brendhanbb

i am really curious. i have seen so many amazing maps i myself have tired to get into it. its eh. i know the basics i even made a very basic map with a few puzzles it made very little sense and had no enimes or anything like that but i think of it as an experment to get used to it. and i think i did okay. but some of the maps i have seen are amazing and i know this sounds strange but for me idk i would love to see the thought process of making a map and a video would be the greatest way it would be like a lets play but instead anyone and everyone can follow along and get experience in making a map i do not see many of those because like i said i see people starting to show the basics but i feel like its more complicated then just knowing the basics. like i said i am really cruous if anyone has tired or has thought about or would even consider trying something like that. i think it would be neat to see.

where do so many of you get your ideas from, where do u get your inspearation from. for me i feel like everytime i try to make a level my mind runs blank and i cant not think of what i want to do or what i want to next. and its just frustutating to feel this way. and i am just so curious where so many of you get your ideas from.

If you haven't created any custom textures etc., just a new map, it would be enough to upload the .bsp you get when compiling. But usually you'd put all the custom files required by your map (including the map itself) into a zip archive and rename it to .pk3. Check out some custom maps - the .pk3 files are just zip archives so archiving programs like 7-zip or winrar can open them just fine - to see what it should look like.

thanks but how do put the file into zip archive and does it automatically change the bsp into a pk3 it says i cant upload the bsp file on this site though

thanks i have another question though how do you convert a map into something you can upload.

i have a map i am working on and i would like to upload what i have so far. just i guess to get feedback to hear what people have to say. can anyone please help me upload it because i do not know how to upload my map right now

thanks all for the advice i would like to think my map is not experencing any of those issues yet and hopefully wont. but agian thanks for telling me about stuff to look out for.

Edited out the double quote @@brendhanbb, and shifted this to General Modding Discussions as it is, well, a discussion about modding.

 

 

What I will say for this community is that I'm more than confident that nobody will mock you or your map, especially if you are a beginner. Most of us think we suck in comparison to anything @@Szico VII produces where mapping's concerned, but we share and critique anyway. We all started somewhere, so don't sweat it!

yeah i am not worried worried about being mocked for my map. who knows mabye my map is pretty good for a beginer and i am still working on it. i am seriously thinking about putting on the site and allowing people to download it i would love to hear some feedback from people.

I started modding Jedi Academy some time in 2006. My sister and I had joined an incredibly small clan named Jedi of the Republic. As it was so small, we only had two members with custom skins. Only one of them was available from the downloads section of the clan website. I'd already found JKFiles, so I knew what I was doing with installing it. (When I first came across all of those mods, I assumed that it required an extremely complicated and expensive skill-set to make anything, so I never looked into learning.) Anywho, the other member, I honestly at the time assumed was simply choosing to use the Kyle model as like I said, he never provided a download link to his skin. Everyone else in the community used Base assets. The skin which I had download from the website belonged to the Council member Pyrotechnics (responsible for JotR SandTrap and Manaan Beta. His personal skin was nothing more than a standard (Base) Jedi Trainer with Kyle's torso (with red and blue variants, respectively) and Kyle's sounds.cfg. Since he was the only person I knew that had made a custom skin, I asked about the process. He made it sound far, far more complicated than it really is. Nevertheless, I managed to piece together this:

 

 

 

 

He taught me how to avoid overwriting the Base Jedi Trainer model, and once I had my skin folder set up, he left me to edit the textures as I saw fit. Since I had no skill in that area, I stuck to swapping out compatible Base assets as he had done, hence the Jedi team blue torso. All other modifications were made with MS Paint - hence JotR tag on the shirt and dodgy British flag on the arm. I didn't understand how to add outfits outside of team red and blue, (I wasn't aware you could select a skin without using the menu system via commands), so I wound up with several skin folders with "red and blue" variants to complete my wardrobe. Within a month, I'd managed to produce this:

 

 

 

 

Nothing extravagant. Just playing with layer filters in GIMP and sticking with simple MS Paint edits. When the clan folded, I followed another member to a new community where I met @@Azatha. We barely interacted until around about the time that community folded as well, after which we started to take an interest in role-playing. Role-playing made me want to create a skin that was a bit more unique than tinkering with Base assets, and luckily Azatha was a complete boss at skinning, as well as very generous with taking time to part with tips and advice. I gained the occasional outfit from her, though I did try to bargain for more than that on several occasions, as she'll recall. My abilities were still limited to simple recolours of Jedi tunics and things. Azatha had given my model a new face, but I still couldn't create anything particularly interesting. Whilst we perused our interested in role-playing (subsequently joining ::JEDI:: as a result), Azatha again started me off on most of my skins, usually providing me with one outfit whilst I was left to fill the rest of my wardrobe. Every so often she gave me a cosmetic touch-up, and I tried to take advantage of her skills in this department more than once. She did eventually became more reluctant to provide anything for me, and instead encouraged me to practice the techniques she described to me in the past. Without her to do the work for me, I was pretty much forced into trying it if I wanted my own skin. (Needless to say, I stuck with my last skin update for a very long time.)

 

Some point in the last two years, I decided to take a step up in the skinning department. I learnt how to age my characters, make use of the clone tool, etc. Continued practice lead to my Alternate Rosh and edit of Elandain's Spidey skin.

 

Throughout my time in JEDI, I learnt to dabble with Lightsaber files and vehicle related stuff, leading to my swoop fixes among other things. I experimented constantly with all kinds of cosmetic related things in JA, which lead to me creating things like the Hydroball Cosmetic Pack and many, many other mods which were exclusive (and really only beneficial to) ::JEDI:: from loading screens, chat icons, consoles, skybox edits, music changes, launchers, etc.

 

Mapping is something I picked up from Pyrotechnics in JotR. As mentioned above, he'd been responsible for two maps on JKFiles. He pointed me in the direction of the necessary programs and the same tutorials which he had used to learn and left me with that. I made a few maps. My first ones were extremely bad. There was constant bright lighting, everything was horribly oversized, there were repeating, gigantic textures. I couldn't even work out the skybox, so I just made a box around the map and applied the sky texture. It should be noted that these bad maps of which I speak were usually made for private use. (Not wanting to embarrass myself publicly, of course). I did get better, though. The Fortress of Solitude was the only map I released for a very long time before Yavin Retreat and Yavin Sanctuary came around. When I took an interest in role-playing, I had stopped tinkering with maps for a fair while. I decided to take another swing at it which had lead to those two winding up on JKFiles. I have not gone out of my way to create maps for wide release very often, as I've preferred to make maps that myself and close friends will enjoy. A few attempts surfaced when I met @@Caelum at his clan, Cosmos, which can be found in this thread.

 

I'm not sure there's much more to say beyond that, but that's moi.

I have other stuff on the site, but that's the basic process I went through!

wow what an interesting story btw i am making a map right now myself. i am not sure if its good or bad. i am proud of it but then only because i know i am a beginer and anything thats playable and does not hurt the eyes is good to me lol when its coming from me. but idk if i was to show my map to people right now i have no idea what anyone would think. i only know what i think. and i think its a good start for a beginer but thats just me for all i know it could be a horrorible map for a beginer. honestly one big issue i am having is models. plus my cordiors for the most part are super mega plain :/

Started modding back in...2002? Started in JK2, making maps. I remember that I was 8 years old whenever I started. Never really got far in mapping. After starting up several TCs, all of which failed, I started a relatively modest code project. The beginnings were just me messing around in JK2, like a painted-on ironsights. This would have been back in 2008 whenever I started coding. So for 6 years, I was more or less a nobody in the modding scene. I still don't tell anybody my true alias from before this one, but I know that several people (particularly those involved around Filefront) in this community can guess.

 

I believe when I started modding, I became too excited to contain myself. I kinda got too excited. Excited enough that I broke the fourth wall between modding and my life, and people that I know were super hyped up. I hyped up the crowd that wasn't right for me -- the Zelda fanboys, the Trekkies, the WoW nerds -- all of those people would eventually contribute to what I would call the lowest point in my life. This point was when I was more or less physically battered by the people around me at school. When we moved away from that place, that is when I found peace, I believe. Some people wouldn't agree with that. It was an eye of the storm in my life, really. I was sinking deeper and deeper into maddening depression, and messed my mind up something awful with Prozac and other drugs. I liked to play on the idea that my depression stemmed from a lack of females in my life, but really what I desired was...well...a true friend. I'm not going to go all brony on you or anything, but I had nobody in my life that I could talk to about what was really going on with me. That lead me into a dark depression, I think. And it felt like I received nothing for the efforts I have done. If anyone were to tell me that I'm doing better than I was 5 years ago, I'd have to force myself to agree with the people that said that. I'm not _better_. I'm _stronger_, not _better_. I hate myself in fact because I allowed myself to proliferate to where I am today.

 

I guess where I've been causes me to become extremely angry with people who are depressed over miniscule things. Now some things I can empathize with. Other things..not so much. I can't empathize with myself for how I was before. If the things that we do define who we are, why is it that people say good things to me, after I've [indirectly] been the reason, cause, and/or motivation for the attempted suicide of three (one succeeded unfortunately, may his soul rest in peace), the vehement criticism upon my team members (past and present), the lies I've told, people I've spoken irately about, the bigotry, the hate, the demoralization of the masses, and general emotional grief I've caused people -- if the things that we do define who we are, why do I feel like I've gotten better, when I haven't? I don't know.

 

After a few unfortunate events, I had to move away from there and spend my time gaining practical skills in a rural town of around 1,000 people. Practical skills and discipline did me well. I think the practical skills, the discipline, the constant isolation, the separation of my actual thoughts from what I said...I was more or less forced to live a double life. One on the internet, one in real life. I never told anyone about my exploits, the deep intricacies of my hobbies. Whenever someone texted me, asking me what I was doing, I would always tell them "nothing", or some other silly white lie. I did, for the record, meet someone who was really special to me. Like many of the things in my life which would remain mysterious, she vanished one day. I don't think I've recovered from it.

 

Things changed a bit when I actually learned how to code and got into it. I still never told anyone anything. I liked to believe in many things. For instance, I liked to believe that people were actually honorable some of the time, and that people hardly ever committed the vices shown on television. That all became lies and fallacies when it actually turned out to be true. I didn't lose my beliefs in a few things though. For starters, that I could do things other people couldn't. I hated being different though. Steve Jobs, and their different ideas about how people should be different, that they should strive to be different..I couldn't believe any of those things. Jobs and Apple proved themselves to be hypocrites: they brought out the idea that people should be different, yet they stole ideas from people and created phones which became cardboard cutouts for later models. That's why I couldn't believe that people could be different and still succeed. Then you have the hipster crowd, and all the bizarre things that brings. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against being different, or being normal, or anything else. People should be how they want to be.

It's just how I wanted to be that I didn't know about.

 

In modding we make decisions based on things that we've seen each other do, based off of help. In a way, we help make people become just like us -- just as enthusiastic, just as technically involved, just as good as us. It's therefore rather perplexing that while I help people in the modding scene, I've become so fundamentally different from anyone or anything else that I don't know where I belong anymore. I'm too "goth" or "metal" for the nerds. Not vain enough for the popular crowd. Too nerdy for the metalheads. Too quiet for the stoners (yes, I was actually kicked out of a group for being too quiet -- more on this later). Too loud and obnoxious for the aspies. Too mellow for the radical free thinkers out there. I can't hold a conversation for more than 5 minutes with someone. I can't even talk to my girlfriend without the conversation devolving into us either saying "What's up?" back and forth for hours, or going into trust issues and other things. So after some thought, I think I've figured out what it is that I actually am.

 

I'm a rockstar.

Sounds like a great life to live, with the amenities of what I have, the knowledge, grades, all that. But deep inside me, I can't bear to deal with a lot that goes on. Ask anyone here who's talked to me for more than 5 minutes at a time. Ask my girlfriend. They'll tell you the same thing. I'm emotionally unstable. I can totally relate to people who have had issues before in their life. Maybe not in the same way as others. The scenes are different but the struggle's alike. Modding is the only thing that keeps me from going insane. I sometimes feel inadequate, but I have ideas. I have creativity. I learned from the depths of where I was that I have these things, that I can use these things. If someone as messed up outside and inside could have something useful, I know that people outside my bubble, such as you, @@brendhanbb, people like you, they have something useful in their lives. It's how you think about things that makes all the difference.

 

I'm no David Gilmour though. I know that I don't produce a lot of amazing things that people talk about, like BlueIce Nightfall, or a beloved game model made to life, or an incredibly popular serverside mod. I get treated generally bad for the things that I've produced, now and in the past, and I can't say I don't deserve it on both a quality level and a moral level. I don't blame people either for what they say. Take things one day at a time, that's the only way you can live life.

 

I do genuinely try my hardest though. I just wish that people could understand...

this honestly speak to me i myself am the same way i am trying to find my true crowd but its so hard. and i feel like now that i have a basic grasp of maping i can create my own worlds to escape too. i can create whole words in my imange places i can only dream of going. create stories that are amazing. etc. i have so many ideas in my head but i still lack so much knowlenge on how to do them. i mean i understand exactly where ur coming from. and i relate to so much ur saying.

No one does.

well there are some people who still use it. and they seem really passionate about it.  but i am glad to see i am not the only one who felt like it was a really bad level editor and hard to use.

Reference images, reference images, reference images and more reference images.

can u explain what u mean by reference images lol.

Definitely. A really easy solution would be a shader with a series of tcmod scroll images.

 

http://robotrenegade.com/q3map2/docs/shader_manual/stage-directives.html#tcMod

Definitely. A really easy solution would be a shader with a series of tcmod scroll images.

 

http://robotrenegade.com/q3map2/docs/shader_manual/stage-directives.html#tcMod

i wont lie my exprence with moding is very basic right now. so i have no idea how i could do that. at least right now

I like you.

 

 

 

 

 

Also you can find a bunch of DF2 related tutorials http://jkhub.net/ <---- here. They even have the older versions of ZED and JED. Even have the source files.

 

 

 

You should totally stick around here, but I figured I post that stuff for nostalgia sake.

oh i already found df2 tutruals before i found jko moding. but yeah i did not like using the editor for df2 too much

i am just curious but can you add a hyperspace effect ourside of a window i am really curious if you can do that. and if so would anyone be willing to help me do it.

I can agree to this.

i take it u have experence with that happening. what happens. exactly

Years and years and years ago. The result of a 12 years old with far too much time on their hands meeting JKA was slow in-depth acquaintance with how the engine works, how to mod stuff, and so forth. These days, I have obscene amounts of theoretical knowledge on all kinds of modding subjects, despite having never done half of them, like modelling and mapping.

 

Tl;dr do not let Caelum near keyboards. Bad things happen.

thats really cool. like i personally lack insperation right now to anything creative. like sadly i am good at copying stuff. and i would like to try to create the entire jedi knight dark froces 2 game but yeah if you saw the level i am working on right now u might understand why thats hard for me at least right now.

okay i am curious i heard that if you put too many textures you can run into an issue where the map will not complie anymore. i honestly have several ideas but they are big ideas. and i am just wondering if anyone has actually made a map that was the limit of how much you put into it.

wow all these stories are really interesting. beleive it or not i techenically started modding with doom. this was many years ago with my father we actually made a playable level together but then for whatever reason stopped. i moved on to jedi knight dark forces 2. and yeah without the tuturoals that are avabale now on how to mod a game i was competely lost. and yeah i gave up since i had no idea what to do and neather did my father. but then i found tuturuls on how to edit jedi knight dark froces 2 and that was awesome and then i looked for how to make maps for jedi acdemy and acutally i found mugs tutural which is how i ended up here.

thank you all there is also an issue of insperation too. though like i said the map i am making is really more or less an experement to see what i can do

i am curious but how long have you been modding the game for. did you start off with this game  or did you start off with other games if so which games. and like i said how long have you been at it for and how did you get into it. i am very curious.

i really do. i myself am creating a level right now. its super mega basic but it works. and its also a work in progress i would like to think i have some interesting things on my map but more then likely nothing compared to any of you. i have to say making a map is really fun though once you get the hang of it. and hopefully with practice and exprence i can get better. anyways just wanted to introduce myself and tell you all you are super mega amazing and i hopefully look forward to meeting some of you

so i am trying to use the gtk raident to create levels for jedi acdemey. and well i am using 1.3 because thats being used in a turtuoral i am using to figure it out. but the porblem is when i try to get some textures it tells me the shader is missing on every texture. and i am not sure why its doing that. can anyone please tell me what to do. because for all i know i installed everything wrong or did not end up downloading something or something. so if someone could tell me what to do mabye from strach that would be great. or if anyone just knows what the porblem is in general.