Perhaps to be a little more reasonable, the cost of C's power is productivity. Today's OOP languages add a little bureaucracy to systems, but they can be developed, maintained, and extended easier. C is still necessary for very specific applications, namely compilers or embedded system applications.

Regarding the topic of this thread, THERE IS NO TRY. It's LEC. They don't care about whiners on teh intarwebz. And GL wants the cash money. There is no money in JK. There is no money in satisfying your petition.

Yeah, that's what I meant, just without the jabs.

Obviously, something like this is in conjunction with an applicable new product release is also going to get them free coverage with a favorable spin. Marketing isn't as naive of the cultural aspect here as you probably think.

The other important thing is contacting and having a discussion with someone at LucasArts that isn't there just to filter public input out. Being able to explain to them the advantages here on the business aspect is important. That's something I can manage once a community of significant size has expressed interest (and if I had a base interest from this community, I could easily expand petitioning and news into other gaming communities). In other words, there needs to be enough people there to show that this can inflate into something to get bigger coverage, and it needs to coincide with a new product of appropriate subject matter from LucasArts. I'm sure that with planning, that could be agreed upon.

Certainly, it's not easy to meet all of the criteria. That's why previous attempts have probably failed miserably. But in trying, it certainly isn't hurting anyone. It is really no bother for me to try taking something like this and turn it into something bigger that matters to LucasArts, and it's no bother to you guys to spend a few seconds showing support for it. However, I need a group of people that are interested in supporting it to begin with to get anywhere. I don't see what you are helping by fighting it, other than perhaps putting yourself in a position to go "I was right, look, it failed" when it fails. I guess that then you can feel special about yourself, having helped the community in no way whatsoever.

Bottom line: It takes little to no effort to support this cause. If you care about Jedi Knight or its community, then it is beneficial to support this effort. If you don't, why are you here?

Well, I think that most people here were into JK at one time or another but it's been years and LEC doesn't really encourage people to modify their games, and at this point I think most of us just stick around for the forums/chat. (for example, look at the lack of showcase posts since like ever)

If you follow through with this then more power to you, but why not work on a game made by a company that actually wants you to mess with their product?

If this worked, it would make massassi entertaining again :p

Signed.

I don't think I even have a JK disc anymore.

i want Ghoul in DF2

I could do it. And Jon'C has already done much of it. And it would be easier. It would be time consuming, but it wouldn't be hard.

I'm not signing solely on the basis that there's been multiple petitions in the past which didn't even get enough signatures to be worth showing.

Signed it, but I doubt it will have any effect. I know you hope that this will help get the later games' code released, but it you actually are interested in JK: DF2, you could help in other ways. As mentioned earlier, Sith2 was fairly far along when it was dropped, and its source code is still available: http://www.jkhub.net/project/show.php?projid=64, http://sourceforge.net/projects/sith2. Another clone was worked on last May, and actually did have physics, at least to some degree: http://forums.massassi.net/vb3/showthread.php?t=41253. However, its source code is not publicly available, so you'd have to contact the author.
In, any case, best of luck in all your endeavors. Don't let Massassi bring you down!

If fifty people sent actual physical letters to the right guy, we might get them to acknowledge our existence. But he'd probably be to lazy to spend the hour it would take to release it.

jk sucks

I will elaborate.


Why it's not going to happen:

First of all, JK code has migrated into many other projects. We know for a fact that this list includes the later 3D SCUMM games (Escape from Monkey Island, Grim Fandango), Droidworks and Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine.

Droidworks was done by a different company within Lucas' empire and it's not known if they would offer resistance to the release. Probably not, since it could easily be argued that the source code would serve as an educational aid.

The main problem here is actually Indiana Jones and the Infernal Machine. Unlike Star Wars, LucasArts does not have unfettered access to the Indiana Jones copyrights: all Indy merchandise must also be approved by Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford. The release of IM was conditional based on a software license forbidding third party modification and technical measures designed to enforce the license.

A source code release of JK would never ever happen because it would make reverse-engineering and modification of IM possible.

Beyond that, the last time I heard anything about the original Sith code it didn't actually exist in a compilable form anymore. Even if LucasArts decided to release the code they probably wouldn't be able to get it out to us.


Why the code would be useless to us:

The original Sith code is archaic to the point of uselessness. I mean, unless you really like DX5 execute buffers. I, personally, don't care much for them.

We know for a fact that most of JK was written in straight, pure, unmaintainable C. Yves Borckmans once told me that a ton of the engine (triangle setup, transformation, lighting, software raster and physics) was written in macro assembly. Basically all of the code would need to be rewritten from scratch just to have it in a form that could be maintained by a large group of unpaid unprofessionals, which more-or-less relegates the usefulness of the original code to a reference source.

But it's not very good as a reference either, is it? The JK engine sucks. It's an awful engine, it's poorly-designed (even for the day) and it's fraught with critical design flaws. We didn't flake out on Sith 2 because we couldn't figure out the magic math behind the gameplay, we flaked out on it because we were catering to stupid and retarded mistakes made 10 years ago. To be totally blunt here, nobody should even be editing JK anymore. It's such an awful and poorly-designed engine that editing it won't even give you practical, real-world experience you can apply to any other game. It's just an excuse for being too lazy to learn how to edit something else.


Why the release of JK's source code would never, ever, ever help you get the source code to JO or JA:

These games were not done by LucasArts, they were done by Raven. LucasArts doesn't have the rights to the JO or JA code. They don't even have a commercial Quake 3 license.

Raven's not going to release the JO or JA code because the JO and JA code include source used in Raven's other games. All of the scripting code, model code, the AI, the modified physics, bot pathing... everything. It's all used in Soldier of Fortune 2, Star Trek: Elite Force, Quake 4,....... this isn't going to happen. Ever.

You're barking up the wrong tree. And by 'wrong tree' I mean 'retarded tree' because this is a terrible idea and completely off-base no matter what way you look at it. And Star Wars is pretty lame anyway, so you'd be better off finding a good game to edit instead of beating a dead horse.

Jon wins the thread.

Jon said it best and nobody else can ever say it better.

This thread did bring a bit of nostalgia though

If you want to play JK all over, make a mod. Source engine, Quake3 engine, Unreal engine are all perfectly decent for making mods. It wouldn't take you more than the "few weeks" you're willing to spend on a port. If you show some results, there'll be people willing to make maps or something or other.

Someone is making a Jedi Knight: Source ?

That sounds flippin awesome!

Awesome post, Jon'C. Btw how did you get a chance to talk to Borckmans?



I'm not sure if you are sarcastic or not, but I will assume that you aren't. The guy who started this thread wants LEC to release the JK source code, not port it to the Source Engine. On the other hand, I'd love to see a JK brought to one of the modern game engines (Crytek, UE3, Source, etc.) where the vertigo-inducing maps could really shine. Oh but only a dream it is. The DF mod looks good but progresses at snail's pace.

I can't argue most of what you said about JK, since I don't have sources to state anything to the contrary. And no, I have no problem with DirectX 5 execute buffers. As to how horrible and awful the code-base must be, that's left entirely to speculation at this point. I've had no problems dealing with code-bases in the past that were largely written in x86/macro assembly. In either case, you are way off base in saying:



Quake3 is already available under GPL. Raven has released code for Doom and Quake-based projects following id's release of code. Raven's studio head has stated that the reason they have not considered releasing JO/JA code is the involvement of LucasArts.

Additionally, Quake4 does not use any AI, physics, bot pathing... anything regarding JO/JA code. Neither does any project that is not Quake3-based over at Raven. I know this for a fact. In fact, JO/JA didn't even make use of the AAS system (this includes the multiplayer bots). They both used their own AI pathing. Quake4 makes use of the newer Doom3-based AAS system. You are just stating false information there.

CueEffTee

Also, it's a bit off-topic for my thread here, but:



So, you started writing a new engine from scratch for a 10-year-old game, and then you were surprised when you ran into "mistakes". That's generally not the kind of attitude that's going to help you finish a project. You come off as simply sounding bitter that you began something you couldn't finish, and you want to blame the engineering practices of 10 years ago on that fact.

Additionally, there is no reason for you to call people lazy because they enjoy modding an old game. People who work professionally on current and next-gen engines as map designers even like to go back now and then and work on a Duke Nukem 3D or Jedi Knight map. People who just do it in their spare time for fun have even more of an excuse. You are only attacking the practice because it contibutes to giving you a valid out for giving your project up. At least that's how it sounds to me.

I can remember Jon trying to explain a few things about the old Sith engine a while ago when he was working on it, and he's right. The old code is absolutely horrid in that every single number used appears to be completely random and not based on anything at all.

Otherwise, Ignore this post because I know precisely jack **** about coding.

I also talked to Ray Gresko and Justin Chin. They aren't mythical god-creatures, they're just guys who like to talk about games.


Liar.


Alright, fair enough. The last time I heard anything about it was that the SP SDK code for JO was off-limits because it had Raven's magical/awful AI in it.


None of us were surprised that we ran into design flaws. What was surprising was how awful those design flaws were. If you actually delve into how the engine works and all of the file formats you'll figure it out for yourself. It's a rat's nest.

Uh huh.

Nobody ever said we couldn't finish it. Contrary to your opinion, it really wouldn't require that much technical skill. In reality there were three contributing causes behind my abandonment of the project. You'll have to ask the others for their reasons:

1.) I was the last person working on it. I did a significant amount of the file parsing, the engine internals, the COG Virtual Machine. The other primary contributor (Sige) wrote the renderer, the barebones sound system and the barebones input system (basically anything API-dependent). And then he flaked out on it, which wouldn't have been a problem if he had actually commented (or fixed) his code. To continue the project I would have had to rewrite his contribution.

2.) It was a lot of work for absolutely zero gain. I only 'started' the project because I felt like writing a simple toy COG VM. I was talking about the project to the JKHub crew and was convinced that most of the code we'd need was already floating around out there. They were half right.
Sith 2 was not even an educational experience for us. It was slogging through mud. For instance, the ASCII resources have no internal consistency - we were literally rewriting the parsing code over and over again. I ended up having to rewrite the COG parser because - surprise surprise - the guys who wrote the original JK COGs used keywords as variable names. And this works in the original COG VM because it uses an awful, awful multi-stage parser.
Ultimately I decided that since I wasn't getting any experience out of it, and there's no way I could reuse the code for another project (JK's design is simply too bad to be reusable), and it was taking up a gigantic amount of my time that I would rather spend on something... you know... fun, I dropped it on Sourceforge. Not that anybody has worked on it, at all, ever.

3.) I realized that most of the people who still play these terrible games are also awful people. Up until recently the remains of the JK players' community was run by a 15 year old script kiddy, and my attitude about the situation is that ReT should learn C and finish the engine himself if he wants it.

Yes there is, because it's true.

Duke Nukem yes, Jedi Knight no.

By "Duke Nukem 3D or Jedi Knight" you mean "Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, or Quake 2" right? Because those three games actually had decent engines for their day.

Jedi Knight was never a popular game to edit. It was, after all, released in the same quarter as Quake 2.

You can apply whatever hidden meanings make you feel better about your ridiculous quest, but I'm saying exactly what I mean.

My stated opinion was quite the opposite. The technical groundwork for an engine with such capabilities would be easy to get done, for most of us. We have experience already well beyond what is required there. The "difficulty" (I refer to the time taken as difficulty, not the "I am smart so I can figure things out/know how to do things easily, look how special I am" aspect), and part that matters, is making it faithful to the original.


Wow. Nice.


Well, your opinion and observation of reality within a limited scope does not equate to fact. Obviously, there are plenty of people that enjoy editing Jedi Knight. If you want to call them lazy and have a real basis, I guess you'd better start holding conversations with them, telling them they're lazy, listening, and combating their responses. You could also just not make opinionated and mostly baseless remarks, but that is up to you.

It's great if you want to move on and work on things that are more technically challenging and fun for you, but that doesn't mean you have to come back and bitterly spew false information (or speculation, at best) toward someone who is trying to do something productive for, what I and many others view as, an old classic.

I don't see anything else productive coming from this thread, so that's that. Thanks to everyone who did attempt to support this effort. I'll be going through some producer contacts to see what we can do, since a real community-backed effort is looking difficult (if not impossible).

ok, bye

you came to the wrong place.

You assumed poorly.

Signed.

No, he's 100% right. There's like 3 people that still play JK that are worth any snot. You should see what it's really like.

Hahaha...

I find the comment about JK editors being lazy to be quite ironic, because it's a harder game to work with. Making a level like Atrium look that good would be a synch with a newer engine. But I understand the point.

I remember in 2002 or so when I played JK & MotS like mad and people were already like "OMG IT R OLD". Of course, back then we had awesome SP levels like BoaM/ToaM and A Pirate's Tale released and that was mainly the reason I still played (and attempted to edit) them.

Too bad we don't have those anymore. Sure, I guess graphical enhancements can be nice and all but the days of awesome SP levels like that are gone. No other game really had such awesome addons as MotS.

In fact, if I could run MotS properly I'd just play those SP levels because they're just pure gold (not graphically, though). No matter how awful that guy still playing JK MP is.

Why not like, use the Q3 engine and modify it to handle JK files and implement cog?

It could feel and play exactly like JK, but have a modern well-designed engine.

Have you been in #jkhub lately? Like in the last couple days? I wouldn't call them awful people.

Screw checkers... it's too old of a game to be any fun playing or modding...



Signed just cuz I would like to see it happen, even if I have little faith that it actually will any time soon.

Being "faithful to the original" does not mean you have to include shoddy code. Being "faithful to the original" is keeping to the same style of game play that is JK only with a much more modern and better coded engine. You CAN accomplish this.

It's called Jedi Outcast.

Oh yeah. And there you go.