OJP Website news

[Samuel Dravis]

For those of you who don't visit the OJP forum -

 

I've finished the OJP's website, so check it out for the latest news, files, and screenshots.

 

The OJP Website

 

A description of the OJP:

 

The Open Jedi Project is a coding/modding collaboration with the intent of maximizing the features and fun factor for all Jedi Knight Academy (JKA) mods. We work together by contributing fun, interesting, and useful game features so that everyone can benefit.

 

We operate on what's basically an open source system. Open source basically means that the source code is freely available and accessible by all.

 

Our design philosophy is to make everything as separated and customizable as possible to allow developers and players to choose what features they wish to use.

 

We currently have two distributions (gameplay/code changes), Basic and Enhanced. We also have two packs (non-gameplay related), Vehicles and Skins.

 

Basic has two main features. One is bug fixes and balance fixes, neither which will severely alter game play. They are designed to be the "unofficial patch" for bugs and game play problems. Basic can still be considered vanilla Jedi Academy. The other main feature is map enhancements. Things such as new entities, expanded AI, vehicles, scripting and effects system can allow mappers to create far more immersive and fun maps. Since Basic also aims towards recreating all the single player entities and code, it is possible for mappers to create full featured cooperative and single player games and levels using the multiplayer engine. This allows modders to make other enhancements such as new weapons, AI, etc., not possible using the single player engine.

 

Enhanced is a superset of Basic, meaning it has anything and everything included in the Basic distribution. The difference is that it adds many significant gameplay alterations. It is a playable mod, but also a code base for other developers. To decrease the possibility of mods based off Enhanced loosing originality, we are keeping our game play feature list generic and flexible. New features will be generic, expandable, and flexible so other developers can easily adopt them to their mods. It won't venture out side of Jedi Academy's principle game play, so there won't be anything that makes this drastically unique in terms of pure game play. Players get a full mod that shares the same basic principles and ideas that stock Jedi Academy offers. Developers get a solid, flexible code base that includes the basic, fundamental features you would want to find in most mods, allowing them to spend their time on what makes their work truly unique. An example of a feature for Enhanced would be an extended version of the player class system seen in Siege, one that is available in more game types, and is far more flexible.

 

The Vehicles package is a collection of additional vehicles for JKA. We're including them in the project to allow OJP compatible maps to use additional vehicles without having to include said vehicles in their release packages.

 

The Skins package is a collection of quality modder created skins that have been turned into customizable player classes. We've done this to allow more player options, to allow SP useage of these skins, to allow servers and players to quickly get a pack of quality skins, and to prevent a lot of redundent data from clogging up your game directory.