Vulcan

I tried looking up what I'm about to write here, but I didn't find it anywhere and so I assumed I am the first to think of this.

Ever thought "Man, I wish JKA had higher resolution shadows" when you create a map?
Lightmaps always leave a blocky shadow, especially if you make them thin. But how do you achieve very thin lines?
Better said, how do we create shadows, as if a bordered window casts them?
This is where I came from:

And this is what we will create:

It's actually pretty easy to get such shadows, if you get the know how, what I'm about to give you!
You probably know about decals. Polygons that stick to a surface as a sticker.
We are going to create a fake lightmap in Photoshop, based on a texture that we want to simulate light from as shown in the picture below:
The Texture



Now onto shadering

Save your file as a JPG (NOT PNG as it will leave some fractals) The shader itself can just be copied from the original JKA Decal shaders. They are actually all similar.
Optionally you can animate the shader with multiple jpegs, for when there's a storm outside for example. But we will keep things simple.

My shader:
 

textures/*yourmap*/*yourshadowtexture*
{
    surfaceparm    trans
    polygonOffset
    q3map_nolightmap
    q3map_novertexshadows
    surfaceparm    nomarks //this will stop the game from rendering shadows and burnmarks on the decal//
    nopicmip
    {
        map textures/*yourmap*/*yourshadowtexture*
        blendFunc GL_DST_COLOR GL_ZERO
    alphaGen const 0.7 //This is an optional line of code, that will make the texture more opague//
    }
}

GTK Radiant
 
To place the shadow in game, open up the systems shaders, create a "nodraw" brush on the place where you want the shadows to cast.
Make it so one of the sides of the brush z-buffers with the brush you want the shadow on. Now select the top polygon (Ctrl + Shift + Left Mouse) and apply the texture.
Open up the Surface Inspector, and click "Fit". If it doesn't fit the way you want, rescale the brush, and select "Fit" again.
Continue fitting, and once you are happy, compile you map!
Don't forget to set sv_pure to 0 if you are working without compiling to Pk3!
Start the game, open up your map and...

You will have a high resolution shadow!
Continue tweaking the Lights so it gives a realistic effect, and you are happy about the result!


One downside on this: low end computer who are forced to use Global Lighting, will see the shadows as decal and not as actual shadow.
But think about it, we live in 2014. There aren't many computers who need to have global lighting enabled all the time 


Protip: The same technique can also be used on static models like small trees, X-wings etc. Just as long as you can get a screenshot from the right angle.
Then you can just use the picture above as reference, and give the shadow a small Gaussian blur instead of a tilt shift blur.


I hope this small tutorial helped you create awesome content!

Why a remake?

Star Wars is one of the most flexible franchises ever. Combined with the Wookieepedia it's easy to write new stories using other ones as fundament.

Take the saber gameplay of JKA, add some level of realism (but in a way the classic gameplay is kept) to the animations. Take the weapon play from Battlefield (Battlefront?) and crush that in an more open world RPG setting.

Instead of placing the player in a role where he's the hero of the game, give the opportunity to do whatever he/she wants. Becoming Jedi/Sith is a long road, you'll learn how to use your lightsaber (in a way you can also fight in multiplayer), but you start lightsaber training when your character is mentally ready. Jedis are lead by Luke and Kyle, both old farts. Sith are leading themselves as worshippers of the dark side, in extreme secrecy.
Become a smuggler, and explore the most famous traderoutes like the Kessel Run.
The underlying story? Things are happening all over the galaxy. Remnants of the empire are scattered all across the galaxy, people still join the ranks of the Stormtroopers because it's good money. The alliance tries to stop that and spreads the stories about Darth Vader and Sidious, the remnant counteracts that with propaganda. A constant battle in which you battle stormtroopers, rebels, and the further your character progresses Jedi or Sith.
Combine that with mod support for races, planets, ships, weapons and there ya go.

I'm going to bump this topic :3
Any more work on this? It looks completely sick!

Try compatibility modes.

I had this issue in the past, and I think it has something to do with older video cards. I remember disabling aero mode in Windows and it worked like a charm.

But try running as administrator, and as windows xp/98 first.

No need, GLM exporting can't be done with md3view

I mean, it works with lightsabers and weapon models alright, but animated models not so much

 

I don't know how you feel about it, but if you'd send me the model I can give you an animated glm and gla, with a script

Individual tentacles can have different animations, like normal waving around, some twisting and turning, some slapping around etc. your call

Same problem I ran into Langerd
Misc_model_breakable is an SP only entity. Try the rancor level on multiplayer mode for example. The switches that make the windows open are those entities.
In SP that entity is usable too. In MP it simply doesn't appear, so most buttons in that map don't function there.

You haven't told us what game you're modding for by the way, is it singleplayer or multiplayer?
If it's singleplayer, go for misc_model_breakable. If multiplayer, try the technique i wrote in my own thread
I don't want to push people in using my ways or somethin, but I also tried several things and found that my technique was the only one that worked.

I don't work with blender, but with 3Ds max. However I've read that Blender is capable of exporting glm's and gla's, instead of using the Carcass compiler.
Considering what a sarlac looks like from above ground, it's pretty easy to create animations for it aswell.
You could also add a death trigger close to it's mouth, and activate a script that would make it squeal and bite whenever a player gets too close to it
Honestly, animating and rigging a sarlac is pretty much the easiest thing there is

In BehaveED, set_solid > Solid/nonsolid
Such an NPC would trigger a script anyway, when you tell him to loop an animation.

http://jkhub.org/topic/4822-mp-3d-animated-flag-model/?do=findComment&comment=70937

I thought of a technique on how to use a NPC as map model
Same technique can be applied here

Unless you're mapping for singleplayer ofc, then you can go for animated MD3s. If you want to make your map multiplayer compatible you can use my technique

It's a nice and short suggestion, and not sure if it's possible. I'm looking at the coders around here.

Is it possible somehow to make Jedi Academy transmit positions to VoIP softwares like Mumble or Teamspeak?
I've read some topics about it and seen how games like Half Life II, Team Fortress II, Minecraft, Arma, but also more older games like Unreal Tournament 2004 do support it.
I think it could be a nice mod if it would be possible, so hereby the request

This :3

Technique looks familiar! Nice application

Here is the best tip I can give you:

Since every map is different, techniques are also applied different. If I were you I would make a few test maps and try out some techniques. Once you get the result you want you use that on the original map

ROTFL, information for ALL modders... i hit the limit of entities.... on gtk radiant 1.5.0 it's 4096 XD all included if you hit, Radiant stop building. so i delete a thousand of light points of Pillars XD i will use a glowing shaders for they.

W00t

 

And I have 119 now haha

Misc_models aren't counted as entity, but baked in the map

You could create a script with various tasks, and then add a "do" random 0-5 I assume.
Just name the tasks 0-5, all with other wait commands

Our server (EFF) crashed during the day because there were so many people on it
It was quite a party though, but we haven't had a full server in months. So we owe humble some lol.

Btw for us modders, there will be a lot more people looking up to us now xD

We owe that humbledumble a lot..

Earlier today JKA had 180 players. Today, we raised the bar to 500, and there will be more once people ended singleplayer.

Even today, we had our server full with people and we had to teach multiple people the basics all at once haha

 

Guys, brace yourselves, JKA just got himself defibrillator!

Well, it's back!

When I create textures I always start out 4x bigger than I need to.
I create everything then, try to generally detail things, and then downgrade it.
Even though details will blur a bit, it will ironically work better for the eyes.
So that's a tip I can give you

soundsets are pretty much created by that sound.txt (if i understand it correctly)
The game looks for that sound.txt as asset, and then reads that as individual soundsets. If you create a soundset yourself you'll have to edit that sound.txt
The problem is if for example, I decide to download another mod that also has a sound.txt, the game will either use your soundsets or those soundsets, resulting in random errors when the game tries to load it.

It's a bit like how JKA handles custom animations.

I looked it up, it's actually 1024.
Now that limit is for weapon spawns, dropped weapons, NPCs, speakers, triggers, lights and all movable brushes.

If I'd think of my map, I can estimate that I'd use around 30-50 doors.
Speakers are dropped around the level, so i'd say I need about 150 to make the entire exterior work with random sounds, and that exterior is about 6 times the size of the platform on FFA5 to give you a sense of the distribution.
misc_models and misc_model_statics are baked in the map, so unless they are movable they are not an entity.

Now I'd like to add some effects, the clouds have 2 fx_runners, the waterfall will have about 3-5, and maybe i'd like to try and add some effects for butterflies or something.
This map also features it's own NPCs, so that adds about 10 entities.
And last there are ofcourse the various spawnpoints this map will absolutely need, so I'll estimate I need about 15 of those, randomly distributed. 

That takes my total to about 232 entities minimum. Admins could still spawn about 700 NPCs and give everyone weapons or force, and the game would be maxed out.

In reference, The Academy V3 by Virtue has 376 on start (it also features NPC spawners)
648 for NPC spamming, and it's a pretty huge map.

And ofcourse there is the king of entities, Jedi Council GCX, with a staggering 707 entities on start, featuring NPC spawners and more.
Still, it's 300 below the entity limit, and it takes a while for people to move around the map. It has medkids pretty much all around aswell

Now I obviously haven't been on the titanic, but I still don't think that limit is going to be much of a problem with few speakers

Sound sets like in the sound.txt? Yes it's possible, but as soon as people download another map with a modder who also added a new sound.txt it will be replaced

Possible yes, useful no.

 

(if someone could tell me how to add ambient non speaker sounds it would be epic.)

It's also possible to play sounds with a script, for when people are in a trigger_multiple. But I think your best shot are speaker entities.

The cap for entities is higher than you might think, and don't forget that lights only count as entity if they have a light style or are triggerable. Targeted lights and normal lights are baked in the maps light map. If you don't go overboard (ahahah) with it you'll be fine. If you decide to go overboard, remove the entities that are not entirely needed when you hit the cap

#Drama

Dude, the only game is only dying if everyone here decided not to put effort into things.
The fact that the boys here at the hub are running a master server proofs that.

But I do agree on that it does take long for James Monroe to check things out, sadly.
There isn't anything we can do except cross our fingers and wait. (And not nagging them, because that's only annoying)

Heyyy, is that my shadow decal trick?

Surely looks like it!

Looks like it has something to do with a LoD.

As if the game reads lod2, what only has the skirt, and shows that only.