eezstreet

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 stuffMove News to the topOn 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.

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

Thread moved to Modding Assistance

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: 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. 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: The mod should be relatively bug-free, and therefore necessitate very strongly-vetted releases. As a platform, this does not matter as much. 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. 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. A mod release should ship with all of the best assets, whereas a platform release should come only with testing assets. 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. 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 imagesSFX 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 BSPWeapon 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 commandPerformance 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.

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

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

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.

Like?

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...

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

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?

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.

Very weird. It can probably be looked into.

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/NormalIdle animations?First time equip (a special animation that plays when you equip the weapon for the first time)FireAlternate FireEquipUnequipForce 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 readyTransition away from low readyForce 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**

@@DT85 sorry to bother you about this again, but could we maybe see a PBR-enabled one for rend2? Since I have that working now.

*sparkle sparkle*

Amazing work. That's a ghoul2 viewmodel?

Maybe it would help if you had a more specific question?