Jedi Knight Galaxies releases assets

[eezstreet]

With recent activity by our staff decreasing, the development team of JKG has decided to make the assets for the mod publically available, and encourage outside contributions, similar to open source. With this Google Drive link, you will be able to download the game assets. After that, all one needs to do to play the game is acquire a compiled version of the Jedi Knight Galaxies code, which is available on our GitHub repository. 

 

We were running on the idea that we'd be able to get the game up and running again a lot faster. Unfortunately this was not the case and in that time, the assets have been unavailable to the public. Recently we have released source code, but we have realized that without the game assets being publically available, willing editors were unable to contribute or use the source code. With that in mind, we have decided that this might be a better solution. We encourage the community to contribute in whatever ways they can, and we hope that 2014 will be a solid year for JKG development.

 

To make changes or additions to the game yourself, simply login and click Add to Drive, make your changes, and submit a zip file with your changed files (please upload off-site somewhere like wikiupload, megashare, or your own cloud storage) at our Contribute forum.

 

In the near future Pande will be making a more official page on our site with instructions on how to get binaries for the game, how to compile the game yourself, and grabbing the assets as well as contributing your own assets.

 

Our Google Drive.

Our GitHub repository.

 

 

tl;dr version: We're making our assets available to the public, and allowing people to submit their own contributions.

 

Some Q&A:

 

Q: Does this mean that JKG is dead/dying?

A: No. Staff activity has just gotten very slow recently, and the consensus is that we shouldn't allow people to wait with no news.

 

Q: Can I play JKG right now with these assets?

A: Sure, but expect bugs/unpolished work.

 

Q: Is this an official release?

A: No. All official updates will go through our launcher, which will be updated soon.

 

Q: Can I submit my own contributions?

A: Absolutely! Just make a post on the Contribute section on our forums.

 

Q: Can I use these assets in my own work?

A: Not without permission.

 

Q: Can I make a reskin/rehash of these assets in my own work?

A: Not without permission.

 

[h643]

Will try it tomorrow

[Onysfx]

Nice. Hopefully this will help JKG, many have been waiting for a playable demo of it for many, many years .

[Circa]

Sad that the staff activity has been low, but this is a smart move from you guys. Hopefully we'll see some benefit from this, and maybe the original staff will return to their previous duties soon.

[Shadzy]

Ditto the above, eez has there been alot of interest in JKG before??

Was there a number of staff to choose form before?

[eezstreet]

A few people have come forward and said they'd like to make some code edits, but were unable to due to the lack of assets.

Otherwise, no, there hasn't been much interest aside from the usual "Can't wait until JKG comes out again" stuff.

 

I'm trying to step back and assert myself as an open source contributor to the project. There haven't been many staff contributions (at all) aside from what me and Pande have been doing for the past few months.

 

Back around release, we had something more in the realm of 6-8 people working about, but I was still doing 24+ hour coding sessions (only 3-4 15 minute breaks) right up until release. These days I try to pace myself and do maybe 2-3 hours of coding daily. In order to get the codebase anywhere near where I want it to be standards-wise, it'd take me a great number of these crunch sessions, and I'm simply burnt out.

 

Course. That puts a lot of pressure on me then. Seeing as how I've been running the show on the technical end for a number of years now, me quitting effectively puts the project dead in the water. I mean sure, a few people have contributed here and there, but take a look at the GitHub commit log and see for yourself.

[Tempust85]

If other areas get more staff, I may just come back and redo those shitty models I made.

[eezstreet]

If other areas get more staff, I may just come back and redo those shitty models I made.

Why wait for more staff? Could just contribute stuff. That's the glory of open source development. Drive-by contributions.

[Tempust85]

That's true. I'll take a look after I finish maul.

 

How's JKG doing with animation? Last I saw, pande was modifying the JKA GLA in blender.

 

I read something about soon to be standalone? That would mean a new animation set.

[eezstreet]

That's true. I'll take a look after I finish maul.

How's JKG doing with animation? Last I saw, pande was modifying the JKA GLA in blender.

I read something about soon to be standalone? That would mean a new animation set.

Yeah, one of our goals was to get the game standalone at some point. You'd have to ask @@Pande what's going on with that.

If the assets are distributed separate from the code (like they are now) and the launcher simply serves as a glue to bring them together, we might be fine though legally speaking.

Pande is also working on a base humanoid model to be used as a basis for future models (in terms of clothing etc). This is to get armor and stuff to display properly.

[Apprentice]

Is there a *.ZIP available ??

[eezstreet]

Is there a *.ZIP available ??

That's a good question. I don't know how Google Drive handles ZIPs but I will get back to you.

[eezstreet]

@@Apprentice: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2423534?hl=en

[Pande]

@@DT85 Would absolutely love help in the animation department, and maybe some assistance with the rig - as you already mentioned on the Moddb image comments, my novice forays into the field did reveal some mistakes that I wouldn't have caught onto without your help. The only caveat is I'm doing it in Blender, however from what I can tell the GLM import/export is pretty damn flawless, so swapping back and forth if need be between your modeling software (max, right?) and blender should not be a problem.

 

Let me briefly explain the system for you and for anyone else interested:

 

eezstreet's armour system 'stacks' meshes from a .glm model onto your base model using .armor files, and also surfs out meshes from the base model where they are no longer needed, as per instructed in the .armor file (for e.g. a helmet completely covers the head, so to save those tris or possible overlap the head model would be removed).

 

To ensure perfect alignment between base mesh and armor/clothes, the models have to be made for each other. Knowing that we wanted a new skeleton, adventures into character modeling were often stinted by the 'well it's just gonna have to get redone when the new skeleton is made' argument, which held water but without development on the skeleton and an increasing number of new armor and clothing models appearing in JKG's assets (mostly by Jonthe aka Psycho) I made an effort recently to start the project. 

 

I did succesfully get a glm ingame as an NPC with working test animations - however, I am by no means an animator and as soon as the skeleton is deemed complete and we have all the model tags we need to (that's really important for future weapon holstering and effects!) I will be trying to opensource development of animations as much as possible, and that is where I'd really appreciate the help by yourself DT and anyone else interested!

 

Also to note: JKG obviously would share a large quantity of animations with base JKA - so it would be a brilliant idea if once JKG's skeleton outline is written as per what's needed, Base skeleton tags as well as any others wanted by the community could be added and the skeleton could be a shared 'super-skeleton' with new animations to be used by both JKG and other JKA mods.

[Tempust85]

@@Pande

 

Yeah I use 3ds Max. I could modifiy the JKA skeleton to JKG's liking (adding any bones you want), and compile it with the current JKA source animations into a GLA. Now only the new bones won't animate, all the others will (ie legs, arms, torso, head). I can write a conversion table for JKG's code so JKA rigged models can use this new GLA, but it will overwrite JK2 model support (unless an experienced coder can make 2 conversion tables exist).

[eezstreet]

Making two remap tables doesn't sound too difficult. You just have to make sure that there's a different number of bones than JK2 and JKA (also I'll need the bonecount for JK2 and JKA)

[Apprentice]

@@Apprentice: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2423534?hl=en

That worked ... sort of. Now everything is in one big ZIP file without folders . . . :wacko: :blink:

 

 

* I really miss the hammer on the head smily *

[eezstreet]

Leave it to Google

[Circa]

That worked ... sort of. Now everything is in one big ZIP file without folders . . . :wacko: :blink:

 

 

* I really miss the hammer on the head smily *

Me too, so I added one.  :hammer:

 

[Boothand]

In the near future Pande will be making a more official page on our site with instructions on how to get binaries for the game, how to compile the game yourself, and grabbing the assets as well as contributing your own assets.

 

Any news on this?

[Futuza]

@@Pande

 

I may make a post if I have some more time this week.  I've been focusing a lot on bug fixing the Launcher and haven't had much time for the game code itself.