NAB622

Well the website for JediTracker is completely gone now.....did something bad happen to BlaSt?

Sure, sounds like a bit of fun. I'm very *very* busy IRL, but I will be happy to switch gears back to here and make it work. The back end of the tracker and the UI were kept mostly separate for this reason, so it shouldn't be very difficult to rework the UI. Keep in mind also that ParaTracker theoretically supports any Quake 3 based game, not just JA. I would still like to get Xonotic levelshots and Quake 3 Arena levelshots, and I'll need to get bitflag data for each of them as well. Eventually.

That's very helpful. I'll look into DIVs and the possibility of using them for the entire layout, but I really don't know what I'm doing with them yet.

The design cannot be changed by the end user, due to it being controlled by the PHP. I am not very good with CSS actually. If you have a better way to do it, please share, since I am honestly way out of date with my HTML knowledge.

Oh wow. Didn't expect that......especially since it lasted so long. Because of JAOWNT, I haven't been doing anything new for ParaTracker - skins A B and C are the only ones completed thus far. (Skins E F G and H should theoretically take very little time each.) And then there's the ASCII/ANSI bug I still have to figure out. Other than that, ParaTracker should be completely usable, to the best of my knowledge. If there is anything else you need added to ParaTracker, or if you're really itching for more skins to be released, let me know. My attention is elsewhere at the moment, but it can easily be diverted back to here. Just a reminder; you do not need to host ParaTracker yourself. We have one already set up that you can use, just like JediTracker. http://pt.dogi.us/

Blast doors are already being worked on. Due to some limitations of the prefabs, however, I didn't go with death star style blast doors. A whirlpool room? Please elaborate.

After looking up some sci-fi door designs, it seems that the door doesn't need to look very high tech - it's the frame that makes all the difference. So for now i made some decent looking door frames. Thank you, Railback, for the design, although i likely will not use it at this time. Added a hydronics lab and shooting range to the list of rooms to add. After some more thought..... I might be able to stretch this to 15 decks or so. It would be a lot of work, so I'm not sure I want to go through with it, but if I do, just about any room idea will have space.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CO1bVeZuhaA

Noted and added to the OP. Most dreadnaught art has "blisters" on the outer hull that contain the turbolasers - so if I do anything with mannable guns, that's probably where they'll be. It's tricky because it'll involve slicing through the outer hull, which is mostly curve patches. But I'm sure I can make it work. Edit: Another thing I'd like to know - does anyone have any cool door ideas? I don't want them to be traditional doors that go up into the ceiling, but I also don't want to make them simply move sideways.

As promised, here are some screenshots from within Radiant. Please keep in mind this is VERY WIP and a lot is subject to change. All comments are welcome. Outside of the ship: The hangar area (There is only one hangar for now, and I will probably add an identical one on the bottom of the ship later): VERY early shot of the bridge area: Finally, pictures of the aforementioned hallway prefabs. The red light strip in the middle of the walls is going to be a light bar that turns on for red alert only, but it has to be visible for editing:

So, I am mapping my version of an Imperial Dreadnaught as part of Jedi Academy Of Weird New Things. I am not at home right now, but I will post pictures when I have some time. In the meantime, I actually have a question for the JK community. I'd like to know what you all would expect to see on a Dreadnaught. Let me give a little background first; I am planning seven or eight decks, with turbolifts and emergency stairwells connecting them. I would like a tram or two to run the length of the ship on each deck for quick travel. I have prefabbed some decent looking hallways that I can cut and paste into place to connect everything, and I plan on making a blueprint on graph paper at work for each deck, then translating it into Radiant at home. I already have one hangar (Possibly two), an engine room, a bridge, a brig, a large central storage area, two cafes, and a bar planned and/or done. I want a security office on each deck, and maybe a master office as part of the bridge. There will be at least one very large barracks area that will span multiple decks. What I need from the community is to know what else they expect in a large ship like this. I plan to map out as much of the ship as I possibly can, and other than snazzy looking hallways, I need to fill the space. Single deck room ideas: Conference room (Ready room) Briefing room for officers Officer quarters Hydroponics Communications room Chemical storage Battle bridge Sickbay Gravity generator Shield generator mannable weapons bays, gun/cannon turrets Multi deck room ideas (Rooms that have entry points on multiple decks): Briefing room for troops Garbage crusher Stormtrooper practice range Droid maintenance Weapons control Atrium (Maybe two?) Science lab Power plant Please let me know if any of these rooms sound good or bad, or if you have better ideas. Thanks!

Off topic - did anyone else know that the "angles" key works on func_doors, in place of the "angle" key?? I just found that out today. It would have been the single most awesome thing to make use of, back in the day...

Worst case scenario, if it isn't possible, I'll find some way to tone down the polygon count of the room, but it'll look awesome if I can pull it off. Thanks for the heads up.

It looks like Antiportals might do what I am looking for.....and they might work for my application because it is unlikely/impossible for them to line up with any structural splits, since the wall is curved. I'll have to check them out.

I'm mapping an Imperial Dreadnaught, inside and out, with my own embellishments. I want to make a very large room at the front of the ship, with two of the walls being a huge, curved glass window that can see into space, so if anyone is flying around, outside, they are visible. But from the outside of the ship, all anyone will be able to see is the ship's hull. I know I could use a misc_portal_camera and misc_portal_surface to do this, somewhat....but I don't know if it would work correctly, as it would only open some leafs to each other, and not all of them. The other problem is that I don't want players flying around outside to hear sounds from inside the ship - there will likely be music and carnage inside.

Scripting is super easy. It's the easiest way. A long time ago, someone suggested to me to use a shooter (I forget the entity's name....target_shooter? Misc_shooter). How it works is, you hide the shooter off in an inaccessible area of the map, and aim it at another entity a short distance away (I think it was a damage-activated func_door). Then, put several func_doors in the way of the blaster fire, and connect them to your buttons. Voila, conditional door without a script.

I had loads of issues with func_train. It is quite a hackjob and I don't like to use it. Unless there is a specific reason you're using func_train, you should switch over to using a func_static and move it with an Icarus script. It is actually easier and a lot more flexible.

That will work as far as hiding the inside of the room, yes, but the game would still be drawing the inside of the room. I'm trying to prevent that, both for sound leakage reasons and for rendering speed. I intend to have a LOT of stuff in this room.

I know patch meshes can be used to make one way walls and walls that can be seen through on one side, but is there any way to make an area of the map able to see another without the reverse being possible? I am trying to make a room in the front of a large ship that has a large glass wall that looks out into space. Due to the large number of polygons in this room, i want to use a wall texture on the outside of the ship, and seal it off. But i still want people in the room to be able to see into space. Is there any way to do this without using portals? Sorry for the hasty post, I am actually at work trying to figure this out on my head and I have no idea how.

What shader support needs added? Can you elaborate?

So, I am wondering. Cagelight and myself are already swimming in work to be done. Is there any interest in this community in making an HD texture pack, that scales all the base textures up by 4 times the original resolution? One of the big reasons I ask is, if/when this mod is released, I'm hoping to have a community content pack to go with it, with authors' permission (Kind of like how JA+ included a bunch of hilts and swords). I can't say the other big reason yet - all I can do is promise that the end result will be very much worth the effort. Ah yes, Stalax. I couldn't remember the name of the mod, thanks. If I recall the old demo video correctly, the game ran super super slow with only a few objects. The physics in Cagelight's videos are implemented from an outside library (Bullet), and will be far smoother. But physics aren't even the half of it. There is much more on the way. As far as scripting, that has already been taken care of and the language choice was made. I will remain silent on this as well, if only because we have not gone anywhere with it at this time, but it is implemented and working.

Oh really? Good, at least I'm not the only one. One of the big things I wanted to do with it is to have the level randomize itself. The idea I started with is that the players are prisoners being transported on an Imperial Dreadnaught, and the Dreadnaught becomes disabled and the prisoners have to escape. I intend to map out as much of the ship as I possibly can. Randomizing the level would be as easy as disabling random turbolifts and locking random doors. Could be a lot of fun. And then having waves of stormtroopers and other NPCs that grow or shrink based on the number of players would make it more challenging. Add in NPC squad behavior and the physics engine, and everything gets awesome. I also wanted to have multiplayer "cutscenes" of sorts. EDIT: I'm hoping to also make music for this, although it'd likely be techno-oriented. Once the back end of the engine is ready, I guess the most reasonable thing to do would be to release an updated mp_entities.def file and some kind of updated shader editor so people can join in....but that's down the road. And I have to bite my lip and stop there.

Not only that, Siege has been removed as well. A long time ago, we had wanted to do a Left 4 Dead style game with JA, where a group of players would be attacked by waves of NPCs with slightly random boss encounters. But I ran into so many bugs that we had to stop. Now, with the source code available, we might be able to give this a new approach. However, there is still much to be done on the back end, and we must wait until it is complete before continuing.

So Parabolic is a bit bored of the way JA is currently. A month or two ago, a friend of mine started doing some serious code modifications. Currently, the name of the mod is Jedi Academy Of Weird New Things, although that will likely be changed before it is complete. This mod is far from completion, and will make massive changes to large portions of the game. My friend is a little shy about it, but I wanted to see people's reactions, so I am posting some of his videos here. I have been asked to keep quiet about some of the things for now, simply because they are too far from completion and he is not sure if they are possible. Currently: The entity limit has been massively increased. Of course. EDIT: EDIT: OBJ support has been added. It is not intended to replace MD3, but it is a more useful format for models. The force powers are getting a massive rethink. Push, pull, and sense will be getting some major updates. Protect and rage are being replaced with something else. We already know what we want to replace them with, but I will say no more, just to keep things fresh for now. Suffice to say, it looks like all force powers will receive massive adjustments, except for heal and drain. Now, on to the stuff with videos. First, everyone's favorite - a physics engine. I know this has been tried before, and usually has slow results or a plethora of limitations. Introducing: the Bullet physics engine. This is an old video, but it shows the engine at work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HpPipbxjfvM After the physics movement was smoothed and force powers were added: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI6D733Fs84 Crushers actually crush, and multiple NPCs in a doorway does not cause the door to reverse (Thanks to the physics engine). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6aa3Kda3S90 The motion of movers has been adjusted for both a slow start and a slow stop. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9Aq84q_ISE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X81ecl1B3Ec There is much, much more to come in the future, but nothing to show yet. Comments are welcome!

I have confirmed a bug where server responses are randomly not being recognized as ANSI encoding. I'm not quite sure how to handle this yet, but when I have a solution, I will implement it. It will fix both the Euro sign in the server name, and the unrecognized characters in player names.