Open source Jedi Knight in a modern engine

[afi]

Discord channel for this project: https://discord.gg/BCMhU3h

In the last couple weeks this has been discussed in a number of threads and status updates and I think it's time to give it a proper discussion.

 

Why is a project like this a good idea?

The goal should be having a free, open source game with Jedi Knight gameplay mechanics.

 

- You don't need Jedi Academy / Jedi Outcast to run it

- It's completely open source

- Everyone can contribute

- Modern graphics

- Modern engine and all it's benefits

- Possibly new players

 

I know many want a new Star Wars Jedi Knight singleplayer game in a modern engine. However, I don't think that this is something that can be achieved by a fan-project because at some point the project would be stopped by Disney.

 

An archetype for a project like this could be "The Dark Mod" which is basically a Thief-mod for Doom 3 that became standalone after a couple of years (you don't need Doom 3 anymore to run it).

While it obviously resembles the Thief games, it doesn't use any of the intellectual property. The Dark Mod is even close to be integrated to steam now (it's already through greenlight).

 

A project like this could be realised in two ways:

 

- Use a modern engine like UT4

- Use the Jedi Knight sourcecode (openJK for example) with rend2 and recreate all assets like it was done for openArena (free version of Quake 3)

 

The main reason why I think this could be a cool project is the possibility of having the unique Jedi Knight gameplay translated to a modern engine, hopefully attracting new players to this kind of combat.

 

Obviously it would be a huge project but if you would focus on having a small multiplayer-build first (one map, one playermodel etc) it could be possible.

To come back to the example of The Dark Mod: While the base game is fairly small in content (it mainly provides the engine and the assets), it's fairly easy to create so called "fan missions" which could also be the way to create singleplayer missions for this project.

 

These are my two cents.

[Circa]

So I think what you're saying is to strip the Star Wars content completely? It's an interesting idea and I recall you mentioning it before.

 

As a Star Wars fan it would be sad to see, however it think it could be extremely cool to see a small and simple game like that. Would be great for competitive play. You'd only need one player model, maybe two for team differentiation. One weapon. And only a few maps.

 

And I don't think it would be that big of a project. The biggest part is rend2. Unless you'd want the animations completely redone as well. It would then be pretty different gameplay from JKA.

[afi]

The problem is that I'm quite sure you'd have to redo the animations cause of legal reasons, just like textures, models, sounds etc. And yes, I agree that would be probably the biggest part of all the work, especially since there are not that many people who are into making animations.

 

If you'd use a different engine it would be a different system anyway.

[Boothand]

I think the most important thing to discuss is what kind of game you want to end up with? If it's not star wars, what weapons, what context is it placed in? What elements from the combat do you want to keep and change?

[Bek]

Screw Jka. You might as well redo the story too, give the fans something to bite on. I haven't played jka in almost a year, and this is mainly because:

 

A: The story is lack luster.

B: The animations, are very cheesy.

C: The level design is very weak.

D: The voice acting is God awful.

 

I figure if there were to be a remake, all of these aspects should be approved upon. Something worth doing, is worth doing right. You want to worry about the core essentials; the maps, animations, and story. Voice acting, multiplayer, and customization stuff can be added later. Also I wouldn't really worry about Disney shutting down a jka remake. The Knights of The Old Republic remake is pretty far along, and hasn't gotten a cease and desist yet. The best thing to do would be to complete it, and have a bunch of people torrent it, ensuring that it stays on the internet, and away from Disney's grubby fingers.

[afi]

Story and singleplayer would be the last thing I'd care about. Besides the copyright issues, it's an huge amount of work to make a singleplayer game. And again, I'd leave SW completely out and just focus on resembling the gameplay and combat mechanics. I don't say that it couldn't include singleplayer but it shouldn't be the main goal.

I think the core aspect of the Jedi Knight games is the saber melee combat. I'd focus on that and try to polish it as much as possible. Force powers and other weapons would need to be discussed.

[Boothand]

So something where you can jump high and have this movement based directional attack system with a sword with various slow/fast styles? How would blocking/staggering work? Stuff like wall-jumps/climbs? Strafe jumps? What about various bugs and stuff people use from JKA like backflip delayed swings and stuff that is important to JKA duels?

 

Some time ago I did some live streams where I put Kyle and his anims in Unity and started playing around with the movement and combat system. Unreal would probably be better suited. I wanted to change up the combat a bit, but I'd rather try out my ideas some more before I try pitching it to someone.

 

I think an ideal combat system for something with the Jedi Knight-series movement style would be some hybrid between JKA and JK2 1.04 and 1.02. No matter the implementation, I have some ideas on how to make stuff like blocking look good and got a ton of experience in Unity and some experience with Unreal. If your/the community's ideas get developed enough, I'm sure I could help coding/blueprinting.

[afi]

So something where you can jump high and have this movement based directional attack system with a sword with various slow/fast styles?

 

Exactly this. I could imagine this to become what Blade Symphony wanted to be. Blade Symphony was advertised as a game similar to JK2 but failed completely.

 

I think poke/wiggle and all broken mechanics like broken wallflips etc would have to go. Remove all the bullshit and streamline the combat while not dumbing it down. Of course it would have to be discussed what is a bullshit and what is a legit gameplay mechanic. Delayed swings for example are probably too important to remove them. But all this would have to be discussed of course.

[Tempust85]

Can port the animations, onto a new set of bones with different names. We also have access to the full animation source as well. No one would be able to prove that they were ported.

[Cor]

I'd be interested in Jedi Academy remade in a modern engine, although if Star Wars gets removed from it I personally don't see it being worth the effort. But others might do.

 

It's a very good game, but the context of the game is the reason I played so much. Because it's Star Wars, the game has a lot of variety, way more than in other games I know.

When I want to play melee combat, which is actually all the time, I play Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. 

[Tempust85]

I think what should be done is just a barebones, Star Wars MP shooter. Add sabers later when you've got a release out to get more devs. This is pretty much what we were doing with MBIII on UDK though we had very basic sabering as well.

[Boothand]

If you intend to make a game like Jedi Knight that has sabering, I'd say do that from the start. Get the prototype up with the important features immediately. I think projects easily come to a halt if you say "we'll add that later when this part is good", if it's actually part of the core, even if a MP shooter is easier.

But I guess it's more about what the community wants in such a game. Personally I'd focus on saber combat, as this is the unique part that warrants a remake, since there is no other combat system like it outside of JK series.

[afi]

Can port the animations, onto a new set of bones with different names. We also have access to the full animation source as well. No one would be able to prove that they were ported.

 

I doubt this would stop someone from suing you if he really wanted to.

 

I guess the most important question is the choice of the engine. Doing a standalone version of Jedi Knight 2 / Jedi Academy with openJK would be really easy. You'd just have to replace the assets.

With a different engine the main work (in the beginning at least) would be coding and creating the combat and movement.

So it would depend heavily on enough coders being able to contribute to this.

 

About the Star Wars - problem. I could imagine having SW as a mod or as an alternative theme. However, I think most people here underestimate the amount of work to create assets for a complete Star Wars game, including models, maps, sounds, textures, etc.

When choosing a different setting, a more minimalist approach would be sufficient.

[Grab]

I think poke/wiggle and all broken mechanics like broken wallflips etc would have to go.

R.I.P. JKA

[Tempust85]

About the Star Wars - problem. I could imagine having SW as a mod or as an alternative theme. However, I think most people here underestimate the amount of work to create assets for a complete Star Wars game, including models, maps, sounds, textures, etc.

 

Both projects I was part of - Star Wars: The New Era (HL2) & MBIII (UDK), focused on all of these things and yet they still ultimately failed. Why? Because the developers eventually lost interest. Not many people want to hang around for years making a game unless you're being paid for it. The only projects I've seen stick it out for longer than 6 months are Star Wars: First Strike Mod (Battlefield 2142) & Star Wars: Battlecry (UE4), with the latter still in production and the other finished.

 

 

 

EDIT:

 

Here's a good base blueprint: https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/generic-shooter-sample-project

[Teancum]

...yet they still ultimately failed. Why? Because the developers eventually lost interest. Not many people want to hang around for years making a game unless you're being paid for it. The only projects I've seen stick it out for longer than 6 months are Star Wars: First Strike Mod (Battlefield 2142) & Star Wars: Battlecry (UE4), with the latter still in production and the other finished.

This is the most realistic view I've seen yet. When you start tackling the sheer scale it turns out that 1) an extremely tiny sample of people with the patience to see it out and 2) often people dive in over their heads. The reality of it all is that we struggle to get enough people to staff major mods when a game engine and assets already exist. As cool as these ideas are, there just isn't enough manpower (and possibly talent) to tackle all this in a totally different engine.

[afi]

That's why you should focus on gameplay and not on creating thousands of Star Wars assets.

I'm completely aware that even then a project like this would be a lot of work. I was part of too many failed mod- and gameprojects already so I know how hard it is to get a project like this finished.

[Noodle]

The problem I've seen with many mods is that they set unreal goals when they should focus on achieving small things first. You can aim for the sky, but without a clear set of goals it's impossible to get anything done. 

[Tempust85]

The problem I've seen with many mods is that they set unreal goals when they should focus on achieving small things first. You can aim for the sky, but without a clear set of goals it's impossible to get anything done. 

 

Exactly. It's all well and good to want to get large features like sabers in off the bat but unless you're team is large enough and experienced enough, you'll fall flat.

 

Proper assets can come later. You could easily make a VERY basic saber, UE4's test dummy character and use them for animation work. So long as you have the skeleton you want, a test character model and a saber hilt with a right thickness (for correct holding), then you can move straight on to animation & coding work. Wouldn't matter if it's Star Wars, this would still apply.

[Boothand]

I just mean like.. doing the very easiest things in the start is nice because it feels good to get them done. But if you decide to make a game that has JK-like sabering as a core feature, you should really start at once, don't leave this to the end. This is when you'll find out what it takes, if you or your team can do it and you will get your game built to support that feature completely instead of ending up with a robust system for a shooter, only to find you need to change a lot for the sabering to make sense (or that you cannot do it after all). I do agree that using a shooter template like linked above would be reasonable for a community project though.

 

 

My suggestion right would be to see if someone could transfer JK's movement, jump and sabering animations (yellow only) onto a new skeleton, and export FBX files, retarget them onto the template mesh and just replace the template's animations, then prototype with a placeholder stick.

[Tempust85]

I've also read that you can mod Unreal Tournament, so that could be a good base as well. Slap in a basic saber, then get animating & coding.

 

 

I've also got $30 USD credit for the UE4 marketplace that I'm willing to donate for something decent, if this ever gets started and the purchase is of a dire need.

[Boothand]

I've also got $30 USD credit for the UE4 marketplace that I'm willing to donate for something decent, if this ever gets started and the purchase is of a dire need.

 

Hmm, if it's supposed to be entirely open source, might be tricky to include something bought.

[afi]

I found this: https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/348037/is-it-oklegal-to-publish-my-game-on-github.html

[Tempust85]

Need something a bit more recent than that, ue4 went from needing a sub to being free.

[afi]

As far as I understood you can make marketplace items available for employees but you cant distribute them freely on the internet if they are uncooked