Dan,

Ignoring 90% or so of your posts, you're right, a JK facebook page was probably inevitable. I have lots of love for JK, and for it's time, it was a great game and lots of fun to play. I know I wasted countless hours playing on the Zone and editing.

That said, don't hold your breath for a revival on a 13 year old game. Have fun anyway.

He PMed me asking among other things to help him with his surefire goal at reviving the community. Sorry to disappoint everyone, but I responded by telling him not to waste his time.

It's the way of the future!

CoolMatty's A KOMUNIST!

REVIVE JK!!! LONG LIVE THE REVOLUCION!

>.>

I gotta admit there's something endearing about this guy's dedication. I don't think he's even following the thread any more and everyone else has already said it better though, so I'm not gonna try and offer any advice.

But, a JK facebook page is not a bad idea. We're not gonna relive the glory days, but it wouldn't hurt to pay respects to the game that brought us all together and for many of us got us into gaming/computers in the first place.

Plus I'm like 70% sure there's a girl in the group.

Wrong, Think about Doom, Fallout, Space Quest, Tie Fighter, X-Wing....
Specifically Doom because, unlike JK, it has a bazillion revival projects that focus on making it better instead of bringing back "Glory Days"

.

i actually dont have FB, but whatever keeps this game alive ill support

I almost wonder if our treatment of JK is inhumane, like keeping grandma alive even though she's in extreme pain.

Im starting to wonder about the almighty Massassi Temple

I'm starting to wonder if Massassi shouldn't just go the way of TACC and host an insignificant social forum under a different moniker since there seems to be so much contempt, at what used to be one of the preeminent sites, if not the preeminent site, of the game, for the game.

I have to agree it seems that anyone coming here and posting anything Jedi Knight related, even requests for help, are provoked and insulted. I don't know what Dan did to get banned from these forums previously but initially his post seemed sincere and lighthearted. I did not read it as an attempt to insult the community as a whole.

While I personally wont be joining the 'Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2' group on Facebook, maybe someone else here is interested.

I think the point is that it's naive to think JK will ever be like it once was, Doom had a hell of a following once, X-Wing Alliance had a hell of a following once, Quake had a hell of a following once. All these things are dead and will never come back. People have moved on. It annoys the old guard when someone comes in with yet another grandiose plan to instantly restore JK to what it once was. We've all seen this before a dozen times: Sith2, IGZ, The Dedicated Server, it goes on.

I get that. But I also see no harm in him trying. If he chooses to spend his time attempting another revival, its his time to waste. It's not like he's spamming the forums, hes made 1 thread.

Apparently it annoys the "old guard" just to simply ask for help running these games anymore.

Hey Dan, I'm Dan. Nice to meet another Dan. o_O

Nobody is stopping him, they're just arguing that it's stupid and they want no part in it.

Am I the only one who joined? **** sake, now i feel stupid

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

I'll admit that 12.5 years is pretty old, but I really don't understand all the hate. The guy doesn't do himself any favors in subsequent posts, but a JK Facebook page seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to exist.

A Jedi Knight (JK) resurgence was made impossible by the release of Jedi Outcast (JO) & Jedi Academy (JA). The last real JK resurgence was when the prequels hit the theaters ("Attack of the Clones" (AotC) was released just 2 months before JO). The Internet Gaming Zone (IGZ) increased in numbers again for quite some time during the prequels (especially during "The Phantom Menace" (TPM) but a little during EP2/EP3 as well). If George "destroyer of my childhood" Lucas were to release another Star Wars movie & if it actually caused a resurgence, it would be in the newer Star Wars games, not in JK.

Sorry double post.

WTF? JK is and always will be a wonderful game. No matter how many over hyped ****ty games come out.

That's probably because you didn't read the thread.

This isn't about the existence of a Facebook group for JK. Honestly, I don't think anyone here cares one way or the other if it exists. It's the matter of him wanting us to devote some unnamed resources and time into this glorious revival of the JK community, which he seems to believe is centered around the idea of promoting this Facebook group.

In other words:

It's not that it exists, it's that he thinks the FB group is going to revive the community. It won't. It's not pessimism, it's truth. If he wants to try, he can try on his own time; us "old guard" of the community have seen these ideas come and go so often that to even respond to such a ridiculously unfounded idea is rather surprising.

Ah, Ruthy, you made me lol

I admire the enthusiasm of this other Dan, and if he gets this off the ground I'll join him.

I was going to join just because of the reaction to him but I don't need you guys browsing my Facebook! Actually, I probably will anyway. If and when I do, you will so obviously be able to figure out which one is me.

I never promised instant results, nor depending on a facebook group to do all the work.

Really what it comes down to is a collaborative effort of the people within the community. Because Facebook is the largest social network on the Internet, I figured if we all work together as admins of the page to keep the Facebook page udated with all the "latest" happenings of the community or even as far as to revive all the best projects that existed. Not only would it create buzz for people who are interested in "retro" video games, but those interested in creative expression through video game modification. JK is hella easy to manipulate and all of you here know exactly what I mean.

We as a community have retained an abundance of all sorts of resources for any new player to begin to play the game and modify not only the mechanics but the look and feel of the game as well.

I was hoping to eventually grow into a single community again, starting with Facebook, and creating a new, or revamping an old jk community website to meet the modern standards of the most current community driven websites.

A collaborative effort was all I was looking for.

Think if we started making youtube videos that depicted the flexibility of the engine (tutorials and such), or trailers for new levels and mods. The only thing that the current jk community websites lack is communication to the rest of the Internet, which is what I want to offer my skills in doing.

It begins with integrating the old jk community websites with top level social networks like twitter, facebook and youtube. Thing's like feeds and connection options (signing in with facebook, or twitter feeds.)

So the reason why new people would come here is obviously the same reason we all have kept in touch. (JK is the best game ever.) The reason they'll come back, is because the community is tightly woven around how awesome the game is. Besides with the latest addition's of xfire and steam support (albeit really ****ty), a multiplayer interface (jk launcher, http://www.voobly.com/), and the fact that we still use IRC (considered super retro), there isn't a reason for any gamer not to try JK out especially if they never have before (pc or console, jk runs on practically everything).

I agree the jk community is a tight one, and only those who knew, know. But how long do we continue to keep it this way?

Are there really enough people left to even call it a community? Even w/ the release of the Steam version the "community" grew by like, what, 2% for a few weeks & I would guess that the vast majority of people that purchased it were doing so out of nostalgia (most gamers don't go out & buy 13 year old games to play when there are tons of modern games that are probably better). Those that bought it for other reasons were probably very disappointed. If we took all of the JK editors & players & put them on their own island, there would be massive amounts of retarded children born w/in a generation. That & a lot of homosexuality (not necessarily a bad thing if you dig the same sex) because there can't be more than 10 chicks that would play a 13 year old Star Wars game & probably even less that would mate w/ someone that did. That just doesn't sound like a very good community to me. That's not even going in to the fact that half of the players that are left (maybe more) that still take the game seriously are *******s, bigots, racists & just about any other word that one can think of that has a negative connotation (e.g. read the JKDF2 forums). The final half of them consist of 25% "hackers" & 25% victims of all of the above. I think it's great that you want to do something productive but I think if you'll put your emotions aside (e.g. nostalgia) & look at this from a reasonable viewpoint, you'll see that it's a waste of time & is destined to fail.

Note: I pulled all of my statistics out of my ass but I stand by them.

I don't understand why people feel the need to abandon old games because new ones come out, even if the new ones are total BS

example, UT3...i still play ut2004 and ut99 because UT3 was an absolute pile of ****

quake 3 is still popular over quake 4

CS 1.6 over CS:S

Nobody abandoned Morrowind after Oblivion


The truth is, most star wars fans are just as bad as George Lucas in being sell outs

Why do people watch new movies when there's perfectly good ones in black & white?

Note: I actually still play JK & MotS on occasion. However, it's mostly to play single-player levels or to explore new multi-player levels alone. The thought of actually trying to get a multi-player game going w/ actual human beings w/ the map &/or mod that I want to play would be a logistical nightmare that my heart just can't handle.

You make valid points, all of which are completely understandable. But from the perspective I'm coming from is not the game as just a game. But the game as a platform to learn to create. It's the perfect platform for beginners to get their feet wet in game modification.

Yes I know there are means for modifying newer games, but the learning curve is huge and on purpose.

I'm just saying, I believe because I was able to successfully turn my interest in modifying and creating through JK into a career by modifying and creating through web design (photoshop textures - > photoshop websites -> file organizing / hierarchy -> aspects of programming), maybe quite possibly and worth the effort, getting many other's to do the same, and possibly with enough people trying their hands at game modding, we'll possibly see some significant improvements in next generation video games, because we will have built a community of game designers who are also gamers.

All I'm saying is because JK helped me ( and maybe you guy's on some level), I think it can help a lot of others, too and it would be selfish not to try.

If you can get those same people interested in editing/modifying newer games, they'll have a much higher rate of success. Focusing on JK/MotS will turn a lot of people off to your cause because of the age of the game & the technology. Editing JK/MotS to get people interested in creative avenues would be like trying to convince people that the best way to learn about computer hardware is to dissect an Apple ][ or that the best best way to learn graphic design is to learn w/ a version of Paint Shop Pro from the 1990s. Either way, I wish you success but don't say we didn't tell you so.

It is more difficult to mod a newer game than JK, and the majority of pc gamers just aren't interested in modding the newer games because either the majority of pc gamers who can even play the newer games (requiring expensive machines) really are only interested in playing them, or they've moved on to playing games on a console because its cheaper.

I just want to bridge the gap between pc gamers and pc game developers, and JK is just the platform to do that. All the while big game developers are only trying to increase the separation by making no effort to offer backwards compatibility for their PC titles or just making games for consoles (harder to mod), so they can churn out even ****tier games that appeal to the "general audience" instead of the real gamers, who actually care, only to increase their profit.

And these big game developers are obviously heavily networked with colleges and institutions to only offer game modding education for those who can afford it.

Abandon? I say "moved on." Fact of the matter is JK's multiplayer is broken in today's standards and a decade ago. The net code is horrible. It has no real protection against hacks of any kind. It's a nightmare to get a round together with people. The host lacks any real tools to maintain a game, and mod management is an exercise in frustration. Etc.

Looking back, I think the real appeal, for me at least, was the potential. There were mods of all kinds, and even the hacks were insane in what they could accomplish. People did all sorts of strange things from roleplaying to rolling around at high speeds. That's what I enjoyed most. When it came out in 1997, JK felt like a lump of unstable clay that you could possibly mold into something interesting, but when you take the product at face value, it's a mess. An absolute mess.

With enough effort and attention, I am absolutely positive that we can get LucasArts to redev the game. That would be the end goal in mind that we'd all be working together to reach.

I know efforts for this have been tried for in the past, but this was heavily based on expressing what an already existing and dwindling community believes, however, if we were to grow the community like how I've been talking about this entire thread, we can definitely call to attention how much potential JKDF2 has for LucasArts to take some sort of action, like how we've already got xfire and steam support.

Think about it, if LucasArts didn't see any of that same potential in JKDF2 why the hell would they offer it through steam?

It really comes down to meeting them halfway, they've offered us the availability of the game, we need to show them how much it means to us by telling everyone to play it and mod it, giving them a reason to change it for us.

I believe LucasArts would love nothing more than to see a growing community of people interested in using a platform they've developed in a creative and productive way of which they can get full recognition for.

Edit:
Also there is a forum on steam specifically for this game that we can use to draw attention to it's flaws and its benefits (modding etc..)
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=714

Which I understand is difficult to do because its only a $5.00 game, but with enough people (the collaborative effort) we can definitely make a difference.

Besides ...money? If LucasArts really cared, they wouldn't have tried selling a piece of software that the user, on his own, had to figure out how to make the crummy thing work amidst major compatibility problems. And they didn't even provide the music. Massassi did more on getting that blasted game working that any schmuck on LA's payroll.

"Potential" is a hard sell when it comes to a company known for half-assed ports, license milking, and rushed sequels.




Nonsense. LucasArts needs to show me that they are a company whose products are worth paying money for. If I had a list of game developers that deeply "cared" about the community, it wouldn't have LucasArts on it. I mean really, what do I owe that company for releasing Jedi Knight on Steam, even "halfway"?

You loved the game didn't you? If you don't feel like helping because you hate LucasArts, that should be motivation to stick it to their face by help growing the community to be able to make a better game then them with the platform they've developed. If you don't feel like helping because you don't actually like the game, keep your opinion to yourself because I'm not trying to appeal to people like you. If you don't feel like helping because your lazy, stop using pessimism as a way to justify your laziness. If you can't help because you don't have the time to (it takes the same amount time to be post pessimistic thoughts as it does to actually help.) than thats perfectly understandable, at the very least, show some support.

That's it, I'm canceling Jedi Knight: Source.

Good job. I don't need this.

Lol good one, in all actuality that's a perfect place to start. Not by canceling of course, but either of the following (but not limited to):

• By posting all JK:S stuff on the Facebook group
• Creating videos to be youtubed
• Sharing on MODDB under jkdf2.
• Posting on the steam forum.

And if you don't have the time or are too lazy to do any of the above, give me permission to do it for us. All credit will be paid accordingly of course with respective links to their origins.

Oh my god.