Jedi Knight: The Clone Wars Extension Pack

[Cerez]

Question: I've been thinking about putting together a Clone Wars era (prequels) extension bundle for JKA (MP) for a while now. I have a high quality mod collection that I've sorting and cleaning for over a decade. It has a high selection criteria, so it contains only a few of the best models and maps created of Clone Wars era characters and locations.

 

The advantage of this curated bundle, apart from it being a single, optimal download, is that I've tweaked all the settings to fix any broken NPC and BOT files, and harmonise them to work with one another -- such as the Anakin bot not attacking the Ahsoka bot, but Vader doing so. Obi-Wan not attacking Anakin, and so on. Their in-game sizes have also been adjusted to reflect their real sizes in relation to one another in the films and TV shows. Furthermore their NPC/BOT callnames have been simplified for ease of use and remembering, misc. texture/sound/shader errors have been fixed, and missing dialogue has been filled with appropriate character lines.

 

On top of it all, I've created a new icon design for each of the characters that blends into the default JKA design pattern in the MP character selection menu, but distinguishes the prequel characters with a different colour to the Imperial Remnant era characters.

 

In order to release this package on JKHub, getting a hold of the many author readmes and contacts/permissions pose a problem for me. I could host this on my private Dropbox, but I would rather make it official and accessible to everyone.

 

Among other things, this package helps to solve the problem many Clone Wars TV show fans are encountering in bringing the world of the TV show into JKA. Now a single download would pretty much take care of it, JKA style, as an "official" community extension pack to the default JKA game. (Being JKA visual style, however, the bundle addresses prequel fans just as much as the CW TV show fans.)

 

My question is, is it worth my trouble getting this up? How many people would actually be interested to see this package uploaded? How many people would oppose this idea? How many people would get offended if their mod was included in a curated, "official" character/map bundle like this?

 

I'll see if I can get a screenshot up of the menu in action.

[Jeff]

I like the idea. That's the problem with giving credit, if you make anything of size, you'll spend a ton of time tracking everyone who contributed and your read me will rival the Bible. 

[Barricade24]

Mod bundles can be a bit tricky. Tracking down everyone you need to get permission from, unless the give permission in their readme, is a time consuming process. Much like Jeff has already stated.

 

I guess the main question would be: Would this be worth for other players or what it be much simpler for them to download the files individually?

 

In the time it would take to put this piece together, a player could probably have a majority of the files already.

 

Not trying to bash this idea at all, but that is the question that should be contemplated.

[Cerez]

I guess the main question would be: Would this be worth for other players or what it be much simpler for them to download the files individually?

 

In the time it would take to put this piece together, a player could probably have a majority of the files already.

 

Not trying to bash this idea at all, but that is the question that should be contemplated.

No, that's exactly right. Is it worth for me to go to all this trouble? The one thing about it that players won't get by spending their time looking for and downloading all these files individually is the collaboration between the files, and the curated benefits. It took me years to fine-tune these packages to work well with one another and fix up all their misc. errors.

 

Also, with the individually downloaded files you don't get the benefit of easily being able to call up on NPCs (without having to remember all those unnecessary mod ID prefixes and suffixes), and you won't get a unified interface.

[Cerez]

Here's a preview of the unified icon set:

 

[Cerez]

The thing is, we've had some bad habits that lasted in the community for more than a decade that impact usability in many of these great mod packages. One of these being the author-prefixed-suffixed naming conventions we use for naming NPCs. It makes sense when you have a number of models made of the same character, but in a person's personal collection it only serves to make use of those mods and NPCs tedious. If you only have one player model for a character, you don't need prefixes and suffixes to call their NPC. If I want to spawn Anakin, I'll call "npc spawn anakin". Nice and simple.

 

Another thing is the repeated use of a misformed relationships definition in the JKB files that stops all bots from interacting friendly with one another.

 

All these issues have been fixed in this bundle for these characters. These are some of the benefits you get in a curated bundle.

[Cerez]

That's the problem with giving credit, if you make anything of size, you'll spend a ton of time tracking everyone who contributed and your read me will rival the Bible.

I was thinking I could do one of two things (or a combination). I could write a Credits.txt file that lists for each character model their author(s) (with a contact email address?), making it easy to see who is responsible for the making of each model/skin or map. This, however, doesn't address their creative permissions. I could direct players to seek permission from the authors for any re-use of this content. That would be the simpler way to manage this.

 

The other option is to hoard together all the readmes released for these models, and place them all in a "Readmes"/"Authors" folder, named for each character/location.

[eezstreet]

Can you give us a list of what all is planned for this bundle? I see mentions of bots, NPCs and icon unification, but is there a list of stuff that your pack includes?

[Cerez]

I can try to sum it up. I'll see what I can do.

[Cerez]

@@eezstreet Here, I think I've covered everything:

 

Characters:

Ahsoka Tano

Anakin Skywalker

Battle Droid

Clone Trooper

Clone Commander (Cody)

Commando Droid

Count Dooku

Darth Maul

Darth Vader

General Grievous

Jango Fett

Jar Jar Binks

Obi-Wan Kenobi

Plo Koon

Savage Opress

 

Locations:

Coruscant Underworld

Palpatine's Office

The Invisible Hand

Utapau

Mustafar (Anakin's End)

Kamino

Mustafar

Mygeeto

Naboo

The Senate

 

NPCs:

ahsoka

anakin

battledroid

clone

cody

commandodroid

dooku

maul

vader

grievous

jango

jarjar

obiwan

plo

savage

yoda *

 

*hidden extra

 

Lightsabers:

tano, tano2

skywalker

vader

maul

dooku

kenobi

opress

 

Animals/Vehicles:

reek

 

Features:

- New level screenshots for all maps included (matching the unbranded, clean, default design).

- New icons for all characters included (matching the default design).

- Proper full names for all bots in menu (matching the default naming style).

- Fixes to known shader issues and sound errors/overlooks.

- Simple to use callnames for all NPCs and lightsabers included.

- NPCs for *all* characters.

- Working bot relationships between characters.

- All character NPCs properly sized in relation to one another (as per movies/TV shows).

- Some authentic extra character bot dialogue.

- Map names in menu cleaned (to default naming style).

- A few rare to find character models.

 

Basically this is a cleaned up, unified edition of all these selected mods in a bundle (however the PK3s are not merged, so you can still take mods out and replace them with other ones if you like). It's a unified, curated distribution aimed at making these mods look and feel like they are part of the official game, and improving their usability -- fixing bugs, and making it cleaner and easier to use them.

[Noodle]

It's a nice project, hope you can get those permissions.

[dark_apprentice]

@@Cerez first of all i really love your new avatar :3 and second why there are x2 Mustafar maps? Is the one without "Anakin's end" gonna be an alternative ending version, based on the PS2 game, when Anakin kills Kenobi and later Palpatine, tooking his new red lightsaber and "transforming" into the fan art concept I've shared of Emperor Skywalker?

[Cerez]

@@Cerezwhy there are x2 Mustafar maps? Is the one without "Anakin's end" gonna be an alternative ending version, based on the PS2 game, when Anakin kills Kenobi and later Palpatine, tooking his new red lightsaber and "transforming" into the fan art concept I've shared of Emperor Skywalker?

Eh? Whoddawhadda?

 

There are two Mustafar maps because @@JCulley3D made two different ones for Mustafar -- one before Episode 3 came out, and one after. Anakin's End is the one made after the movie came out, but the first map is just as interesting, and feels like a completely different location on Mustafar.

 

I don't know anything about the alternate PS2 game ending...

[Anakin98]

What happened with the Clone Wars Missions ?  Good luck with this anyway, clone wars for the win!

[Cerez]

What happened with the Clone Wars Missions ?  Good luck with this anyway, clone wars for the win!

I ran into a big booboo with the development of The Clone Wars Missions. I still haven't canned it, but I need to find a better way of setting NPC movement than the default waypointing system of JKA that we have at the moment -- because, frankly, it's incredibly primitive, tedious, and a disaster to work with.

 

Either that, or simply design levels with stationary NPCs... :/

 

This project is different. It's simply a curated package of community made Clone Wars era models and maps for JKA Multiplayer.