Circa

This is awesome, can't wait to play it! A more Star Wars focused mod with Epic Challenge-style levels is something I'm totally into.

Try doing what ashura recommended with making your own PK3 file, not only is it a better way to mod your game, you don't break anything and need to reinstall.

Also, are you using OpenJK or any other mod? It's possible that the assets are installed twice in different locations or something like that. That has happened to me before.

There is also a chance that some of those values are hardcoded depending on the NPC. There are a lot of nuances to NPCs and sabers that aren't reflected in the NPC files.

5 minutes ago, undeadslayer said:

@MagSul Would I need to make an account with either of those?

Use WeTransfer.

You could follow the tutorials that explain how to kitbash/Frankenstein models with Blender and only copy over that tag. Here’s one:

 

Are they in a folder or in a PK3? I've had the issue of textures not loading straight from a folder in base, I actually had to put them in a PK3.

There was an official port of both Jedi Academy and Jedi Outcast, available on the Mac App Store, Steam, GOG.com, etc. Those are still available, however they will not work on any version of macOS after 10.14 Mojave. Version 10.15 Catalina and beyond (Big Sur, Monterey) all drop 32bit support, and Aspyr (who ported them previously and more recently to consoles) stated they have no plans to update the games to work on modern macOS. Only a couple mods have updated their Mac versions as well to have native support.

If you plan to only play base Jedi Academy multiplayer, follow this video tutorial. It explains how to install EternalJK, which is currently the best way to play base multiplayer. You can follow that same tutorial but for Jedi Outcast, you'll want JK2MV.

For Jedi Academy singleplayer (and multiplayer if you don't want EternalJK), you can use OpenJK.

Follow this tutorial to install OpenJK.

These options are very limited in terms of mods and honestly just makes things complicated. I highly just recommend using the options below, which will ensure you have access to any mod you want by using the Windows versions.

---

That leaves us with running the games in a more unconventional and non-native method called Wineskin, or more importantly, a Wineskin app called Porting Kit that makes it easy to run older games like these.

It's worth noting that Porting Kit works only with GOG.com versions of these games, due to the non-disc and non-DRM install process. However, I also tried it with the non-disc installer that was provided in the Limited Run USB drives, and they work just as well. Using these installers will be the easiest way to do this.

At the end of this tutorial I will explain how you could also install the Steam version or any other version to use with OpenJK or EternalJK, since all you need are the assets for mods like that.

Installing Porting Kit
Porting Kit makes this process easy. Start by going to their website below and downloading the app and installing it. The DMG or ZIP file won't matter, whichever you prefer.

  Porting Kit  

 

---

 

Installing Games

Luckily it will run you through most steps needed for all this. The app opens on the News page, but you'll want to click over to Library. They have a pretty extensive library of games if you ever want to install any other old ones. Search for "jedi" to show both of these games and choose one to install. All steps in this tutorial apply to both games.

Choose your game and click install.

It should open and give you 3 options like this:

It's pretty straightforward. Click Download installer now to be taken to GOG.com to buy and download the offline backup installers. Once you have it downloaded, click Sure, which will then run through an installer. Click through to the end, where it will ask you to locate the installer file and let you select it from your Downloads folder. If you have the Limited Run installer instead, simple click Sure and select that installer. This app doesn't distinguish what you are installing, which we will use to our advantage if you want to use a non-GOG copy.

Let it run and do it's thing. It may take a minute or so with a couple pop-up windows and eventually show the installer for the actual game itself. Run through that as you normally would. Everything from here on out should look like Windows, basically.

Be sure to not run the game in that window once it completes. It should pop up with a window asking you which executable to run, like so:

Be sure to choose either jk2mp, jk2mp, or if you're installing Jedi Academy, your options will be jasp or jamp. Pick the one that you plan to play the most, it's up to you. If you want shortcuts to both, I will cover that below.

The game should show up in your Porting Kit library now. The first thing you'll notice is that it is quite small with a black background. You'll want to immediately go into SETUP and change the resolution to something bigger. I also recommend turning off full screen, but that's up to you. You will need to restart the game for the black background to go away if you turn off fullscreen. It's now installed and ready to go!

 

---

 

Adding a shortcut to MP or SP

If you want a shortcut to both modes, you can easily do that by going into Porting Kit, click the game, then click More, go to Advanced Tools, then click Add Shortcut to EXE. Name the shortcut whatever you want, such as Jedi Outcast MP, or JKA MP, or SP, whatever applies.

Then browse to the .exe that you didn't choose during the install. So if you chose jk2sp.exe last time, you'll want to find jk2mp.exe. If you're unfamiliar with Windows, it should be in ProgramFiles/LucasArts/Jedi Academy/GameData, or something very simliar. GOG might list it under ProgramFiles/GOG/JediAcademy or something like that. Poke around and you should find it.

That should make a new shortcut in your app for that executable and you can now launch both. Repeat this process for any mod launchers you have as well. More on that below.

 

---

 

Installing mods

You saw above that the file structure is exactly like in Windows, so installing mods should be self explanatory to mod veterans: put PK3's in the base folder. You can find your base folder very easily by going to that MORE menu like above and clicking Open C drive and navigating through the folders from there. Drag and drop PK3's into the base folder from there.

Obviously follow the instructions that each mod provides for installation. Any client-side mod like JA+ that don't have their own installer should go into GameData by default, but just make sure to read their own instructions, as they are all Windows based instructions that will apply to you now, rather than Mac instructions.

If you're installing a major mod that has it's own installer like Movie Battles II, do the same steps as above but choose Install Patch/Mod and select the downloaded installer for it. It should then run through the install process as if it is Windows.

If you're unsure which type the mod is, go by the file that you downloaded. If the file is one .exe, it needs to be installed. If it's a PK3 or a folder with a bunch of pk3's and other files, it should go right into GameData. If it's one PK3 file, it goes into base. Again, just follow the instructions provided by the mod itself. Comment here if you need help.

 

---

 

Installing Steam, MAS, or disc version

You should only be reading this section if you don't already have the game on GOG.com or the Limited Run USB drive. If you do, skip the hassle, that way is much smoother. You're reading this is if you already have the game on Steam, the Mac App Store, or even the old disc version (either PC or Mac disc should work).

The workaround here is to run a random installer when it asks for one, so that it creates all the necessary files and configurations and then you can copy your assets and OpenJK into the C drive folder. The random installer we will choose is the official SDK for Jedi Academy. Download it below.

JKA SDK

Unzip by double clicking it. You should see the .exe file for it. Run through all the steps above but use this EXE instead of the GOG or LR ones. It will show an error at the end about not able to open a .htm file. Click okay to ignore it.

It will ask which exe to run at launch. It won't matter which one you choose here since it will be changed later, so I just chose ModView.

Follow the instructions above to open the C drive and have that ready. I'm breaking down each version first and the common steps under that, but these are assuming you don't already have the games downloaded on your computer already. If you do, skip past this.

Steam

Mac App Store

Disc Retail

Now go back to the window that you had open with the C drive for the app. You'll need to make a new folder for the game. I recommend creating a folder structure similar to how the installers do it, just for the sake of simplicity, however you can potentially make whatever folders you want, as long as base is inside another folder.

So in the C drive folder, go into Program Files and create a folder called LucasArts, and inside that folder create a folder called Jedi Academy, and inside that folder create a folder called GameData.

Go back to your Steam/MAS/disc game folder, drag or copy/paste that base folder into this new GameData folder. So now you should have it like so:

Now that you have the assets, you'll need OpenJK or whatever client mod you prefer. For SP I recommend OpenJK (download below has both JKA and JK2 support), and for MP I recommend EternalJK for Academy and JK2MV for Outcast.

  OpenJK  

EternalJK

JK2MV

Put whatever items related to your version into the GameData folder. 

Now is the tricky part. You'll need to go into the MORE button again, go to Advanced tools, go down to Launch Wineskin app. Go to Advanced. Go to Browse and browse to the relative .exe file. So if you got OpenJK for Outcast, choose GameData/openjo_sp.x86.exe.

Next, go to the Tools tab, and then Config Utility. Go to Graphics tab, and check the box next to "Automatically capture the mouse" and click Okay.

Close that window and now click PLAY to launch the game. It will launch, and you'll notice a weird issue with the mouse cursor. Bring up the console (the tilde ~ key on your keyboard) and type in_mouse 2

Restart the game and it hopefully will be working fine.

 

---

Please let me know in the comments if you have any issues. This guide probably seems very complicated but it's not! It only gets complicated if you want to use the Steam version, but hopefully this explains it well.

On 7/4/2021 at 9:47 PM, undeadslayer said:

@NAB622, could you explain in more detail? I'm still kind of new to this.

He means the path to the sound should be relative to your PK3 file, not your computer. Or if you're using a sound that is already in the game, relative to the path in the assets0.pk3. It should look similar to his example he gave when you edit that entity.

Also keep in mind you should be using "soundset" for doors unless you are using a trigger_multiple or target_speaker for it.

This tutorial explains the basics of doors and has the sound portion:

https://jkhub.org/mapping/richdiesal/Brushes201_Lesson_5_Doors_files/br201lsn5.htm

To quote:

To look up the soundsets you can use for doors, open up the sound/sound.txt file and do a text search for... well, the word "door." Add the key soundset and the value for the soundset you want.  I will be using large_door for mine.

This also shows the soundset key and explains how to do doors in SP fairly simply:

https://jkhub.org/forums/topic/5149-lets-map-singleplayer/?do=findComment&comment=76650

5 hours ago, Zombiesoldier said:

Hey is there anyway we can get mods for ps4, even if its client based having some would be amazing.

The PS4 version doesn’t support mods unfortunately.

5 hours ago, disneyaintcanon13 said:

any chance you could either fix the link to that, or something?

Downloads fine for me. Must be an issue on your end. Probably Adblock not playing nice with it. Try this:

https://icedrive.net/0/a8r1Mq2pCj

Use the commands in the MP section in this:

https://jkhub.org/forums/topic/9974-model-dismemberment-realistic-lightsaber-combat-by-cerez/

Both players and server's cfg will need those commands I believe.

On 6/11/2021 at 11:58 PM, Scerenso said:

So the only thing I know how to do is to install and download mods. Can someone please walk me through on how to edit NPCs? The YouTube videos confuse me.

Start here:

Then go here:

 

Dang, that is awesome, nice job!

I'm pretty sure it uses the same music as t1_surprise, IIRC. You could probably entity mod the map to use a different music track. Try this tutorial:

The music line is usually the very first one in the entity list.

3 hours ago, Bubbles said:

The difference is irrelevant its how Lucas arts interpret it.

I personally find it hard to believe that none of that money will go to funding the project but it doesnt bother me.

Keep in mind he got official approval from Lucasfilm to do this, which means they knew about the patreon already. I’m pretty sure that patreon has been active for his overall channel for more than just this project.

6 hours ago, BlindDaThief said:

I gave it a shot. Doesn't seem to work  still goes to the base openjk. Thanks for trying tho! I appreciate the help either way!

Make sure the japlus folder is in the GameData folder alongside the base folder. Or if you're using OpenJK with the default home path, you'll probably have to put it in the /User/Documents/My Games/OpenJK folder

8 hours?

You know we are not robots, right? We sleep and work and live.

It's not just a matter of pressing the approve button. We have to review the contents and upload it as well.

Y'all would not survive in the JK3files days where it would take a week or more to get approved.

Just remember that creating the model itself isn't going to be JKA specific. So you can go look up tutorials for Blender on YouTube to get you started learning how to use the software. Once you have the saber made, you could then reference the JKA-specific ones or ask for help with getting it into the game.

8 hours ago, Bubbles said:

Only other thing I can think of is a rep system that is showed next to someones name. Again like the old filefront forums. Probably a little meaningless now due to forum activity though. I also doubt it will be effective in getting people to contribute to discussions. Probably be pretty easy to implement though.

It's already a feature, I just have it disabled because I never really saw the point of it. I may consider adding it back.

2 hours ago, Aldro Koon said:

Just a word of caution: We're absolutely booming on our {JoF} community forums to the point of the activity being overwhelming and a big part of that (outside of constantly recruiting new members) is that we don't officially endorse/use Discord. We believe it detracts from forum activity (and we have past data from experimental attempts to back that up). Discord is faster and more modern, people will form groups with each other and just quickly share links/questions there rather than bring up a forum and start a topic, waiting longer for replies etc. So whatever Discord plans you have, It'd be a good idea to tread carefully (assuming the aim is to increase or maintain forum activity here).

It's a valid concern, however we didn't create the JKCommunity discord, and we can't really control people continuing to create JK-related things. We can control our brand and that's about it. The plan is never to make a JKHub discord. When I say Discord integration, I mostly just mean a plugin that allows people to create an account here using their Discord login, which nearly everyone in the gaming world will have. We won't be making a server or sending our traffic elsewhere necessarily. I'm not entirely sure how it'll work yet but your points are well made, for sure. We can't control where people post their stuff though. Some people are just straight up against using JKHub entirely, for no good reason other than ignorance from my perspective. Posting something on Discord will just get lost, but a forum thread or post can be seen at any time easily.

I love Discord and feel like it's a tool that serves a different purpose than a forum does nowadays, but they can go hand in hand, it's just a matter of people realizing that a forum has it's uses.

3 hours ago, Aldro Koon said:

We also try to share what we're up to every now and then here (especially custom created content). I made a topic earlier wanting to share some of our screenshots/videos as we have monthly picture and video contests but I don't know where to place any of that without the fear of it coming across as aggressive marketing. But I generally believe it would be of benefit to have new gameplay footage rolling in on the forums. It basically scratches an itch to get ingame when you see footage of others having fun.

The problem is you're the only group that is doing that. If more clans and groups would do the same, it would feel less spammy. I'm willing to reduce the time limit on how often you guys can post, but I am also considering adding a new media section where artwork and other media like videos can be showcased a little better.

2 hours ago, Bubbles said:

Well with respect to Bucky and any other people you could simple provide a link to the github without hosting it.

May sound pedantic but I see JKHUB as a directory of mods.  Doesnt work so well when a lot are just not on here. For example the same with Movie Battles. A simple information page with a download link that links to the movie battles website.

We can’t host files if the creators specifically don’t want them here. Even just linking to them. They’ll just ask them to be taken down, and we’d have to respect their wishes. There are reasons people have for not posting here, and that’s on them. There isn’t much we can do as staff. It’ll come down to them putting their stuff up themselves. If there’s a mod that is missing, request it to the creator. Maybe if enough people ask they will do it.

2 hours ago, Bubbles said:

I also liked the layout of the old JKA Filefront homepage in which the main page was basically https://jkhub.org/files/   So people could see straight away the most popular downloaded files and what is new. Because I highly suspect most people that use this site are only interested in downloading mods.  Maybe a minor gripe as the current JKHUB homepage does show the most popular downloaded files in a small section.

That’s essentially what I’m planning, yeah. Better to have actually relevant info.

3 hours ago, Wolfeye said:

just not Thanks Giving. )

You mean you don't want to run around as a turkey in JKA?

3 hours ago, Wolfeye said:

Also yea, revamping the wiki would be great. But I've been saying that since like 2016  never seen a good solution to it come up though. Its the kind of thing everyone complains about because it sucks but no one bothers to suggest a better alternative. And I'll be the first to admit, I have not thought up any alternatives.

It's already a feature of this new software (called databases), we just never got around to moving everything over because it's going to be a massive pain. There isn't a conversion tool that will make it automatic, we'll have to manually copy and paste things over. But it will be worth it in the end I think.

On 6/5/2021 at 12:43 PM, BlindDaThief said:

Any way to automatically load the mod upon startup? Or do I have to go to the "mods" section every time?

Create a shortcut to Jedi Academy MP (or OpenJK or whatever client you use) and right click the new shortcut and add this to the Target path:

+set fs_game "japlus"

4 hours ago, Bubbles said:

For example creating a download page to EternalJK with a link to the github. (Maybe a poor example)

I also think it is disapointing that the JK2 community is not more engaged/apart of the JKHUB. I played recently and noticed a lot of interesting content that is just not on JKHUB because JK2MV has autodownload. Which is fantastic but it also means that a lot of maps/models are not backed up anywhere permenant.

I would love if EternalJK was on JKHub, but Bucky specifically didn’t want it on here for some reason when I had asked him a couple years ago. No idea why.

JK2 is another story. It’s another issue with that group of people not interested. They made their own community (JK2.info) and have made it clear they don’t feel the need to be here. Not all, but a lot of them did when I had asked.

All of that is up to those people though. I’ve done a couple campaigns going around to get people to get more involved and get feedback and I usually get the same responses along the lines of them not seeing the point. For mods, I really don’t get it, other than not abiding to our rules I suppose.

Also, the whole issue with clans and players not spending time here is kind of a lost cause nowadays. That’s why I want to kind of switch gears with our mission statement and not try to force people to talk on this forum if they have nothing to contribute other than memes and spam (which we had a big issue with when we had those sections of the forum). Focusing on mod-related things and a wiki/tutorial/database is going to be our best bet going forward I think.

4 hours ago, Bubbles said:

Discord integration may be cool but I dont know how effective it is.

The plan is to at least just make it easy to sign up for an account with a Discord account. Anything further may be a more complicated process that we’d need to team up with the JKC server on, and would be a further out project than this redesign. TBD.

4 hours ago, Bubbles said:

Not sure how big an issue ported content is because on Steams workshop for garrysmod is basically all ported content from other games.

We will most likely go back to the previous rules we had that allow ports under certain stipulations, but we will post about those changes. That might happen before this redesign. The current rules were kind of set out of my control, I wasn’t a fan of changing what I had set before, but it wasn’t necessarily my decision.

1 hour ago, Tompa9 said:

Finally make file section for models with ported parts!

This is also in discussion.

45 minutes ago, mrwonko said:

Firstly, it should be collaborative. The best results are almost always arrived at by improving iteratively. It might be a good idea to have all content under a suitable Creative Commons licence. Contributing has to be easy, to encourage as many people as possible to share their knowledge.

The current wiki is technically like this already. Anyone can make an account and edit things. The issue is that it's a separate account from the forum account, and traditional wikis are a pain to deal with or learn at all.

45 minutes ago, mrwonko said:

The content should not be tied to JKHub. We've had multiple sites go down in the past, taking vast amounts of tutorials with them. Use a system that makes it easy to access and export the content.

If it's not tied to JKHub, that's outside this conversation. Anyone can make a wiki on the various wiki hosts out there. If a group wants to make one outside of JKHub and it ends up being better than something we do, I would love that. If people don't want a wiki here, I will gladly remove it, as long as there is a suitable replacement out there.

EDIT: I should clarify, this feature is built into this forum software, it's going to be a matter of getting it set up and transferring existing wiki pages to it.

So a couple years back, we had been teasing JKHub 2.0 for awhile, saying it would be more modern, include more features, and include a complete redesign. We managed to upgrade to the modern version of the software with some bumps along the way, but with Caelum's absence shortly thereafter, not much was done past that. I have polished some things here and there, but our main goal was to make the new software feel as much like the old one as possible while also including the smoothness and features of the new one, in order to keep people that hate change to slowly ease into it (and let's be honest, that applies to most people here).

However, the actual redesign is still coming, and I'm now in the process of planning it with some help with the other staff. We discussed some things we'd like to see done, but I want to know what you guys think. What are some features you'd like to see on JKHub that either you miss from our past or just think are needed?

Keep in mind the current climate though. The population of the Jedi Knight community is quite small. Asking for weekly or even monthly contests isn't going to happen, but we will be doing more contests. Or asking for more news posts isn't happening either. One big change (which I've already alluded to in the current design) is not making news posts so prominently displayed. There was a point where we didn't have a news post in over a year and it just makes us look inactive. News posts will still happen, but they won't be the focus of this website going forward.

We want to focus on what we do well: mod hosting, showcasing, and discussion. Obviously our file section has always been the focus, but we want newcomers to know that, and make it easy to find. We also want them to know where to go to find anything JK related, such as tutorials, walkthroughs, popular servers and clans, etc.

So here's what is planned for sure so far:

• New design from top to bottom. The old theme will always be available for those that end up hating it.
• New home page with valuable info on who we are and what we offer
• Discord Integration (at least the ability to sign up with an account, further integration TBD)
• Rewards system for contests and other events (gives a badge or something on your profile)
• New wiki/tutorial system (unsure how this will work right now, but our wiki needs some love)
• Yes, more contests and mod features will be done (had to put it here for those that skimmed)

Outside of those things, is there something you wish we would do or have? I'm putting this as a poll but I want actual responses more than votes.