Jedi Academy Character Customization Mods
I still remember it as if it was yesterday, it was a few months into my Jedi Outcast adventure when my clanmates told me some exciting news.“They’re making Jedi Knight Three!” They said.“Holy Shit!” I exclaimed. I was ecstatic that Jedi Outcast was getting a sequel, the hype was real.Mind you, 2003 was a much simpler era, the proliferation of social media that we see today was just taking its first shy steps, and much less gaming outlets existed; not to mention that English Chinese cartoon message boards were still new and more niche. I didn’t knew much about Jedi Academy beyond its name, and it’s not like I made efforts in obtaining additional information.Approximately a month and a half before the game’s release date, a “Pre-Gold” build of Jedi Academy began to circulate on the Internet. I remember how surprised my friends and I were when the news broke.Many theories as to who was the culprit arose across all of the community forums, some had more credence than others, but most, if not all, spawned out of pure speculation and unconfirmed hearsay. The theory with the most consensus and the most plausible one at the time was that the leak was the work of a disgruntled employee—or his girlfriend, depending on who you asked.
The temptation to get our hands into that leaked copy was too intense, one half of my friends preferred to wait and not dabble in the realm of illegality, but some of us couldn’t resist and downloaded it. The most notable addition, gameplay wise, was the new two Lightsaber styles: a Lightsaber staff, made famous by Darth Maul, was now a full-fledged combat style (before, a half-assed implementation existed in JK2 but it was only part of a cheat code).Dual wielding, a style Anakin Skywalker popularized in Episode II: Attack of the Clones, made its debut in the series. These two styles were given stances of their own—and even unique “kata” special attacks; while the single saber stance, ever so perfect, returned in all its mighty glory with a few new special moves.Visually, the game resembled much of its predecessor. While a considerable amount of assets from Jedi Outcast were reused it did had a substantial amount of graphical improvements and new textures; your journey took you across new places never before seen in the Jedi Knight series, as well as famous planets such as Tatooine and Hoth. Vjun, a prominent location in the Expanded Universe, was an important destination in your journey.Tavion Axmis, a secondary antagonist in Jedi Outcast, was now the primary antagonist of the story; as a result, her in-game model received a fitting rework. Kyle Katarn, the hero and protagonist of the Jedi Knight series wasn’t playable this time around for the first time since the Mysteries of the Sith expansion for Jedi Knight I. The create-a-jaden wasn’t limited to the single player campaign, you could use it for multiplayer too if you wished.Unlike other entries in the Jedi Knight Series, Jedi Academy’s campaign was less linear.
Gone were those first segments of the game where you didn’t had access to a Lightsaber that characterized Jedi Knight I and II. The multiplayer in Jedi Academy was just as good to Jedi Outcast, if not outright similar; what was already great was expanded upon. Raven was wise and didn’t try to fix what wasn’t broken—for the most part that is.Everything that you loved about Jedi Outcast’s multiplayer was back in addition to the new Lightsaber styles and the two new weapons; you could choose your character and force power build in the same way you did back in JK2, in addition, you could choose the style of your Lightsaber hilt and the color of its blade. If you preferred, you could use all of the options available to create your very own Jader Korr in multiplayer.However, not all upgrades were for good; the Lightsaber combat in Academy felt somewhat inferior to Outcast, the new hit collision wasn’t as precise and sometimes the combat tends to be more “floaty” and erratic; the new combat styles made that flaw much more evident.If you prefer to duel against other players with your Lightsaber, I’d recommend doing it in Jedi Outcast, as the single saber combat in JK2 is technically better and far more precise. If you want a more varied and frantic Lightsaber hack and slash multiplayer action, try Academy’s 3 styles and numerous stances.Personally, I’d like to think that Raven acknowledged the existence of the Saber Code to some degree and tried to build maps that steered away from that paradigm in favor of a more “the way it was intended” multiplayer precept. The five default Free for All Maps that the game shipped with were designed in a more traditional “Quake 3 arena” Deathmach layout (the Tatooine FFA map was perhaps, the one that could barely classify as an exception, if at all). From a visual standpoint, all maps were diverse and colorful, Vjun Sentinel had an Empire vibe attached to it, Tatooine had that sand we all know and love, Rift Sanctuary had a crystalline cavernous style, and Taspir had a volcanic facility theme going on.The game shipped with 5 Free for All Maps, 5 Capture the Flag Maps, 10 Duel maps, and 3 Siege mode maps.
Of course, you had the choice to add as many custom maps as you wished.A few months after its release, Raven released an official set of bonus maps, it included 4 new FFA maps, a new duel map, and a new Capture the Flag map. Compare that to the DLC found in modern games, had Jedi Academy been released in this era you can be sure that you’d be charged for those six new maps.
Of all the new additions done from Outcast to Academy, Siege Mode was by far the best and most complex addition—paradoxically, it was one with the most absolutely wasted and underutilized potential of them all.Siege mode was one of the precursors of the objective-based assault modes that are now prominent in modern games. It threw away the default customization options available in other modes that helped you build your omnipotent Jedi warrior and instead gave you an array of pre-built classes to choose from, each with their own limited selection of weapons and powers and with their own list of strength and weaknesses.One team was always in the offensive, they had to complete a series of objectives to progress through the map, while the team in the defense had to stop them no matter what.The SiegeHoth map was a simple recreation of the battle of Hoth, albeit with certain creative liberties. Vehicle support, a new but then underutilized addition to the engine, was used in Siege mode; in the Hoth level, some of the players had to board AT-STs to destroy the rebel defenses, while their companions would infiltrate the base and raise a bridge so the machine could walk through a chasm. Every custom map or skin that was done for Jedi Outcast “worked” for Jedi Academy straight out of the bat—for the most part that is.Models and skins did in fact functioned, but they had some issues; due to a minor change in the way the game read the skin’s sound file location JK2 skins would not play their corresponding sound files; this was easily fixable with a.pk3 patch file that contained an updated sound.cfg file. I released a single patch file that elegantly fixed this issue for every Jedi Outcast skin I made for my clan without breaking the skins’ regular functionality in JK2.The other problem wasn’t that easily solvable.
In Jedi Outcast, all models had no animations for their left hands, as these were only used to hold weapons and all lightsabers were held in the right hand. In Jedi Outcast there was only one type of saber, you could mod its appearance but it would apply to every other player you saw. The lightsaber in JK2 was just a regular weapon just like every other one in the game.For Jedi Academy, Raven implemented a new and expandable lightsaber system, powered by simple scripts stored in.sab files, this allowed the potential to add as many Lightsaber models and types as you saw fit. Sabers from the five movies (at the time) and weapons from the Expanded Universe were among the most downloaded ones, as well as brand new creations. Thanks to the reference files and tutorials released by Raven alongside the SiegeDestroyer map pack, mod makers were able to add new vehicles ships from the Star Wars Universe into Jedi Academy.
From the Naboo Starfighter to the Hailfire droid, even the A-Wing and Republic ships from the Clone Wars.This also opened the path for “racing” maps, a small but fun niche subtype of maps, most of them involved the swoop speeders.KOTOR Flight School was one of the first and most popular “training” maps that existed, it was made as a clan map and then released to the public, over time, dozens of maps with a focus on vehicle and space combat were released. From a technical standpoint, custom maps in Jedi Academy where bigger, badder, and better than Jedi Outcast.
The SDK shipped with a slightly updated version of GTK RadiantSome JK2 community favorites, such as Jedicouncil and Matrix Reloaded, received updates for JA, their authors used the opportunity to add new content to them, from new rooms to minor adjustments.Map makers now had access to a more robust scripting system for their creations, allowing for more interactivity between the map and the player. Of all the custom maps (at the time) that took advantage of it, Fearis Incident by ‘mslaf’ was a crowning achievement to interactivity. The entire map was designed with interactivity and destroyable objects in mind.
CHoSeN oNe’s (in)famous JAMod, the backbone of the majority of the Jedi Outcast clan communities returned for Jedi Academy, albeit in a reduced and more streamlined form. Gone were the commands that were deemed prone to abuse such as slap and sleep, and instead it only offered the core moderation/admin elements that the original version provided in order to keep “peace” in your server.The removal of the controversial commands was well received by some—including myself at the time, but it was heavily criticized by a vocal majority.
Slider’s JA+ is a prime example that sometimes we’re simply doomed to repeat the mistakes of the past.“Jedi Academy Plus” was born out of an opportunity (and misguided necessity) to bring back a more full featured “JAmod clone” including everything that had the potential to be troublesome once again (slap, sleep, bunny, et al.)When JA+ was first released, there was a short period of tension between those loyal to the original JAMod and those who preferred the infant JA+. This one is an oddball. It started as a personal mod for Lugor’s server, and was simply destined to add minor tweaks and enhancements for his personal use.
Over time it grew up to have more features like the ability to place models and doodads from the game at will, effectively letting you modify map elements in real time, it also featured account management for players. It was the most used mod for a growing roleplay community (no, I wasn’t part of it, but had friends on it).It was the closest you’d get to a “Garry’s mod” in Jedi Academy.
Jedi Academy was a step in the right direction of the series despite not being a huge generational leap like JK2 was to JK1. It took the foundations laid by Jedi Outcast and expanded on them, JA was a worthy sequel but ultimately it was no true Jedi Knight III.The id Tech 3 engine, the core of JK2 and JA, was already past its prime.
Its successor, the id Tech 4 engine, and the competitor Unreal Engine were vastly superior in every single aspect, and yet despite of that, Raven’s did a remarkable job with the outdated engine, a swan song perhaps. The market was evolving, the success of Call of Duty in late 2003 and Halo 2 in 2004 (and by extension, Xbox Live) were some of the catalysts that shifted the online multiplayer paradigm into a more closed experience; one riled with matchmaking and peer-to-peer networking instead of dedicated servers and browsers.In 2004, Star Wars Battlefront was released, it easily became the premier multiplayer Star Wars experience thanks to its engaging and action-packed gameplay. Time went on, and the seventh generation of video game consoles was now upon us, and with it, concepts like DLC and micro-transactions, a paradigm that was diametrically opposed to the concept of community driven content, the heart and soul of many multiplayer games such as Quake, Unreal, Jedi Knight, et al.Raven then went onto working in other games such as Quake 4, X-Men Legends, and Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, further reducing the probabilities that they would go onto work on a new Jedi Knight game. Nowadays, they’re exclusively working on the Call of Duty series.In 2008, a book titled “Rogue Leaders: The Story of LucasArts” was released, the book showcases the logotypes of 20 cancelled game projects, which contained the only public evidence that Jedi Knight III existed at least in a conceptual form.
Jedi Academy Character Mods
The follow up to Jedi Outcast does away with some of the problems of that game. There's none of the scratching around trying to find exits or terribly pixelated tunnels and having only a blaster for five horrible levels before you get going. Nope, in Jedi Academy you are thrown into the game from the off with a Lightsaber and force powers to use. You choose to build on these with a simple skill tree, but its bit too simple because pretty much everyone is going to choose to use 'Heal' and then all the Dark Force powers. Nevertheless we're off to a better start than Jedi Outcast.The game also adds some variety by staging levels into three groups.
You select four out of five available missions to play in any order and then you complete a 'boss' level to progress to the next tier of five missions. Go through this process three times to get to the final boss fight.
It's an interesting take on a way to progress through a game and indeed some missions are more fun than others so you can leave out ones you don't like. These missions therefore allow a variety of gameplay options. Some missions require you to ride a speeder bike or a Tauntaun on Hoth, some to fight alongside Chewbacca or shoot Tie fighters in space.
This is a great idea for mixing up the game play. Unfortunately it isn't done to the best of possibilities. The Speeder bike section handles poorly and is more of a chore, and the sections of Tautaun use and shooting tie fighters are small and over too quickly and easily. It adds to gameplay but feels like a missed opportunity. Again though a better aspect to the game than Jedi Outcast and one that certainly adds more fun. Why would you bother doing five missions per tier when you don't have to you might wonder? Well each mission progresses your force skill tree by one notch so you can choose to progress slower through the game but more powerfully.
That's an interesting choice to consider on each tier of missions.The graphics are very similar to Jedi Outcast, but the sound here is scorchingly good. Classic Star Wars tunes wash over you as you take on reborn dark Jedi throughout the game. It adds greatly to the atmosphere, as does another development. You get to fight alongside other Jedi in mass pitched battles and the AI teammates are genuinely useful. You can sit back and watch them fight Sith on their own, conserving your energy or jump in and assist. Those allies who survive (and more will if you help) can often follow you for a little while helping out with other attacks. It is rather wonderful seeing numerous coloured flashing blades around you as you try to deal with an attack.
In addition to this halfway through the game you achieve the rank of Jedi Knight and this enables you to choose to develop a new stance (fast or strong like Outcast offered) and to choose to either have a double sabre like Darth Maul or to wield two sabres (one in each hand).In all there is enough here that had changed to make the game a genuine improvement on the flaws of Jedi Outcast. It is much more enjoyable from the get go because of that. The only draw backs are that the game is a little shorter than Outcast, but you should still get 20 hours out of it and there is an excellent multi-player that still operates.
It is also sadly, a considerably easier game than it's predecessor. In all though it is still easily the best Lightsaber simulator you can buy and well worth a playthrough.
Great game; obviously uses the assets from Jedi Outcast, but provides the exact upgrades needed to create an enjoyable new play experience. Basically, the play mechanics are identical to Jedi Outcast (reading a review for that game will be 90% relevant to this one); the new additions include the ability to customize your Jedi (sex, race, appearance, even lightsaber(s) style and force powers), and a more free-form quest selection, with story quests in between each series of 5 missions.
Missions are short and quite fun, while story missions are longer and more involved.My single, tiny, tiny gripe is that I really disliked the swoop bike missions, as the controls were not very good. However, this was a single short mission in an otherwise great game, and is barely worth noting. + dramatische Lichtschwert-Kaempfe+ tolle Star Wars-Atmosphaere+ freie Jedi-Entwicklung+ grandiose Musik+ tolle Soundeffekte+ gute Wiederspielbarkeit+ gelungene Multiplayermodi+ schoene Lichteffekte+ massig Kampfmanoever+ gut eingesetzte Zeitlupe+ intuitive Steuerung+ angemessen umfangreich+ coole Macht-Kraefte+ herausfordernde Gegner+ abwechslungsreiche Missionen- insgesamt veraltete Grafik- gelegentlich merkwuerdige Animationen- leblose Gesichter- unterschiedliche Machtseiten spielerisch kaum genutztWertung: 88% (sehr gut)(Beendet auf Jedi Master, ohne manuelles Speichern). I am split straight down the middle on this game. The much praised lightsaber combat lives up to expectation and is incredible. The story was pretty cool and the progression system really made you feel like you were becoming a powerful jedi.Unfortunately, the structuring of the missions is terrible. Being a jedi fighting stormtroopers and officers is fun, with the occasional lightsaber battle with a sith.
Fighting 200 sith in a row is tedious beyond words, and it becomes a chore to fight. I realised it was so bad when I was just running past any enemies I could. The enemies need constant health bars as there is no way of knowing if you're really doing damage to saber users. Lastly, the final boss gave me severe depression. Yes, it was that bad.
Jedi Academy Character Customization Mods 3
First and foremost, I have an emotional attachment to this game, specifically towards the multiplayer RP and modding community.At the time, me and my family watched Star Wars 4-6, so when we got this game we we're heavily invested into playing it. The game worked with a skill point system in which you gained after every mission.
You can spend it on different powers, light or dark side, or in weapons/saber-stances. It was fun to customize and play with the different styles of lightsabers. The story was not super interesting but the use of force powers and saber battles were awesome.With vanilla multiplayer it wasn't anything game breaking. Just used the same combat/shooting mechanics from the story and created basic game modes, capture the flag, free for all, team deathmatch, etc. But there were some servers that hosted a role playing section.
Now, when I was playing this I was in 8th grade (so about 14) and I lived with my family with 4 siblings and we had to share one computer, by playing 1 hour at a time. Though the other 3 did not care to much about Jedi Academy, me and my older brother scheduled our time and joined a server and told time our situation. Unfortunately, I don't remember the name of the server, all I could remember from it was the Requiem For A Dream song being played A LOT. Either way, it was fun me and my brother scaled the ranks from jedi initiate to eventually jedi masters. I really would like to thank those guys because they really made us feel like heroes.The other part of this game was the modding community.
This is where I didn't play vanilla multiplayer again. Me and my brother were searching through one of the mod sites to check out the different mods and we found Movie Battles II. Movie Battles II changed a lot of things, combat, character customization and gameplay. The combat became more real to Star Wars and mostly revolving around the lightsabers, but also balancing the gun aspects of the game. For instance, if you were to max out (3 points) 'saber deflect' you would accurately aim a laser bullet to someone more precisely every time to someone who only put 1-2 points. There was also character customization. In vanilla you just choose any character model and throw points into what you wanted depending on what the host set the points for.
In Movie Battles II, you had to choose certain 'classes' from solider to jedi/sith, and even choosing from specialty classes like Droideka or Wookie. Each of these classes had locked models and had points to throw into specific custom stats that the mod makers created. I realize now I'm more reviewing the mod then the game at this point but whatever lol. The gameplay was changed too, the games are more based on specific objective game with 2-3 different ways to tackle it. The most popular map is the phantom menace area in Naboo(?).
The map is modeled beautifully.That's kind of it, good game overall, great mechanics (vanilla/otherwise), decent story, and fun modding community. If you made it this far, WHATUP?!? At the time, knight of the old republic won a great deal of rewards. Original story line, good graphics, an intriguing puzzle here and there. However, playing through the action I found – to my personal opinion, that the game failed it one of the most important point: combat.rnrnWhile the first few levels enjoyed a full range of powerful weapon to experiment with, as the game progressed, those weapons were of no use as light sabre welding opponents can reflect those strait back at you. Therefore, the last few missions were light sabre only – and melee fights are always difficult to make interesting first person style.
It mainly involved punching keyboard like crazy and hoping you will get lucky – wholly un-enjoyable experience.rnrnAlso – while Jedi’s have a verity of forces, I feel that more could be done to build interesting puzzles around them. Still, for the story, and the attempt – a passing grade. One of those rare games I played almost exclusively for the multiplayer. Coming off of Jedi Outcast, the SP campaign blows.
The story's forgettable, pointless EU material that adds next to nothing to Katarn's story. The levels are a choppy mashup of unrelated-but cool-ideas, ideas that feel like a user-made, best-of DLC compilation. Don't pay attention to the story, there's no use for it. Just play the goddamned multiplayer or download some sexy weapon mods and chop the hell out of some limbs, because the lightsaber combat is like 32 orgasms.When Jedi Academy came out, the most amazing thing it had to offer was that the rancor knew what a wall was, and could successfully touch it.