Road Map

[Xycaleth]

A road map is a plan of what is hoped to be achieved at specific milestones in the development. Bug fixes and new features are placed in milestones based on their priority and importance to OpenJK. Not only does this allow you to see the progress that we are making, but it also allows us to see where we are heading and what we need to aim for in the next milestones.

 

There are currently no planned milestones as we are still deciding on what should be prioritised.

[eezstreet]

Here are some things which might serve as milestones which might be achieved. Don't hold me to some of these as we still need some idea here:

- x64 Linux support

- Oculus Rift support (workaround suggested, official SDK is off-limits)

- VOIP ported from ioq3 (?)

- Ghoul2 could honestly use porting from the renderer modules to the executable. In addition to killing off rd-dedicated, this would also fix various issues that arise from mismatching

- Renderer modules need to be independent from SP/MP. That is, SP and MP need to be using the same renderer DLLs. Less overhead. All that this needs is to make sure the renderers are consistent and using the same exports properly.

- OpenAL sound system needs completely replaced, perhaps with additional efx stuff. Reason being is that it's ugly and horribly buggy, not to mention the incredibly large number of issues with snd_restart

- Mod menu needs to properly restart stuff all the way, as to fix issues with ghoul2, animations and EFX not being properly working.

- Linux buildbot slave (?)

- Possibly work in ^8 and ^9 a la what JKG does, if it doesn't break compat and there's enough community consensus as to what those colors should be.

- JK2 support for MP, backwards compatibility for older QVMs using legacy bridge

- Continue to poke and prod and make sure SP works on both games and on all platforms

- Analog joystick support + vibration support (XInput/DirectInput on Windows, depending on in_joystick setting. SDL 2 for Mac and Linux)

[Xycaleth]

Here are some things which might serve as milestones which might be achieved. Don't hold me to some of these as we still need some idea here:

This should probably go in a separate discussion thread. I'll see if i can get a staff member to split the topic.

 

Anyhow, there's two kinds of people we need to consider when prioritising tasks: the coders, cause they want a working and clean code base to work from; and the player, who I think we're completely forgetting about, and who would inevitably be running it and wants to have a working game.

 

From the players' point of view, I don't think any of the changes you mentioned, apart from the mod loading problems, would impact how the game runs (in terms of stability and usability). Almost completely orthogonal/separate to this is the need to tidy up the code and make it easier for coders to work with, and to make it less of a mess. Things like VOIP, OpenAL, etc are nice things to have but don't really immediately benefit either of the two parties.

 

At the moment, my line of thinking is the first milestone will include fixing the mod loading problems, and possibly a fix for shaders with # characters in them, but as far as I know it's only Szico's maps which have these problems. I still need to go through the other issues that need addressing, and then probably run it by a few other people to see if they agree. I don't think even x64, Linux or Mac support are really a priority at the moment, but obviously should be worked on. Code-wise, I'm not exactly sure what needs doing... All of the Ghoul2 and EFX code at the moment is in a pretty dire state, and it would be nice to have a unified code path for sound so it only uses OpenAL. I guess we can just pick random tasks for those and have one or two of them for the second milestone.

[eezstreet]

I don't think we should be worrying too much about the player. The player should be expecting a clean, working game. OpenJK was never meant to add features. I'm just listing some things which need worked on.

[ensiform]

@@Xycaleth the DMA sound backend wont go away.  The both ones will just be migrated and cleaned when we get there.

 

What mod loading problems?

 

>> Mod menu I suppose?  Though connecting to a server is actually worse than using mod menu :}  And our hands are slightly tied because of svc_setgame and the fact that overrides are in pk3s.

[Xycaleth]

I don't think we should be worrying too much about the player. The player should be expecting a clean, working game. OpenJK was never meant to add features. I'm just listing some things which need worked on.

 

When I say we should cater for players, I don't mean to add extra features. I'm referring to what they actually see when they run OJK. So this means, whether it crashes, whether there are noticeable bugs, and so on.

 

@@Xycaleth the DMA sound backend wont go away.  The both ones will just be migrated and cleaned when we get there.

 

What mod loading problems?

 

>> Mod menu I suppose?  Though connecting to a server is actually worse than using mod menu :}  And our hands are slightly tied because of svc_setgame and the fact that overrides are in pk3s.

The problem that @@eezstreet mentioned where animations/menu files aren't loaded properly.It must be fixable some how

[ensiform]

When I say we should cater for players, I don't mean to add extra features. I'm referring to what they actually see when they run OJK. So this means, whether it crashes, whether there are noticeable bugs, and so on.

 

The problem that @@eezstreet mentioned where animations/menu files aren't loaded properly.It must be fixable some how

It is but that pretty much means we'll probably have to sacrifice netfield override support or figure out how to restart the game properly during really early stage of svc_setgame without having it restart later too.  This comes before the systeminfo does so...

 

Part of it happening is also likely because of the severe changes raven made with how models and animations are cached too. :|

[katanamaru]

When ya'll talk about making it 'free of errors' for the player what do you mean?

When I start the game up it works just fine. Unless I mess something up with a mod.

 

I've read how you are cleaning up the code, but what is so wrong with how the game runs?

[Xycaleth]

There's a few small bugs lying around like when you try to connect to a server using a different mod from the one used to start up JKA, and it doesn't load the animations/string/menu files properly. I guess it's not really noticeable but it's still there

 

We don't plan on changing how everything works if you're worried about that.

[Futuza]

When ya'll talk about making it 'free of errors' for the player what do you mean?

When I start the game up it works just fine. Unless I mess something up with a mod.

 

I've read how you are cleaning up the code, but what is so wrong with how the game runs?

Most of the errors you've probably just got so used to.  There's a few new 'featury' things that I'd like added.  For instance, when you scan a server list have it auto reload the server list instead of making you push on the refresh button.  Also getting rid of vm_create failed issues completely would be nice, especially when its caused by two jamp.exe's running.

[eezstreet]

SP is buggy and possibly doesn't work in certain OSes. Also there's a really weird bug in Linux where rocks in t1_surprise and buildings in t1_rail are replaced with models of trees.

Prior to OpenJK, /cmdlist was completely broken in SP as well. This is the sort of stuff I'm referring to.

The issues with flood protect bypassing and cvar string DDOSing could also use fixing

[ensiform]

Also getting rid of vm_create failed issues completely would be nice, especially when its caused by two jamp.exe's running.

 

That's because the extra instance can't extract the dll from pk3 since it already exists and the file is locked to the first instance.

[Futuza]

That's because the extra instance can't extract the dll from pk3 since it already exists and the file is locked to the first instance.

Can't you do something like a check to see if it is already locked before attempting access though?  At least make the error smarter.  eg: "You are already running an instance of jamp.exe, please end the process before attempting to open another."

[ensiform]

At the present time no, because that whole code is going out the window soon.

[-=Shade=-]

Hey yall, I saw some mention about ghoul2 animating on here!  I know how to animate for jk3 using Wudan's Dragon & GLAmerge and editing the animation.cfg / _humanoid.gla files.  I really want to animate a Bo Staff style that would be similiar to how Chinese ppl use a Bo Staff.  I thought at first this would be too overpowered so I figured a slight knockback effect could be incorperated.  I dont know how to mod saber hilts to do that though, but I do know it's possible to add slight knockback to a saber!  Lemme knowwwww if yall want me on your team

[ChalklYne]

 I really want to animate a Bo Staff style that would be similiar to how Chinese ppl use a Bo Staff. 

rofl @ Chinese people. lmfao I cant stop.

Do all Chinese people come stock with Bo skills?

 

There are a couple of very nice Bo styles I would ask @@katanamaru a few ideas

 

Also, instead of using Dragon you could view a few quick basic navigation tutorials in XSI and grab minilogoguy's constrained skele. Animating an entire style could be verrry daunting with Dragon. Also, honestly, unless you spend hours making sure each frame blends smoothly in dragon, you will have better looking anims doing it this way. 

[Tempust85]

Hey yall, I saw some mention about ghoul2 animating on here!  I know how to animate for jk3 using Wudan's Dragon & GLAmerge and editing the animation.cfg / _humanoid.gla files.  I really want to animate a Bo Staff style that would be similiar to how Chinese ppl use a Bo Staff.  I thought at first this would be too overpowered so I figured a slight knockback effect could be incorperated.  I dont know how to mod saber hilts to do that though, but I do know it's possible to add slight knockback to a saber!  Lemme knowwwww if yall want me on your team

 

@-=Shade=-

 

The only way you can use Dragon is when the custom GLA is ready, and if Dragon can use the custom GLA. AFAIK, it can't?

[ensiform]

You would have to create an entirely new & compatible (not crashing) humanoid animations that are not derived from the original assets if you intend to distribute with a custom engine such as OpenJK because of legal reasons.  Same goes for any and all other assets not released with GPL source code including the menu files.

[Tempust85]

This is why the custom GLA I'm making will be uploaded as a mod for JKA and won't be distributed with any other project. It will be upto the player if they wish to download it and use it but of course if they don't, then they won't have any character animations. Price to pay for a large amount of animations to remake and not enough people to do it.

[zezeri]

Well I think that Jedi Academy is a farely well working game. I barely experience any bugs, but that might be because I'm using Windows and playing SP mostly. Still, it's nice to see some bugs being fixed.

 

I guess, that this project is a lot about practicing ?

[Xycaleth]

I guess, that this project is a lot about practicing ?

What do you mean?

[minilogoguy18]

No, I'm no coder, just a long time modeler/animator and I can tell you there are a lot of things broken in the base game.

 

I think he meant like coding practice which I don't think it would be.

[zezeri]

It's just my personal experience of playing the game for a few years, that I've never really experienced any heavy/game-breaking bugs. Ofc there are always some bugs/memory leaks/whatever, there's barely any perfect programm, I guess.

Nonetheless, I'm not that experienced with JKA modding, so you're most likely right.

[ensiform]

There was plenty of them that were trickled down from the quake 3 engine in general. Add on top that JKA was based on an even older version of q3 than the last q3 released version.

 

This is missing a ton of the changes at this point but, https://github.com/Razish/OpenJK/blob/master/CHANGELOG.txt plenty of the security and large bug/holes were patched at the time this was last updated.

[Tempust85]

Wow that's a lot of changes guys, great work!