Jedi Outcast/Academy on iPad

[Syko]

I know this sounds crazy, but someone actually did port Quake 3 Arena to iPad. In fact, I have it on my iPad and it actually runs really, really well. You just have to jailbreak.

 

http://www.redmondpie.com/quake-3-arena-hd-for-ipad-is-now-available-for-download-jailbreak-app/

 

I'm just wondering, how hard would it be to bring Outcast/Academy to the iPad if the engine is already ported to it?

[eezstreet]

Hard. The controls are already terrible on FPSes, adding lightsaber combat would be too much. Plus I hate Objective C. Also we don't have the engine source, which is required. Would need the Mac computer required, + the SDK which runs for several thousand dollars total I believe. Nothx.

[Syko]

Well, would it be at least partially possible without code work? I thought that was already done with the engine being ported. Obviously moving the Outcast PK3s into the Quake base folder wouldn't work, but perhaps if the JO maps were recompiled to work in Quake 3 that might work. I think at a bare minimum getting the MP maps to work in it are possible. 

 

Would be an interesting undertaking nonetheless.

 

EDIT: I just realized, wasn't the Jedi Outcast MP source released? Maybe the MP part of the game could be ported. Better read up on my Objective-C...except I have no access to a Mac, not that I could do an engine port anyway.

[Circa]

This would be interesting. Not sure how the controls would work...

[Syko]

The controls actually worked relatively well for me on the iPad (for an iPad FPS game). They worked about as well as NOVA (Gameloft's Halo clone). That game was trash but the controls actually weren't bad once you got used to them. 

 

You could always implement Wiimote support and play the game with a Wiimote. I've used Wiimotes with the iPad before with emulators and it works really well.

[Raz0r]

Well, would it be at least partially possible without code work? I thought that was already done with the engine being ported.

[...]

EDIT: I just realized, wasn't the Jedi Outcast MP source released? Maybe the MP part of the game could be ported.

iD Tech 3 was ported. JA's fork of iD Tech 3 was not, nor is the source available for it.

 

It could probably be done with iojamp, which is a jamp(ded).exe replacement based on ioquake3.

[Syko]

That iojamp looks really interesting. So, from what I understand it's basically the JK3 MP engine effectively rewritten so we have the source, right? I guess a JA/JO iPad version would really just depend on if anyone felt like porting that to Objective-C then. 

[spior]

Just here to remind everybody that you can use C++ for Android apps.

And probably Windows RT too, I haven't checked.

[Circa]

The controls actually worked relatively well for me on the iPad (for an iPad FPS game). They worked about as well as NOVA (Gameloft's Halo clone). That game was trash but the controls actually weren't bad once you got used to them. 

 

You could always implement Wiimote support and play the game with a Wiimote. I've used Wiimotes with the iPad before with emulators and it works really well.

True. NOVA was pretty simple with controls. COD Zombies was pretty similar too. The only thing is, going from a full keyboard to only a few controls would be a huge jump.

[redsaurus]

(just to point out Objective-C is fully compatible with C anyway (and can be mixed w/ C++ code), and it's $99 to register as an iOS developer. if you're jailbroken you don't even need to be registered as an iOS developer)

[Syko]

True. NOVA was pretty simple with controls. COD Zombies was pretty similar too. The only thing is, going from a full keyboard to only a few controls would be a huge jump.

 

Wouldn't it be possible to use console commands/text chat with an iPad or bluetooth keyboard? You would probably only need the keyboard for MP anyway. SP shouldn't need one unless you use a lot of console commands in it. 

 

EDIT: couldn't you just use the touchscreen keyboard for that? If it could be implemented that is.

[Circa]

Wouldn't it be possible to use console commands/text chat with an iPad or bluetooth keyboard? You would probably only need the keyboard for MP anyway. SP shouldn't need one unless you use a lot of console commands in it. 

 

EDIT: couldn't you just use the touchscreen keyboard for that? If it could be implemented that is.

Yes, you could use a bluetooth keyboard for those. I guess if you only use it for console commands and chat, that it. One of the nicest things about PC gaming is the keyboard and how many keys can be bound. But that's not the point of this I suppose.

[Omicron]

Or you could always have a keyboard up on the bottom of the ipad, and you just use that like a regular one. Only downside would be that it would take up valuable screen space...

[Syko]

I just realized, JK2/JKA might get a large spike of popularity if it was successfully ported to iPad. The mobile gaming scene is really popular these days, so it would probably draw in a lot of new players. A crop of online n00bs with rudimentary controls would be ready for harvesting too. 

[spior]

I just realized, JK2/JKA might get a large spike of popularity if it was successfully ported to iPad. The mobile gaming scene is really popular these days, so it would probably draw in a lot of new players. A crop of online n00bs with rudimentary controls would be ready for harvesting too. 

There are already games that surpass JKA in terms of graphics on mobile platforms.

And we all know that "MOAR BLOOM" is what most of the tablet/phone gamers care about.

[Syko]

There are already games that surpass JKA in terms of graphics on mobile platforms. And we all know that "MOAR BLOOM" is what most of the tablet/phone gamers care about.

 

Not by that much I don't think. A lot of the games with really good looking graphics only have good graphics in the screenshots on App Store. When you actually have them on your device they look like a Nintendo 64 game. The small number of ones that actually have good graphics don't surpass JO/JA by that much anyway, at least I don't think so. Besides, if you use iojamp which the source is available for, the graphics would probably be able to be improved significantly. 

[spior]

Not by that much I don't think. A lot of the games with really good looking graphics only have good graphics in the screenshots on App Store. When you actually have them on your device they look like a Nintendo 64 game. The small number of ones that actually have good graphics don't surpass JO/JA by that much anyway, at least I don't think so. Besides, if you use iojamp which the source is available for, the graphics would probably be able to be improved significantly. 

You might be right.

At least think for an android and WP version too, I for one don't want JKA to be flooded with them

[Circa]

The games that have surpassing graphics lack greatly in good gameplay. Most of them are horrible. One of the first impressive titles was Infinity Blade and even though it was near console quality, the gameplay was BORING. The games with good gameplay have N-64 style graphics, which make me cringe.

 

Mobile gaming is all about the experience and the addicting gameplay. So far at least. We're slowly getting to full mobile gaming with everything we love about desktop gaming. Eventually.

[Doby]

I've been dreaming of a JKA iOS port for some time now, never thought it would actually happen though. Saber combat would just not work right.

[Syko]

Bump

 

This is probably a dumb question, but would porting a game engine to iPad/Android require very extensive coding knowledge/experience? I'm thinking of getting a Google Nexus 7 to start learning how to code Android apps (yes, I do have an iPad and I'd rather code for that but I have no Mac. The cheapest one is $600) and I would be interested in porting iojamp to Android. Obviously I need to be reasonably comfortable with the coding languages before I would start working on it, but even then would porting require me to be a code wiz? I guess if anyone could do it though, porting would be a lot more common.

[eezstreet]

We don't have the game engine anyway, and it's a moot point since it would never be approved to Google Play due to all the copyright problems therein. The game would suck anyway on a tablet, if it could even run (the iPad/iPhone, which are infamous for having such poor processing power, would probably explode as soon as you turned on dynamic glow or repeater orbs).

[Syko]

We don't have the game engine anyway, and it's a moot point since it would never be approved to Google Play due to all the copyright problems therein. The game would suck anyway on a tablet, if it could even run (the iPad/iPhone, which are infamous for having such poor processing power, would probably explode as soon as you turned on dynamic glow or repeater orbs).

We don't have the engine exactly, but we have iojamp. I think it might technically be legal to port the iojamp to Google Play because the code of iojamp is entirely free and open source (correct me if I'm wrong there). The assets of the game would be the only copyrighted material, but they wouldn't be released on Google Play with the engine. The way Quake 3 on iPad works is you download the game engine which is included in the app, and you have to copy over PK3 files from the game you (hopefully) bought into a folder on the iPad and then you can play the game. It doesn't come with the assets. iojamp could work the same.

 

As for processing power, I know almost for sure that the game could run on iPad. I have played Quake 3 on my iPad (it's actually an iPad mini) and it ran almost perfectly. I just detected slight chopiness here and there. Overall it was very playable. Maybe dynamic glow and all the extra stuff could be overlooked if it causes a slowdown on the device. Plus, the iPad 4 has an A6 processing chip which is even faster. My iPad mini has an A5 processor chip.

 

As for the Nexus 7, I don't really know how well the engine would run. I think the iPad actually runs games better, even though the Nexus 7 seems to have somewhat better specs. (1Ghz Quad core Tegra processor, 1GB of ram compared with iPad mini's 512MB ram, A5 processor)

 

Also, I admit the lightsaber combat controls would suck, but I think the touch controls could work decently when playing it with guns after you got used to it. And, like I said before, a Wiimote or keyboard could be used for play. Heck, maybe you could even swing a Wiimote to swing your lightsaber in game.

 

Plus, there are practical benefits to porting the game to tablets. Tablets are what the kids play these days. JA and JO could very likely regain some popularity if it was successfully ported.

 

Everything I just said is pretty much a summary of the entire thread so far.

[eezstreet]

Maybe, but it isn't going to bring about any sort of substantial increase in the playerbase like you're hoping for. Porting iojamp to Android would be fine. You're looking at an extremely niche market here though.

 

The A6 wouldn't offer any significant improvement over the A5, as it mostly increases the GPU portion of the processor, which is primarily irrelevant in this regard, since the processor is still too slow to keep up. You also have to consider that they doubled the polygon limit from Q3->JK2, and added in a new effects system, ghoul2, scripting, etc, which will affect the game's performance significantly.

 

Nexus 7 would probably run better than the iPad version. iOS is very picky about how much memory that apps are allowed to use and it tends to crash out to the homescreen on even simple apps a lot of the time (ie, Safari, but this could actually be because Safari is unstable as shit)

 

Why would you want to hook up a Wiimote or a keyboard to the tablet, which I myself can barely see on, when you can just hook it up to the PC, which has a bigger, better looking monitor? I guess you could hook either up to the TV though for output, but I still rest my case that it's pretty pointless to go through the tablet medium. And it's not like the Wiimote is an exclusive thing either, it's the next controller that I'm going to try and get support for in JK2:HD (I've already got both PS3 and Xbox 360 controller support taken care of).

 

There are plenty of practical reasons to not port it at all either, such as the time or effort that could be put in something else. Tablets are definitely _not_ what the kids use to play a first person shooter or action game like JKA, they have consoles for that. Tablets control a wider margin of the market than they did 10 years ago sure, but they aren't used for action games, they're used for more simple games like Infinity Blade or Fruit Ninja. That's all aside from the fact that kids these days simply don't have the attention span to try and get iojamp working. Quake: Live and Quake 3 for tablets failed to invigorate new life for the game, so I doubt the same will happen here.

[Syko]

There are plenty of practical reasons to not port it at all either, such as the time or effort that could be put in something else. Tablets are definitely _not_ what the kids use to play a first person shooter or action game like JKA, they have consoles for that. Tablets control a wider margin of the market than they did 10 years ago sure, but they aren't used for action games, they're used for more simple games like Infinity Blade or Fruit Ninja. That's all aside from the fact that kids these days simply don't have the attention span to try and get iojamp working. Quake: Live and Quake 3 for tablets failed to invigorate new life for the game, so I doubt the same will happen here.

 

I agree that a significant portion of tablet "gamers" are more into casual games than 'hardcore,' but I think you are stereotyping the entire tablet community as casual game players. I'm a 'hardcore' gamer yet I've found a great deal of popular hardcore titles on the iPad that I actually have really enjoyed. Right now I'm mainly thinking of Square Enix's apps. I have Final Fantasy I-V, Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, Chaos Rings, etc on there and all of them are great titles that I've enjoyed as a 'hardcore' gamer. The point is, I don't think all tablet gamers are exclusively interested in casual games. Many of them are, yes, but I think just as many are into the hardcore titles. Square Enix's titles have prooved to be very successful on tablets.

 

If Quake 3 for iPad didn't reinvigorate the community, (I don't know if it did for sure or not, I don't know where you read that), it was probably because it required a jailbreak to install. If iojamp was released on Google Play, no one should have to hack anything. Google Play sells emulators on it's store. I'm sure it would allow a ported open source engine. It would be completely open to people. Plus, since the source of iojamp is available, JA could be reworked to add community elements to it. It could even be linked to JKHub somehow. An easy way of downloading mods right to the tablet from JKHub would definitely give the JKCommunity that spike it deserves.

 

Why would you want to hook up a Wiimote or a keyboard to the tablet, which I myself can barely see on, when you can just hook it up to the PC, which has a bigger, better looking monitor? I guess you could hook either up to the TV though for output, but I still rest my case that it's pretty pointless to go through the tablet medium. And it's not like the Wiimote is an exclusive thing either, it's the next controller that I'm going to try and get support for in JK2:HD (I've already got both PS3 and Xbox 360 controller support taken care of).

 

This is probably the strongest part of your argument and the weakest part of mine. Yes, you can just play JA on the PC with a bigger screen with a Wiimote and keyboard. The iPad does have portability though. Also, the screen size in my opinion is OK on the iPad. On my mini, Quake 3 runs at 1024 x 768 which is the resolution I play Jedi Academy on my PC. Plus, if you played it on an iPad 4 with retina display (which has a resolution of 2000 something by 1500 something) screen size would not be an issue at all. It might even look better on iPad with that crisp, sexy retina display.

 

The A6 wouldn't offer any significant improvement over the A5, as it mostly increases the GPU portion of the processor, which is primarily irrelevant in this regard, since the processor is still too slow to keep up. You also have to consider that they doubled the polygon limit from Q3->JK2, and added in a new effects system, ghoul2, scripting, etc, which will affect the game's performance significantly.

 

I'm sure you know a lot more about JK2's engine than I do, but you say the polygon limit has been doubled from Q3 to JK2. Does that mean JK2 and all of its models and geometry have twice as many polygons? The limit may be higher, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's twice as much geometry in JK2. Even if performance is slow on iPad, things could be optimized to increase FPS, right? Even if it was too slow to run on iPad, like you said, it could probably run on Android well enough. 

 

[CrimsonStrife]

 This is probably the strongest part of your argument and the weakest part of mine. Yes, you can just play JA on the PC with a bigger screen with a Wiimote and keyboard. The iPad does have portability though. Also, the screen size in my opinion is OK on the iPad. On my mini, Quake 3 runs at 1024 x 768 which is the resolution I play Jedi Academy on my PC. Plus, if you played it on an iPad 4 with retina display (which has a resolution of 2000 something by 1500 something) screen size would not be an issue at all. It might even look better on iPad with that crisp, sexy retina display.

 

 

I'm sure you know a lot more about JK2's engine than I do, but you say the polygon limit has been doubled from Q3 to JK2. Does that mean JK2 and all of its models and geometry have twice as many polygons? The limit may be higher, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's twice as much geometry in JK2. Even if performance is slow on iPad, things could be optimized to increase FPS, right? Even if it was too slow to run on iPad, like you said, it could probably run on Android well enough. 

As a former modeler for the JK community, and at one point for Quake...and a current game developer, I can speak pretty well for this.

The quake engine in general has always, always had polycounts on the lower-end of the spectrum.  The counts in JK2 and JKA respectively, increased not just the limit, but used higher poly models, some higher than others.  In order to optimize it, you are looking at having to go in manually and reduce the counts on ALL of the models, which first of all, is basically a lost cause, because you aren't going to be able to do it cleanly.  And if you do that, you have to re-rig every single one to their skeletons.  With how few modelers and riggers there are left around here, I can't see you getting that done.  Then you have to have the maps optimized, which I couldn't begin to tell you what that would involve.  And presuming you get all that done, you still have to make it work on the device, and given that the JK games run on a MODIFIED Quake engine, there is no telling what speed-bumps lie there.

 

 

 

 

If Quake 3 for iPad didn't reinvigorate the community, (I don't know if it did for sure or not, I don't know where you read that), it was probably because it required a jailbreak to install. If iojamp was released on Google Play, no one should have to hack anything. Google Play sells emulators on it's store. I'm sure it would allow a ported open source engine. It would be completely open to people. Plus, since the source of iojamp is available, JA could be reworked to add community elements to it. It could even be linked to JKHub somehow. An easy way of downloading mods right to the tablet from JKHub would definitely give the JKCommunity that spike it deserves.

 

Now speaking as a (former) staff member, I feel obligated to point out, that while the MP-code is now open source, the game assets still have a copyright on them.  As such, regardless of IF you could do this and get it accepted to the Apple store or Google's Android Market, or whatever else you had planned...you would still need to copy the assets (be that something the end-user does from their own copy or not) it is still porting of copyrighted material,  and therefore is not something I think that JKHub can support as a cause.