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Old School JK sites...!


Kurgan

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Hey gang, was going through some of the JK directories looking for map files, and found some fun things from the past. I realize many of these are defunct relics, but some are suprisingly still functional and/or relevant!

 

Take a gander at some of the JK.net greats (a few of these are still on our hot list due to their archival value):

 

http://www.jediknight.net/jkmag/ (JKMAG)

http://www.jediknight.net/3do/ (Al MacDonald's OLD site (the new one is here!))

http://www.jediknight.net/commander/ (Patch Commander)

http://www.jediknight.net/kicker/ (Kicker Helper)

http://www.jediknight.net/hiss/ (Hiss' Strategy Station)

http://www.jediknight.net/ctf/ (CTF Group)

http://www.jediknight.net/trail/guide.html (Trail's Guide to JK)

 

-----------------------------

 

http://www.jediknight.net/filehq/ (FileHQ)

http://www.jediknight.net/gangstas/ (Gangstas of Nar Shaddaa!)

http://www.jediknight.net/darkfall/ (Darkness Falls)

http://www.jediknight.net/editing/ (Jedi Editing Academy)

http://www.jediknight.net/fortress/ (Jedi Fortress)

http://www.jediknight.net/jediring/jediring.htm (Jedi Knight Ring)

http://www.jediknight.net/levels/levels.html (Jedi Knight Level Addons!

http://www.jediknight.net/mmvsg/download.html (the infamous MMvSG, at least you can still download it!)

http://www.jediknight.net/links/ (JediKnight.Net Links)

 

Some sites were sadly gone forever (unless somebody kept a backup someplace) like hyperview (map review site) and 3do Studio. :(

 

So please excuse the dust and cobwebs, I just thought this might spark some nostalgia in some of us old school JKers. And maybe it'll give the newer people a glimpse into our community's past... ;)

 

And who knows, you might find some file that still works which you might want to try!

 

PS: If anybody finds a broken image or broken file link someplace, and actually HAS the real image or file that would replace it. Please email (kurganx@comcast.net) it to me with the description of where it should go and I'll be happy to upload it!

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Ahh, nostalgia.

 

Fixer Upper

 

Wow, 2001, where did all the time go? News reports that Obi-Wan, our long awaited game is going to be a console-only release, and won't be coming out for awhile. Rumors that "Jedi Knight II" is in the works, with no confirmation/denial from LEC yet. I fixed a couple of broken links on the page and straightened things up a bit. I'm hoping to get this site back on it's toes soon. eFront may afford us the chance to work on this full-time. We'll wait and see...

 

Teehee :p

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Yep. What a joke! First Obi-Wan goes console only, but we didn't know the half of the horrors to come. Obi-Wan SUCKED. eFront crashed and burned thanks to corruption (luckily before we got invested with them too much), and the site pretty much went on hold idefinately as a result of the lack of a stable server for awhile, then loss of the logins for hosted sites for awhile. I have full access now, but too many other projects.

 

Oh well, was fun while it lasted. It was kind of funny how I suddenly had total power over JKMAG, but no time to really do anything with it. I guess now somebody could continue it if they wanted to, but I feel like they ought to preserve the retro-flavor of the site in respect for its heritage. ;) Ditto for many of the classic sites I listed...

 

As for Massassi losing interest in JK1, I don't know if that's true. JK1 has been low in popularity for a long time now, overshadowed by Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy. Most of the old guard has moved on. But the mod projects continue regardless of this fact. Fond memories of the game still exist of course. I wouldn't expect the forum community to still discuss JK1 as excitedly as they did back in 1997-1999, and the mod community is small. Still, they probably have more activity with that than we do. If anything I'm sure it's no smaller this year than it was last year. Still, I don't think we had some of those new graphical improvement projects two years ago, so that might have sparked some more interest.

 

Anyway, few forums stay fixated on one game for THAT long (it's been 8 years now). Mostly public internet forums are full of "useless" chatty/filler topics about whatever, and that's how it's likely always to be. Nothing particularly wrong with that... ;)

 

Anyway, as luck would have it, JK2 and JA were both awesome games and worthy of the series (not without faults of their own of course, but a lot of that has been thankfully overcome by helpful mods, despite many crappy mods from the past!). Sometimes people forget some of the crap we put up with in the old community. While the bane of JK2/JA was the honor code, abusive mods and a community divided over patch changes, the problems in JK1/MotS were the rampant cheating and lack of dedicated server support. But somehow we managed to have fun, didn't we?

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Wow... this is a blast from the past. I used to play FF on zone from 2001-2003... used to LOVE FF BGJ... haha. I can still remember all the moves. I don't really play computer games now but it'd be fun to get a game again.

 

Phelan, whats up :) It's cool that guys still play. Is there anyone else I might remember still playing? We used to have a hilarious time in that chatroom... "nar shaddaa". I'd love to catch up with guys like AERON and such, haha. Fun times.

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  • 2 months later...

I might as well join this thread. :)

 

Back from about 1997 until 2000 or so, I ran a website on this network called JKPATCH where it was a small little hosted site on JKMAG. Of course I haven't touched the site in 5+ years and the website design is still reflective of that becuase I lost my login information. Anyways, it was a fun time doing small little modifications for Jedi Knight even if they were very simple in comparison to today's mods.

 

I still get the occasional email asking about editing Jedi Knight or MOTS. The truth is that now, in 2006, I forgot pretty much most of the programming techiques and no longer any help. heh.

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As for Massassi losing interest in JK1, I don't know if that's true. JK1 has been low in popularity for a long time now, overshadowed by Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy. Most of the old guard has moved on.

 

A lot of the JK editing community from Massassi is still active at the JK Editing Hub, which splintered off from Massassi a while back and has been slowly developing itself as a hosting site for editing projects.

 

Not exactly old school, but worthy of mention, perhaps? If anyone here is interested in editing JK, we'd love to have you stop by. At the moment, it's not well set up for people wanting to play JK, but you're also welcome to come and comment/feedback on people's work, as well as download alpha/beta releases that people make.

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They won't come back, but the JK Hub has achieved more in its short existence than the other sites have achieved since the dawn of JK. Think about it, we're comparing classic re-skins done with wordpad to total conversions done in 3DSM... It's like JA's quality graphics, on JK's quality engine. Not to mention that every editor is more proficient with COG.

 

I do miss the old times, though. Never again will there be another game like JK, so as long as there is someone to compete with, I'll play it, mods or not.

 

I didn't like JO/JA, but I haven't seen enough mods to see if anything makes it almost as fast paced or strategic as JK. It's not even Quake with Lightsabers like the advertisements claimed, it's too slow.

 

Don't get me wrong, if you're the kind of person who says "Wow, did you see the graphics on that game? I've just gotta get that!" then JA, not JK, is for you.

 

 

Obi-wan? I remember hearing about that game. Nobody really talks about it anymore, though.

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  • 3 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

I remember all of those websites. I worked on JKMAG for a bit after Chyren left. I didn't do much other than moderate the forums, which I eventually had to close due to piracy issues, and run a one time JK IRC tournament that went over quite well. The tournament was host to 50-60 JKers, many of which were top players, and that's no small feat for a group of people that were that entrenched to the Zone.

 

Hyperview was a great site. Kurgan, you remember that one side...JK Depot or something similar? That was a great site as well. Many files from both of those sites will never be experienced by anyone again. :(

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Yeah I've very sad that hyperview seems to have disappeared from the face of the internet. I was actually quite surprised (and glad) to find a copy of my old MMvSGcore.zip file (the one on the MMvSG site was corrupted) at 3ddownloads.com (somebody had uploaded a bunch of JK1 files to their server in 1999, including mine), and so I was able to restore the download from that mirror.

 

I wonder if anybody archived an old copy of those pages and/or files and reviews back in the day? It'd be great to see them again.

 

Who all worked on Hyperview? I can't even remember (which sucks, because I used to know just about everything on JK.net...)...

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Kurgan, guess what? I stumbled across Al MacDonald's OLDER version of his site, the one with the 14 skin packs he had for download, and they can still be downloaded as well.

That URL is http://www.jediknight.net/bespin/al.html.

Also, the old review site The Jedi Knight Academy still works, both "light" and "dark" versions. The URL is http://www.jediknight.net/academy. Some stuff on the site doesn't exist anymore, like downloads or old links, but has some useful info nonetheless.

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Sorry, found yet ANOTHER old url that might interest anyone. It has a good bit of some older stuff for download, so here it is, it's the old "Jedi Knight Editing Zone" page:

http://www.jediknight.net/files/jk/files.html.

 

Here's yet another url I wanted to add. Didn't know it existed until I was searching for something, and came up with this. Good resource, sometimes there ARE some files that can still be downloaded, believe it or not! Here it is:

http://www.jediknight.net/archives/archives.htm

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I wonder if anybody archived an old copy of those pages and/or files and reviews back in the day? It'd be great to see them again.

 

As regards to that, Kurgan, there's really only one way to see the archived versions of that and some other long-dead hosted sites that I'm going to list here. And that's to go to the Internet Archive Wayback Machine at http://www.archive.org/web/web.php and enter the URLs for these in the search box where it has the http:// part. Just don't forget to leave off the http:// part, unless you want to just paste over that. The following old hosted sites are on here, and will give you results.

 

http://www.jediknight.net/zone

http://www.jediknight.net/files/files.htm

http://www.jediknight.net/jkat

http://www.jediknight.net/mcp

http://www.jediknight.net/ultipla

http://www.jediknight.net/yoda

http://www.jediknight.net/warzone

http://www.jediknight.net/review

 

I didn't link these, because they are defunct. But, just copy and paste them in and the search results will pop up. Good hunting!

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Ahhh the memories. Wonderful... ;)

 

So Forceboat, did you used to go by another name? You seem to know a lot about the old network, despite your fairly recent registration date (as far as us old timers go around here)...?

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Hey there Kurgan!

 

Well, I have come and gone from the JediKnight.Net network on and off since 1998. I started out as just an erstwhile person who submitted at least 1 file for the old gang (a Qu Rahn skin based on a model in a map for Jedi Knight that I had accidently fixed; it was messed up in the actual map; I think I submitted it under my real name but I'm not sure); and also posted back in May 1998 about the actor who played Rahn in the cutscenes of JK and also made a mention about the then 15th anniversary of Return Of The Jedi. Anyways, Kurgan, my old e-mail sig was princessmuffin@msn.com, named after my Calico cat, Muffin, which I still have; so, if you were around here at that time, that was me. Now, I did get in touch with you a few years ago about that old Kyle's Backpack file for JK, and I'm not quite sure, I think I was either YODA or jedianakin something or another, it was a few years ago when you guys had the older BB system, but yeah, I have been coming around here a long time, so I guess you can call me one of the "old-timers". Yeah, I used to check out all of the old sites in the network, even the ones that aren't around anymore (I'm like you, I miss Hyperview too. I loved that page. Great reviews, pics of the levels and everything). Somehow, I just happened to remember a lot of the old sites (of course, checking the archives helped too with some I maybe didn't quite remember offhand). You know, Kurgan, I actually was reading the old news pages and saw the post about those taunt packs and such you made back in the day and I said "Hey! This is Kurgan's stuff!"

Well, enough ranting. It was good catching up on all of these old memories so far here. It's sad how JK has all but almost disappeared from people's minds. These days, I think JA is played more than anything, but I still remember the days of downloading that latest Single Player level or that great new skin or weapon mod. I miss that.

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Yep, I'm up to the brim with nostalgia for JK. What's funny though, is the editing renaissance really took several years to get going.

 

Remember all those HORRIBLE mods we had in the early days? I mean yeah, we were desperate for anything new, but all those reworkings of Canyon Oasis (that typically destroyed the atmospher or balance of that map), the random boxy rooms strewn with concussion rifles, the recolored skins that looked like they were done in about 5 minutes (Kyle with Sunglasses... give me a break!).

 

But still, we dreamt, and I cut me teeth making MMvSG, which looks extremely silly in hindsight (but I fully acknowledge this while making it, it was always "tongue in cheek" but quality wise it is blown away by later efforts of skinning). The JKhub stuff is extremely amazing. I mean it doesn't even look like JK anymore, it looks more like "Unreal" or something. Vastly improved, and amazing people are still plugging away, despite the much smaller community.

 

In terms of coding, a lot of stuff has been done with JA, but in terms of new artwork, it seems JK/MotS have improved a lot more than the modern games have. JK/MotS really got a huge shot in the arm from Episode I since Obi-Wan ended up NOT being a PC game, much less one we could edit (much less something worth playing), and so that forced people to make their "Prequel content" for our games instead. And so it goes.

 

I think I remember that Rahn skin thing. Was that the short SP map where you played Rahn and had to fight the Dark Jedi from the opening cutscene and see if you could "change history" by surviving? Yet the author forgot to put in the replacement skin so you were just "default texture man." ;)

 

The Kyle with backpack was simple, yet cool. "New Models" at the time were pretty rare.

 

Yeah, most of my projects were just tweaks of existing stuff. I made those taunt packs (but I'm not sure if they completely work now, because I worked on them a lot later and may have accidentally used windows sound recorder for the updated versions, which is a huge no-no for MotS taunts, but they might work after all I don't know, it's tough because you only hear them on the other end if the person has the same taunts), Manowars SE (a repack of Manowars 1 as a single gob), GobBFP2 (which later became BFP2X: both repacks of Big Fluffy Pack 2 in gob format, and fixes), GooBFP2 (same, for MotS), Al MacDonald's Star Wars Skinpack (big collection of all his SW skin except the "final" versions of his Episode II skins... mine just had the first or second versions of those he released, including a dark skinned Jango Fett in white armor and a more adult looking Anakin) and Al MacDonald's Movie Skinpack, MMvSG Core (just the skins and taunts and menu screens and a few misc sounds and sabers, no actual levels though I had long planned to do some, oh well), a map I created and shared with only one or two people (it kinda sucked), and the "double saber" which just replaced the saber handle with a blaster bolt 3do, so it looked kinda like a double bladed lightsaber, at least from far away. ;)

 

I loved how you could edit your files so you could use any texture as a saber mat, that was fun. Some people found some awesome or strange looking ones.

 

Anyway, good to have you around. I am going to see if I can find a quick game before bedtime. If not, I'll mess around with Rbots in MotS some perhaps.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Dethlord and I hopped on the Hyperview project for Jedi Outcast back then. However, one of the staff members from JK.net rejected the design and wanted something more "new-age 2000" looking. So they get another guy to make something look trendy as can be, and it was never completed. I love the old school look. Now on websites there are just too many links and no room. What happened to the days of simplicity!

 

http://www.bransinanderson.com/graphic/hyperview/index.html

 

As you can see, I still incorporated those beautiful clouds.

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