Thoughts about UnrealJK

[Keyten]

It seems to be really unreal.

 

Hey, guys!

There was a lot of times when somebody tried to make something JA-like on Unreal Engine, on other engines.

Movie Battles 2 team, Primal Clarity, making his JO film, a guy on reddit and a lot of others.

 

Why did we reach nothing? Nobody published his results, nobody can make his contribution. The only results one can see are screenshots and videos on youtube. If MB2 team published their all results, somebody could continue the work when they decided to stop it. Anyone who wanted to port JA on UE, would contribute - instead of making it from scratch (and then stop his work because it's really terrible long and big and time-consuming). Maybe we would have the playable UE JK already.

Every year there are more and more mods in the Files section. And less players in JA. Look: there are many of good programmers, 3d-modellers, animators, effect artists making different mods for JA. They all could contribute not to the dying JA. They all could improve the new UE JK making it more and more like our JA.

Supporting OpenJK, rend2, JKG seems to be pointless (IMHO, sorry guys): why is the game with no players?

 

Just imagine: JA with UE graphics. New models, new sabers, new AI, new weapons, new maps, new possibilities. Old fight mechanics.

The people will play it. I think you realize it too.

 

Sorry, it's really hard to me to write so long text on English.

The main idea: let's do something! Let's do it together! — or we won't reach anything.

[Futuza]

What do you plan on doing about

 

 

?

 

 

Why Unreal?  How exactly is putting the game on a new game engine supposed to revive the JKA community and bring new players? (If it's standalone, it's no longer protected by the mod umbrella and things could just get shut down, especially if a certain publisher we all know and fear thinks such a project is a threat to Battlefront).  Why not just start with this (go convince the Obsidian devs to expand it)? Convince me that this is reasonable from both a legal stand point first, and then we can talk about all the reduplication of effort that would need to happen.

[Xycaleth]

Nothing's worked so far because there's little to no team organization and coordination. Collaboration is good but the reason why so many projects fail to finish is because there is nobody to guide the project to completion. Without it you're essentially wandering aimlessly towards a completely undefined goal.

 

Unless you or someone can provide that direction and leadership then you will just be another forgotten effort.

[Archangel35757]

we're closer to having better graphics now with Rend2 than some great effort to recreate JK in Unreal.

[Keyten]

What do you plan on doing about EA?

 

Okay, I expected smth like this. But any fan stuff is legal, isn't it? If I write a story about Vader, it will be legal until I sell it or use for commercial purposes. What is the difference between a story and a game?

[Xycaleth]

Technically it's not legal and Disney have given sole rights to creating Star Wars games to EA. It doesn't matter whether it's for profit or not.

[Futuza]

Okay, I expected smth like this. But any fan stuff is legal, isn't it? If I write a story about Vader, it will be legal until I sell it or use for commercial purposes. What is the difference between a story and a game?

One drives away EA's profit margins and threatens their business, the other just makes Star Wars more popular and has a history of being allowed.  EA on the other hand is notorious for handing out cease and desist documents like they're hot cakes at a fair.   I wouldn't touch a project like this without first consulting a law firm and they were confident it would be allowed.  Xycaleth is right, it's illegal, plus the other concerns he mentioned are huge.  Who's going to lead it?  Who can be trusted with something like that?  Who's willing to stick around for the 3-7 years it takes to make it and personally fund and guide it, and has the knowledge and expertise to do most of the work (project leads are expected to do most of the heavy lifting)?  What is even the goal here, to clone JKA exactly, but in the UE4?  If so, why?  Why not just build JK4 and make it a brand new game.  Why are we trying to resurrect an old game instead of just making a new one?  Will it be open source?  Will it be open asset?  If not, how do you licence it?  Who's going to draw new developers to it who are willing to learn a new engine and work on it for free and without compensation?  How do you market it? etc.

 

I mean it's cool you want to do it and I've always thought it'd be a neat idea to see jka in a modern engine, but realistically you have to answer these questions first.  Any project of this nature that can't face these questions with confident absolute certain do-able answers, is doomed to fail and not worth putting effort into imo.

 

Then you also have to ask yourself, why try to keep the Star Wars licence?  I mean...couldn't you just make your own game and make it for profit, by dropping the Star Wars licence?  Call it Space Wars and have laserswords and spacemagic.  Is there something magical about Star Wars that makes it worth trying to fight EA for it?  If you decide there isn't, and your universe is better then you're back at the beginning asking yourself, what make me different from all the other indies and kickstarters out there and what makes me think I'm going to succeed?

[Noodle]

My favorite games in the world are Jedi Outcast and Mount and Blade, neither have good graphics. What would we win by doing the game again in a new  engine, if we can keep working on the old one?

[ensiform]

My favorite games in the world are Jedi Outcast and Mount and Blade, neither have good graphics. What would we win by doing the game again in a new  engine, if we can keep working on the old one?

 

There is somewhat of a motivation requirement to actually continue wanting to work on the "old one" too.  And with the poor state of tools (and how time consuming it is to build new ones), there is little incentive for new developers or modders to come to an old out of date idTech3 based engine.  Rend2 or not, there is still very little reason to continue efforts at making major new content because it is very tedious IMO

[Archangel35757]

@@ensiform - I disagree... GtKRadiant is being developed, improved and maintained. Many gamedev tools have been, or are being, updated. We also have all SoF2/JKO/JKA asset exporters for 3ds Max and Blender. So creating new content is easier than ever.

[ensiform]

@@ensiform - I disagree... GtKRadiant is being developed, improved and maintained. Many gamedev tools have been, or are being, updated. We also have all SoF2/JKO/JKA asset exporters for 3ds Max and Blender. So creating new content is easier than ever.

 

Prove to me there are actual radical improvements going into the slow as molasses development into GTK Radiant that are actually helping bring people to older tech3.  Most people today do not build with BSP hence they won't use it anyway.

[Smoo]

I was thinking of a Source JK like how theres a GoldenEye Source lol

[Smoo]

After seeing the fan made battlefront game getting shut down by EA, bit hard to do this regardless lol

[afi]

The only thing that might be worth thinking about would be a free version of Jedi Academy (like openArena for Quake 3). It wouldn't even be complicated, just very time consuming replacing all the original assets.

[ensiform]

I was thinking of a Source JK like how theres a GoldenEye Source lol

I don't really see the point in this at all. The source engine isn't that much newer I'm comparison or that revolutionary.

[Lancelot]

Personally, I don't see a point to port Jedi Academy or Jedi Outcast to the Unreal Engine, or any other modern engine. I don't have any doubt that it's possible, but the effort would be in vain.

You might have better graphics, but this doesn't make a better game. People are playing these games not because of the graphics, but because they simply enjoy them. The engine is not important.

It's a common misconception that better graphics and modern engines automatically make better games.

 

Another thing is that Jedi Academy and Jedi Outcast are among those games that are very easy moddable. You don't need tons of tools to create specific content. A new engine would make it more difficult for beginners to create even smaller

things, like custom textures or sounds. And besides, I don't see the that the community is "dying". Why do people think like that? Sure, people don't submit much content on a daily basis anymore. But I think we should be glad that we have tons

of content to go back to, and that people are still working on projects, no matter how big or small.

[ensiform]

But it's also a common misconception that the games themselves are perfect untouched. We already have witnessed throughout the years how terribly the code has caused a negative shift in people's viewpoints over saber mechanics simply from recompiling the SDK or full source makes something feel different to some people. The simple fact that it's as flakey as it appears to be makes it hard to make a case as to what the true intentions are/were or if they just shipped calling it good enough.