Jedi Academy Of Weird New Things

[NAB622]

Cagelight and I talked some more, and he liked the idea of incorporating an element from Morrowind. So disregard my post above; this is far more interesting.

 

We still need something to replace Drain. if anyone has any ideas I'm all ears.

 

Also, any user can choose any force power they want. There is no limit on light side or dark side abilities. There is also no force point system.

 

Force powers will now have several casting types.

I know this is complicated, but we would like to simplify this with a special menu and several default binds, to make it far less intimidating.

 

Self will apply to the user only, and uses the least energy. (Yes, you will be able to lightning yourself.)

 

Touch will affect anything the player touches. It will use the energy equivalent of self.

 

Cone will affect a small area in front of the player, facing forward. It will use a moderate amount of energy.

 

Area will force the user to put away their lightsaber or gun, and both hands will be used to cast the power. It will use a large amount of energy.

 

Projectile will use a huge amount of energy and will be fired toward the player's crosshairs. The effect will diminish greatly over range. The distance will likely be a server side Cvar, so it can be changed on a per-server basis.

 

Toggle powers can be used indefinitely, as long as the user has force energy left to cast with. Multiple toggle powers can be used simultaneously. Also, force energy will continue to recharge while a toggle power is being used, but it will be diminished.

 

 

Neutral powers

 

 

Saber Attack and Saber Defend have been removed from the list.

 

Saber Throw

This power is not affected by the casting type. Throws the user's light saber. The intensity will determine how fast the blade spins. Also, the blade should spin on two axes, not just one.

 

Jump

This power is not affected by the casting type. Jump as high as the default force jump 3. When you fall from any height, a burst of force energy will be used to break your fall and you will not take damage. As long as you have force energy left, you can also lunge a short distance in any direction mid-air.

 

Sense

This is a toggle power, and it is not affected by the casting type. A player can sense every other player and NPC around them, even through walls. Players will also get an “Alien sense” feature (Tremulous) that shows where people are, specifically behind them. If the user is targeted by a darkshear, a warning will display….somehow.

 

Push

This power is continuous. It will affect projectiles, bullets and darkshear. Also, force speed has been removed because "Push self" should fill the gap nicely.

 

 

Pull

This power is continuous. It will affect projectiles, bullets and darkshear. If the user has another player or NPC’s weapon directly in the center of their crosshair while casting in projectile mode, they can pull the weapon from their hands.

 

Levitate (Replaces speed)

Levitate is a toggle power. You will press the button once to pick up whatever object is in your crosshairs, and again to let it go. You can move and carry objects around, but depending on the mass of the object, the user's movement will be nerfed.

 

 

 

Light Side Powers

Absorb

This power is continuous. Force absorb will absorb all incoming force energy. It should cause the user to be unable to attack while absorbing the energy, just like in the movies. No blue glow around the user, either - just a hand going up to stop the energy being thrown at them. Depending on the magnitude of the absorb, some of the energy absorbed will be converted into force energy for the user. The force energy meter will be allowed to overcharge. The overcharge will not dissipate until the energy is used. Also, force energy will not recharge any further while it is overcharged.

 

Heal

This power is continuous. Meditate for up to 5 seconds, heal for 2 for every uninterrupted second, must meditate for 50% of maximum time or no healing will occur??

 

Field (Replaces protect)

This power is continuous. Players can project a field of force energy. For every 1 HP of damage dealt to the shield, 1 force energy will be taken from the user.

 

Mind Trick

This power is continuous. Victims of a mind trick can still negate a mind trick with force sense, or by dealing damage to the  person who cast it on them.

When tricked, a fake player will appear to the affected player. The fake player will appear to continue doing whatever the user was last doing (Standing, walking). So if the user was too close to a wall, the mind trick will be obvious when the fake player runs into it for no reason. Sounds from the casting player are much quieter to any affected players.

 

 

 

Dark Side Powers

Grip

Immobilize target, deal 5 damage per second. If someone uses force push on the user, they will be freed.

 

Drain

Uhhhh....not sure what to replace this with.

 

Lightning

Basically same as before. Lightning should be blocked, at least mostly, when a person holds their lightsaber in front of them and doesn’t move it

 

Darkshear (Replaces rage)

Charging time is 1 second. Spend 100 force points to launch a dark spear approximately the damage of a concussion bolt. A loud sound will play during the charge, and a thunderclap will sound when it is fired. The screen will shake slightly during charging. If the button is released before the darkshear is fired or the user is knocked back, the energy will dissipate. Force energy is not taken from the user until the darkshear is fired.

[Tempust85]

So will you be using a different format instead of ghoul2?

[NAB622]

So will you be using a different format instead of ghoul2?

No idea. All I can tell you for certain is that I have no intention of generating any ghoul2 assets.

[NAB622]

After intense discussion, many other things we would like to implement have been hashed out. We are (Well, I am) not certain about the workload yet, other than the fact that it is huge and will likely take more than a year.

 

The sad fact is that this community has very very outdated, and in some cases, non-functional tools (Radiant, ShaderED, BehavED, Milkshape). If we are going to continue with our project, we will need good tools. I personally want to create many more maps to include with this project, but working in Radiant has become extremely tedious for me, especially when I think about how much easier it could be with just a few basic/easy features and bug fixes. So basically....we may be quiet for a while, depending on how long this takes to hash out. But we are far from giving up.

 

 

Side note: Does anyone know if darth_G can still be contacted? We would like to update his entities.def file for our own uses.

 

[Archangel35757]

Are you planning to fork & modify GtkRadiant then? I have asked Raven if they'd release the tools' source code (ShaderED, EffectsED, etc.) ...but I never got a reply. (sigh)

 

Milkshape?! Who the hell is using that? XSI ModTool 7.5 is FREE and supports MD3 (with my new exporter) and exports dotXSI that is converted to Ghoul2 using Carcass.

[Cagelight]

If we do it, we will not be forking Radiant. It's an unsalvageable codebase with little room for improvement (without more effort than its worth).

[Tempust85]

Perhaps look into making the editors in-game, like Id Tech 4.

[NAB622]

Are you planning to fork & modify GtkRadiant then? I have asked Raven if they'd release the tools' source code (ShaderED, EffectsED, etc.) ...but I never got a reply. (sigh)

 

Milkshape?! Who the hell is using that?

I sure hope nobody is using milkshape. I haven't forgotten the nickname it was given. But I have been absent from this community for some time so my info will be spotty and dated.

 

Re-using shaderED and EffectsED is a bad idea too. They are both a buggy mess. Granted, EffectsED isn't half bad, but still relatively useless.

 

Perhaps look into making the editors in-game, like Id Tech 4.

What all can be edited in-game? If it's just shaders, I'm sure that's an easy one. If you're referring to maps.....I'm not sure that's even possible with how Q3 is set up. A total rewrite of the map code does not sound appealing.

[Archangel35757]

@@eezstreet may have some ideas how you could implement an in-game shader editor and effects editor.

[Ramikad]

I sure hope nobody is using milkshape. I haven't forgotten the nickname it was given. But I have been absent from this community for some time so my info will be spotty and dated.

 

What nickname? I started with Milkshape, it was the only thing back then which had limited .glm support and didn't require a PhD to download and install. Admittedly it also had a couple of decent heightmap generators.

[Jedi_Mediator]

Re-using shaderED and EffectsED is a bad idea too. They are both a buggy mess. Granted, EffectsED isn't half bad, but still relatively useless.

 

I never got shaderED to work right, and now I find it pretty easy to write shaders manually. But I have always used EffectsEd to make new effects, and I've always found it very useful. Have you had issues with it?

[NAB622]

What nickname? I started with Milkshape, it was the only thing back then which had limited .glm support and didn't require a PhD to download and install. Admittedly it also had a couple of decent heightmap generators.

"Milkshit 3D." Seen that nickname all over the Filefront forums. XD

 

I never got shaderED to work right, and now I find it pretty easy to write shaders manually. But I have always used EffectsEd to make new effects, and I've always found it very useful. Have you had issues with it?

As far as I know, ShaderED doesn't work correctly beyond Windows XP. Could be wrong on that, it's just my personal experience. Also, writing shaders by hand is perfectly fine, but a live visual editor is invaluable. Otherwise you have to fire up the game and reload the level until your shader looks right.

 

Unless I was doing something wrong, EffectsED orients the effects in the wrong direction, in addition to a few other small bugs. Overall it isn't bad and I've used it many times. ShaderED is the bad one.

[Tempust85]

ShaderED also becomes obsolete with a modern renderer. Could really use the source code.

[AshuraDX]

I use ShaderED on windows 10 to quickly test and preview my shaderexperiments. It helped me create the Rorschach Mask Shader. It works just fine

[Tempust85]

Came across this shader generator

 

https://github.com/Unvanquished/Sloth

[NAB622]

ShaderED also becomes obsolete with a modern renderer.

Not that we are replacing the renderer at this very moment, but that is something else we've discussed.

 

I use ShaderED on windows 10 to quickly test and preview my shaderexperiments. It helped me create the Rorschach Mask Shader. It works just fine

On windows 7, ShaderED will not render anything for me. Instead I get errors galore. When I was able to use it on windows XP, it would not add or edit more than 6 stages per shader, even though the game supported 8. Editing was clunky and the frame rate was always low (HOW!?!?). The colored background feature was nearly useless for checking alpha blending because it was always wrong. Tcmod rotate and tcmod scroll did not play nice with each other, even though the game handled them just fine. The debugging tool was inaccurate and complained about nonsense that didn't matter. I could go on but you get the idea.

 

And yeah, that's why most people in the know type them by hand - but that's the point. ShaderED is supposed to handle that, and it doesn't. When everything is added together.....it's just time for a replacement. Even if nothing else is accomplished here, I personally would like a new one.

 

Came across this shader generator https://github.com/Unvanquished/Sloth

Will have to check this out.

Edit: It's a python console application so it doesn't look particularly useful, but at least it's something to know about.

[AshuraDX]

On windows 7, ShaderED will not render anything for me. Instead I get errors galore. When I was able to use it on windows XP, it would not add or edit more than 6 stages per shader, even though the game supported 8. Editing was clunky and the frame rate was always low (HOW!?!?). The colored background feature was nearly useless for checking alpha blending because it was always wrong. Tcmod rotate and tcmod scroll did not play nice with each other, even though the game handled them just fine. The debugging tool was inaccurate and complained about nonsense that didn't matter. I could go on but you get the idea.

 

And yeah, that's why most people in the know type them by hand - but that's the point. ShaderED is supposed to handle that, and it doesn't. When everything is added together.....it's just time for a replacement. Even if nothing else is accomplished here, I personally would like a new one.

I never had any of these problems you described. And I've been using it for a long time, mostly as a cheat sheet, setting up animMaps or to test blending modes

[RAILBACK]

I never had any of these problems you described. And I've been using it for a long time, mostly as a cheat sheet, setting up animMaps or to test blending modes

Me as well. I always used ShaderED to preview and never had any issues no matter what the OS. You can instantly preview and make adjustments.

[NAB622]

I never had any of these problems you described. And I've been using it for a long time, mostly as a cheat sheet, setting up animMaps or to test blending modes

Testing blending modes was always the strong point of ShaderED, and highly useful. Viewing animMaps is useful as well. My main point is that if you're doing the shaders by hand and then viewing them in ShaderED, then obviously something is wrong with the editor, whether it is bugs, missing functionality, or a clunky interface. At this point in time, over 15 years after the release of Q3, shader editing should easily be reducible to point and click. Yet it is not.

 

I'm not opposed to typing them manually; I'm just saying that the tools have not stood the test of time and are sorely outdated. A fully visual editor would save a *lot* of time.

 

Me as well. I always used ShaderED to preview and never had any issues no matter what the OS. You can instantly preview and make adjustments.

Neither of you have had any frame rate issues? I've never seen ShaderED render higher than about 15 FPS on any computer.

[Archangel35757]

Aren't there some other Shader Editors out there? What about J.A.C.K?

[cr0ssmind]

When I saw this topic I become so excited. I hope it will implemented ( with some OpenGL 4 or Vulkan features as well). I have some coding experience, so I can help you.

I suggest continue planning on a dedicated site & Slack/Gitter channel.

 

Is the source code published already somewhere?

 

Let's continue this brilliant community initiative.

[NAB622]

Aren't there some other Shader Editors out there? What about J.A.C.K?

I looked at it briefly on Steam. It's okay......but I have some issues with it as well. They're more personal nitpicks than anything. At least it's more effective than ShaderEd.

 

 

When I saw this topic I become so excited. I hope it will implemented ( with some OpenGL 4 or Vulkan features as well). I have some coding experience, so I can help you.

I suggest continue planning on a dedicated site & Slack/Gitter channel.

 

Is the source code published already somewhere?

 

Let's continue this brilliant community initiative.

The source code is on GitHub, yes. https://github.com/cagelight/jaownt

 

I'm just coming off of Christmas overtime (I work in parcel shipping), so I need a few days/weeks to recover, but I have no intention of giving up on this project. It will just be veeerrrryyy sloooowwww going.

[Tempust85]

Good, cuz we wants to see moar of the physax.

[Tempust85]

Nice to see an update to the repo. Any info on the latest commit? @@NAB622

[NAB622]

I can't give any info at this time, I'm really not the one holding that stuff. Cagelight is the boss here. I can say that great efforts are being made, but I don't want to say anything specific. Definitely want to see what pans out first.