eezstreet

WTF LIFEHACK

Well, your writing certainly is interesting. Allow me to point out a few points though, that I noticed from the first story. The good parts first: Introduction is very gripping, and has an excellent use of foreshadowingThe atmosphere sits well with me. It has a good use of tension.The plot, while rather simple from the outset, is pretty interesting and enough to keep people engaged.The characterization is pretty good. We get a decent feel for what goes on in the mind of TwinHits, not so much for the girl, but to be fair there isn't much to work with hereThe initial part with the Jedi was a bit alienating at first, but now that I think about it, the idea sits well with me and it's definitely an interesting idea. The things which probably need improved on: Some minor grammar, spelling and punctuation mistakes. To be expected, of course.The dialogue felt really stale and unnatural. Especially the part with the iced tea. Not many people say "unsweetened iced tea", at least not that I know of. Might try a brand name or something in that particular instance in order to make things more realistic. I had a particularly hard time finding any sort of words like "said" now that I mention it. That, along with details can turn sentences from this: Into more interesting blurbs of dialogue, such as this: The part with the Jedi stuff didn't make any sense? Maybe I missed the details, but I don't recall any reference at all to this training or anything that's going on. Just that he's a guy with training who's apparently a Jedi, and that apparently has an effect on Sarah, all for reasons that we don't know about. We also have no idea why the SWAT officers are there. Are they coming to get the guy? It just doesn't seem all that clear to me.

I haven't noticed the first thing. I'll look into it for sure. As for the second thing, yeah, I've been meaning to look into that. It's a bit annoying. Basically a while ago we opted for guns to have their bullets come directly from the muzzle of the gun in ghoul2, in order to speed up the production of guns and make the bullets come out more realistically. Since speed is no longer an issue, I'll see what I can do about giving the blaster shots a muzzle position table similar to how the base game does it. A template isn't a bad idea. Though since the guns are bought from shops, there's always the issue of things not lining up properly. I've given it a bit of thought, and I have a bit of an idea for this that shouldn't result in wasted code time really all that much. Basically, what players could do is put items on a "special order" from the gun merchant. Basically, the idea is that the special order cannot exceed X credits (I guess dependant on the server settings for starting credits), but you could get your special order back at any time. You can have 1 special order done per map. In the RPG environment, special orders would be done whenever, cost more, and have a slight delay in when you can get the item. Saves time in comparison to an Auction House, if we added that. As for your concerns with the maps, I'll be sure to let Pande know!

Since shops are randomized at the moment, one does not simply have a "favorite class" which is able to be purchased from the shop. And again, a bit of a wasted effort if we implemented it since that wouldn't make any sense in an RPG environment.

It's ACI, which is Active Combat Inventory The reason that people need to rebuy weapons is because the gameplay is simply designed like that at the moment. Sorta similar to how in Counter Strike you're supposed to buy new weapons for each map, but this is more stretched out and you can purchase weapons within your base. Won't be a problem obviously with the RPG element, since all that stuff will be saved on the database. As far as remembering the numbers, that's something that I would be interested to look into, but at the same time, it's another one of those things that would probably get trashed later on. I'd like to apologize a bit about that. One thing though that I forgot to mention (I was in a bit of a rush this morning): I've been talking a bit with BobaFett about putting a minimize feature directly into the game (as a chat command), and while we don't have anything solid, we have a theory that a ingame minimize command would be pretty feasible, using a lot of the same tricks that Ultra Utility uses, with a few added hooks here and there. I think you and I both know that using a third party program at all to minimize is a bit ridiculous Never been a big fan of KTs either, since they just annoy other people from my experience with them. Sucks if you just want a minimizer though. I'd have to ask @@redsaurus about that, as I don't think any coders have experience with Mac compiling. Would be a bit of a huge undertaking with all the hooks that would need to be done. However... our launcher is written with cross-compatibility in mind (it uses Qt, which works on Mac, Linux, and PC), so that won't be a problem. It's mostly the hooks and game engine hacks that are the problem. But yes, I've definitely considered Mac stuff in the past, and a Linux serverside is highly desired. If anyone has some experience with Mac-specific reverse engineering, they're welcome to step up to the plate. Noted. Menus are in need of a massive overhaul anyway. Stay tuned for my awesome/groundbreaking/HOLY GOD THAT'S AWESOME reverse engineering feature which addresses UI and minigames specifically when it comes to rendering. Post processing sounds like the cause of these issues. Check and see if turning off post processing fixes the issues.

We have an official server, but it doesn't show up in the main JKA server listing (though it could if we wanted it to, I suppose). We separated it from the main server listing for a number of reasons: 1. prevents people from connecting to the server when they don't have the mod installed, and giving them an instant crash as soon as they join a server 2. prevents ridiculous drive-by DDOSes and other crap that people like to pull on random servers in the server list 3. prevents our servers from cluttering up the server list, which always was a pain to me when dealing with Siege, and having to sort between an actual Siege server and MB2 (this can be corrected really easily too, I might add). I'm assuming that that's what you meant with 'the entire JA community knows about'. Course, we could put a server up with some realistic looking bots that shows up in the main server list, just to draw people into the mod. But that won't really do us a whole lot of good to be honest, with the mod being so beta-y. Secondly, I'm not a big fan of FFA myself and it really wouldn't work with the whole shop system. TFFA is better in this regard because then you don't have to worry about people killing other people at the shops. We noticed this being a big problem whenever we tried doing a setup with FFA. It just doesn't work. idd, however, TerranGaming has spoken with us and they're going to make our microsite look more independent from the main site, so it looks a lot more professional. I guess I would be partially to blame for that. We want to get the next patch really polished, and the plan was to release a news post along with the patch to help re-invigorate the community. There is a launcher package out (but not selectable atm) called PTR, which whenever it's ready, will allow players to play the next patch and submit bug reports on our site, which should help to prevent such failures as the ones that the mod experienced at launch. Not a bad suggestion. We will look into it, and work on it more whenever we have less of a workload to deal with. I can totally agree with you and attest to this. While some weapons were underpowered, a lot of them (Stouker Concussion Rifle comes to mind) were overpowered and spammy. A specific list of what people think would be great in sorta helping us out with this. Probably going to get removed. The next version of CTF Bespin doesn't have pickups. Speaking of this -- we have a packed version of the launcher in the works which has the game more or less in a .zip that the launcher extracts to the location. Updates would still be done through the site however. Agreed, but would be a temporary fix in the long run. Yeah, I can see why this would be irritating. BobaFett's Ultra Utility seems to be your best bet. I believe this was done to prevent hacks with outside tools or something similar. Fixed a while ago. Hm, good point. This will need changing. Yep. Our UI person is dealing with some RL stuff so unfortunately we're kinda stuck. But, there is a .cfg file that people can mess with as a temporary solution. ? Not sure I follow. Yeah. I've been sorta prototyping a fix for this but nothing substantial yet. People use controllers? XD But seriously though, we did a pretty large hook on the input, and I can assure you that PS3 controller support is planned.

Not that I know of.

No. The saber blade is hardcoded in that regard and you can't change a shader on a hilt or whatever based on the saber blade.

Yes. The shaders you're looking for are in gfx/effects/saber. Each color has two shaders: one for blade and one for the glow around the blade.

Kengo's tutorial was shut down due to Yahoo geocities being shut down. But the basic premise is this: - Set up two ref_tags - In ICARUS: - Enable camera - Do a camera pan and move which points to the first ref_tag, both with 0 ms/time - Do a camera pan and/or move pointing to the second ref_tag, with something in the ms/time field which specifies how fast it goes - Compile script - Have game point to script via target_scriptrunner - Trigger script ingame. - Have fun

I know a lot of you are liking the OP, but I am interested mostly in whatever feedback that people have to offer.

I probably meant "mods", not "models". The problem with making mods for cash is that you're ripping off of the game itself. Especially in the case of code mods and level design, and even more so when there's highly proprietary formats involved like those involved with ICARUS and GLM. Since neither of those two formats have been explained in depth to us by Raven, it's pretty safe to say that the format isn't open, and likewise, the use of those formats wouldn't exactly be ethical. Then there's the concern of moral integrity, respect, things like that involved.

Use v1.33 for launcher. I have a feeling you're using the old version.

Regardless of whether it's rigging, it's still important information that needs to be known. We're getting off topic here though.

It's part of models being put into the game.

Last I checked, Assimilate was definitely part of the Jedi Academy SDK.

Regardless, there aren't a great deal of tutorials on JKH regarding it, and it's pretty necessary really.

This totally wasn't @@Caelum's idea or anything, but I think JKG has gotten off on the wrong foot with a lot of people, and this is my chance to try and change people's opinions about things. I would like to apologize for the rushed release of the initial game, and sorry about the misinformation that was generally given out about the state of the mod, and the useless hype around the release. Going forward, I want to get some opinions from the community about how to improve the game and make things better, accessibility of the mod, gameplay, whatever. I think we have a lot of things to make up for, and I've taken a lot of the flak (and believe me, I took it quite personally) from various different communities such as MB2, JKH, on our own turf at TerranGaming, Moddb, Facebook, all of those different places. I think we released a very buggy and incomplete product. A bit of a shame really. We rushed to get the game out by the release date, and I think that we ought to have delayed the release personally. But unfortunately shortcomings are quite common in the world, and a lot of them befell the release. I've personally spent a lot of time trying to rectify our mistakes. Lots of bugs and changes were done, as our patch notes may indicate: http://jkg-update.terrangaming.com/packages/public/patchnotes.html And the next patch will fix things even further: What I want people to do is give us some kind of feedback in general with JKG. Constructive criticism, a description of whatever bad experience you might have had, a description of whatever good experience you might have had, an idea as to where we should take things, all things will be considered. I'll watch over this thread very carefully and try to respond to each answer thoroughly. For any JKG devs that are watching, I ask that they do not respond to this thread, I will handle things myself the best I can. If for whatever reason this thread dies out, I ask that someone mention me.

Hm. This kinda reminds me of the whole debate over abortion. Taking a stance like this one says to me that you don't really care. I can respect that. I can respect paying for a model. I can't respect paying for a mod. Fair enough. But I believe that people need tutorials because they aren't naturally lazy, they need some way to learn. JKH doesn't have any real tutorials on the matter and I doubt that tool tutorials are going to be enough when it comes to rigging, as it's a complicated process.

I kinda have a different viewpoint on this (see what I did there?). It isn't a victimless crime if you think about it. The victim is the community itself, because if people are openly accepting money for mods and trading them for cash, at what point will the community start making mods simply for cash? Nobody would be able to simply request a mod or get help with anything without there being cash involved. Openly allowing people to pay for mods, directly or indirectly, only condones such behavior. You have a fair point here. But when you're releasing such a large mod as kotf, and (not taking into account the obviously stolen content and simple scripting that the mod is) you're basing it off of the factors of both the Star Wars IP and the Jedi Academy code which lays the foundation, that's stealing from the game developers and George Lucas. So either way you swing it, you're still stealing. How would you like it if someone made a modification of JKHub, and then required pay for people to join, and it actually made a reputable profit? Pretty miffed, I would assume. This. And resources, I presume I wasn't actually aware of such a thing going on. But at least he's cleaned up a bit, I suppose. However, the mod is developing now at a much more steady pace. Notable is that the running animation you've mentioned is gone already in the next patch

So how does it stand morally, which in my opinion is the bigger issue?

Sure, but if he didn't have any donation, the creator probably wouldn't have made it. Frame of reference:

Ninja'd, so I'll respond to this here. it's good that the tutorial will come about, but I still don't agree with the fact that it needed a texture to be brought into the community. Someone doesn't have to simply "want" something to get things done. I for one want bigotry, greed, and ignorance to end. Now, I've already spent pretty much my whole day on a forum defending my idea that one of those tenants should be upheld (and another, indirectly), that doesn't change the fact that people like Dan Mor or Tim are still profiting from the modding community. That's why we need to inspire people. We need to inspire people to make models and other artwork, because people want tutorials on how to achieve what they're trying to do, not something which may or may not be unrelated. I don't know about you, but I'm not going to spend 30 hours or more studying on the theory of light before I learn anything about graphics programming.

Sorry, I misinterpreted. I thought he meant a prepackaged mod. Either way you swing it, "donating" for a "mod" to be "released" is still wrong. Yeah, I misinterpreted. Sorry about that again. ._. And I'm talking about mods here, and whether or not it's legal for people to make mods, which for all intents and purposes, the OP of that thread was explicitly asking for. He wouldn't have asked for a simple mesh to be done on a forum explicitly about modding. That simply doesn't make any sense. Why would somebody ask for a mesh on a relatively small forum such as this for a specific niche, in favor of something like IndieDB or Polycount, where that kinda stuff is traded all the time. Furthermore, the lack of explicit sentiments such as "I only want the mesh, I'll put it into the game myself" (which I guess I would've been fine with, I don't totally agree with it, it's better than paying for a mod I guess but I still kinda disagree with the idea) makes me believe that the person was wanting a mod made, not a model.

It's illegal if you violate the game's EULA, is it not? That's a minor point though.