This mod owns. I havn't touched JK2 since the summer and this mod was the only thing keeping it installed.

P.S. I want to have your children.

:D :D :D

Originally posted by [D12]SirBanshee
This mod owns. I havn't touched JK2 since the summer and this mod was the only thing keeping it installed.

P.S. I want to have your children.

:D :D :D

*Moves away with extreme speed*

And Dave already has children, I believe :) You leave them alone! *grrr*

Let's hope those smilies mean "just kidding."

Any way, just curious, what exactly did Darth do for this?
And I know he is project leader, but just what exactly does that mean?

I'm doing this project (and Transfusion before this) for some pretty simple reasons:

I've been PC Gaming since Doom came out and the quality of FPS games, IMO, has been going down ever since Quake 1 came out. Some of my favorites stand out though:

Doom
Heretic
Hexen
System Shock
Dark Forces
Blood
Half Life
Jedi Knight
System Shock 2
Hexen 2
Deus Ex

Now in most of the above cases, the software house that made the game released the source code for the game so that as hardware and operating systems changed and improved, the games could be updated to look and play nicely. See jHexen, jDoom and jHeretic for good examples.

In other cases, the source code was and will never be released and I couldn't play those games anymore due to DOS games not working right on NT/Win2000/XP. So what should I do?

Well the answer I came up with was to recreate those games using a more modern engine that had the features I wanted, and ran on modern hardware and OS. So for Blood, I and a group of guys modified the Quake 1 source code and created "Transfusion".

A couple of years ago I thought about redoing Dark Forces with Jedi Knight as the base but couldn't find anyone knowledgeable and/or interested in the idea.

When JO was announced I started looking at it and sure enough I figured I could redo DF in JO. So back in April I started scouring the LEC forums looking for people who shared my interest, found some, and we got started.

So basically the reason for doing this is to preserve a really good game (in a time when really good games are few and far between) so that people new to gaming can play it on their modern PC's and not have to keep a Pentium 90 around just to load up some old low-res DOS game.

I hope that made sense . .

WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
Being project leader means I brought to the table the resources (ftp, web servers, irc channel, mailing lists), experience (previous TCs), knowledge (reverse engineering the game), and organizational skills to be the "glue" that holds the project together.

I keep the entire group of people on task, figuring out what needs to be done, what order to do it in, who should do it, what the dependencies are for each task and so on. When something breaks, I fix it. If something doesn't work I figure out how to make it happen. When I can't make it happen I find some people who can . . .

it's a large job, but it is very very rewarding. Not only do I get to play my favorite games again (in a much better format) but thousands of other people get to share the fun with me.

now if it could just make me $75K a year . . .

*huge hologram and Linux's face come up*
*Salv says* What is thy bidding? my master. :D

ok darth u got urself a mission statement, so write it up somewhere on the main page and the project will look EVEN MORe professional hehe

At first reading that, seeing you just wanted it updated, I was like, "Hey, I could have been a project leader! If I hadn't asked on SW Forums for someone to make DF levels for JO, I may have never found this place..."
But then I saw all of the stuff you do and now it makes sense.
I don't play a lot of FPS, mostly SW ones as well as MoH:AA.
I agree, new games aren't like those older ones like DOOM and DF...

Darth, if you liked Sshock 2, you will probably also like Thief I and Thief II, as well as Deus Ex. The Thief games are made by Looking Glass Studios, the same as Sshock 2, and Deus Ex was made by the guys who used to be at LGS and are now at Ion Storm.

yeah I love Deus Ex, looking forward to DX2.

I've got Theif 2 laying around, I just got to get busy playing it. I had some troubles with it before but I've got a new GPU now, so I should try it again over Christmas break or something.

It's hard to actually play games when you get all involved with recreating them ;-)

Deus Ex rocked!

I especially loved the level editor. Wish I had remembered about the level that I made before I reformatted my computer last year. I had made a map of our entire college campus. Even the inside of all the buildings. It was awesome! But it just slipped my mind when I reformatted. ah well that happens I guess.

I would recommend playing Thief I before II, since II won't make much sense without I.

Originally posted by Darth_Linux
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
Being project leader means I brought to the table the resources (ftp, web servers, irc channel, mailing lists), experience (previous TCs), knowledge (reverse engineering the game), and organizational skills to be the "glue" that holds the project together.

Let me just say that a Project Manager is extremely important to the success of any serious software development project. No project should be without someone who does what Darth_Linux is doing for JODFMOD.

The "glue" analogy is a good one, too - a successful project needs someone who is not necessarily knee deep in mapping, skinning, coding, etc., to handle the project management aspects (timeline, cattle-prodding, and the like). For more information on managment of software projects, check out Rapid Development and the Software Project Survival Guide by Steve McConnell. Great books.


now if it could just make me $75K a year . . .

I wouldn't be surprised if it could in the long run. Experience often counts the most.

I think you've been handling this project very effectively and professionally. It's one of the reasons I wanted to join the team, because seemed more like a serious software development project rather than some dorm-room hack (I could be wrong in that assessment, but you get the idea).

Just remember to put these projects that you've been working on in your resume!!! You never know where your carreer will end up these days!

:D

-Evan