OpenJK General Topic

[eezstreet]

This is a thread to discuss all things OpenJK related, be they technical banter or otherwise.
OpenJK is an engine enhancement for JK2 and JKA, which is designed to be "the ultimate source code" to base your mod projects and standalone projects on. It, like the rest of the source release, is licensed under GPLv2, so you must adhere to it (openly distribute your source code, and we don't have any problems!).

 

Feature list (only slightly out of date):

 

Singleplayer

(note: OpenJK savegames and base savegames are not compatible with each other due to major structural differences)

General

• JK2 and JKA are now playable from the same .exe file.
• Can now read jagamex86.dll/jk2gamex86.dll from a mod folder (ie, set with fs_game)
• Removed force feedback due to copyright infringement
• Wampas are no longer affected by knockback [Jedi Academy only]
• Disabled various useless warnings

Bug Fixes

• Corrected an issue where some models which normally worked in MP would not work in SP
• Fixed an issue where /setforceall 3 would not allow you to cycle saber stances all the way [Jedi Academy only]
• Fixed an issue where /setforceall 3 would not allow you to advance through the menus and remain stuck on mission select screens. [Jedi Academy only]
• Corrected a massive parsing error which was causing lots of OOB (out of bounds) memory access
• Improved/fixed Mind Trick Level 4:
  • The text that says "Press JUMP to exit" is now accurate.
  • First person weapon now displays correctly
  • Noghri Stick/Tusken Staff/Tusken Rifle fixed for first person [Jedi Academy only]
  • Imperial Pistol corrected for first person [Jedi Outcast only]
  • No longer switches weapon on the player when active
  • Improved the third person camera so that it's more consistent with the player. This does not affect droids, in order to maintain base consistency for certain missions in JK2.
• No longer allowed to switch weapons while charging another weapon
• Fixed light amplification goggles. [Jedi Academy only]
• Fixed gamma ramping issues
• Fixed various memory leaks
• Fixed /cmdlist command, as well as the entire command sequence, which was totally broken

Extensions/Modability

• ICARUS can now set and read the values of cvars
• Added damage/altDamage/splashDamage/altSplashDamage/splashRadius/altSplashRadius to weapons.dat, and removed Force Feedback related ones.

 

Multiplayer

General

• Adjusted several cvar defaults
• Added support for multiple master servers on the client. The second one is defaulted to JKHub.

Bug Fixes

• Removed the following useless cvars: net_killdroppedfragments, com_blood, and com_hunkmegs
• Corrected crashes on ATI cards
• Raised maximum cvar limit from 1600 to 2048 (which fixes Siege-related crashes on JA+)
• ICARUS now functions nearly identical to SP, except for SP-specific features (such as cinematics)
• Fixed crashes from spawning Ragnos or Saber Droids
• Fixed AI:
  • Cultist: All varieties except Destroyer and Commando. Some small bugs with Drain and push/pull variant.
  • Jawa: corrected walk/run sequence
• Fixed a crash from spawning a YT-1300 vehicle, and from piloting invalid vehicles in general
• Fixed freeze when server does a map_restart while client is loading the map
• The game no longer spams "r_maxpolies or r_maxpolyverts reached" in certain circumstances
• Corrected a buffer overflow in RCON code
• Cheats now work properly when playing back demos
• Corrected an issue where shaders were wildly inconsistent with SP. As a side effect, the detpacks now flash like they do in SP.
• Corrected timescale frametime issues with negative or very small timescale.
• Various security fixes:
  • Fixed clients being able to change IP via cvar
  • Corrected people spoofing clients with print packets
  • Corrected servers spoofing clients with connect packets
  • Fixed an issue where typing in certain commands caused a total map refresh, allowing people to bypass various ingame limits (such as the MBII respawn limit)

Visual

• Demos can now be recorded to AVI format
• HUD corrections:
  • Allowed non-hardcoded HUD elements to be drawn from .menu files
  • Removed color tinting from team games (looks bad)
  • Corrected an issue where the HUD would show up while dead in Siege.
  • Correctly displays infinite ammo for the pistol when g_hudfiles is 1
  • Correctly displays melee when g_hudfiles is 1
• Added minimize command
• r_mode can now be set to -2, which uses your desktop resolution
• Added screenshot_png command
• Reintroduced r_mapOverBrightBits cvar from Quake 3
• Updated the JPEG library.
• Interpolated NPC movement, so they don't have stuttery movement
• Corrected a minor visual issue where the Stouker Concussion rifle was improperly rendered in first person.
• Greatly smoothened the look of first person animation.
• Fixed Stouker Concussion Rifle and Bryar Blaster Pistol animations [Pure OpenJK games only]

 

Shared

New Features

• Modular Renderer, which in the future will be able to be exchanged for other renderers (such as ioquake3's rend2, or XreaL)
• Linux Support
• Visual Studio 2010/2012 compilation support, and CMake support
• Console improvements: changed keycode (Now `, instead of shift+`), added more controls (shift+page up/down, mouse wheel, ctrl+mouse wheel), and increased the buffer.
• Added fontlist command

Bug Fixes

• Fixed widescreen causing black screen
• Fixed unusual resolutions causing game crashes when creating a local game
• Removed CD checks
• Removed anti-piracy code (CL_PacketParseEntities)
• Cleaned up the code (in general)
• Corrected an issue where ICARUS could potentially overflow and corrupt the memory
• Removed CPU detection from the code
• Corrected an issue where viewing the OpenGL config screen would crash the game due to having too many GL extensions on your video card
• Removed warnings about DirectX being out of date
• Fixed issues with mouse not being properly released when not fullscreened

Please do not ask about:

Renderer-related stuff, we're well aware that the renderer is crap
Gameplay-related "suggestions". OpenJK isn't a gameplay enhancer.
What's possible with the engine - because <em>anything</em> is possible with the engine source.

Fork it now!
https://github.com/razish/openjk

General Support/Discussion Channel:
irc.arloria.net / #JACoders

[minilogoguy18]

You said as long as they release their source code, but how restrictive is the whole no use of original assets deal? Is it expected that people make all their own animations for their stand alone games and nothing can be reused?

[Raz0r]

Yes.

[therfiles]

Can commercial products be developed off the source code? As long as they release their code in turn?

[eezstreet]

therfiles: Yes. But its highly frowned upon, and you'd be profiting off of Raven's work, which I don't really approve of personally. Also, Star Wars copyrights et al.

 

tl;dr. Not sure why you would, but yes.

 

@@minilogoguy18: The rules here are a bit gray. Since mods can legally distribute a _humanoid.gla to suit a particular purpose, but can also edit an animation... Its a legal grey area for sure. It's technically legal to just snatch up a stance mod and distribute it. But is it really ethical...? No, not really, because you're stealing the other stuff in the GLA. I can't definitely say one way or the other.

 

Textures, sounds, models, maps, and basically everything else is definitively off-limits though.

[FlemoidusMaximus]

It is great to hear that the source code for Jedi Academy and Jedi Knight have been released after a 10 year wait. However, I just now heard of it, so I have several questions concerning the OpenJK Project:

 

1) How long has the OpenJK Project existed?

2) Is it an open-source port, similar to GZDooM for Doom or the XLEngine for Dark Forces and Daggerfall?

3) Is there a direct download link available now? If so, could you provide one?

 

Feedback to these questions would be greatly appreciated, and thank you to the people who are making this OpenJK project. Even during the days of filefront, this would have sounded too good to be true . 

 

[minilogoguy18]

I was wondering too about commercial usage, surely if you "reimbursed" Raven in some way much as in how other companies license out an open source game engine I bet you could make a sell-able game, as long as it was good enough that people wanted to buy it. You'd probably also of course have to pay royalties to Disney for the Star Wars name. Hell who knows, maybe if it were good enough they'd back it but that's a long shot really.

 

How are guys doing it with say the Source engine? It's free but people are using it to make games and selling them on steam, perhaps a percentage of each copy goes to Valve?

 

I'd imagine someone who could animate when it comes to projects like these would be in very high demand since there are very few of us in the community, and if you were to make all your own animations only someone with a ton of skill could do it in a reasonable amount of time, it took me many years to learn the things I know and I'm far from good. Really good texture artists are tough to find as well, especially ones who could UV map the model for top notch results, that way the modelers can move much faster.

[Raz0r]

1) How long has the OpenJK Project existed?

2) Is it an open-source port, similar to GZDooM for Doom or the XLEngine for Dark Forces and Daggerfall?

3) Is there a direct download link available now? If so, could you provide one?

1) Since a few hours after the source release, April 4th 2013. The core contributors have been coding on JA and tech 3 for years, we've also merged a project we called "modbase" into OpenJK, so you could consider that the start of our open work.

2) Yes, all of the OpenJK source is available under the GPLv2 licence and is hosted on Github

3) At the moment, no. We want to get a bit further in development with native ports to major platforms and an impressive feature set before promoting usage of OpenJK by the general public =]

[CrimsonStrife]

I was wondering too about commercial usage, surely if you "reimbursed" Raven in some way much as in how other companies license out an open source game engine I bet you could make a sell-able game, as long as it was good enough that people wanted to buy it. You'd probably also of course have to pay royalties to Disney for the Star Wars name. Hell who knows, maybe if it were good enough they'd back it but that's a long shot really.

 

How are guys doing it with say the Source engine? It's free but people are using it to make games and selling them on steam, perhaps a percentage of each copy goes to Valve?

 

I'd imagine someone who could animate when it comes to projects like these would be in very high demand since there are very few of us in the community, and if you were to make all your own animations only someone with a ton of skill could do it in a reasonable amount of time, it took me many years to learn the things I know and I'm far from good. Really good texture artists are tough to find as well, especially ones who could UV map the model for top notch results, that way the modelers can move much faster.

 

The source engine is only free for non-commercial use, as with engines like UDK. This is becoming a standard, with many engines now having "free for non-commercial" models, some limited, some not. In the case of Valve, I would assume they work it much like Epic does with the UDK, there is a fairly affordable license fee (UDK is $100), and you are allowed to make a set amount before any royalties are due (UDK is $50,000) and after that a royalty hits on any other profit (25% to Epic for UDK). Valve requires you to contact them for licensing information, so I don't just know the numbers http://source.valvesoftware.com/licensing.php

 

Selling on Steam is essentially a per item basis, you go through the approval process, and then the terms are based on exactly what is agreed upon for your product. You can check here for the details http://www.steampowered.com/steamworks/index.php

 

In the case of this engine, it is a modified one, and so it is less Raven you would need to worry about (especially if you made your own assets) and the original developers, this being based off the Quake engine I am assuming that would be id Software.

 

Can commercial products be developed off the source code? As long as they release their code in turn?

 

This Basically...

 

tl;dr. Not sure why you would, but yes.

 

 

Honestly though, this is a decade old engine, and it was a sort of hack'n'slash modification of an existing one at that.

With all of the other available, and surprisingly affordable options for SDKs and Engines, why would you really want/need to? Especially when you consider you would already need to make and code EVERYTHING else in the game.

[eezstreet]

I was wondering too about commercial usage, surely if you "reimbursed" Raven in some way much as in how other companies license out an open source game engine I bet you could make a sell-able game, as long as it was good enough that people wanted to buy it. You'd probably also of course have to pay royalties to Disney for the Star Wars name. Hell who knows, maybe if it were good enough they'd back it but that's a long shot really.

 

There's several problems with licensing out an engine from Raven for this particular purpose:

1. Disney, as you mentioned

2. The id Tech engine itself, which Raven doesn't have permission to license in such a way to us.

3. Some of these are Raven Standard libraries, which are licensed under Activision oddly enough, particularly Ratl (Raven Template Library), Rufl (Raven Useful Functions Library) and Ravl (Raven Vector Library).

4. There's legal issues with releasing the source as it is (50+ forkers of the original project had to clean their history and rebase their code because it was found to be illegally distributing some libraries, unintentional of course). This has been mostly taken care of though.

 

How are guys doing it with say the Source engine? It's free but people are using it to make games and selling them on steam, perhaps a percentage of each copy goes to Valve?

 

Possibly. Or they could be licensing it with money up front, which is more likely. You'd have to ask Valve about the specifics. Raven's code is based off another engine, which makes this a very tricky situation. Frankly I wouldn't even bother starting this up as a commercial project. Just seems silly, since there's far better options. This is more for learning/fun/maybe portfolio, idk, as Raven says.

 

I'd imagine someone who could animate when it comes to projects like these would be in very high demand since there are very few of us in the community, and if you were to make all your own animations only someone with a ton of skill could do it in a reasonable amount of time, it took me many years to learn the things I know and I'm far from good. Really good texture artists are tough to find as well, especially ones who could UV map the model for top notch results, that way the modelers can move much faster.

 

Depends on what sort of talent is brought back into the community.

[Guest Kel'ariy Ory'Hara]

linux support, nice, that means you guys are workin on jamp/jasp executables that run native in linux right?

[Raz0r]

Yes, native clients on both Linux and Mac.

[mrwonko]

therfiles: Yes. But its highly frowned upon, and you'd be profiting off of Raven's work, which I don't really approve of personally. Also, Star Wars copyrights et al.

Huh? Why would that be frowned upon? If you release under GPL you grant rights for commercial use. See the Lugaru fiasco on how not to do it though.

With all of the other available, and surprisingly affordable options for SDKs and Engines, why would you really want/need to? Especially when you consider you would already need to make and code EVERYTHING else in the game.

Maybe because you don't want to share revenues or like open source? Or you're a long time Jedi Academy modder that is already comfortable with the engine. Maybe you just want the nice mod support of idtech 3. There are a couple of reasons I could think of.

[CrimsonStrife]

Huh? Why would that be frowned upon? If you release under GPL you grant rights for commercial use. See the Lugaru fiasco on how not to do it though.

I don't believe he is saying that it is frowned on by the legal system...more that it is an ethical or moral issue.

However, even though they released their source under GPL, the actual id Tech engine (which that was built off) isn't theirs to release, so you really can't just use it without licensing it from id Software.

 

Maybe because you don't want to share revenues or like open source? Or you're a long time Jedi Academy modder that is already comfortable with the engine. Maybe you just want the nice mod support of idtech 3. There are a couple of reasons I could think of.

I was referring to using the version of id Tech that Raven created for JK for an unrelated commercial project.  If you're going to use id Tech commercially that's fine, you still have to license it from them one way or another, and you have to make your own assets anyway, so why not go with the actual engine.  

 

The only thing that is open source here is the code Raven created, anything initially belonging to another company is not, unless they have released it elsewhere as such.

 

Hate to say it, but due to id Tech's engine being what JK was built on, regardless of what you do, you'll be paying royalties to id Software to use it commercially.

[afi]

I agree, Raven released the coder under GPL... They know what they did and if they had something against a commercial use they would have chosen another license...

Edit: And Quake3 is open-source as well...

[mrwonko]

However, even though they released their source under GPL, the actual id Tech engine (which that was built off) isn't theirs to release, so you really can't just use it without licensing it from id Software.

Yes you can. This is GPL and that's all you need to know. And even ignoring that, the id Tech engine 3 is GPL as well, you're free to use that without licensing it as long as your code adheres to the GPL.

The only thing that is open source here is the code Raven created, anything initially belonging to another company is not, unless they have released it elsewhere as such.

No, if that were the case they would've removed it, like they removed the FeelIt and Bink stuff (eventually). You can create your own assets and sell the resulting game.

[CrimsonStrife]

Yes you can. This is GPL and that's all you need to know. And even ignoring that, the id Tech engine 3 is GPL as well, you're free to use that without licensing it as long as your code adheres to the GPL.No, if that were the case they would've removed it, like they removed the FeelIt and Bink stuff (eventually). You can create your own assets and sell the resulting game.

 

I was confusing id Tech 3 with 4 then.  But ok, let's run on the idea that you create a game for commercial use, using all this GPL licensed code/software.  How do you intend to actually market a game, that by it's own terms, is open source? I am not saying it couldn't be done, but if you're going through the trouble of making an entirely new game off this source, I wouldn't plan on doing it commercially, not going to be worth it in the long run.

[afi]

Yes, but you only have to release the code, not the assets... I think people will still buy Jedi Academy and Outcast now even though the source is released.

But you're right, it would be hard.

[CrimsonStrife]

Yes, but you only have to release the code, not the assets... I think people will still buy Jedi Academy and Outcast now even though the source is released.

But you're right, it would be hard.

Well when you're dealing with such a mod-accessible game engine like this, then the assets are right there...all someone needs to do is buy the game, then they could easily repackage it, sure not legally as the assets would be yours assuming you did your licensing right, but when has that ever stopped anyone on the internet.

[Raz0r]

The source would be freely available. The assets you created would be proprietary.<br /><br />It's the same way Jedi Academy and Quake are being sold. We have freely available source code, but we have to pay for the proprietary assets.

[mrwonko]

How do you intend to actually market a game, that by it's own terms, is open source?

For the most part just like any other game. How is Doom 3 BFG marketed? It's open source after all.

[afi]

Well when you're dealing with such a mod-accessible game engine like this, then the assets are right there...all someone needs to do is buy the game, then they could easily repackage it, sure not legally as the assets would be yours assuming you did your licensing right, but when has that ever stopped anyone on the internet.

 

People also just could pirate the whole game

[CrimsonStrife]

People also just could pirate the whole game

Kinda what I was getting at, only thing protecting your game is needing one person to buy it to get the assets.

 

For the most part just like any other game. How is Doom 3 BFG marketed? It's open source after all.

In that sense they are catering towards user's potential desires to have remastered releases of classic games.  The source may be available, but anything that went into remastering assets, is not, also you have the releases to modern consoles, which because of the approval processes and costs to get the development kits for consoles, open source isn't likely to have allowed users to create those ports themselves.

 

If you were say, going to market an HD remake of JKA (legal issues with the intellectual property aside)...then reasonably, yes I could see it pulling a profit. People will often pay good money for nostalgia's sake.

But here you are talking about marketing something completely new, with no existing fanbase...totally different ball-game.

[mrwonko]

The source may be available, but anything that went into remastering assets, is not [...]

And right there you have one of the reasons you can sell GPL stuff. Assets. The main other one being support.

[CrimsonStrife]

And right there you have one of the reasons you can sell GPL stuff. Assets. The main other one being support.

I've already agreed that you CAN sell it.  I am trying to point out that there is no real way for a brand new IP to come out with this type of marketing strategy.  Sure by all means keep it modder friendly, builds community, but using an open-source license really doesn't offer your product any protection.  You're going to face enough pirates as it is (because pirates will steal basically anything not nailed down) even being such a low profile release.  And making it where all someone has to do is get their hands on one copy of your game and then it's free source code, and then poof, kiss any hope of profit out the window.

 

Even these HD re-releases of classics don't see the kinds of profit as original releases do, and they are catering to an existing fanbase, and coming out at reduced prices.  Think about what you have to do to compete.

 

And if you try to claim you aren't in it for profit, then doing it commercially is pointless.