eezstreet

it could be that if the hero characters suffer too much damage, the mission fails... so the player has to help protect/cover them...

That's how it is in the game already, and it's obnoxious as hell.

Wouldn't that allow the player to sit back and watch as the undying NPCs kill every enemy?

One solution might be to spawn more NPCs every time the friendly AI kills something, so the player is forced to kill a certain amount. But that feels cheap.

Any weapon you'd like me to do in particular? I hope to redo all jka&jko weapons at some point in time. Will also retouch my dl44.

The DEMP2 would be good, seeing as how nobody has ever tried to remake that to my knowledge. That, or the rocket launcher. I know you also made an E-11 at one point, didn't you? We could probably use that with some nice PBR shaders.

Great! In theory, would it be possible to have a tool that can render menus and let's you test them without having to start the actual game?

I'm not sure I understand the purpose of such a tool - you can do all of the editing ingame with this tool (for the most part).

In the future I am also considering making a binary menu format that will load faster and only be editable ingame.

 

Absolutely wonderful. Fantastic work! Perhaps a list of "shown" and "hidden" itemdefs? Sometimes, a lot of elements could be hidden and not accessible immediately. In addition, some action/mouse-overs draw itemdefs to a set point of coordinates (think the "glow" that draws on the Base JA menus). Would this be changeable?

This is part of the plan, yes. The controls and feature list are still subject to change.

@@eezstreet

 

If you're interested - I have a clean, "DF2-free" version of DF2's GL2 here for you. I started off from JKE master and added the GL2 stuff in, minus widescreen in-case you have something of the like in JKE already. JK2 should also have GL2 support in the cmake files, but it's untested:

 

https://github.com/DT85/DF2-EDP/tree/Clean-GL2

 

 

Changes from JKE master:

 

- renamed all sp vanilla renderers to GL1

- added GL2 with untested JK2 support in cmake files

 

 

EDIT:

 

I've noticed that some stuff that's in JK2's code, isn't in JKA's code. For example, json. Will the JK2 features be shared at some point?

Yes, when a proper release of EDP comes. A lot of the features are still very heavy WIP at the moment (nav editor can't save yet, among other things).

I intend to create a whole bunch of issues on the Github page detailing everything I need to complete.

 

Were the functions that were missing from GL2 but required for JK2 (eg, jpeg buffering) added?

Properties window now done, see OP for screenshot.

Not all of the properties are available for editing yet. Still have to code special handling for a lot of things like shader/model types.

 

 

 

Very super early WIP but there will be the functionality to edit .menu files from ingame so it's easier to make quick adjustments to the menus.

 

Controls

You need to have the cvar "developer" set to 1 in order to use this.

 

F11 - Enable/Disable ingame UI editor

F12 - Take screenshot

 

Main controls

• MOUSE1 - Select itemDef
• MOUSE2 - Deselect
• N - Create new itemDef
• DELETE - Delete itemDef
• P - Toggle Property Window for selection
• Arrow keys - Move selected itemDef
• I / K - Stretch/shrink itemDef vertically
• J / L - Stretch/shrink itemDef horizontally

Property window controls

• ENTER - Edit property
• Up/Down arrow keys - Scroll through properties
• PAGE UP/PAGE DOWN - Scroll through properties (faster)

 

The properties window, creating new itemDefs, deleting itemDefs, and saving are not currently done yet.

I made a Developer Menu to test this feature out on, which will also have cheats and stuff.

As per the pinned thread:

 

 

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.

Added a video to the first post to demonstrate this feature (apologies for poor video quality, seems like YouTube butchered it)

Does it take away the blur as well?

It doesn't exactly take it away, it makes it different, and active all the time. Basically the core (not the glow) is the only thing that blurs, and it uses a different shader for the trail to make it look like it is blurred. I'm not sure how to describe it easily, but it's very cinematic looking.

The GL2 renderer (rend2) will use realtime lighting as an option in addition to lightmaps. Which of course means that you can preview your lights and get the mood just right, unlike in Radiant.

There will be an ingame lighting editor which you can use to add, remove, and adjust lights on your level. These lights will get saved to a .rtl file with the same name as the map (t2_trip.rtl for instance). A .rtl will get automatically generated at level start if one does not exist, based on a special "realtime_light" entity (which gets discarded after map load, so it doesn't affect the entity limit).

 

No screenshots of this yet, just code, which I need @@SomaZ to assist me in finishing.

I've got the code written, except for the saving and loading. Just the basic console commands for right now.

https://pastebin.com/StwxpyiK

 

It's currently set up like a gamecode file - you'll want it to probably live on the client.

I think ashura is referring to the md3 version as that's done. I'm still making all of the animations for the ghoul2 version, but it won't have all of the animations you've listed mostly due to them not being implemented in code or simply not needed for DF2.

 

Example would be alt fire animation. There isn't one for player models, it's just one fire animation for both modes.

 

I was thinking of doing button activate animations but it'll never 100% match up with the button on the map. You'd be watching the players finger press thin air. To fix this, you'd have to lock the player input and move them to the correct position. I've seen this done in a few games.

Yeah - that's fair enough, we can implement that stuff later.

 

I think it's fine if the interaction doesn't match up on the map, it's never going to look great for ammo dispensers etc without some kind of complete overhaul to how those work.

Is the code in a "good to go" state? I'm wanting to move DF2 over to this, and asap.

It works, yeah. But not all of the code that I want externalized, is externalized.

Basically I want to get the weapons and force powers separated into external scripts or something else, so that the new weapons and force powers can be considered a scripted aspect specific to JK:E, and not part of the "engine" so to speak.

If you think you're going to be ok with some more upstream pulls, then go for it. There's also a rend2-sp branch as well, and a lot of our code is in common there.

@@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.