Thoughts on Editing, by yours truly and Rishka has been posted. Since I had a hand in its writing, I can only suggest you read it... It deals with what makes good JK levels, single and multi-player. Any feedback would be appreciated.

On the sidebar, you will now find a link to our Features section. This section contains the works written by our staff or written specifically for Massassi. If you would like to write an article for this page, feel free to submit it.

8t88 has written an article titled The Version Conspiracy. It addresses the trend of level authors creating numerous versions/betas of levels before announcing one actually "finished." If you are planning on ever releasing a level, I suggest you take a look at what he has to say.

The =Weezer Jedi Guild= has posted a revised version of their editing tips. I'll let =wjg= Death Bunny explain it in his own words:

Well, the guys over at the Massassi Temple have asked me to write some hints for editing. Now, it's gotten pretty easy to find information on how to build levels but I'm constantly finding better ways to go about doing things. Now most of my hints, as you will find, fall under two categories, those that I find are helpful while building, and those that help the levels overall look and play. I hope that some of these little tips will help you build better levels.

This document is another great read for all you level editors out there.

By the way DB and Regs.... when you gonna let the Massassi staff whoop you in JK? I saw a brief appearance of Regs a couple of nights ago, but apparently he got cold feet and didn't stay long . . .

Darkjedi.com has just posted a tutorial on creating Mission Objectives. There have been a lot of questions about this on the message board, so go take a look. All you have to do is click on the "documents" tag on their sidebar.

I am very pleased to announce that 8t88 has become our new Co-Webmaster. He will be helping out with news updates and general site updates. He has already helped out a bunch, read on . . .

8t88 has re-organized and added to our Basic Editing Techniques section. I suggest that anyone who has questions should go check it out.

Version 1.03 of 8t88's Thrust Calculator has been released. Again, it's windows based, but it has been modified to automatically round for you. If you have no idea what I'm talking about, download it and then visit the Sector Thrust tutorial.

Another thing on this note... the JK sites have been flooded with these vector calculators... and they have helped the JK community a bunch. However, I will not post any more unless they offer a significant advantage over those already out there. JED is projected to be able to accept plugins in the next release, how about an addon to JED that allows you to put in two things, and it calculates right in JED? Just a suggestion - thanks for all the help guys.

The first is a tutorial on creating Force Fields, written by GMS_Slug.

The second is a detailed explanation of every line of a Trap cog. The tutor is titled, "How to Build a Trap," but I would suggest reading through it if you have interest in learning cogs. It goes far beyond just teaching you how to implement them. This one was written by Rishka.

Well, being inexperienced at these types of things, I made a mistake and overwrote the index file of the message board with an old version. Basically all the messages that were posted are not in the index anymore, although I do have the actual messages themselves. I will put the questions that got answered into my ongoing FAQ, but if you had a question that did not get answered, please re-post it. Now that I know how to do it, hopefully this type of thing won't happen again.

Yeah, Yeah, I know I shouldn't post on ONLY 5000, but it's kind of neat because today is EXACTLY 3 weeks from the day we opened...

8t88 has programmed up a nifty little program to calculate vectors for sector thrusts. This one is programmed for Windows, and is very easy to use. I would still suggest you go through the Vectors and Sector Thrust Tutorial so you know what's going on. You might need a .dll called vb40032.dll. If you don't have it, it is available to download here. Just put it in your Windows\System directory and it should work fine.
Thanks, 8t88 for that great program.

After a few emails with questions about our stairs tutorial, I decided to draft up a quick Stairs For Dummies tutorial. All the information included in it is ripped straight from Pele's Original Stairs Tutorial so you won't find any new info here. The additions include breaking down each and every step. If you don't want the long winded "dummy" version, please use the original. If you had a few problems with some of the advanced techniques, then the "dummy" version is for you.

Darkness Falls has posted two new articles on creating your own cutscenes. One covers Smacker and the other covers MotS-style (which uses the engine and cogs to make cutscenes). I know this isn't new news, but if you haven't taken a look yet, please do so, they are great articles.

Well, after a lot of heartache and a lot of help from Raven, who is the webmaster of Telefragged, I was finally able to get our message board up and running.

This message board will be frequented by our staff. If you have any questions about any of our tutorials - or editing questions in general, please feel free to post and someone will get back to you.

Pot-Head, one of our most dedicated team members, has written an extensive reference to be used when creating a CTF level for Jedi Knight. It is not intended to be used by novice editors. Rather, it is geared to editors who have some experience in placing and using COGs. Thanks, Pot, for that great reference.

EvanC has been hard at work finishing the Basic Editing Techniques page. It has been expanded to include:

• colormaps
• layering
• saving correctly
• skies and floors
• sounds
• sound tracks
• texturing

If you have any questions or comments regarding this section, please forward them to Evan.

Pele, now a part of the Code Alliance as well, has worked up a great tutorial on creating Smooth Stairs. It includes two different types, basic stairs and stairs that the player can walk under. Thank you Pele for that excellent addition to the Massassi Temple.

WazzitZ has joined the Massassi Temple to write tutorials. The first one, on adding custom messages to MotS, is being converted to HTML, so look for that within a couple of days. Welcome aboard, WazzitZ.

A big thanks goes out to the very busy Mangore Kiramin for bringing us yet another great tutorial. This one covers how to create a sector that "has thrust." It gives a detailed description on how to calculate the Vector, or direction, of the thrust. Yes, boys and girls, this tutorial does involve a little bit of math, but when I did it, I didn't need more than the Windows Calculator. Good luck, and remember that you can always email the author of the tutorial if you need help.

Booto, one of our Coggers, has posted a tutorial on creating Cameras for Jedi Knight. These cameras function much the same (but not exactly) as the ones in MotS. For more information on Cameras in Jedi Knight, browse on over to our articles section, and we have posted there an article previously published in Darkness Falls. As always, if you have questions about these tutorials, please feel free to contact any one of our staff members, and if we can, we will help you out.

Red from Jedinights.com has unvieled his new site, Cog Archive. The Cog Archive is a place do share custom Cog files for use with JediKnight. The Massassi Temple will be working closely with the Cog Archive to bring you Cogging tutorials. The first of them will be on a Cog similar to the Thermal Detonator Traps, but it allows you to use any "thing" as the trap. Look for this soon.

I was informed today that the pictures in the Outdoors Tutorial, Part 1, were not working. I apologize for that, and they have been fixed.

A VERY talented editor, and friend, has joined The Massassi Temple Team. He is also a member of the Mandalorian Wars team, and will be a real asset to us. Welcome aboard, Mangore Kiramin.

Mangore has written a tutorial on Switches. It covers how to add them to most anything in JK and MotS. A must read for all editors that don't know how to use them.

We have replaced our old "Other Info" section with a new Articles Section. There you will find all the articles NOT written by our staff, but donated to us by other web sites that deal with level editing. I suggest you read through them, as they contain a LOT of useful information.

Terrafusion.com has a very interesting section called Question/Answers. It deals with successful implementation of Deathmatch Levels. I have found many many JK levels released that just don't "do it" with deathmatch play. All of them have the potential to be classics, but I think that by reading through articles such as this one, editors will find ways to create great levels. The article can be found here, but was also posted in our articles section.

Game Design Central has kindly given me permission to re-post an article on Deathmatch levels. It's called "What's in a Deathmatch Level?" and can be found here. It was also posted in our articles section.

Bluesnews.com has posted a link to download a program called "Universe." It is a program that lets you create image files that are based on Space Scenes. It is a great program for creating more in-depth images for new sky .mats in JK. The Program can be found here: http://www.diardsoftware.com/universe.htm.

If you'd like a few Boba Fett skins for your Quake II games, you can get them here: http://www.planetquake.com/q2pmp/models/bobafett.htm.

The JK Editing FAQ was posted, and can be found on the sidebar.

By: Magi
Some of it by: Evan C
Converted by: JABrennecke

If you have any comments, suggestions, or additions, please see the FAQ for information on submitting them.

The Massassi Temple is in need of articles on anything having to do with Jedi Knight editing. Some of the things I'm looking for are editorials and opinion on the best way to do things while editing JK. Also wanted are inputs on level design, how to add detail and realism, and general observances about the JK editing community.

If you would like to submit articles or editorial, please email them to me.

Pele, who's been populating the Message Boards at Darkjedi.com with answers to questions, has joined the team to create tutorials and articles. The first project will be a tutorial on laggless stairs, including a way to create a spiral, multileveled staircase.

Evan, who has been hard at work on the JK editing FAQ (soon to be posted on this site) has joined to help create tutorials. Evan has experience in Templates, COGs, and 3do's. The first tutorial from Evan will be on Templates.

A tutorial on Beams was posted on the tutorials page.

I received an email this morning from Matthias Welander, the creator of ForceBuilder, and basically it said that Forcebuilder is cancelled, and that all liscenses are now cancelled. Here is an exerpt:

Because of the termination of the ForceBuilder project, all licences for the programs in the ForceBuilder suite (Cybercraft ForceBuilder, Cybercraft 3DO Viewer, Cybercraft Gob2 and Cybercraft UnGob2) are terminated. It is, from today, illegal to posses any copies of those programs, unless you have special permission to continue to use them. More information can be found on the ForceBuilder homepage.

The Forcebuilder hompage can be found here: http://www.darkjedi.com/forcebuilder/

I would like to personally thank you for visiting. I hope you find the tutorials and other files here at The Massassi Temple helpful. We have a top notch group of editors working on tutorials, and the pages should continue to fill up quickly.

I would also like to thank JediNights.com, along with Telefragged, for hosting this site. They are a great group of people to be involved with.

The Basic Editing page contains just that, basic editing techniques. It is recommended that if you don't know anything about editing JK, you download the tutorial (Thank you Darkjedi.com!) and read it before attempting anything else. It is not imperative that you understand everything in the tutorial, but there is a lot of great, basic information. After that, head on in to our Basic Editing Techniques page.

In our tutorials page, you will find detailed illustrated tutorials on many aspects of JED and editing techniques in general. We have attempted to make every tutorial easy to understand, but if you have problems, I would suggest reading it a few times over, and practicing. If that still doesn't help, go over to www.darkjedi.com and try out their message boards, as there is always someone there who can help.

If you surf on into our Projects page, you will see all the projects we have planned for the future, as well as all the ones we have so far completed. If you have anything you would like added to this list, feel free to email me, and if it's valid, I'll do everything I can to either create it or have it created for me.

You'll also notice that some pages are completely lacking in content, such as the files page, but that will all come in time, and when pages get populated, I will add it to the news. The point of releasing a site that's not finished, you ask? Well we decided that it was pointless to hold off. There are a number of great tutorials here, as well as good general editing information. Also, this site will always be growing, and will not be "finished" until there is nobody else involved with editing Jedi Knight.