For those of us still playing Jedi Knight: Dark Forces 2 and Mysteries of the Sith, one of the biggest problems is finding others to play in MP games. JKLauncher is one part of my solution to the problem.

JKLauncher allows hosting and joining MP games, and most importantly, listing of games via IP addresses and special web page listers. It handles mods much like the famous JK Patch Commander program. It also has chat features (via IRC), enabling a sense of community around games, as the Zone once offered.

JKLauncher is unlike the Zone or old forum IP listers, though. Whereas the Zone was a centralized chat place, JKLauncher can connect to any IRC server. The old IP listers were static; the protocol being developed for use between JKLauncher and new web page listers will be much more dynamic, including updates on games currently running and statistics of games played. Thus, JKLauncher can still be used even while web sites come and go.

The current release of JKLauncher has the game listing features implemented, and just the bare bones of chatting implemented. Hosting and joining of games works for both SP and MP, for JK and MotS, and includes mod selection. Many more features are planned for JKLauncher.

Look at the screenshots, read the project pages, and make suggestions. Most importantly, please download and try it. I especially want those overseas from USA to try listing games from a USA server. This might involve using the new option for using JK's polling method. If you don't have a server to try, contact me in #jkhub (irc.zirc.org) or via any instant messenger listed in my profile, and I will setup one.

Thanks,

I'm still waiting for the Linux JK dedicated server :p

Looks cool. Nice and organized place for game it seems

On a slightly related note, will there be a patch that takes JK 1.01 back down to 1.0 so I can use the JK Hub patches for all this good stuff? I patched the game (from LEC) years ago but lost the CD now.

Good idea. Reversion patch from JK 1.01 to 1.0

Don't forget to post comments about JKLauncher.

CLOWNSHOES

On that note...

More on topic, IMO you went a bit overkill... you don't need an IRC client, especially a multi-server one. *sigh*

Anyways I would advise giving the player list a horizontal orientation rather than the current vertical, so you could show more information about each player. Many server browsers already do it like this anyways.

It would also be great if it could dig into the GOB and patchinfo.txt/episode.jk files therein and actually get proper display names for the mods, episodes and levels.

Also there seem to be too many columns too my liking for the server information; ideally, I'd make the more detailed information appear in a pane below the ListView when an item is selected. And/or allow the user to hide columns by right clicking the header and being able to select columns to show/hide (Steam's behavior in this area is a good example of what you could do).

vEry sweet.

I'll give it a shot this weekend.

I dunno what you have planned, but I think a "quick join" button that logs in and automatically connects to a chat room would be good for people unfamiliar with irc.

[ I tried the chat feature, that worked fine. However it won't launch the game! I press the host game button, select jedi knight, multiplayer or singleplayer, and after that menu it goes back the the JKlauncher, but the host game button remains grayed out. I still have to try it at on my home computer. ]

Due to Echoman's help last night (and before Shred returned to #jkhub), I found a major bug when JKLauncher tries to Host or Join a game.

I know how to fix it, and will try to have a new release up today.

Thanks again for testing, reporting your experiences, and suggesting changes. Keep them coming.

hey hey hey, I think I'm the one who discovered that (SaberClash) do I get no credit? Anyways, yeah Xanatos and I were trying to play a game together and I was having trouble launching JK, and I realized that it had something to do with the path, so I double clicked my JK.exe in the path settings (even though it had it right the first time), and then for some reason after that it worked. However, I had to do that each and every time I wanted to host.

Also, whenever Xanatos attempted to join my game it would always say "Inactive" and we couldn't figure out why.

Bug fix release is ready for download. Sorry for the inconvenience.

If you go into Setup > Game Listers and Insert (in the address column):
http://www.jkhub.net/gaming/lister.php
and check the checkbox for it in the Poll column, you should see my game listed. I have been leaving the game running 24/7 for testing JKLauncher. Because my IP is dynamic, using the web page and JKLauncher provides the best way to always find my game.

Others can do this, too. Just "Host Game" and make sure the JK Hub lister is selected at the bottom of the Host Game window, then Enter Game. Other JKLaunchers, when they poll JK Hub's page listed above, should see all games that people have posted (via JKLauncher) to that page.

Someone finally used the new JK polling option (overseas), and sadly, it failed to work. The bug was very obvious when I did some debugging; I was a bit hasty in my testing last time, I guess. Thus, I have tested this bug fix more thoroughly this time, and have uploaded another release with the bug fix.

What about having a master server that JKLauncher can communicate with? All the games would be announced to the master server, and the master server would in turn tell all the JKLauncher clients what games are available.

I'd be willing to host such a master server if you'd want to do that.

I was purposely avoiding the "master server" idea, because sites come and go. JKLauncher is being setup to use *any* web page/server that uses the JKLauncher protocol.

Edit: What I mean is that the "web page listers" are really the "master server" you speak of. For example, if you Insert into the Game Listers window, http://www.jkhub.net/gaming/lister.php, you should see that that web page is already doing what a master server does. (It just has limited functionality at the moment.)

I hope that clarifies.

this program is sexy as hell. i think it'll help bring back a few more people into the community.

maybe I'm dumb, but i can't get it to work, AT ALL.

The program runs all fine and dandy, but I can't seem to poll your server and when I try to play Shreds JKEnchanced, JK won't launch... as far as I know from the readme I've done everything right.

is there some kinda dependancy? do I need to download the other versions to use the newest or can I just download JKLauncher_2007-01-26_alpha.zip and it should work.