now) thought it was worth the effort.

I am a JK editor, and I *do* think this is very cool. I just don't have time to post how cool it is because I am too busy working on JK stuff.

Doing any real coding in assembly is quite hard, hacking stuff away (like limits) isn't too bad. You still have to know assembly of course and be a good programmer. There have been plenty of people in the JK community over the years matching this criterea, however thing limit hasn't been a real problem until the past few years and it's always been illegal. Well, it still is, but it appears no one cares.

I'm holding out for a MOTS version

Personally, I do find this really exciting. I just don't feel ONLY the thing limit being lifted is THAT earth-shattering. That being said, a project I am starting will make use of the lifted thing limit.

Emon, this exact method to remove the thing limit WASN'T that easy. Years ago I had tried to simply force a greater number (through hex editing JK.exe) without realizing a buffer overflow was what was causing the fail. Also, stop waving the illegal flag, it's already been argued into the ground that it's NOT illegal, so there shouldn't be any more mention whether it is illegal or not. In other words: you can believe it's illegal, you don't have to tell us that. I'll stop saying it's not illegal if you'll offer me the same courtesy.

I've started work to improve the JK engine, inspired by this patch. I've generated C source code to wrap ddraw.dll (as this is my best guess as to what JK's using to draw on screen) so that it can be rerouted into something like opengl or one of the new directx render methods. I've hit a little snag (which I'll probably get passed once I get a good night's rest) where I can't get my code to compile into a forwarding DLL. I think my install of VC++ got screwed up sometime when I was installing 1 or more other programming environments (probably stupid perl). So here's the source code for a naked ddraw.dll wrapper. If someone can get it to compile (it should compile as ddraw.dll) please leave a post here.

QM

Edit: (in reply to Daft_Vader's post below this one, I hope you see this Daft_Vader =D) a ddraw.ddl wrapper (assuming that IS the part of directx that JK uses to render junk, if I'm wrong I can wrap whatever the right DLL is) would allow call made to directx to be modified or rerouted entirely. Heck, with enough work, JK's rendering could be rerouted into opengl (which is way easier to mod, in my opinion) and would possibly allow some engine upgrades (stuff like bump-mapping, but probably not bump-mapping, likely smaller improvements). The reason I'm posting this is I'm always retarded when it comes to getting stuff to compile. Once I get a program/whatever to start compiling, I can edit it and get stuff done.

Update: Got it compiling in VC++. Included the workspace and project file as well as the original code I posted in a zip inside this zip. A compiled dll is inside too, but it doesn't do anything; putting it in the JK folder results in normal JK operation. Gonna see if I can add some sort of logging output generated by the DLL if it's in use.

Update: The bad news is, if the file is simply named ddraw.dll, JK ignores it and loads the one from windows\system first. The good news is, if you hex edit JK.exe to look for ddrax.dll, and rename my modified ddraw.dll to ddrax.dll it DOES use it... not the way I wanted this to work, but I'm glad I've managed to hijack JK's calls to ddraw.

What would be the benefit/advantage to such a program (what exactly does it do)?

Now can editors make a forest of trees in one map?

Lots of trees! Too many and you'll get slowdown, though.

And Quib, I'm glad to see you're gettin into this. If you'd like, I'll see if my friend doesn't mind comming out of the shadows to work on more things that can be done to JK.exe.

Sh'yeah I'd like it! I'd groping around in the dark working on this type of stuff. As long as this barrel of monkeys is open, I'd love to see JK expanded as much as possible before all the monkeys die. Ahem... sorry, best metaphor I could come up with at this time of night. Hope to hear from you soon Hell Raiser, and your friend really has done something great for the JK community (well, and you seeing as you sorta showed us it).

QM

P.S. - I'm interested in what your friend did to your mousewheel for you (as mentioned in a previous post); a DirectInput wrapper affecting the mousewheel or something?

No prob, I think he's as excited as we are.

http://www.hellraiser64.com/Files/wheelthingy.zip if you wanna have a looksie.

Quib Mask, I sent you an e-mail.

Shouldn't the first major improvement to the jk engine be stretchy surfaces? Then perhaps full dynamic lighting?

If Lucasarts wasn't a corporate whore then we could do that, because they would have released the source.

But they are, and they haven't. I like the idea though, kind of like, what is it, Tenbrae Quake or whatever?

get a whole bunch of people to bombard lec with emails till they say something. Ask them to reliece it. after all nothing can live without a heart, play to their weaknesses and so on and so fourth. O and it would proble be a bit better if you could chose between opengl rendering and d3d, there are many different computers in this world that tend to have a preference towards one or the other. (mine hates opengl)

[dusts off his massassi account]

Kudos to you Hell Raiser (and your friend). Good to see JK is still being tweaked.

And thank you Freelancer for making me have to wade through a long arse thread of whining. Blah. :p

I'm afraid I didn't receive it Shred. Try sending one to my Massassi forum name, except remove the space between the 2 words, at aol dot com. The only thing at the inbox for the e-mail address I have in my profile here was a bunch of prescription medication spam (whatever happened to porn spam? does anyone still get that?).

QM

Odd, ok I sent it to your other account.

Here's another limit that isn't often noticed, but my FL mod is in DESPERATE need of breaking (mots of course)
The cog variable limit. I don't know what the exact number is, but eventually, adding new variables doesn't actually do anything. The cog just messes up its assignments.

[edit] well I just tried to hit the limit and I'm past the previous limit I had, so I don't know if it was just a variable name messing it up. If you can find a limit in the hex editor please remove it, but I'm starting to wonder if there is one.[/edit]

My Evil Experiments, Conniving Concoctions, and Devious Discoveries thus far:

1,600 Stormies + Kyle + a Conc Rifle = Mass Devastation!!!


Before the Storm(ie):



War is Declared:



Deep in the Heart of Battle:



Futile Resistance:



Mass Slaughter:



More Carnage:



The Aftermath:



Yeah, so the patch works. 1,603 things on thes screen at the same tiem though cause some serious lag. The game was very stuttery for a while. However, even if 1,600 troops were present, the game would only grind to a halt if you were viewing that many (or large numbers) all at once. In small pockets, the framerate was quite managable. So this means this feature should be handy for editors so long as they group the enemies and items apart from each other in clumps, not in one large mass (which of course every sensible editor would do, ).

JED froze up on me a couple of time though while I was adding the units. Quite a pain. I'm not sure if there's anyway around this, except for plenty of layers. I have a 700Mghz Pentium III with 384 MBs of RAM and a 64 MB Nvidia Ge-Force 4 video card.

Hehe, looks like fun.

I absolutelly love you Daft. LOVE.

I'm so tempted to give that SotD... Post it in the showcase forums, but throw in some friendlies for some all out carnage, and maybe some good looking archi. Give me a war.

JediKirby

Quid: DDraw is Direct Draw, used for 2D stuff, perhaps the menu interface. I think you need to try D3D*.DLL

Daft, can you supply a copy of this mass carnage thingie of yours? I would love to see if my comp can handle 1600 objects at once (if it can, I would sooooo try my hardest to make some levels for JK that used the patch). Again, I only want this for testing purposes (and because I'm a slaughter freak).