eezstreet

@@DT85 is animating it for the DF2 Mod

So I guess it does.

I will mark it as yellow for now until I know for sure.

Are you doing any other weapons?

@@eezstreet You forgot to highlight the bryar in green

Does it have all of the animations listed in this thread?

I'm thinking about implementing a series of configuration files that can be used to enable/disable certain features at startup, instead of making these all cvars as I feel like it would lead to unnecessary cvar bloat (also, autoexec.cfg for instance tends to be finnicky for developing stuff with).

 

Here's an example of what I'm thinking of, using the base game's method of parsing files:

 

 

detachable_eweb
{
    featureEnabled 1
    explosionEffect env/explosion
}

 

Some of the base game's cvars can be migrated to such a system:

 

 

swappable_sabers
{
    featureEnabled 1
}
 
manual_blocking
{
    featureEnabled 1
    blockButton BUTTON_ALT_ATTACK
}

 

I want them to be pretty convenient to handle in code too, for our purposes.

 

Force powers and weapons wouldn't be an example of something that can be configured in this system, instead I am thinking of making those into external files/scripts somehow.

The Enhanced Development Platform is the base which Jedi Knight: Enhanced is developed on, and it's designed to be used by other modders as well. It is based on OpenJK and is targeting singleplayer only.

 

So what will EDP offer you as a modder that isn't offered by OpenJK or JAMP? Well...

• Better graphics, and better performance too. EDP offers two renderers: GL1 and GL2 (better known as rend2). GL1 is similar to the original game's renderer but runs better. GL2/rend2 is a modern renderer with enough new features to warrant its own thread. On top of that, we will be focusing on changing the renderer pipeline to eliminate some of the greatest bottlenecks in the engine. And on top of that, we've added some novelty quality of life features like SFX sabers, holstering, and more. And on top of that you have this all running on OpenJK, which has all kinds of nice performance boosts.
• Ingame editing tools. Many of the new modding features in EDP can be accessed entirely ingame. The AI workshop lets you debug AI scripts with ease, or just screw around, if that's what you want to do. An updated waypoint editor lets you develop the navigation of the map without recompiling, and you can view your results live with the AI workshop. There are more tools coming, and these are just the start.
• More things, to be added in the future. I have a lot of crazy ideas which I want to implement. This is just the start.

 

Documentation:

• Downloading and installing the Enhanced Development Platform, the easy way
• Downloading and installing EDP, from source
• Setting up your project
• Adding new weapons
• Material workflow: .mtr and you
• Deploying your project
• CVAR list, rend2

(If a piece of documentation doesn't have a link, that means it's still being written!)

Old news, but needs to be documented: EDP has support for SFX Sabers. SFX Sabers are dramatically higher quality than the base game lightsaber rendering and can be toggled with the cg_sfxSabers cvar.

 

Available for both JK2 and JKA.

 

Original Lightsabers:

 

 

 

SFX Sabers:

 

 

 

Video comparison:

 

Perhaps this answers your question, @@DT85 ?

Since the Enhanced Development Platform is now going to be a major part of the project, I am thinking about doing some housekeeping on these forums and making it a lot easier for people to understand.

 

Here are some of the changes which I am proposing:

• Condense JK:E Weapons, Player Models, Coding and Missions sections into one forum section: JK:E Content Development which is for discussion of all development stuff
• Move News to the top

On top of that, I am thinking of making a new Mod Projects forum or a new forum that's part of this mod projects area, for modders to discuss the Enhanced Development Platform and to ask questions/get help, etc etc etc

 

@@Circa @@redsaurus

Removed a lot of stuff which is specific features of EDP.

Updated roadmap.

It's based on the tool that you're using. You'd want to learn how to animate with whatever tool you're using, not anything JKA specific.

Not that I know of. Would be a nice feature of OpenJK, though it might require a menu edit as well.

The problem is that there is no way to code for this, because servers have all kinds of ways of faking bots as players.

Methodology/Why I'm doing this

I've spent a lot of time thinking about how the project should be organized. There's two separate, yet important goals that I want to accomplish with this project:

1. Create a solid platform for people to base their mods off of, similar to OpenJK but taking more risks, breaking compatibility entirely with old save games and so on.
2. Create the best possible experience for JK2 and JKA yet still retain a similar feel to opening the box for the first time.

However these two goals have wildly different demands and expectations. We'll refer to the game people should play as "the mod" and the game people should develop on as "the platform" in this list:

1. The mod should be relatively bug-free, and therefore necessitate very strongly-vetted releases. As a platform, this does not matter as much.
2. The mod should be released in different channels than a platform; a mod should be in public download areas like on JKHub, whereas a platform release belongs more on a forum.
3. The platform needs loads of documentation to ship with it, so developers know how to use it. This would be completely unnecessary and even confusing on a mod release.
4. A mod release should ship with all of the best assets, whereas a platform release should come only with testing assets.
5. A platform release, ideally, should have material relating to both games (JK2/JKA) and all of the different renderers shipped with it. A mod release only should target one game, and ship with two renderers, maximum.
6. A platform release would be shipping with .map files, model source and source code, which is wholly unnecessary for a mod release.

Therefore, it makes sense to distribute two separate versions. There will be JK:Enhanced (which will have JK2:Enhanced and JA:Enhanced as "child" mods) as well as The Enhanced Development Platform

 

What is the Enhanced Development Platform?

The Enhanced Development Platform is a modding-oriented codebase. It is based and design on the concept of OpenJK. The main difference between this and OpenJK however is that we're generally going to be breaking savegame compatibility on purpose and be more open to feature requests. The philosophy will also be different, since we are targeting modders specifically, and not players and modders like OpenJK is. (OpenJK is also targeting Multiplayer and Singleplayer. We are targeting only singleplayer.) Releases on the Enhanced Development Platform will be frequent and available for all three major OSes (Windows/Mac/Linux).

 

The EDP opens up a lot of the hardcoded stuff and makes that more accessible to the modder. Information on this will be forthcoming.

 

There will almost certainly be a lot of bugs and possibly crashes or worse. We aren't focusing on making the platform stable. However, "stable" releases will be marked as such.

 

What does the EDP offer me, as a modder?

It's a stable codebase, like OpenJK is, but there's a lot more experimental/interesting stuff that's been implemented. A lot of this breaks compatibility with the original savegames and can't be implemented on the main branch of OpenJK.

 

A non-exhaustive list of things that will be offered in the EDP, in both JK2 and JKA:

• rend2 - A modern renderer that utilizes Physically Based Rendering and advanced techniques like normal/bump mapping, real time shadows and specular mapping. (More information / Announcement)
• Aspect ratio correction for fonts/text/some images
• SFX Sabers - These saber blades, most notable for appearing in Moviebattles and originally appearing in OJP, are a vast improvement over the original saber rendering technique.
• JSON Weapon System - Swap out your weapons.dat for a new JSON file which loads faster and can be changed ingame with a cvar. It also has more fields that can be modified.
• GHOUL2 First Person Weapons - Use the power of the game's GHOUL2 model format to create animated first person weapons.
• The AI workshop - Manipulate NPCs with console commands (More information)
• Ingame Navigation Editor - Alter the game's waypoints/point_combat places ingame without recompiling the map.
• .eent files - Add extra entities to maps without modifying the BSP
• Weapon Holstering - Weapons can show up on your player.
• TrueView 2.0 - View your feet in first person, or just view from the third person model's head
• /spawn command - Spawn entities ingame, like Lugormod's /place command
• Performance Improvements, Bug Fixes - FPS has been improved across the board. Lots of minor bugs in the game have been corrected, thanks to being based on OpenJK.
• Sample Library - All of the map samples, sound effects, script sources, etc are wrangled up in one place.

 

When will EDP be available?

Technically, the code for it has always been available (https://github.com/JKEnhanced/OpenJK) but over the coming months there will be some changes to the code, new documentation written and automatic code deployment to help make things easier.

 

What does this mean for JK:Enhanced/the mod?

It's a good thing, since the development will be streamlined and we can appeal to modelers/mappers who want to help out. My time will probably be taken up by writing documentation, but I've been idle for a lot of the time anyway because much of what needs to be done is art assets.

 

Plus it totally gives me a good excuse/motivation to work on actually neat/crazy stuff that will never be seen by the players anyway, like an ingame scripting system or something crazy.

 

These forums are going to get reorganized as well.

The angle of how it's held is mostly what bothers me. It should match the original game better.

Yea, only entities. Is there special code you use to read -onlyents bake runs or is it compiled to the bsp?

Well, OpenJK supports an external .ent file, but I just bake it right into the .bsp. So basically yeah, it's compiled into the BSP.

 

What I do is pretty simple, and I'm surprised nobody has written a tutorial on this:

 

1. Decompile the original map using q3map2
2. Modify the entities from the .map using Radiant
3. Run q3map2 -onlyents
4. Bam, you've modified the map's entities.

Well, I have a build from 2014-12-15, and it has XInput support enabled, and it works nice. This one will work?

Well, this is its own source fork...so....?

Ok, I understand. I hope that proper joystick support will be added someday, cause it's a nice feature for SP.

 

And I guess that if I use your mod with an older build of OpenJK (one with no SDL), it won't work properly, isn't?

Erm, depends. I was the one who wrote the original XInput code that was in OpenJK before, but you had to compile with that feature enabled.

@@eezstreet- but it also has lots of improvements. Maybe there needs to be a cleaner, uncrufty version? @@UniqueOne

Like?

I guess a proper joystick support won't be added (or fixed) to JK2:E and JKA:E until its fixed in OpenJK, isn't?

If I did joystick support, there are some things which I would need to add to the game which OpenJK won't ever support (button context info, rumble, etc). OpenJK is getting better at joystick support however so...

Simple answer, no. Just because you wont need a new version of q3map2. ^^

Ah ok, so it's just extra light entities?

If that's the case, in theory I won't need to have the map source if I can decompile and do an -onlyents bake run, like I've been doing already to optimize some of the waypointing the easy way.

 

Should everyone be using @@UniqueOne's improved 64bit q3map2?

wzmap has a lot of extra cruft that I don't think is really necessary.

Yea, sure. Without proper Materials everything will look strange.

Can you provide me with a version of q3map2 (and the entity name/properties/whatever) that works with your new lighting model, when it's ready?

It should be easier to use than the current lighting system. It won't break compatibility with GL1. It's simply some new entities to place on the map that are ignored by GL1.

Well, we'll also need some new textures as well.

I did a history check on the files involved and didn't see anything out of the ordinary.

I've noticed that if there is an animation that's in the code but not in the animation.cfg, the game will print a NaN error at the top of the screen in white.

Very weird. It can probably be looked into.

Yey, vertex lighting! *_* (just kidding)

 

Ok, now I want you to ask if you got all the JO map files? PBR doesn't necessarily look good if you only use the new pbr materials. You also need new lighting. As I already told everyone in Discord I'm currently working on a new light system that's completely working on the GPU. This will result in very different light placements and the removal of all the fill lights that are extensively used in JO. I will also write support for the old shadow technique, which is used by the vanilla game (so one can choose between old shadows and lighting vs the new system, performance wise). The new system will completely ignore the pre-generated lightmaps and lightgrids and will only rely on the new light entities (and some diffuse environment probes that are automatically generated by the renderer to compute global illumination). We will keep the rend2 compatibility to the vanilla system, but will expand the system for much higher quality. This will require some additional love in mapping, besides the new materials.

 

I'm just writing this to make sure that you know what you've been up to. ^^

I have *some* of the map files, but not all of them. My thought process is, if I can show what I can do with the .map files, I can talk people into giving me the rest.

 

Your system sounds complicated, but awesome. My only concern is, will it break the original lights in GL1?

Let's talk about the standards of the weapons that will be in JK:Enhanced, and what needs to be done to bring a new weapon into the game.

There are two distinct differences between a JK:Enhanced/DF2 weapon and a base JKA weapon:

• The first person model in JK:Enhanced uses a GHOUL2 viewmodel, similar to the playermodel. It has a lot of extra cool animations that are going to be added, and there are also some new features that can be added (surfaces can be turned on/off, new skins can be added, things can be bolted onto the model, etc)
• JK:Enhanced will include the rend2 renderer built in, and of course, this means that a .mtr shader will have to be included as well as the original game's .shader. We utilize the metal workflow of PBR, short for Physically Based Rendering, a set of modern rendering techniques that incorporates the real properties of light, materials, etc.

So to start out with, I think we should first describe all of the weapons which are present in JK:Enhanced, or will be present at some point. There may be more, but here are the core ones which will definitely exist:

• Stun Baton (Model in progress by @@Seven)
• Bryar Blaster Pistol (We can use @@AshuraDX's model)
• E-11 Blaster Rifle (We can update any number of existing models to fit in PBR, or make a new one)
• Tenloss DXR-6 Disruptor Rifle (Model in progress by @@Silverfang)
• Wookiee Bowcaster (No updated model exists)
• Imperial Heavy Repeater (Model of it by @DT85 exists, just need to update it)
• DEMP2 (No updated model exists)
• Golan Arms FC-1 Flechette Weapon (A model of it was in progress by Reven, but possibly lost (?))
• Merr-Sonn PLX-2 Portable Missile System (No updated model exists, to my knowledge)
• Thermal Detonators (There is an older model in Ultimate Weapons and one in JKG, but I believe @DT85 is working on one)
• Trip Mines (There is a model in JKG, but it doesn't match the original game enough to suit my tastes)
• Detonation Packs (No updated model exists)
• Hands (There is currently no updated hands model, which will need to be visible for animations etc)
• Lightsaber (@Rooxon has a model, not sure if it has PBR or not)

Now let's talk about some of the animations that will be present. The ones I've marked with an asterisk will probably not need to be present on the Stun Baton, since there are no force powers. Anything I've marked with a double asterisk is something that may or may not be used, or open to discussion

• Base/Normal
• Idle animations?
• First time equip (a special animation that plays when you equip the weapon for the first time)
• Fire
• Alternate Fire
• Equip
• Unequip
• Force push*
• Force pull*
• Mind trick*
• Low ready state (for when you are too close to a wall, fallen down, or using Force Heal)
• Transition to low ready
• Transition away from low ready
• Force Lightning, quick*
• Force Lightning, start*
• Force Lightning, hold*
• Force Lightning, stop*
• Force Grip, quick*
• Force Grip, start*
• Force Grip, hold*
• Force Grip, stop*
• Callout, pointing (it's a new system in the JK2 portion that I coded, where you can "point out" enemies to get the friendly AI to focus on them)
• Use non-bacta item (a "toss" animation for throwing down a sentry gun or seeker)
• Push/use button start**
• Push/use button hold**
• Push/use button stop**
• Reload weapon**
• Sprint start**
• Sprint loop**
• Sprint end**
• Melee bash attack**