Oh sweet. After spending some time trying to get Steam's JK to work with jkgfxmod, now I can't get my CD-ROM version of JK to run.

What the **** did those morons do???

omfg you hyper****ers

don't doooo that

HEY NIKUMUBEKI

I found your problem

Run ^ that ^ command in an admin command prompt.

Apparently Microsoft(TM) Windows(R) has a feature that lets apps install a system-wide automatically enforced binary patch that's applied when an executable is loaded. weirdly this can ****in break **** in mysterious and incomprehensible ways.

I am moderately livid.

DO NOT use the Steam version of JK. If you do run it, do not give it admin, do not allow it to "install". It will most likely break your JK system-wide if it was working before.

Looking at process monitor, the Steam version of JK was also somehow loading the system DirectX libraries even though I'd replaced the only one it was supposed to link to. I don't know what they've done but I don't trust this executable at all.

Not, like, I don't think it's a virus or anything. But I honestly don't have the impression at this point that the maintainers really knew what they were doing/why they were doing it. You're better off getting the CD-ROM JK 1.0 executable from somewhere, purging the shim using the above command, and then using the injector. No music, but at least it will work.

I got these DLLs from some obscure source I can't recall that makes JK (probably MotS too) play OGG music from a Music directory inside the JK root, which I believe is what Steam's JK does. The fact that these probably came from a suspicious source is what makes me apprehensive in sharing. It was probably one of those jkdf2 dot somethings, so not the most trustworthy sites around. Been using them for some time though and never had any trouble, in fact I use them for playing custom music in JKGR.

Kotaku posted a snippet article about the texture upgrades a little while ago.

So Jon'C was an AI all along? Interesting...

Nice work, TreeMarmot.

Meanwhile, I've been making displacement maps for materials I felt like displacing.


This one is definitely my favorite so far.

They change the feel of the game sooo much.

I’m doing quick and dirty ones for level 1 just as an experiment, it makes Kyle feel like he’s running slower.

Canyon Oasis, adding displacement maps to the deck makes it feel like the walkway is narrower.


I’m still not sure it’s a welcome change, but it’s definitely a meaningful one.

They look so rad. I'm going to need a better computer.

Is there anywhere we can upload and put the ones we're making together so we get the whole thing done faster? While it's really nice to see the results in-game, this isn't a particularly fun thing to do

Here are the ones I've done so far. Some clearly look better than others, but still.

Is there like a GitHub for SVN? Heh

... damn those pipes look fantastic! And Kyle's line at that part is permanently etched into my brain "[weird noise] I BETTER MAKE A JUMP FOR IT!"



Goddamn Steam JK. I can't remember all the details of how I first re-installed JK in July 2016 when I got my current computer, but I'm not sure if I ever even ran the Steam JK.EXE (so did I get the original EXE immediately with JKVersions). Then again, IIRC, when Kroko got his new SSD and basically started off fresh, he didn't launch Steam's own JediKnight.exe at all and the JK 1.00 EXE he got from JKVersions was already flagged with the Windows Defender/run as an admin/whatever logo.

But yeah, thanks for this, I'll run that command line prompt thing ASAP.

Makes me wonder if the GOG version of JK didn't work on my end due to the Steam installation having messed the registry up OR because it just doesn't work with the injector (for now)..

Also, SMLiberator, I guess I could try and make a "Jedi Knight/MotS Graphical Mod Compilation Extension Pack 0.08" type release over the weekend, which of course led to yet another FGR idea in which I'd need your help:

Do you have the time to extend the muzzle flashes to the rail detonator (JK and MotS) and the carbonite gun (MotS) in the form of a small puff of steam gushing out from the front of the gun (grey/regular steam in the case of the raildet, something blue/icy for the carbonite gun)? Something tells me you might have such resources available already...

hopefully this pack will have glowy projectiles too

This problem is independent of Steam DRM. If the GOG maintainers are the same people as the Steam maintainers, it's likely the app is doing the same thing as the Steam version.

When I did manage to get the injector attached to the Steam version of the exe, it would crash immediately before switching to 3D graphics. I think it's doing something weird with the Direct3D DLLs, but that's just speculation because Steam detaches debuggers. It's possible this is related to the shim but I don't really want to try it again.

How about running a neurel net over the different viewing angles of the displacement map render to get rid of the weird jaggies?

(joking)

Turn on temporal antialiasing in your graphics driver per-app settings. I don't know when I'll get to it.

Hmm, I had forgotten about those.

Let's see how far I can get with at least adding glow to the JKE ones.

Possible, though I vaguely remember getting the GOG version to actually run the game (with 3D accel on of course, I've never played JK for more than 3 seconds without 3D accel). Didn't get that far with Steam's own JK.exe in 2009 (or, if I actually have tried running it at least once, in 2016 or so).

That said, I think a separate "OGG injector" would completely invalidate the Steam/GOG versions so that people could just forget about those and stick with getting JK 1.00 from JKVersions (well, as long as it works, but I think MZZT released the source for it on GitHub at some point).

Do the Steam/GOG versions play back the correct tracks from discs 1 and 2, or is it all munged together?

I have to verify that later, but to my recollection they were the correct tracks (at least for the first level and the Dark Jedi battles) and the OGGs were named like 01.ogg, 02.ogg etc. indicating that they were using some kind of an injector of their own (substituting CD track numbers as OGGs named with the corresponding numbers).

(Similar to the MP3/OGG mod for JK in 2005)

They have a replacement winmm.dll, which is probably how they're injecting the replacement CD music functions. There are 18 tracks across both of the discs and I counted 18 ogg files, so they seem correct, but they're numbered oddly. I haven't checked yet but I would guess they just patched the levels/cogs with different track numbers.

original:



steam:



sooooooo yah, the only episode that's changed is jk1? Let me guess.

This makes fixing music a LOT easier, so long as people are ok with the idea of fixing the track numbers in the episodes.

It seems like it shouldn't be a major problem (for someone willing to retain listening to the original tracks from JK/MotS). I guess it'd also mean that it'd be possible to have mods use track numbers like 999 or so to avoid the issue of conflicting with JK's original music.

And congrats on your ModDB #1 spot!

thanks

Guys, this is freaking crazy. I still don't really understand how all of this is working, but it's absolutely beautiful. Jon, would you mind explaining in layman's terms what's actually happening here?

Also, I'm curious how relevant any of this is to the old Sith2 / GORC projects you were working on? Are any of the developments you've made here impactful to the work that was previously done? Also would there be any efficiency gains by working with the guy over at JKHub who was doing the JK engine rebuild called "Smith". I know I saw a discussion about that a few months back and there's a strong hesitancy from Massassi to work with them because of the immature nature of that community. I don't have a scope of any of the alleged issues, but just curious from a technical standpoint how much can be leveraged to drive all of this forward even further.

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Cool beans

I taught an AI how to make Jedi Knight textures bigger. Then, I worked with the AI to make them all bigger. I split out the parts of the textures that were lit, then the AI made the textures more detailed, and finally I did some minor touch ups (but only on the absolute worst textures, because I don’t have time to do all of them).

Then I wrote a program that replaces Direct3D 5, used by JK for 3D accelerated rendering, with a new renderer built on OpenGL. Because this was a purpose built replacement instead of a faithful emulation of Direct3D, it fixes all of the compatibility issues running JK on new computers. It also fixes a bunch of other problems JK had, like transparency order.

Then, I modified the program to automatically replace the games original textures with materials specified by a modder. These materials are bundles of textures and parameters. Materials introduce support for high-resolution textures, 32-bit textures with proper alpha channels, emissive textures (with bloom), and parallax occlusion mapping which adds the illusion of 3D detail. It is possible to add more in the future.

Finally, I made my own material pack with the AI-upscaled textures.

I reused some Gorc code. Otherwise, no.

No / nothing. This project is for the original game. It's also basically done.

I like how the emissive textures make this part in level 8 look like... this:

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Anyway, I did get around to enabling some of them glowy projectiles (which look pretty OK to me)...

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@Jon`C

Very helpful, thanks for the overview! Do you have any plans to do anything else with this? Are there any other potential low-hanging fruit improvements that can be interlaced with this outside of .mat improvements? I realize that's probably a bit of a loaded question, but obviously this new development you've shared with us has a significant impact on the visual aspect of the game. Are there any other areas of the game (visual, auditory, mechanics) that you are looking to improve as well?

Know what’s a real trip? Play for a couple hours, then hit F11 twice. Discovered that last night

There is more low hanging fruit, but I’ve exhausted the useful data JK sends DirectX. Documented in post within last 24h.

No mechanics improvements planned or desired.

I’m considering adding a soundtrack patch and possibly A3D emulation, but I don’t know when/if I would get around to doing it.

Thanks. I can't code but if there's any way some of us who are less technical might be able to lend a hand, let me know. Even if it's just testing random things to see if they'll break. I've been around JK since it was released. That doesn't mean much outside of my enthusiasm for projects like this. Great work and thanks for releasing this to the masses.

By all means, please do try the textures+injector and report any issues you find. Everything is released.