UniqueOne

While i'm here I guess I will post a few new screenshots.

Before I start, everyone should note that everything can be turned on/off in menu to suit your own preference. Turned off, they have zero FPS hit. The changes last night improved FPS a lot. There are now fast versions of the DOF, SSGI and HBAO shaders, and we have made a lot of progress removing the rend2 CPU bottleneck. Depending on the map designs and culling we are now most of the time using the GPU close to 100%... resulting in some pretty major improvements. As a bonus, we have also been able to get Nvidia SLI working for those with multiple GPUs (wish I had SLI *sigh*). Bloom enhances and adds extra glow to the rend2 dynamic glow. Almost no FPS hit at all. Anamorphic Lens Flares are wide glows on lights like those seen in the new Star Trek movies (but without the blue shift they use because it doesn't suit JKA - although there is code in the GLSL to enable that). Ours are not as exagerated as the ones in the video of course. Would make it too hard to see the screen OpenGL has a habbit of drawing light edges on things. This fixes that. It also has a sort of Anti-Aliasing affect, reduces pixelation on shadow/AO edges, and makes cavities in textures appear a little deeper. This one will probably be removed. It can look nice on a lot of stuff, but screws up (pixelates) sky textures. That description wasn't really correct, it is not a texture filter, it is a full screen filter. Just adds a little more detail to the scene, especially on distant objects. I like it personally. Will probably be removed. Not needed as well as eSharpen. Adds extra light to screen from the objects around it. This is also SSAO at the same time depending on your setting. The other SSAO has been removed as it is redundant. Will be removed. Looks ok on some stuff and not on others, so not worth keeping. Anaglyphic 3D is for Red/Blue glasses to play the game in real 3D. Buy yourself a set from ebay for a dollar and try it! Nothing is wrong with Xycaleth's HDR at all. It's very nice. Truth is TrueHDR and Xycaleth's HDR should have their names switched. TrueHDR only mimics HDR, but much, much faster then the true thing. Again note that all of these can be turned on/off in menu based on preference. That is close to what I plan to keep. My current list would be: * Anamorphic Lens Flares. * Anaglyphic 3D. Because it rocks with cheap glasses. * Bloom. * Dark Xpand - I don't use it much any more personally, but no reason to not have it available. Will default to off. * Depth Of Field - Standard (static) and Cinematic (dynamic) options. Note as of last night this also has 2 fast options. * Horizon Based Ambient Occlusion (HBAO). Note as of last night this also has a fast option. * eSharpen. * FXAA 3 - A fast Anti Aliasing method. * Lens Flares. * Screen Space Global Illumination (SSGI) - SSAO is include in this same shader. Note as of last night this also has a fast option for each level. * TrueHDR (will probably be renamed). * Vibrancy - More color please! * Volumetric light on lightsabers.

I already made this game mode for the jedi knight galaxies warzone gametype. https://github.com/JKGDevs/JediKnightGalaxies/tree/master/codemp/game See the following files: jkg_supremacy_flags.cppjkg_supremacy_flagsys.cppjkg_supremacy_spawnsys.cpp Includes in-game editing commands although from memory they were not visual. Feel free to use any of it if you wish.

Both options have good and bad sides. I tend to lean toward using an existing project though to outsource updates. The OJK team right now does not have the resources to do everything for an engine as well as an editor... even if they never actually need to update. Absolutely. The heightmap based terrain is the big one. It has the potential to get new people addicted quickly while just screwing around (specially if you can also draw foliage and trees the same way). And what you end up with is a much better product then the Q3 brush system. As the scene grows, new people create pre-build map objects and maps will be spewing out in no time. That sounds like what i've been working on for the last 9 months or so... The warzone mod is not about eye candy. It just also has that. I like shiny as much as the next guy, but I know it alone is not enough.

*yoda voice again* disney leads to star wars interest. star wars interest leads to jka/ojk and new easy to use tools for noobs. tools leads to facebook posts of pictures of maps drawn in a simple editor. pictures on facebook leads to more noobs.

This is something that in the end the OJK team would need to decide upon. I could point out a few possibilities quickly though. Irrlicht format and the Ambiera editor: License: zlib license (due to it containing zlib) - OJK already uses zlib so the license is compatible. Web Site: http://www.ambiera.com/irredit/ Advantages: Looks to be a reasonable editor. A real mapper should really look at it though. Disadvantages: ? Blender Game Engine format: License: GPL2 license like OJK Web Site: https://www.blender.org/ Advantages: Well known editor. Many users. Disadvantages: ?

http://www.trionworlds.com/defiance/en/ Even Skyrim itself could be considered a twitch game with melee. In fact it's manual blocking system is better then JKA's blocking. ... because its really hard to imagine how a mostly melee based game would work with lightsabers... lol. You may want to actually look. FXAA replaces slower MSAA. DOF and AO are part of pretty much any new game and they run fine. Try modifying all the maps surfaces to support rend2 cubemaps and shaders and compare yourself. Don't compare FPS with everything off with that of things actually being used (you know, the whole point of an enhanced renderer). Add some npcs and look toward them them through a wall and see how well the culling works. Maps have partial culling, but entities are not culled at all. Xycaleth is only one person and getting little help from anyone. I guess performance analysis is wrong then. ... and that is why we are having this discussion. Maybe it is beyond the original scope. Maybe the original scope was misguided. After all, we are where we are. It is nothing that can not be fixed. I don't expect that this map stuff will ever be done... and you know what? Skyrim will go on with a strong community for years to come. Not because it is a good engine, but because it has good tools and an open world that any noobie can add to. This community will die completely because of short-sightedness of people who are not even representative of the "new" people needed to rebuild a community (and seem incapable of thinking like them, they want simple tools, they want shiny, they want to not get bored after 5 minutes playing and go play something else - nearly all the things people are talking about are for the people already still here, not for the new people we need). This game community will also die because Xycaleth is only one person who nearly everyone seems to have abandoned for other things.

Everything (with the exception of radiant sucking and maybe saber combat - although I think skyrim does that nearly as well too with the various lightsaber mods) you just said is ... wow... what? Twitch gameplay not compatible with large maps? What world are you living in? Do I really need to link nearly every latest shooter? Side scrollers? 2D games. huh? JKA/Q3 are not 2D games. FPS issues from pixel shaders in my mod? Actually I added culling to rend2 (so it no longer draws all that stuff you cant see) last night and its much better. Problem has nothing to do with pixel shaders - they just amplify the inherent issues of the renderer (and the shaders that like to draw in multiple stages - doubleing/trippling/quadrupling/etc render times). OJK not an engine? wow. speechless... Every engine is an alternative to this engine. Is there an infinite number of potential modders? Why would they select JKA over UE4 or Skyrim or whatever - you know, where everything doesn't take months to get done, look better, and isn't restricted to a linear fishtank? Every engine that offers what modders want to mod in 2015 is the death of this engine/game. Period. There sure is one way and strategy to get people back to the game. Making it the equal of what they left for. Making it the equal of the alternatives for new people... And making it as easy as possible for them all.

You need some "worlds" to stargate too hehehehe. The worlds from Stargate, again, are huge. To do huge maps without taking forever, and without having horrible FPS, a new map format is required (and stuff like generating large vegetated terrains quickly, with a better tool then radiant). On a side note, we should chat, your project is probably very compatible with what I am working on at the moment (a MMORPG mod of OJK engine).

Ok. If you guys believe the models are not an issue. I'm fine with that. I am no modeller, just want to see a growing community again. The map thing though I swear will be my dieing breath .

Well I am happy to bow to DT's knowledge of modelling. If he feels glm is an easy enough format for a new wannabe modder to want to learn. I put it second in my list because it is less important then the mapping issues. Let's face it, theres already plenty of glm animations to select from and exporters would probably be good enough. I'm just thinking about new people here. The days of corridor engines is over. Herein lies probably the biggest reason we don't have a community. There is really 2 choices here. Either rewrite radiant, or support a new map format. Rewriting radiant would be a much larger project then supporting an open source map format which already has a good editor. It would also not come with the other benefits. (Note: I am not saying remove support for BSP, just added a new format as well). I completely disagree with this. If we want people to use this engine then it had damn well better offer at least the same advantages as the newer alternatives. Otherwise we may as well all give up right now. If the engine gave people a reason to use it then they would. At the moment all JKA has is a license that we are not taking advantage of. Skyrim has its horrible issues, but it offers good tools and doesn't make you feel like your in 1990's running around in a fishtank. This is why it's community is still strong as ever (even to the point of stopping steam from allowing payed mods, passion) 5 years later. You can not get sick of infinite large open worlds. You can sure as hell get sick of small boxes. Star Wars has never had a game that offered a true open world experience (BF2 is not going to offer this either - it will have the shiny, but not the long term playability or the "expansive star wars universe" feel), the games have always been rushed to the market for profit. Here we have a license and no time restrictions to do it right. As for nice looking graphics. Rend2 can do that now if you make use of it's abilities in your mod (see screenshots below) or get people mapping for it (which we will get little or none of with radiant). It's missing things like dlight shadows, it's fps can be quite bad (mainly due to multi-stage shaders and a bad map format *cough*), and there's a few minor bugs, but whatever. Rend2 can be pretty... but it's not enough to get long term community over a newer engine. You realise that they all do this too??? No disagreement here. But I think this is something for the community to do with an updated, robust, engine to work with, not necessarily by the OJK team themselves. There is also little point having advanced scripted AI on tiny maps. I did not come to these conclusions either lightly, or quickly. I have been working on various Q3 games for like 16 years now (as I think you already know), I have watched every Q3 based game community die. Even those new shiny Q3-mods have a very limited shelf life because they don't give people the tools or the reason to choose them over a newer engine. We can screw around with a fish tank until all the water leaks out or we can expand the fish tank into something people want to be in.

I think that sums it up. Doesn't it? You can't compare Q3 to even a 5 year old engine. Hence all of this talk. As for the "players" vs "mod tools", the two are completely interlinked. Both require some big change to get attention. Getting players is short term if there is nothing to keep them here. Getting modders is the basis of a long term community. *yoda voice* Tools leads to modders (and news). Modders (and news) leads to community.

Nobody said it would be easy (hence my suggestion of using another project's format(s) and tools). Just necessary if we want a real long-term community. Give people the right tools and you will see projects like this.

For the new tools... to make it easier for noobies, and to reduce long term work for everyone by outsourcing that work to teams already working on these projects.

Xycaleth already knows my thoughts on this. I assume the timing of this post has a lot to do with our talks. But for everyone else, this is what I have suggested - in order of priority. 1. New map editor. No point trying to remake radiant though (let's face it q3 bsp is old and too limited), much better off to take a modern map format from another open source project like ogre or something, use their editor and tools. Saves work long term, and gives us the ability to have large open world maps like modern engines. The ability to have worlds like this in Q3 engine is by far the best thing that can be done to bring in community and new modders. The possibilities are endless. 2. New model format. See above. Same story - use tools maintained by another project. 3. Add things like foliage and grass to rend2. These would probably come as part of (1.) anyway though - or an addition later to that code. 4. (The final part) Add renderer shiny. This is where rend2 has been heading, but is much less important then getting 1 + 2 done, as good modern tools bring in the community and the community will add shiny. The man might act a little crazy, but he is right. This is Star Wars. We have a huge community that makes games like Skyrim pale in comparison. We just need the tools to get the community active again. Easy to use, modern, tools. Modern map/model formats.

Yeah it is only MP. But the long term goal is to make it into a multi-server MMO platform - so it would have single player style elements... but with quests and stuff. It would work similar to how dungeons and dragons online works with main cities and questgivers. After taking a quest you would be directed to a door which takes you to another server to run the quest with your group. The initial versions will probably be single server based, but with a main city area, and a bunch of small areas you teleport to to run the quests. We need a lot of help to make this happen though. We do not change original shaders, other then assigning a material type to anything that does not have one (which we use to apply various graphic options). Also, for any texture that has no shader, we generate an advanced generic one to support reflections, speculars, normals, etc. Most maps will just work with all the advanced graphics from the start. Unless the mapper has used some weird shaders that do not support the advanced stuff. We can add overrides in such cases for some stuff as required. The game creates its own exe and renderer files, separate from jka and openjk's. It will run along side anything else. Hopefully when the MMO stuff comes, you will find the same enjoyment as sp, but with friends. I hope we get some help too, there is a lot to do, and I am no mapper or modeler. I think we would all like to see a free star wars MMO created by the community, for the community. No crappy subscription fees or pathetic free limitations like the other alternative.

Actually, these are all unaltered original maps and textures. All maps get these upgrades by default. The magic is done through generic shader generation, material type selection, and glsl. EDIT: Actually that's not quite true. Just realised I do have a few hoth textures in my mod folder, so the hoth pic probably has some modified textures.

Thought I might post some of the shinies worked on this week.