Quake Freed: Call For Jedi Academy Content

[quakefreed]

 

Hi all,

 

I'm a masters student writing a book about the evolution of the First Person Shooter, its relationship with modders and hackers, and its relationship with open source software. These 3 topics intersect best with games by id Software, with the unfolding of the Doom and Quake series generally moving in tandem with the growth of the modding scene. I will be covering other games critical to the mod scene also, which brings me here.

 

Jedi Academy is probably THE most modded of the id Tech 3 games and this site is testament to its still lively community.

 

I'm looking for members of the community to suggest mods that they feel have had a strong inpact on the JA and JO community. (Can be your own mod don't be shy) Post them here or PM me.

 

I used to post on map-craft.com under the alias whitewolf so I have been floating around for a few years.

 

The book will be funded on kickstarter so I need all the support I can get. Please head on over to http://quakefreed.tumblr.com for updates or drop me an email at quake.freed@zoho.com and I'll let you know when the campaign kicks off.

 

Look forward to working with the community.

 

[Syko]

I'm looking for members of the community to suggest mods that they feel have had a strong inpact on the JA and JO community. (Can be your own mod don't be shy) Post them here or PM me.

 

Movie Battles is probably the biggest, most successful total conversion mod JA has ever had because it created its own pretty popular spin-off community. KOTF (Knights of the Force) was very popular as well but it was single-player only and a lot of people here frown at it because of plagiarism.

[afi]

Ja+ is the most used multiplayer mod but it's impact on the community is questionable as it doesn't change much of the gameplay (except for making saber combat a bit worse). Most impact definitely Movie Battles as it got a completely different community than the rest of the game (pretty much like a new game).

[eezstreet]

Don't forget to mention OpenJK and the source release!

[Xycaleth]

For JK2, I would say that the Jedi Academy Mod was significant. I don't have first hand knowledge, but reading some old posts on LucasForums tells me that this mod was responsible for the "honour rules" that's prevalent in both JK2 and JKA. Or at the very least made it much easier to enforce this kind of rule (making it more popular etc etc). I believe it's the mod from which other admin-based mods are made, including JA+ in JKA. If it weren't for the Jedi Academy Mod, it could be that free for alls would have been more popular. I'd say that's a pretty big game changer.

 

In JKA, I'll just repeat what others have said and say that Movie Battles II is probably the biggest mod and I would go so far as considering it a separate game in its own right if it were not a mod.

[quakefreed]

@Syko

 

Thanks, Movie Battle is definately one of the big ones.

 

@@eezstreet

 

The source release is the reason JA is eligable for the book.. but can you illuminate me as to what has actually been done with the source? I'm a bit in the dark.

 

@@Xycaleth

I'm afraid I'm not following. Are you considering Jedi Academy to be a 'mod' on Jedi Outcast?

 

Also here is the first review vid:

https://youtu.be/o2ghJhBvPi8

[eezstreet]

Have a look here (mind the large infographic!):

http://jkhub.org/page/index.html/_/community-news/SourceCodeOneYearRetrospective

 

Also, I've never even heard of Ultimate Academy? There's Movie Duels 2, which is a lot better of a mod just judging by the video, honestly.

[Xycaleth]

Oh right, I guess I should have explained:

 

"Jedi Academy" Mod was a modification made by someone in Jedi Outcast: http://jediknight3.filefront.com/file/Jedi_Academy_Mod;11422 It was created by one of the members of The Jedi Academy community.

[Xycaleth]

I disagree that JA+ had an impact. The community was already setup for the "honour rules" environment back in JK2. I would imagine the majority of people originally playing JKA migrated over from JK2. JA+ simply facilitated this rule in-place of the Jedi Academy Mod which was only made in JK2.

[AshuraDX]

Ultimate Academy ? doesn't sound familiar in any way

I'd say JA+, Movie battles 2, Lugor mod and Movie Duels 2 (Single Player mod)

[Cerez]

JA+ has had the biggest adoption rate on servers by far. The extra animations it has introduced from base JKA served well to facilitate communication within the multiplayer world of the game (with an expanded emote system), as well as re-introducing some Star Wars related game features to multiplayer, such as the grapple hook, and the jetpack, and introducing some entirely new concepts, such as private duels in an FFA environment.

 

Movie Battles II has created an alternate, huge stream of outstanding creative modifications that aimed to expand on the character and world-set, create a new battle system, and create a Star Wars experience that was more true to the movies. A remarkable achievement as far as the modding community goes, and an impressive demonstration of the power of the community spirit within a single project.

 

The more niche role-playing community received a number of mods that aimed to make role-playing on JKA competitive servers possible with a new ruleset and RPG features. One of the most adopted ones of these mods has been the Lugormod. I have had the pleasure of being a part of a number of smaller role-playing communities that used the action-based MP game servers for story-telling and an entirely different gameplay than what the game was intended for.

 

Most recently, with the release of the JKA source code, the OpenJK project has given rise to a number of more advanced JKA modifications, and is likely expected to be the hub of a new era in JKA modding. It already is here on JKHub. It is an open source initiative to improve upon and expand on the original game while remaining true to its origins. It is a mother project and an outstanding base and resource to many.

 

Out of all these amazing community projects, I would say OpenJK will have the biggest impact, however, it does not yet rival the impact the Movie Battles II project has created, as it is still young in its development.

 

All that said, it is unfair to judge any of these projects above the other simply due to their widespread adoption rate and larger community impact. Every mod ever created for JKA has made a huge contribution to advancing the modding community and inspiring new talent, no matter how big or small. The magic of modding comes from each of us as individuals, and through the act of sharing we are contributing to an everlasting and ever-growing, inspiring community. As long as we are prepared to create and share, its spirit will live on. JKA and these mods mean something different to each and every one of us, and we do our share to contribute back to the source, and expand on its world, creating the community that has been, and that we know today.

[Xycaleth]

If we're going for mods that catered to specific groups of the community, I'd put forward my own JK2 mod, "JK:JO Clan League Mod", or more commonly referred to as "League Mod". This was a mod inspired in part by CPMA and was made for the competitive community. As the full name suggests, it was made specifically for the JK:JO Clan League (also went by the name of Golden Hilt Championship) to allow keep tracking of damage done, kills, deaths, per match. It was the first of its kind in JK2.

 

Interestingly, I found out a few weeks ago that the guy who put forward the idea to me (his alias was "Disrepute") is fairly well known in the Quake Live community.

[Cerez]

Interestingly, I found out a few weeks ago that the guy who put forward the idea to me (his alias was "Disrepute") is fairly well known in the Quake Live community.

 

I don't know why, but that alias rings a bell...

[Jaina D'Kana]

Oh right, I guess I should have explained:

 

"Jedi Academy" Mod was a modification made by someone in Jedi Outcast: http://jediknight3.filefront.com/file/Jedi_Academy_Mod;11422 It was created by one of the members of The Jedi Academy community.

 

cHoSeN oNe  He also released another version for jk:ja called Jedi Academy Reloaded (later Jedi Academy Empire by Orion?), but he took out a lot of the commands such as slap and the emotes because they got spammed a lot in jk2.  I think that is a major reason it didn't do as well as JA+

[Raz0r]

Disrepute cast(s/ed) a lot of TDM with Vor, specifically the European tournaments like ClanBase EuroCup.

[Link]

Probably just repeating people, but to add support, I'd say the most influential and used mods/projects in JA were/are:

• Movie Battles II
• JA+
• OpenJK
• Lugormod <- This probably doesn't get as much recognition as it deserves for adding/keeping people around this community.

[Cerez]

What about Makermod? I've just encountered some people online who are using nothing but Makermod to have fun with JKA.

 

The thing is, imagination is the limit, really. People create what they are inspired by. (In this case, creative worlds like Minecraft.)

 

I think the main reason JKA is so popular is because it is available for modding, allowing for a wide range of flexibility in its design, despite its old base technology. Most of that is thanks to having been built upon the flexible engine known as the Quake 3 engine, but some of it is thanks to Raven Software's organisation of JKA's resources and assets, and much of it is thanks to the community's efforts to keep the game and its development resources accessible.

 

The most popular mods are those that cater to people's widest -- not wildest! -- imaginations.

[Link]

I was thinking about mentioning Makermod, but in terms of influence I'd say Lugormod has played a bigger role overall. Just my opinion of course

[afi]

I really don't think that mods like japlus or openJK are that influential for the playing community because they don't really change the gameplay and share more or less the same community. OpenJK is important for being a base for comming mods and for fixing bugs etc but 90% of the players won't care if ja+, ja++, openJK or base is installed on the server as long as the gameplay doesn't change too much.

[Onysfx]

As much as I would say say makermod is dead, it isn't. I've had people PM me on the MBII and JKhub forums asking for makermod files and expansion packs. So clearly there is still interest in the mod. Of course, it is true that lugormod is far more popular and well known, however makermod is so much easier to build.

[Jaina D'Kana]

Oh and of course the Hydroball mod!  That was fun

[eezstreet]

Maker mod is sorta like the Garry's Mod of this game. It's different in many ways. Lugormod is like an RPG or FFA where the server owner can place objects for people to use, and players have a stored account. People have often designed quests via scripting and some basic entity placement.

 

JA+ continues the honor code stuff. It's the most widely used mod by far, but several coders consider Slider to be inept. It's not totally true, nor that he stole code from Jedi Academy mod.

 

Also while we're at it, DC MOD for JK2 deserves a mention as it was fairly popular among smaller clan servers.

 

And, you should also mention that there's a distinct division between JK2 1.02 servers and 1.04 servers. 1.02 didn't have an SDK and mod makers had to reverse engineer the QVMs. I can only recall one specific mod but I don't remember the name.

 

Also noteworthy is that the official source release no longer exists, unlike other Quake games. Raven took the code down because it included some proprietary libraries like Bink and Xbox SDK. I think it's actually possible to obtain the source because of a loophole - they used a GPL mp3 library, therefore it might be possible to argue that the source HAS to be available due to clauses in the GPL. (By including GPL code, the whole project becomes GPL. Because something is GPL, the source must be made available, even if only by request). I've been meaning to do a direct comparison with this library and other games released by Activision that have mp3 playback in them (Call of Duty, earlier Raven games, etc) to argue that other games are violating the GPL, but I haven't done so yet. Might be a neat little exposé.

[afi]

Maybe the majority doesn't understand it all though, and tends to accept what ever they are given. That could be true yes.

 

That's more or less what I've meant. People like me always complained about JA+ for what it does to the saber combat (and I think that's for a reason) but most people accept it or maybe don't even recognize most of the changes. And it's obvious that competitive players care more about (even really small) changes to the gameplay than the average RP/Clan-players. You are right, some people complain just because it's not base which is stupid. Personally I don't care which mod is installed as long as the gameplay is the way I want it.

But that's what I mean with "people don't really care".

[eezstreet]

JA+ broke the saber combat? I always thought JK2 1.04 did that and then JA just made it worse

 

/me runs

[Petzi]

Makermod and Lugormod were the ones I played almost exclusively.

 

Another mod I find very unique is modwooty. There's pretty much no information about it online, but it's a Power Duel mod with a lot of stats and special moves and so on. One interesting aspect is that you can but sub-admin once you've won enough gold, which allows you abuse other players if you want to.