Oobah

All JO Specific bespin textures are now in there own folder for JA. This means not a huge pk3 with a lot of JO assets as well as no issue with confusion or file confliction. For those who don't also know, ffa_bespin was basically JO's equivalent to mp/ffa3 for JA. All the drops and spawn points are also on the map as well. The boundary clip was moved back so people (who have admin) can't tele and walk around the out skirts of the map. Map lighting was tweaked and improved (lighting on the exterior roofs and a few other map spots). Few other brush related and texture based fixes (windows now have a proper glow shader on them). Beyond that, it's jo bespin to JA. This map was compiled for a relatively empty base folder (mine). So as such if you run into errors/issues with textures missing (relies also on base JA bespin textures), the error is on your end with a custom map setup that alters base ja bespin textures. No fancy _skybox in the background. I kept it closer to the original on that end. But all other stuff is just more modern implementations on an old map. FPS wise was also solid through the map for me as well. Two clips were removed, the main central building and the bevel near the main landing platform just cause it's more areas for people to jump up on. Little admin "hot box" has a layer of glass inside now. This map was also tested live on my own hosted server. Sometimes live testing can give better feedback. Map .pk3 size as well is only a small 3.38mbs. Now for some screenies.

I haven't really changed my mind on more additions to the current map. I just diverted my energy into other things. As for the rest of the map related content, maybe after a little while. Not like the map source is going anywhere anyway. Just gotta be patient and wait. I think the space port portion and into the dark valley might be the most needed for that part. In depth caves sound great, in theory. But for core usage I imagine might be a waste of energy in regards to usage of said areas ultimately going to waste. Like the main cave before the dark valley, no real door on that and it would extend the area size for map portals and could cause some strange little headaches just due to what is rendered or potential fps drops. I'm sure I can get the main central valley into the 4 core tombs to function fine fps wise. Be big enough also I imagine. See what happens when I get to that point. These are just some ideas off the top of my head, nothing is set in stone as of yet.

Map is released and be up when jkhub approves it. Check it out if you want to replay JO Yavin Temple in JA. For the memories, I guess.

Wrong, manual hinting is not always needed or highly needed in any way, shape, or form. The default calculations alone function just fine for the most part. High FPS comes from cell sizes being to large, typically. It's why even SJC's maps with huge custom made outside areas got FPS drops. What about Szico Blue Ice or Atlantica exterior cell? I get FPS drops and I'm on a quard core with 8 gigs of memory and a 680GTZ. This is an FPS game engine. It's not an MMO/modern engine. At a certain point it will simply dip the fps because it was not made for huge/large outside areas/cells. Default portal calculations by Radiant might not be "perfect" but what the hell is in life anyway. If you're running into issues manually hinting, chances are you're method/way is not any better than the one setup/done by the game engine itself. Good solid mapping skills alone can either make or break your map, right from the get go. Might take more work to map things out a bit more "cleanly" but it will save you long term headaches. Even SP base install maps with large outside areas such as t2_trip, vjun1, etc all get fps drops at points due to the cell size being to far/large to fully render even with the fog they had in place. There is better ways to render a more atmospheric surrounding cell backdrop than trying to shove it all in 1 cell. No, it's not misc_skyportal either. Of course you can manually hint and I would only recommend to do so if you understand how the portal system works to a point you can do it better. Anyone can manually hint. But if your mapping is fairly clean and solid, you really wont need to. You can only squeeze so much optimization out of really any map/piece of work. If you're getting any kind of fps drops or your rendering other parts of the map, that has more to do with your mapping capabilities and less with the portals generated. Portals in the -vis stage are calculated after the initial bsp file stage. Clean up your map and find a better way to produce the content. Despite whatever fps drops some of the larger outdoor areas that Raven created with the base game, I still will give them credit because they still made some pretty nice looking content for use by players, despite whatever bugs/things they overlooked. Have you seen some of the base maps in radiant? Some of them are not even fully caulked/detail brushes, yet people still get pretty solid fps on some of the base ffa maps. Even with there manual hinting, they didn't put it all over the map either. They only manually hinted specific areas. No reason to try and put every single cell into 1 large cell. Not even Counter Strike: Source/Go mappers do that. When you have to many things as structural brushes the game calculates portals AROUND those things, detail them. Anything that isn't mainly a wall/ceiling/floor. So that means railings, stairs, elevator lifts, doors, ceiling lights, etc need detail brush. Also if you have slanted walls, detail brush those to and setup a caulk layer behind it so it doesn't give you a compile error. The game will try to calculate portals on curved surfaces also and they can also lead to issues of walls randomly vanishing IN the compile process. I'm going to setup a potential guide on how to do background details so people no longer have to compile large exterior cells. Backdrop is for looks and the way I mapped it out, it has no drop on fps. I can do big backdrops and not even have to put it all in a single cell. Why? Cause I researched on a method/way to do it.

Why so serious?

I don't care for rend2, persay. When a full stable, not code injected fixes/improvements here and there, comes out. I can update this and Massassi accordingly after I learn the best way to deliver the lighting changes. It's not on my priority list and I'm not sure how much impact it will have on gameplay with fps and such as it stands now. I'll leave that to the code junkies to hammer out those details. Not interested in compiling the code and having to constantly update, on top of potential things possibly overlooked that need repatched/fixed again. Base game alone (with light end mods) is stable, more or less, and that suffices for now. Can probably, more or less get the same effect with a mixture of skybox lighting and making the lights actually emit light sources onto the map, with a few light diamonds here and there to fill in the gaps. But like anything else it needs fine tuning to get the best graphical effect. I've seen worse light jobs though.

And now for the map with level lighting. More or less done BUT I'm going test it some more to hammer out fine things before release. I hate endless map versions as much as anyone else so that's the reason I'm testing all I can. Expect an upload here in a day or so though just due to how it's looking to me so far.

Once you release any content it is no longer fully in your control. As for -vis I'll give you few things to aid you. -vis stage is more or less a finer calculation of map portals after the initial map .bsp is compiled. If the portals get messy and you have vanishing walls, it's due to the portal calculation. Simply put, clean up your mapping. Detail more or less anything that isn't the core wall/floor/ceiling. That means beams, trims, and fancy brush work that doesn't connect the core map to the void outside the level, detail brush it to aid in the portal calculations. 1. Manual hint brush work is REALLY not needed. The game does fine with the portal calculations. 2. Portal generation in a cube aka box is easier. When you have a lot of randomly curved surfaces the portals try to calculate out its way around them and can cause little issues here and there. 3. If you have two cells connected together, not in the form of doors but such as windows. Like an exterior window to an interior cell. The exterior cell portals that are calculated will be apart of the interior ones. Which leads into 4. 4. Portals calculate things that are viewable. If you have more detail brushes, but an exterior piece of caulk to just calculate out a pure box with the randomly jutting walls as detail. The portals can become very simple and render distant brush work more so regardless of say, you're away from a window or next to it. Takes a bit of experimentation BUT it's what you have to deal with mapping on something like this. Newer games have more rendering of far away detail and such, but this is an FPS engine. Work within the limitations, don't plow through them. This is why lot of maps made with big flashy exterior work was a waste of effort. If the people researched they could of done something as effective without any impact on the map FPS. MT I did for example did that. For manual hint brushing a simple thing you can do is put it around areas where the hallway bends into another portion. It may still render part of the wall in the distance BUT it will not render as much of the entire area. If you have everything contained in a SINGLE cell, it will most likely render everything in that cell regardless of its distance from you. This is why you're better off isolating cells to specifics. This is more so for large exterior cells, which really aren't needed. If you have a whole map contained in a single cell, which means windows going into hallways, etc. It renders area portals more or less useless and not effective in the least. You can render the portals generated in game, but due to Radiant being able to do it, can cut out the testing time to see where the hiccups might be. But sometimes a test of a basic compile can be helpful also to see what is not fully working right. At a certain distance, even brush work, the LOD quality will alter/change. Take that into consideration for things at a far distance.

They aren't solid on purpose, none of the sitting chairs are. They're setup with mods in mind to make use of the chair sitting emotes. Sitting in meditation style sit in a chair looks, meh. Got the animations in most mods, why not use them for the intended purpose. Back of peoples minds also, see that larger temple in the distance. Get there imaginations going and think "other people are there right now training" sorta deal. With this smaller map setup people will also feel/think that others are at those smaller temples training. So in general just adds more atmosphere! Who doesn't love a bit of atmosphere. Also this _skybox setup is great for doing outside areas. No more nasty fps drops if you wanna do surrounding things for looks. Map has all the music switches also. As well will support the day/night setup. Plus due to heavy amounts of usage of MT. Map download for this will be small in comparison. It's like, a brother sister sorta deal with the maps. I wager with the final light build, this map expansion will be no bigger than a skin/model used by people. I just hope people realize you will need MT downloaded to make use of this, I can see the endless mountains of posts already, crying about missing textures.

This relies heavily on assets of MT itself, so you will need that installed to make full use of this. What is this? It's a restored JO Yavin_Temple to JA setup. I added few of the changes from JA, such as the temple exteriors being more difinitive and less old ruins (I imagine the Jedi would clean up and renovate things to serve there purposes more). This temple is based on the position of one of the smaller temples in the _skybox of MT, when you look out in the distance. I'll let people figure that one out themselves. I setup and used the same skybox technic so as such all surrounding detail is purely for looks, it will have 0 effect on map fps. In terms of imagination as well, I wager the surrounding hill space contains rebel hangars and command centers. But my focus is purely on the Temples. I'm only doing YT, I have no interest in creating other ones. If you recall back in JA SP, Jadens jedi training the old ruins cut through hills and so forth. So that should give you an idea of how the smaller temples connect to the main one. It's a lot like the Jedi Temple on Coruscant. Basically the central larger temple here could be considered the upper portion of the main temple, smaller temples in the distance of the main temple are basically the lower levels of the temple. Like a network it goes out into the little appendages/digits which connect to the smaller temples. Which are used more for specific and more advance training. Maybe have 1 temple that focues souly on force, or perhaps another way to look at it is like you have one temple for Guardians and then another for Consulars, etc. Like Massassi it has all the basic background related things for relaxing, etc. All small temples are setup for self sufficiency from the main temple. There is no mess hall at the smaller temples. They utilize rations and are focused on more advance training. I also used some of the SP based cutscene rooms for few more room addons to the smaller temple itself (Rosh in medical at the end of SP, bedroom area, and lukes personal room now changed into a smaller council room). I also setup a small scale style duel6 in the courtyard, it's basically a dueling pit. If you look out in the distance you will see the larger temple, hiding behind the hill. Without further adieu (test build, no lighting as of yet).

If a mod is considered "abusive" or alters the game to much. There is really a simple answer to that. Small isolated parts and portions are responsible for what it turns out whether that's "abusive" admins or what have you. That's a reflection on these little communitys, and there is a server out there that caters to just about everyones preference in play. A mod is just a tool. People complain about every mod in some way, shape, or form. As well as the fact that every mod has people who personally go out of there way to take it apart OR defend it like it's a holy icon. I've seen plenty of clans through the years simply "give" admin to people just cause they hit a magical rank that allowed them to get it handed to them. But how many places actually taught people the simple basic thing that "being an admin actually means maintaining(whatever your prefered play style is) our level of standard over what people might consider "popular" or "cool"? And at one point or another people go nuts and give everyone magical "admin only" stuff like guns and wizard powers to go crazy and cut loose. I never really understood why there was ever a merc power setup for a mod. It comes by default with the game. You disable it on your servers cause you have no interest in it. Why make it an admin command? If you disable force by default on your server, why even have empower? You already broadcast to everyone you don't like it on your server but love and enjoy it when you have absolute control over it(just like guns). Rcon is honestly most admin anyone needs. In game admin is just "fluff". Fancy and flashy ways of flexing(for most folks). You don't really need emotes either honestly, but again it's just fluff and people obviously love fluff(no not the marshmallow spread). Despite mod complaints if there was no modders, flip kick would of never been turned on in JA. JA would of never had a full forcing crowd like JO already had as it is. JA people should be happy with what they got. Not everyone takes the time to produce or turn out mods or content. It's half the reason why the game is still alive, besides player investment(content helped to fuel player interest). How many admins do you know that have to log into admin the second they get in game?

Developers don't really care to in depth about copywrite till you try making a name for yourself, basically. It ties into money. Him doing small scale videos using another game engine/source doesn't really bug them to much, like showing off a small tech demo.. What bugs them is using and recreating something on a newer or different engine, as well as people trying to make money off it(just my opinion). This is why, say garry's mod, has tons of ported content but it was not really released for someone making a name for themselves nore for making money either. Despite all that if Lucasarts wants to or even Raven, they can still get said content removed and complain to the person who made it. It's a thin ice sorta deal when dealing with assets. Can read up on the disclaimers and what not, for a lot of things they're more or less the same anyway, but they can send out a cease and a desist anytime they see this kinda stuff regardless of what stage any piece of work is in.

This the original gcx or the version I remapped? If it's mine then I can answer why you may "potentially" hit the issue, looking at it from a mapping perspective. If it's the original, that's simply due to a map made on an older version of radiant and did in a different time and place with a different setup of mapping. Lot of people who made some of the first big maps in JA were people who came from JO style of mapping. Hence why on ex_jedi_temple, for example, the creator did brush work for the chairs instead of models(JO is 128 I think?). People probably weren't to sure of the game limitations on map models. Which honestly is just tied into the ent limits for JA, outside of clustered in a single area, you can add up to the 4096 ent limit for map models in JA. I voted for gcx, original, on jawa 1 time and I think it crashed the server, good to have a better idea of what caused it.

Might make things easier, I find using .wav for custom taunt files works for me more so than mp3(just cause I don't wanna put in the effort to get the .mp3 for character taunts to work). For life of me these days, years ago I had no problems, can't seem to get .mp3 taunts or person skin/model sounds to work. I set them to .wav and they all work fine for me. For .wav sound files it's set at: 44100HZ 16(32?) bits Mono Besides, only specific ffa mods use the extra sound files anyway which is more or less all major used ffa servers either use JA+ or JA++ which opens up the extra audio channels(think there's already tutorial on jkhub that explains the audio specifics for mp3 files). I use, at the most, 3 different free audio programs. Any of the 3 should cover the job for taunts/custom music for maps. Goldwave Wavepad Audacity If you need ideas for what your sound files should be named just go into the misc folder for any base models like kyles it should lay out all the possible custom sounds you can use on any creation you make. At the most(servers using mods) you will need taunts, gloat, victory, death, fall, and jump to cover your bases enough so you wont hear the "take that" sounds or generic ones. Not sure if the pushed or confused audio files are used in MP or mods, but I doubt extra work would be to much work once you figure things out.

You're dealing with lines of business whether you like it or not. Money is the motivation in business. Raven isn't generating a profit and was or perhaps may still be hosting the master server, doing it purely out of the fact there is still interest in the product. They aren't making a good enough return on the game purchases, even with steam, to justify keeping it up. It's purely out of simple generosity at this point and it can go any time they feel like pulling the plug. Doom is still going despite it being even older. Community stepped up to the plate and suffice to say it's still doing an awesome job at it. Someone wants to point out they should protect there product you should also understand the fact master server went up time and time again before all this does show it was being protected, probably only way they knew how(whatever that might be). But might now be to the point they need those system resources for other things instead of an old game that has less then probably 200 active players in game at any time. What good would it do if steam was running the master server as it is? Kindness is all well and good but you also have to factor in them using up there own system resources for, quite frankly, an old and oudated game with a niche audience. Also all those DDOS attacks would mitigate to there own servers as well so that would mean having someone to check over it from time to time to keep it updated and going. If people truly want to ask go and directly message Valve and find out instead of relying on one single person to do it then stop waiting and go do it. But don't complain or be surprised if they don't do it.

It makes 0 difference if the latest version has viruses or not. He attempted to sell other peoples mods for profit aka he put out there that the content was an expansion for JK when in reality it never was, he even got people to give him money to make a new computer. He dragged the mod/content on as long as possible to make gullible people pay him for something they could of manually downloaded for the past 7+ years. I wouldn't be surprised if the twit at one point tried using the massassi temple map and put it in his crap not mod(it really isn't a mod). Even if he put my name in the credits, I would still give him the finger simply because I wouldn't want my name anywhere near the con man or his half arsed patch work. Testing ot not, it doesn't absolve the history this garbage and the creator did to literally prepackge other peoples creations(regardless of the quality of the content). A credit list is pointless because he never asked to use the content to begin with when he was generating money off it as it was. Credit list for a single file is one thing. A full scale patch work job and making money off it, is another. http://forums.filefront.com/jedi-academy-general-discussion/297249-kotf-now-100-more-mudkip.html

Since direct porting of JO animations over to JA would be a boring process. Considering JO has more animations one could use for emotes in really any mod. Why hasn't someone just ported the folder over to JA but rename the folder to _humanoidJO that way can make use of all the JO animations in JA for a mod rather then trying to merge the JO .gla to the JA one. Be a lot easier I would imagine do it this way since can have function JO models in JA already as it is. Only thing the JO animations would be needed for is a client side mod to make use of the extra animations since JO already had a kiss emote and about 50+ or so other animations one could use for a mod.

Due to the fact the map itself is at the games ent limit more or less(meaning it wont compile). You would basically have to setup the map like they did in SP as the academy portions aka when they did cutscenes between areas for the ceremony hall. Simply because full map setup wouldn't be able to support anymore additions less you used a custom setup for the game engine to support more entity's but that also means making radiant support the higher ent limit as well. It refuses to compile anything that hits exactly 4096 ents, even for a basic regular bsp compile with no lights or -vis setup. In theory what you could do is strip out things you wouldn't need for certain hub portions and perhaps add a door lock to certain areas so you kinda push people in the direction they need to go. Basically every time you hit the hub section can do slight alterations when people go back to the temple like ships moved around, different races and species showing up talking in the mess hall or different rebels in the command center. I'm no script wizard either so you're out of luck on that end also. You could also take scripts from JO SP since SP to SP between games with scripts seems to work just fine. It's just the MP portion isn't real cut and dry, was never really meant for scripting but it wasn't patched out so it works, kinda. Problem is if after every mission you go back you would have to do a few different map compiles to compensate for each different version. So you would have to do the map in kinda progression blocks sorta deal. After you complete say 3 or 5 whatever number missions, you load up a later map version whatever. But no, I'm not interested in any projects and if you want to use the .map file you're stuck decompiling it and doing the cleanup on things for use and figuring out how things work. It's how I got where I did with mapping with doing lots of grunt work. Might take you longer but you'll learn a lot more then being handed everything on a silver platter. Like I said use the JO scripts if need be. For example in yavin_temple in JO they had droids walking around as well as the jedi training in JO also for SP as well. Word of warning the jedi training in yavin_temple in JO are aggressive when I set them up for MP before. It's probably why they had the training areas locked down and with the npc block texture and forced kyle to use the catwalk area. Don't bother with the yavin_trial scripts in my map pk3, the SP ones in JO will work fine in JA SP like all other JO scripts so use those ones instead. Works a lot better then the kinda frakenstein job I did, regardless of how smooth it can be in some areas. I can understand people wanting an SP setup and kinda capture that sorta kotor RPG style fused with the hands on combat of JA, a sorta experience on what it would be like to go through jedi or sith training whatever. Far as I see it be more fun with MP, which is my main focus. SP to me is just a book. I have no interest in it once it's done. With live players in MP you get actual feedback plus it's a lot more engaging when you're in a community or clan with folks who are in the same mindset as well. D&D might take a long time to setup, but when people get into the game it can be the most fun you could ever imagine. With real players things can evolve and change as time goes on. SP is stuck with things set in stone. But hey some people love having a story they can solo through.

I haven't had a stuck issue yet with that brush, besides it turns on and off so you shouldn't have to many problems with it. From live testing via KoD and JAWA when I turn it on it pops up under me so not sure if it's due to something in a mod or what. As for the shuttle that's from SP, cleaned up and resetup for MP. I had to tweak the shuttle mesh exterior to allow a hole for the door to fit in. By default shuttle model has a door, to my knowledge there is no custom shuttle setup with no door. I also resetup the back portion for the door as being seperate from the mesh so I could reset it up due to the back area having small uv map issue as well.

http://jkhub.org/files/file/2199-jk2jka-server-browser/

http://jkhub.org/files/file/2199-jk2jka-server-browser/ JO player did something JA people were to busy to do. How's that for irony.