Hey guys

I just want to actually contribute to the games I play, rather than just play them. I would like to start mapping/modding, even though I've never really done it before.

I don't really have any programming experience in any language, but I could take up mapping, since I have some great ideas and I've seen what great works of art they can be.

Here are the games I have:

Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight
Jedi Outcast
Jedi Academy
Quake III Arena
Quake 2
Quake
Battlefield 1942, Secret Weapons Expansion, Desert Combat 0.7
Half-Life (Steam)
Counter-Strike (Steam)
Star Trek Elite Force
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Unreal Tournament

and probably others.

Like I said, I just want to contribute more to the games I play.

Thanks, especially if you reply.

This belongs somewhere in the Editing Central (http://lucasforums.com/forumdisplay.php?s=&forumid=144).

You'll find different forums for all kinds of modifications to the Jedi Knight games (mapping, modeling, skinning). You'll get much more help there.

Well i tried mapping some time ago, but its pretty darn hard. If you need tutorials you can find them in the JO/JA mapping forums in sticky, or search for them. you can search for tutorials for any game based on this engine, cause they're practically the same.

as for modding, if you mean code you should learn C++ or something like it. To be honest i think this will be of more value since coding is something you can always use, and to be honest custom maps arent really that popular, unless its for a mod/total conversion, then it really gets used/is very useful

Mapping for JA isn't worth it anymore.

I used to model saber hilts for Jedknight 2, but I stopped cause school got in the way and I never got around to starting up again.

But skinning the sabers started me off on Photoshop, and I haven't stopped using the program yet, and GMax started me off to 3d Studio Max which led me to Cinema 4d, which I use to make abstract renders with.

So everything has a start and a finish I guess.

I map for the fun of it. If you really want to learn, look for RichDiesal's tutorials (too lazy to post a link).

I'll put it in JA mapping, they'll be able to help you with mapping, and you can check in the JA modelling forum for more help modeling :D

Originally posted by GothiX
Mapping for JA isn't worth it anymore.

Why?


Also, read my post in this thread: http://lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=133049)

I would say take your time, don't rush into it and learn everything at once. Pick something you really want to do and do it.

I agree with GothiX, my reasoning is because it has never really took off enough which is something we all thought may happen. I've started mapping for Doom 3 now because I think there is far more hope for that.

The JA community is dwindling, as is the Q3 engined game community in general.

Doom III has just been release with a spanking new engine and Half-Life 2 is round the corner with the new Source technology. Both these engines come with plenty of Bells and Whistles to make you go "ooooooh".

However, these engines are going to be very difficult for beginners to learn to map for, due to the sheer complexity of them. I started off mapping for Duke Nukem and then Quake, Q2, Half-life, JO and finally JA.

With each new game, there have a few new features and so with the solid experience in mapping, it has been relatively painless to implement new features. Doom III however looks like it has a steep learning curve.

And Doom III doesn't have any lightsabers either:)

If you've used GTKRadiant, D3Radiant is a breeze. I couldn't believe how easy it was to pick up and use - there's a few things that could do with tweaking like how to select brushes and apply textures.

Also D3 has amazing lighting which is fully previewable in the editor and compiling takes a matter of seconds.

There is a lot more entities however....but when it comes down to it you really don't need most of them, they've just left them in there for completeness sake.

Originally posted by WadeV1589

Also D3 has amazing lighting which is fully previewable in the editor and compiling takes a matter of seconds.


My word! I like the sound of that.

All we need now is a lightsaber mod for it and the JA community will be killed off forever (along with my graphics card no doubt:) )

[edit] what would be handy, if they ever bring out another version of GTK, would be the abillity to load lightmaps into the editor - that way you can delete any brushes that aren't lit and have a proper preview of the map.

Now that D3 is out though, I can't see anymore development being done for the Q3 engine

Yeah the Q3 engine has finally hit its end-of-days. With HL2, Farcry and D3 there really is no comparison to Q3 anymore. Until Q4 comes along (if ever) I think we'll see less and less games being developed using this aged engine.

Won't stop me enjoying Elite Force though!

And just when I was getting the hang of GTK and mapping for JA too...

Originally posted by Jedi_Vogel
And just when I was getting the hang of GTK and mapping for JA too...



You should have no problem picking up Doom 3 editing ;)

As stated above the Doom 3 editor looks Almsot exactly like GTK. hell the buttons look the same. It just has a few extra buttons there plus all the stuff wade said. Once I get my hands on a new OS and a copy of D3 I'll be editing for it instead of JA.

I love the Star Wars universe and it's the reason I got into editing in the first place. There's so much you can do with it. I'll be around for a while yet. Besides I have too much to finish to quit now and I have no desire to edit any other universe.

Back on topic, te27ch do all the tutorials you can find and you must have a willingness to learn too because there's so much to know. Persistence will take you a long way too.

I'm just about to start my final year of Uni n I can't get Doom 3 yet :/

I just hope JA Mapping sticks around for a whiiiiiile...

Well, I don't necessarily want to do it for JA, unfortunately, in the broad scope of things, JA is dying and unpopular (IMHO).

You can see my list of games up there, and you can see that there are some very popular ones that I might want to make maps for...

On the note of mods, I don't know how to code, other than windows scripts and extremely basic BASIC :p but I do know how to make pk3s and mods for quake 3, i've made my own personal "mods" that just change the default music to some of my own favorites...

A shout out to the Dark forces 2: jedi knight community, as http://massassi.net) has everything I'd ever need to alter JK in any way. i have always had a special love for that game.

I think that the half-life engine could be a good one to get used to, with the 100,000+ ppl playing counter strike (even though most of them do nothing but complain and play the same maps forever), but some of my neat ideas could probably only be done with the HL2 engine and graphics.

Still pretty much clueless...

Why post in the JA Mapping section if you don't want to map for JA? :rolleyes:

he didn't post it in this section.... Did you not read the first few posts? It was moved. Blame the moderators.

I still don't know who the moderators are, didn't see his title. I thought since you can't report posts that it was just a normal users telling him it should be in a different area.

Lol I suppose I'm one of those "Hey look its Star Wars! It's got a lightsaber and blasters and...." people, though not entirely. I like the game partially because its a shooter, and the rest because its Star Wars. Which is why I started learning mapping for it: to be a creator. I don't suppose I'll be able to do any of this for a completely unfamiliar universe.. Maybe next time.

Exactly, it may be 'dying' although it still has a lot of players online. It's a fun game and a good environment. I don't know why people would map for the popularity..

Wow...nice thread. After this ENDOR map I'm done with this game too. I can't wait for Battlefront and I may pick up DOOM III also. But the Q4 engine will be along before you know it. And someone like RAVENSOFT or whoever will develop the next JK based game. When that happens...LOOK OUT! Because you will be able to do so much more. Game mechanics will have improved beyond our scope. And the enviornments will look oh so UBER. :D


Now we know rgoer was hired by RAVENSOFT to do some work for Q4. So I would say that a JK based game is not far off now.

Originally posted by lauser
And the enviornments will look oh so UBER. :D


They will, but they they will only be as good as the artist and designer creating them. If you're crap at making maps for JA, you're going to be crap at Doom III.

What I sort of implied earlier is to cut your teeth on a lesser engine, learn its features and then progress. That way, you'll be using the new engine to it's full capabilities rather than being limited by your own skills.

Once you are fully aware of what the engine can do, the only limit is your imagination:)

Indeed Codja. Surprising that RAVEN released the maps and GAMES that they did considering how much talent is here in the community. I have seen many things surpass RAVENS mismoshed thrown together maps. rgoer and mslaf are perfect examples.

Do you mean me or just in general? I try to make maps that are not only pleasing to the eye but have as much game mechanics as I can throw in. Why do you think I don't release maps? It's because I'm never satisfied and they always have errors with all the stuff I end up putting in them...LOL
Why should I waste a map and the time put into it just for the sake of being popular? I want to utilize the editor so that the end result is FUN. Not just "Oh...another map...yay!...and I'll D/L the next one." But JA has the ability to do that. I don't know of many other games that do this. I REALLY hate the game itself. The animations are horrible and make me want to strangle the idiots who came up with new ones that look and play that badly! I mean it's no secret. The smooth animations you get in Jedi Outcast are much better IMHO.
Maybe with rgoer at the helm, someday we may get a game that really kicks!

Originally posted by lauser
Indeed Codja. Surprising that RAVEN released the maps and GAMES that they did considering how much talent is here in the community. I have seen many things surpass RAVENS mismoshed thrown together maps. rgoer and mslaf are perfect examples.


Couldn't agree more with you, and no - it was a general you to all concerned rather than just you :)

I've been looking your Endor mod and the Ewok Village is looking sweet at the moment (GET IT LIT THOUGH!!!).

Originally posted by lauser
Why do you think I don't release maps? It's because I'm never satisfied and they always have errors with all the stuff I end up putting in them...LOL


Same here - either that or they have so much detail that they'd be unplayable and I just not harsh enough to delete stuff i've spent hours creating. The map i'm working on now has r_speeds approaching 17,000 tris in some places and i'm happy to keep it like that :)

But back to the point with MSlaf and Rgoer - the stuff they've made really puts Raven's efforts in the shade - i've been so used to looking at their wip shots, that when I go back to the main game I think - my lord, how crap is this?

My main motivation for making maps is to create places in a galaxy far, far away - vistas and landscapes you simply wouldn't see in real life, to create towering cities, rolling plains and lost, derelict space stations.

Then put a load of stormtroopers in there and chop them to bits :)

eh, always had a fantasy of making a HUGE map of my high school... hehehe...

have speeder bikes in the parking lot, duel arena in the gym, music player in the auditorium :D, and target practice or NPCs or something for the teachers that I hate...

oh yeah a weapons cache in the computer lab :D

I originally posted this in Yoda's Swamp, becuase I didn't really know what category to put it in, I think it should've gone under "general mapping" but that's not really my choice...

I looked up GTKRadiant and it's like 60+MB! :eek:

I also might download VALVe's "Hammer Editor" (the one everybody uses now for the half life games) which is less than 3MBs...

Yes, I have dialup... and it's only 24000bps (3KB/s) owing to the fact that I live 20 miles out, out meaning out of a pop. 4000 town... lucky b4ssturd friend got cable... at least i can always ask him to dload shizzles....

and going back to school like the 23rd or 25th, high speed net and probly LOTS of time for mapping hehhehe...

Again off topic - In defense of Raven Software's maps, you have to consider that they have deadlines and don't have time to spend months perfecting a duel map for example. The single player side of the game is what takes so long. You have to do missions objectives, cutscenes and tons of scripting. I do recognize that seige maps take a long time too. If you doubt what I'm saying, email a level designer at Raven Software and they'll tell you.

I don't doubt you Merc...in fact I agree. It's just sad that RAVEN puts a price tag on a levels asthetics. They have the talent and resources to do a much better job. I think it boils down to $$.

Originally posted by lauser
I don't doubt you Merc...in fact I agree. It's just sad that RAVEN puts a price tag on a levels asthetics. They have the talent and resources to do a much better job. I think it boils down to $$.

Of course it does. Why else do you think they make games? For the fun of it? Nah, I don't think so. But I'm sure some actually do.

rgoer is really just doing shaders and stuff at Raven but.... meh


Good maps take time to make and time takes money. That doesn't mean that Raven's level designers don't try to make good maps. That Ford Dye guy makes some sweet Q3 maps and he works at Raven..

Originally posted by Lil Killa
rgoer is really just doing shaders and stuff at Raven but.... meh


Yeah...but he's got his foot INSIDE the door.....:p

My Jealousy detector's gone right of the top of the scale people ... :P