LucasArts dead; Raven does good

[Tchernobog]

Following the less than cheery news that Disney had closed down the venerable LucasArts in favour of licensing out their famous franchises to other developers instead, Raven Software has decided to actually make something good of this and as such has now released the source code to Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast and Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy under Version 2 of the GNU General Public License.

http://kotaku.com/lucasarts-closure-con ... -468994505
http://www.gamingonlinux.com/articles/s ... eased.1893

Any thoughts? I have never actually played these particular games myself, but I have played some of the earlier games in the same series and found them to be enjoyable, so I am looking forward to a proper source port so I can get around to playing both titles natively on my Arch box.

[ZedSlayer]

I wonder if some former employee might find the copy of Jedi and Sith engines, maybe release those. I'm really curious to see how this will effect the games communities. What could the sources for these do? As far as I know, modern compatibility is no issue, and is there a linux version?



and yet... blood source still stays lost even in the face of Atari's bankruptcy...

[Tchernobog]

There is the XL engine working on Jedi compatibility of course, and we will likely see that finished before we see BloodXL. So that may already be being covered. Sith I would definitely love to see, especially since Dark Forces 2 does not WINE at all well and the need to swap disks is one pain I would definitely love to see addressed.

But this is an action of Raven, not the old LucasArts, so only properties Raven owned could be released. And these sources are a bit more useful than you think - already looking at the OpenJK project they have removed the CD Key check, a whole bunch of useless code pertaining to the Xbox version, and have implemented a whole bunch of graphics enhancements from ioquake3, as well as making the console a whole lot more usable.

Not to mention the superior performance, reliability, and portability that is going to be offered by basing the game on modern cross-platform libraries rather than an ageing version of DirectX. And of course, for me, a native Linux port.

[BEAST]

I wonder if some former employee might find the copy of Jedi and Sith engines, maybe release those. I'm really curious to see how this will effect the games communities. What could the sources for these do? As far as I know, modern compatibility is no issue, and is there a linux version?

and yet... blood source still stays lost even in the face of Atari's bankruptcy...

You can find that out from the DF-21 site, which belongs to the Dark Forces editing community. I asked them what's become of the Jedi engine, and they replied that its lost. The XL engine is the closest thing we'll have to a freeware Jedi engine, so that's nice. The Sith engine, however, is a mystery to me. The guys at the Massassi Temple tried to reverse engineer the Sith engine, and there are some unfinished files for the engine project on JK Hub. I think I may be the only gamer who likes the Sith Engine for its polygonal modern sculpture graphics, because I liked seeing Star Wars' characters and inhabitants being rendered in interepretive modern art set pieces for some reason. The fact that Sith powered Shadows of the Empire (which is a no brainer) and the legendary Grim Fandango is rather impressive. I've toyed with the idea of wanting to do a Blood inspired game with the Sith engine if it was ever available, but that's for another discussion.

My only consolation for LucasArts' shutdown is that maybe all their classic games may get sold on GOG.com, hopefully. I just really wished that LucasArts didn't lose all of their oldschool talent, which includes both the teams behind Monkey Island/Maniac Mansion/Day of the Tentacle/Sam and Max/Indiana Jones/Loom/Grim Fandango, and the teams behind the X-Wing and TIE Fighter series/Shadows of the Empire/Dark Forces/Jedi Knight/Mysteries of the Sith/Rogue Squadron. Speaking of old school LucasArts teams, I wonder what became of the team members behind the first two Dark Forces games. I still think that those games are among the best SW licensed games LucasArts released ever.

Thank Raven for releasing the JO/JA source code. Maybe coders can mingle the superior A.I. code of Return to Castle Wolfenstein with JO's saber crazy gameplay.

[Tchernobog]

I think I may be the only gamer who likes the Sith Engine for its polygonal modern sculpture graphics, because I liked seeing Star Wars' characters and inhabitants being rendered in interepretive modern art set pieces for some reason.

Well, it certainly was a unique style of graphics, I will give you that.

[ZedSlayer]

The Sith engine, however, is a mystery to me.

I guess you could say we have a...



Mystery of the Sith

[BEAST]

The Sith engine, however, is a mystery to me.

I guess you could say we have a...



Mystery of the Sith

I'm amazed that I unwittingly set my words up for a MOTS send-up. Well done, ZedSlayer!

If I only I knew who held the rights to the Sith Engine. I'm thinking of wanting to learn game code writing, so maybe I could study the files available for the Sith 2 engine (JK Hub's effort to reverse engineer the Sith Engine).

JK and MOTS are games that I've wanted to do levels and mods for since I was a boy in the 90s... and the best I could do was create modeling clay figurines as hypothetical versions of 3D computer game models... Oh, how I missed those days...

Anyway, what's become of the rights of LucasArts' other games? Will Disney ever agree to them being sold on GOG.com?

Oh, and LucasArts wasn't the only one who was extinguished by Disney. Warren Spector also was set adrift because of the lack of success from his two Epic Mickey games (how could this happen to the father of System Shock and Deus Ex!?).

[Tchernobog]

Oh, and LucasArts wasn't the only one who was extinguished by Disney. Warren Spector also was set adrift because of the lack of success from his two Epic Mickey games (how could this happen to the father of System Shock and Deus Ex!?).

Hmm...
http://www.gamespot.com/news/aaa-game-d ... or-6406479