I first bought JK and MotS in a bargain bin in Sam’s Club for $8 back in ’99. I’ve been editing both games since as early as Spring 2002, but long before then I’d already downloaded numerous levels from Massassi c.2000-2001.

But this is what I want to know – how come the earliest levels on Massassi appear in 2000, when the games came out in 1997-1998? Given some of the readmes claim the levels were made as early as 99 (maybe 98?) they weren’t released until a good year or two had passed. Perhaps Massassi wasn’t big enough yet to support all these levels, but even taking Massassi out of the equation, 1 or 2 years is a LONG time in gaming terms for a community to start making levels. Most editing communities have already died 1-2 years after a games release, let alone just getting started up.

Amazingly, quality JK editing seemed to be at its peak by about 2001, 4 years after release. I find this quite startling, and am curious about Massassi history, the other “big” JK sites that have long since died, and primarily – JED. Was this delay because JED was released so late? And who is this Alexei Novikov guy anyway, he wasn’t a LucasArts guy was he? Is JED the same editor LEC used to make their levels? And how did JKEdit come onto the scene, charging money – isn’t that illegal if they aren’t giving that money back to LEC?

Sorry for all the questions, but the beginnings of JK history are hazy for me (I was 9 when it came out, and 11 when I started palying) and I am intrigued by it all the same. Perhaps veteran editors and long-time Massassians could answer some of my questions!

- Daft

LA used an editor called LEIA to make JK levels. Apparently the only advantage it had over JED was the ability to preview COGs within the editor.

I'm guessing JED didnt show up for a year or so at least after JK was released. Also, the first JK add on mods and levels were done using notepad and hex editors. One of the very first mods enabled a feature that was included in the game but disabled before release- blood splashes when an arm is decapitated by a lightsaber.

LEIA also didn't support texture stitching. They had to do it by hand, with a pad of paper and a calculator.

Needless to say, few of JK's levels feature properly-aligned textures.

Wow, didn't know that. Where did you guys learn this stuff? Did one of the JK programmers stop by a few years ago?

A couple people from LucasArts have posted here occaisionally. I remember back when JO was in development, they made a couple of posts here asking for suggestions.

A possible reason for JK editing having a longer delay before taking off than most games probably has something to do with the fact that games such as Quake and Half Life released editors. JED, like JK Specs, was developed by enthusiasts.

My question is, how on earth were they able to ever develop those utilities?

Yeah, obviously the first thing to do was understand the gob file format JK uses. After that understanding each file type JK uses.

I don't think JKEdit is illegal but why would anyone pay for it anyway.

Most of the file formats were derived from Dark Forces files. For images, bitmap data is quite distinctive. All of the ASCII formats were commented and very well documented for us. After the success DF editing had, the JK team wanted to make things as easy possible for addon levels without stepping beyond LEC corporate policy.

In fact, they were so inspired by the DF editing community that they hired Yves Borckmans (the original creator of DFUSE) as a tool/COG programmer. Pretty sweet.

As I recall, Alexei Novikov was invited to look at LEIA, and that's what he used as a basis for the JED interface. Prior to JED we had ForceBuilder, which was more of a Radiant clone than something that would be practical for editing JK.

ForceBuilder is just for DF?

Massassi actually started posting levels in 1998 I think. You can read through the old news to find out exactly when. At first we didn't even have level info pages, we just posted everything in the news.

At that point, we realized that was Not Good, so I wrote a script which created a level info file and a news post. We didn't track downloads, there were no comments or ratings. If we had a mistake or had to delete a level, we'd have to go in and delete it manually. I'm not even sure there was a list of downloads.

Anyway, in 2000 I wrote the scripts we are using now and we imported all the levels. We actually did it mostly by hand. Jepman, COMMANDER (aka LightStaff), Kiramin, and myself (I don't think there was anyone else but it's possible) loaded each level by hand into a text editor, copy/pasted all the relevent info into another file, and when they were all done, I wrote a script to parse that file and insert the data into the db. We didn't record the original posted_on date though So they all show up the moment I wrote the importer.

By hand, it took us a few days to go through all of them!

No, it was for JK. But some "filthy americans" mispelled the author's name so he cancelled the project and made everyone delete their copies.

Thank you, Brian, that particular question is now answered.

I always did wonder why the readme dates didn't match up with the posted date, and why there were so many levels submitted on the same day. I just assumed that Massassi had opened the floodgates on that day, and that people had been designing beforehand, sent their stuff in, and waited for a universal release.

So no one at all still has it?

I did keep a copy but that was in 1998 so I'm sure I don't have backups anymore

You filthy American.

Damn, I forget his name. Did it begin with a M?

Matthias Welander or something like that.

This is interesting:

http://www.jediknight.net/darkfall/jkarts/jedvsfb.html

Matthewus Weildlander. OH MY GOD, NO, I'M BREAKING SWEDISH LAW.

He did the same thing with Dark3D. After I taunted him a bit, he said "NO SOUP FOR YOU" and told everybody that it would be region-locked from working in the United States. Only problem is, I'm not an American. Like he's actually working on it anyway.

An -ite kept a copy and fairly recently I was able to get it from him, but it's pretty useless. At the time of its last release it was pretty much just a wireframe JKL viewer. I deleted it.

I'll field a few questions:

JED 0.1 was out right before New Year the same year JK was out (Dec 20 or so). They first levels showed up a month after that. Well, technically the first levels were out before that, made by ForceBuilder, but they did not have any new geomtry - just object replacements.

Yes, I have seen LEIA at LEC. That's where I got a lot of initial ideas. That wasn't really the reason I was at LEC, and I wan't "invited". It was a personal friendly visit.

Also, Yves Borkmans is largely responsible for how JED turned out - he was the primary beta-tester for JED 0.1. And let me tell you - he didn't mess around. He slammed it mercilessly and I was hard at work fixing and adding things he requested, until finally he said: "This thing is good enough to make levels with". And since he's used LEIA, JED ended up being similar to it.



No. I just liked their games.



I'll be damned. I had no idea. And I spent a lot of time implementing that - it kept coming out screwy.



Um... that's quite a long story. To tell you the truth, if I ever stopped to think if I were able to program something like JED I'd never do it. But if instead you just keep at it eventually things get resolved and you realize there's very little left to do to make it happen.



Quite loosely, though. The file formats wasn't a big deal in JK, especially after we've honed our skills on Dark Forces and then Outlaws.



Oh, that guy :). Actually, guys, you should thank him. He gave me his source code for 3D perview in ForceBuilder and that really helped me to figure out how things work in Direct3D so that I could get 3D Preview in JED going.

Hey there Alex, good to see ya.

Hello there.



How would he accomplish this? I could theoretically set my language to English-UK and my timezone to GMT to workaround this. :p

Not to mention I have tools for tracking which files and registry keys it looks at to get this info.

That would be mean of him. When I heard about Dark3D I was looking forward to it (until the site disappeared).

OMQ! It is the almighty! He hath spoken!
Well, learned some stuff I didn't know about good old JED. Thanks Alexei!

I thought he was Finnish.

No, Swedish.

Wow, the man himself.

So you don't think there's any chance JED will make it out of the BETA phase to v.1.00, do ya?

And good to see you all too. I'm really impressed this all is still going on.



That was a sweet idea, wasn't it? When I learned it was no more I actually contemplated writing a DF clone myself, even did some initial coding... but never had the time to follow it up.



Is anything really missing from 0.95? It's just a number.

As far as JED goes - possibly some minor bug fixes. If I get back to programming now I'll probably start something new.

BTW, a couple of people asked me for source code for JED and I gave it to them. Did anything come out of it?

Actually, one thing. Transparent 16-bit textures in 3d preview. More features could always be added

Um, er, ... Would you believe I have been too busy?
(Hint: Look at my forum title.)

Some of us are working on more ambitious projects.

I'm just taking things one step at a time though. Adding COG previewing to JED would be... well, nifty.

I would just like to say, JED is the best thing ever. If I ever move on to editing other games besides JK, I'm finding a JED-made 3do converter before it happens. Jed is almost limitless in making models, to me at least. Only thing I don't really like is making levels with it, but I blame the sector based engine and not the program. If only other 3d editor's could work the way JED does.

btw what is this deal about not releasing "force builder" to "dirty Americans". That seems a little silly

I forgot to say, something that could make surfaces into all triangles would be nice

JED is by far the best editor on the net. It is better than the new editors. So congrats, you have made the best editor in the world!

Fixing that texture killing thing would be good though, I always lose my texture co-ords when I move my 3dos

Alex, would you be willing to upload the source code here on massassi, or e-mail it to me (lumpshare@yahoo.com)? I'm greatly interested in seeing how you made JED tick.

Alex: Wow, I never knew that deal with Mr. Welander, I think from now on I will keep my thoughts on this issue to myself - there is good in him after all

I didn't realize you still visited - if you ever need anything I can provide, let me know (like web hosting or whatever). Thanks for coming in and answering some questions!

Damn old times.

I remebered about Matthias, though he never released anything useable to the public end players.

Glad to see the old faces still around.

First off, thanks for praises. I do believe JED turned out OK and I warmly remember the times of working on it and seeing people do amazing things with it. I guess there should be even more of that by now.



Why, that is actually easy to believe.



Cool!



Sweet. I remember being questioned for this article. And I'm pleased to see that I've done everything I promised with JED and more



Sure thing. I'll just have to find where I have it.



You mean - break them up into trianges? That should be easy. Is it good for anything?



What happens with them? And what should happen? I don't recall JED even being able to load 16-bit textures at all. Then again, it was a while ago and maybe I'm forgetting.



Texture killing? What exactly is that?



Well, don't underestimate my powers of persuasion either. Good old Jedi Mind Trick. Well, all I did was just asked him nicely.

Matthias was an odd fellow, that's for sure.

It's good if you want to convert the models to other formats. I started a 3DO -> many other formats converter a year or so ago but never finished it. Mainly because it was for an editing project of mine which never really took off.


Getting old are we? If I recall correctly the difference between JED 0.94 and 0.95 is 16-bit textures, which you added yourself. 0.951 just fixes a 3DO heirarchy issue...I believe it was done by someone else at Code Alliance.


Where translating geometry destroys texture verticies, sometimes (seemingly) perminantly. Especially on 3DOs and imported 3DOs. You could import a 3DO, move it around and all of a sudden a texture would be tiling like 50000 times per inch even though the UV was still 1,1.

Also, Zeq was telling me he only got JED 0.80 from you, he didn't go into details much. Would you happen to have 0.95 around or something very close? With things like Jon`C's SITH 2 finally taking off we may be looking at new editor requirements to compliment the new engine. I understand if you don't have it around anymore (though it was one of your bigger projects I imagine, or at least one of the coolest!). From what I remember a couple other guys at CA had the very latest source code, and that's where JED 0.951 came from. Since you've basically authorized the release of the source code, maybe you (or one of us) could contact them about the newest source if you don't have it around anymore?

Anyway, I'd just like to thank you. Thank you for your years of hard work on a fantastic editor (although I hardly think it's the best in this day and age, but it does have many nice features newer editors lack) and thank you for releasing the source code. It'll make quite a few people happy!

Terribly! Also grumpy and cranky.



It will be really easy to do if any breakup goes. For optimal breakup it might be a bit more work.



It was? Hm... I vaguely remember something like that. So what happens when you try to make it transparent and what should happen?



Actually, it was still me. But it went through Dave. Somebody contacted him, he contacted me, I fixed it and gave it to him and he passed it out. That part I remember pretty well.



Does it happen all the time? At secific conditions? Seemingly randomly? Translating it using what method?



Oh, so it only happens on 3DOs? What happens if you straighten the texture?



Wasn't it 0.81? That was what I could find at that moment. I'll look deeper in my archives. I know I never deleted anything and didn't have and harddrive disasters or anything, so it should be all there.