Jedi Outcast/Academy on iPad

[Syko]

 

 

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.

 

JK2/JKA models have different levels of detail, right? What if you just lowered the model quality setting to very low in-game? I remember setting the polycount really low in JK2 and the player models almost looked like N64 models. I still think a high framerate could at least be achieved if the graphics settings were set to very low quality.  

 

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.

 

I stated above that the assets would not be distributed with the engine.

 

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.

[eezstreet]

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.

Final Fantasy, Chrono Trigger and Chaos Ring are all turn-based games, and don't require NEAR as precise action as say, Quake 3 or JKA. Then you have to account for the fact that there's sabers, force powers, inventory items, weapons, taunts, and I mean, there's just a ton of buttons there that you can't easily access on a tablet like that without cluttering up the screen. Square Enix isn't exactly what I'd call "hardcore titles" anyway (with the exception of their Eidos acquisitions)

 

 

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.

Trust me, Quake 3 for iPad, Quake 3 for Android, and Doom for iPad and Android did nothing to reinvigorate the community. In fact I think Brutal Doom did a whole lot more...and that's a mod, not a port. Jailbreaks don't stop people either, since they're rapidly increasing in popularity and seen in fact as a cultural identity phenomenon due to what I believe to be a rise in hipsters, personally. [For the record, I jailbroke and made my own theme for my iPod before it was even cool, mmk?]

 

iojamp is such a legal shitstorm anyway as it is, and that's what deters me away from working on it mostly. It's a ginormous legal gray area, but not as much as Black Rain, I suppose.

 

 

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.

Wiimote and nunchuks as well as lightbar (unless that's not needed) are certainly NOT portable, making your argument irrelevant.

Also it might look shit with a stretched HUD and run even worse with a higher resolution. Just sayan.

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. 

Says so right here:

"Technical details were given: the game would use id Software's Quake III: Team Arena engine. The GHOUL 2 animation system, seen in Raven's Soldier of Fortune II: Double Helix, would be implemented. The polygon capacity of the engine had been doubled."

 

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.

Running iojamp would give a pretty idea actually as to how well it could handle it. I'd say to port iojamp first and see how that works out.

Also, er...just run with a different model quality? Most models in base have LODs anyway. Most MODS however do not (start making LODs feggets)

 

 

 

 

 

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.

It isn't the same thing as "porting" in the evil sense. Calm down, sir.

[CrimsonStrife]

  

JK2/JKA models have different levels of detail, right? What if you just lowered the model quality setting to very low in-game? I remember setting the polycount really low in JK2 and the player models almost looked like N64 models. I still think a high framerate could at least be achieved if the graphics settings were set to very low quality.  

 

From what I have seen most iOS games, and Android games, run around 7,000 tris per frame to get around 15-30fps...most single models in these games exceed that easily.

 

 

 

  

I stated above that the assets would not be distributed with the engine.

 

 

Which I acknowledged,

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.

 

Even if you rely on the end-user to copy the material, you are still talking about porting copyrighted content, which is not something we can support or even suggest.  That is just my opinion, feel free to get the other staff in here. @@Fighter @@Azatha @@MagSul @SzicoVII @@Milamber we can even drag @@Caelum out of retirement, see what his take is on the legality, he is always lurking here anyway.

[eezstreet]

  

JK2/JKA models have different levels of detail, right? What if you just lowered the model quality setting to very low in-game? I remember setting the polycount really low in JK2 and the player models almost looked like N64 models. I still think a high framerate could at least be achieved if the graphics settings were set to very low quality. 

 

But look like utter dog poop. Also take into account that a LOT of modelers (a lot of the old ones anyway) didn't put LODs in their models. It's quite bad in Moviebattles and in Movie Duels especially, if I remember right.

And no, there's still Ghoul2 to worry about, and EFX, the latter of which can't be controlled in how detailed it is. Have fun playing in a lugor server, lel.

[Syko]

Like you said before, I think the engine should be ported to see exactly how it runs. Personally, I think it would run OK. Besides, even if it does lag, tablet technology is improving more and more. Android tablets made a few years in the future I'm sure will be able to handle it. Even if it does lag when ported, as better tech comes out, it will be able to be ran smoothly on eventually. I still think that it should be ported first to see how it actually behaves. I think it would be worth it.

[CrimsonStrife]

But look like utter dog poop. Also take into account that a LOT of modelers (a lot of the old ones anyway) didn't put LODs in their models. It's quite bad in Moviebattles and in Movie Duels especially, if I remember right.

And no, there's still Ghoul2 to worry about, and EFX, the latter of which can't be controlled in how detailed it is. Have fun playing in a lugor server, lel.

 

 

 

And you still add in the fact that if you go ahead and take the average draw count for most of these devices, they can only handle between 6k and 9k tris per frame to reach 15 to 30 fps.  I'm not sure the LOD's could drop the count that low.

[Syko]

And you still add in the fact that if you go ahead and take the average draw count for most of these devices, they can only handle between 6k and 9k tris per frame to reach 15 to 30 fps.  I'm not sure the LOD's could drop the count that low.

 

 

Again, I don't know that much about game graphics, but I think you are underestimating the power of some of the tablets out there. They aren't PCs obviously, but a version of Unreal Engine 3 was ported to iPad. 

 

Check out this video of Infinity Blade II. I assume there are more than 9000 tris in there...

 

 

EDIT: Also Dead Trigger

 

[CrimsonStrife]

Again, I don't know that much about game graphics, but I think you are underestimating the power of some of the tablets out there. They aren't PCs obviously, but a version of Unreal Engine 3 was ported to iPad. 

 

Check out this video of Infinity Blade II. I assume there are more than 9000 tris in there...

 

The difference is, Infinity Blade only ever has a few characters (I think 2?) on screen at a time, so they can use high counts in their models, because fewer of them are being drawn. You would be looking at only being able to have a few models (both animated and static) on screen at a time and keep a playable framerate.

[Circa]

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)

I've never run into this problem ever with any iOS device. And I've used some really hefty apps on it and use safari a lot. Not sure what kind of stuff you're running.

 

 

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.

There are quite a lot of first person shooters on the App Store. They actually work quite well. The thing is, they are made for ipad controls, which in this case, JA is not made for ipad controls.

 

Sure, they're used more frequently for simple games, and its more popular for that, but there are lots of more complicated ones.

[eezstreet]

Just running Safari sometimes is too much for an iPod touch to handle sometimes (talking 3rd Gen iPod here). iOS from my experience has always been crashy, but it tends to improve with newer stuff.

[Syko]

This is what the Jedi Academy recommended system requirements are (the minimum requirements are even lower): 

CPU: Pentium III or Athlon Class 450 MHz or faster CPU required
RAM: 256MB

VGA: 32 MB OpenGL compatable PCI or AGP Hardware Accelerator required
DX: 100% DirectX 9.0a compatable computer required
OS: Windows 98 or higher

Sound: 16 bit DirectX 9.0a compatable sound card required.

 

from http://gamesystemrequirements.com/games.php?id=514

 

I'd like to point out that iPad mini has 512 MB of RAM (twice the amount recommended) as well as the A5 processor which is dual core and runs at 1Ghz on iPad mini (800 Mhz on iPhone) and a 450 Mhz processor is recommended. I realize moar Mhz doesn't necessarily mean faster but in general it is a good gauge of how fast a processor is, plus the mini's processor is dual core. 

Also, I actually have an iPod Touch 3rd Gen and I've found my mini to be a lot more stable than that thing.
 

I really don't think running the game will be a problem. I think the biggest problem with a tablet port would be the issue of controls.

[CrimsonStrife]

This is what the Jedi Academy recommended system requirements are (the minimum requirements are even lower): 

 

CPU: Pentium III or Athlon Class 450 MHz or faster CPU required

RAM: 256MB

VGA: 32 MB OpenGL compatable PCI or AGP Hardware Accelerator required

DX: 100% DirectX 9.0a compatable computer required

OS: Windows 98 or higher

Sound: 16 bit DirectX 9.0a compatable sound card required.

 

from http://gamesystemrequirements.com/games.php?id=514

 

I'd like to point out that iPad mini has 512 MB of RAM (twice the amount recommended) as well as the A5 processor which is dual core and runs at 1Ghz on iPad mini (800 Mhz on iPhone) and a 450 Mhz processor is recommended. I realize moar Mhz doesn't necessarily mean faster but in general it is a good gauge of how fast a processor is, plus the mini's processor is dual core. 

 

Also, I actually have an iPod Touch 3rd Gen and I've found my mini to be a lot more stable than that thing.

 

I really don't think running the game will be a problem. I think the biggest problem with a tablet port would be the issue of controls.

The processing speed doesn't necessarily translate to GPU processing ability however, and this is where I think your primary issues are going to arise.

[MagSul]

As much as I love the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series, it clearly wasn't intended to be played on an iPad. Whether you were able to get the game to run or not, it'd still be a huge pain to physically play. If you're unable to play it, then it becomes redundant to bother with the hassle of installing it.

 

[Syko]

As much as I love the Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series, it clearly wasn't intended to be played on an iPad. Whether you were able to get the game to run or not, it'd still be a huge pain to physically play. If you're unable to play it, then it becomes redundant to bother with the hassle of installing it.

 

 

I agree. I think the biggest issue with this port would be the problem with the controls. I think the crappiness of the controls would depend on what you would use the game for though. When I play (or played) JO/JA, I always played offline with bots with guns - no sabers. So it was pretty much a multiplayer FPS game. As ibonek stated above, FPS games actually work quite well on iPad provided you get used to the controls. I felt like I was trying to pick a lock with a baseball bat when I first tried playing Quake 3 on iPad. Over time though I got used to the controls and fragged quite a few bots. 

 

Saber combat and online play is the main issue with the controls. Honestly I found saber combat to be kind of stupid when I played JO/JA, which is why I don't use it. All you had to do was spam kick and Crouch + Uppercut and your enemy was toast. I think with some good UI design though saber combat on a tablet could work fairly well. Quake 3 on iPad has separate buttons you can tap for different functions like reloading your gun. This screenshot illustrates: 

 

 

The arrow key movement on Q3 by the way was terrible, so they've since switched it to a circle pad which works much, much better. There could be a saber style change button, a force power use button, and the saber swing button could just be the same as the shoot button. After all, minus all the fancy footwork you can do in saber dueling, when it's boiled down to its core it's just mashing the attack button. There could also be an extra button or two on the screen that you could bind using the console. Another button could cause the console window do drop down and you would use the on-screen keyboard to type commands. Overall that's 4 buttons (plus an extra two if you want two bindable buttons) plus a circle pad.

 

A setting might also be added to online play so that you could join a server only with other tablet players so PC players wouldn't have an advantage. 

[Mog]

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.

 

I would assume that you would have to know alot on coding before attempting this. Also, you would most likely have to convert the original code into a readable language for mobile apps.

[MagSul]

I would assume that you would have to know alot on coding before attempting this. Also, you would most likely have to convert the original code into a readable language for mobile apps.

 

 

Couldn't resist...

[Circa]

Just running Safari sometimes is too much for an iPod touch to handle sometimes (talking 3rd Gen iPod here). iOS from my experience has always been crashy, but it tends to improve with newer stuff.

Any iPod touch shouldn't be the device to determine iOS's abilties. They always shortchange them with the low end hardware because they aren't used for as hefty things as iPad or iPhone.

 

My first iOS device was the iPhone 3GS, which is the same generation as the iPod touch 3rd gen. I never had any app crash. I've never heard of safari crashing that frequently.

 

Another major thing to consider is, if it's jailbroken, that might be a large contributing factor.

[eezstreet]

It'll probably have to be jailbroken / retrieved off of Cydia, since the App Store stuff is restrictive on things like this. Android however is not a problem. (Fun fact though- Cydia has a C++ compiler app, so you can compile it on the iPad and then run it. But again, performance would be terrible)

 

In terms of language: you need to recode it in Objective C in order to run on iOS, but I think there's another option too. Android doesn't have language restrictions like that.

 

The DirectX requirement can be ignored. DirectX is only used for sound and joystick stuff on Windows. Ideally you'd be compiling under a modified Linux build of the game.

 

As far as being a code wiz though... Not really, actually. You basically just need to modify the Linux build of iojamp to work on Android. Obviously you'll need to know the basics first though.

 

I saw someone mention something about processors: Yes, while the clock speed is a lot faster on the iPad than on the requirements, clock speed is /not/ an accurate measure of how good a CPU is. Case in point: the Intel I7 had about half the clock speed of a specific AMD processor (can't remember which specifically) but ran around twice as well.. It's really more about the FLOPS (floating point operations per second). The iPad 2 can handle 171 MFLOPS. By comparison, the Pentium III (which was new-ish in JA's time), was the first processor to break 1 gigaflop. That means that the iPad 2 can only handle 1/5th of the processing operations that are roughly required to run the game. LOL.

[Xycaleth]

You can use C/C++ on iOS. Just putting that out there. Also, a port would require a rewrite of the renderer. iOS supports only OpenGL ES.

[Xycaleth]

Also, if UE3 can run on an iPhone (albeit slightly stripped down), I think a q3 engine game on steroids will run just fine.

[minilogoguy18]

Why are people interested in this so much? Even if the iPad could run it visually it would take so much modification to make it work with touch and swipe it wouldn't even be the same game. The JK games are what they are mainly because of the unique saber combat that isn't found in other games, I don't see how you could possibly emulate it on something that doesn't have as many keys or ways of input. It'd be like trying to put x-wing alliance on a PSP, there just aren't enough buttons to even fly the ship.

[Circa]

Why are people interested in this so much? Even if the iPad could run it visually it would take so much modification to make it work with touch and swipe it wouldn't even be the same game. The JK games are what they are mainly because of the unique saber combat that isn't found in other games, I don't see how you could possibly emulate it on something that doesn't have as many keys or ways of input. It'd be like trying to put x-wing alliance on a PSP, there just aren't enough buttons to even fly the ship.

It worked on Xbox, with a controller with only a few buttons.

[minilogoguy18]

XBOX had more than a few buttons, I've played tablet games and I just don't see how you could make the controls work and like eezstreet said, the performance isn't good enough to run the game as it is, you'd have to remake all the models, maps and textures into a lower resolution, no ones going to do that.

[Syko]

XBOX had more than a few buttons, I've played tablet games and I just don't see how you could make the controls work and like eezstreet said, the performance isn't good enough to run the game as it is, you'd have to remake all the models, maps and textures into a lower resolution, no ones going to do that.

 

Eezstreet also said that it should probably be ported first before the speed of the game could be analyzed. I really don't think speed is going to be an issue at all.

 

Like I've said before in my previous essays on this thread, I agree, the controls are the biggest issue for a potential port.

 

Which brings me to my question, how much work would it be for a potential port? Would it require one guy with coffee on a Saturday evening to port the game or would it take an entire team weeks to months? If it isn't that much effort, couldn't someone just do it for the sake of JO and JA on a tablet being really cool? On the other hand, if it would be a ton of work, I realize a lot of other things are probably worth spending coding energy on.

[afi]

A better idea would be waiting for a legit standalone and port it so we don't get problems with Disney/Activision/Raven or whoever.