The JkEdit Homepage has once again updated JkEdit. Here is the lowdown on the new version:

Version 1.03 of JkEdit has some new features:

• A sector can now be Deleted
• Surfaces and Objects can now be Cut, Copied or Pasted

Version 1.03 of JkEdit has a few bug fixes:

• A crash could occur after splitting a surface
• A crash could occur after deletion of certain surfaces

I can't wait to try this version. Now that sector deletion is added, complex architecture can be created. Look for an update to the beams tutorial within a few days.

3do Happenings, the home of a new 3do editor (not released yet) as well as the current 3do converter, has been down for a couple of weeks now. I saw on the Darkjedi.com message boards that it has been moved here. Just to make it clear, the editor is NOT out yet, and actually there are no new posts on the site. 3doxprt assures us that he will make an update soon, however.

I don't normally post news of releases OR of editing groups, but this one really caught my attention. The new group, called the JK Gangstas are already finished coding their mod, and the levels are 60% done! The project looks great: it's a multiplayer teams mod called Infiltrate. The object is for your team to blow up 3 key points on the opposing teams Base.

The lineup in this new group is amazing too. A lot of old Dark Forces editors, along with Pele, who is a member of The Code Alliance. He has also has worked some tutorials for this site as well as Darkness Falls.

In any case, I wish these guys luck, and this mod looks awesome!

Darkness Falls has updated with some very interesting articles. The first is a tutorial written by Mark Jones on how to add Dark Jedi to a single player level.

The second is an article written by Adrian Burnett. It is a preview of upcoming levels, including the sequel to Warzone, which is one of the most popular single player levels out there. Take a gander here.

There is also an extensive preview of Warzone Chapter 2, but you'll have to visit them to see it. They also need some people to write articles and tutorials, so be sure to visit their site.

The JkEdit Homepage has announced that there is a new version of JkEdit out. It has a few bug fixes, and allows for some more colored lighting RGB values in MotS.

A tutorial on creating beams in JkEdit has been posted and can be viewed here. It can also be downloaded, if you prefer offline viewing. [Download]

Alexei Novikov, from Darkjedi.com has updated his plan with his thoughts on the new level editor. Here it is for your reading pleasure:

June 12, 1998 21:05
Heh, I see JED isn't lonely again. JkEdit is now here to keep company. I can only salute that. Well, I only heard some unpleasant things about Ole Thomasen. I don't know him myself, so I can't comment.

Just download the editor and check it out. And pay $25 if you like it. I downloaded it, but haven't been able to check it out so far - it won't find JK or MOTS on my HD because I run it on NT and I installed them on Win95 (Neither JK, not MOTS runs on NT, unfortunately).

Regardless, that doesn't affect JED plans in any way. I will continue developing it, I will neither rush, nor delay JED on account of JkEdit. I'm sure I'll be getting requests to do something "like in JkEdit". That's OK - I'll do it whereever possible. But don't ask me to redo JED interface from scratch.

In other news - I got an ABit Pentium II 440LX motherboard and an ATX case today. Just a little more stuff to add and I can test MP things at home. I have some plans for that.

Also, I finally went out and got Unreal (happend to pass by Best Buy on some other business). Now I'm playing it. Well, the performance in terrible on my P133 w/ Voodoo Rush, even in 512x384, as I expected. About 15fps and below. But I'm quite tolerant to such things - back in Doom days when we played 4 player DeathMatches, I didn't mind to take the 386DX40 machine and even kicked the butts of some guys who played on P90. Well, what can I add to my E3 Unreal experience so far? It looks great, but true to its name - unreal. Almost all the time I find myself guessing what this or that effect in the levels is supposed to mean. The game itself is pretty chaotic. No clues, no nothing. Just kick butt and run until suddenly you get level loading screen. I'll probably be alone in saying that, but I think the level design is uninteresting. Although there're many cool details here and there, the things doesn't make sense as a whole. I mean - first level is a spaceship? Really? Doesn't look that way to me. Parts of it look like they belong in a ship, but where's the logics in their connection? And these large fans you pass through. Ahem... They're supposed to move large amount of air from where to where? Ventilation? I thought I passed the ventilation shaft in totally different place. Why the ship design is totally linear? Etc, etc.

Anyway, the engine is really cool and AI is definitely improved - those bastards find you much quicker than in any game I played. That only makes them easier to kill so far though :-). There's a great editing potential in this game. Interesting things should pop up. Maybe even JK->Unreal conversion? It's be cool for your lightsaber to give off colored glowing.

An update:

I checked out JkEdit. Interesting concept. Admirable integration. Sure looks cool, but I have yet to see how functional it is - his editing tools are incomplete to say the least. I still think that outside view is preferable for building initial architecture.

Darkjedi.com has posted a tutorial on editing Jed's Resource Picker. It can be viewed here.

You can read yesterday's news to find out about the new JK/MotS editor. I have messed with it for a few hours, and decided to write a quick tutorial on some of JkEdit's basic functions. Some of the features are very handy, while others seem cumbersome compared to Jed. Most likely this is just because JkEdit is a completely different editor, so I will probably get used to the differences.

The tutorial is titled Getting Started With JkEdit. It addresses how to add objects, plus some basic architecture tecniques. It is by no means a complicated tutorial. As the title implies, it is for beginners.

The JkEdit Homepage has posted that version 1.01 of JkEdit has been released. Here is the info:

Version 1.01 of JkEdit has a few bug fixes:

• The Test Level command did not worked correctly for Mysteries of the Sith
• Jkl Files were not read/written correctly for Mysteries of the Sith
• The Jedi.dat and Mots.dat file were missing

As Brian posted yesteday, The Massassi Temple has been voted the Best Editing Site for the month of June by the Star Wars Editing Zone. I received an email from Fortuna, the webmaster there, with the following picture attached.



Thanks to Fortuna and all you readers for the award. We really strive to bring you all the best tutorials and information in the JK editing scene.

The Sith Temple has posted that there is a good Skinning Tutorial posted here. Thanks goes to the Sith Temple and Gravity, of the NSWL Editing Team.

GameCenter.com is having a vote for the best first person shooter action game. Last time I checked, JK was a hair behind Quake II, so with a few more votes, we should be able to push it into first place (for a while anyway). In any case, if you feel like, click on over there and vote.

I have recently been hired on by JK.net to do editing news updates. Today, I received, via their news email link, an email from Heregul. He informed us that a new level editor for JK and MotS has been released. The program is called JkEdit. You can download it from the JkEdit Homepage. Apparently, this is the author of a Dark Forces Editor called Wedit. I wasn't in the DF scene at all, nor did I know anyone was working on a new editor.

I have yet to try this editor out, but if it's as good as the author boasts, JED might actually have some competition!

Thanks again Heregul and JK.net.

I would like to personally thank Tolian Worf and his site, The Imperial Image Organisation, for the incredible graphic that is on the Message Board. I was sent to this site by Ultipla, an editing group, when I was admiring their logo. The Imperial Image Orgainisation does custom graphics for Star Wars related sites. So, if you're in need of a graphic, click on over there.

This is a rip from R.U.S.T. -- they are a great Quake/Quake2 Editing site, and many of their articles can be easily applied to Jedi Knight/MotS.

Saw on Blues News that 'Archy Vial' has posted a good design article on Wedge & Choryoth's Hocopus called This Old Level which goes into depth on where to get ideas for a map and how to go about designing it. Good read.

Well, the Star Wars Editing Zone announced, and I'm not gonna argue, that The Massassi Temple has been voted the "Best Editing Site" for the month of June. Apparently it's a vote everyone can participate in, so thanks for the support.

Well, after a few weeks, and a few emails, our counter has been fixed and is now accurate once again. Thanks to Raven of Telefragged for the help. In case you don't know, Jedi Nights is actually hosted by Telefragged, so we get our web space from them.

Received an email from Pele today, and also saw on most of the major news sites, that he has released an anti-cheat patch. I'm not posting it here, but you can find it on JediKnight.net. I just wanted to comment on the fact that it's sad when editors have to work their butts off to make a patch that discourages cheaters. It would be ideal if people would grow up a little bit and just knock it off.

I was cruising around, looking for some editing articles for your viewing pleasure, when I came across a site called Gamers Editorium. The site focuses on most editable games, and I was surprised to see that they had been announcing our tutorials. I haven't had a chance to write the webmaster an email yet, but check out the site, it's great.

A few days ago I received an email from Heinz Högel. Attached, to my surprise, was a very well written tutorial on rotating doors. There is a custom cog with great instructions on how to use it. Thanks for the contribution, Heinz, and I think a sequel would be great (hint, hint).

Well I finally did it, and it seems to be working fine. Any problems just fire me off an email. The old message board files can be downloaded here. If you didn't get a response to a message you posted on the old board, please re-post.

Darkjedi.com has posted a program that creates and edits KEY files for things with a pre-programmed course, like the Moldy Crow. I would like to once again thank the Code Alliance for all their hard work. The file can be downloaded here.

Not editing related, but I do frequent Jedi Legacy. They have gotten a new domain at http://www.jedilegacy.net. Congrats Osan`gar and Speaker4theDead. Jedi Legacy has always supported us, so I thought I'd give them a plug right back :-)

Report on JED progress, here's the info:

Just like that saying goes "90% of the program take 90% of time, the remaining 10% take another 90% of time". Yep, that's precisely what's happening. Finishing things up takes a lot of time. Just about everything has "almost done" status, but this "almost" while looks really small, eats like a grown-up. Anyway, I'm getting close to stating beta-testing (which is usually about 2 weeks from the release), maybe a week from now? That's about 3 weeks from now estimated.

Oh, BTW, which remind me - there have been quite a few suggestions on the JED board lately. Some of them suggest things that are already done though :-). Anyway - what I'd like to say - keep 'em coming. When I react with critique that doesn't mean your suggestion is dumb (well, maybe sometimes). Rather it needs to be refined. So, stick around, comment and answer my questions - then we could work out something.

I'd like to once again thank Alex and the team at Code Alliance for all the hard work and dedication. Without them, this site and it's function just wouldn't exist.

There have been tons of posts on the Message Board about people having problems with trashed textures. I was contaced by Alex from Code Alliance, and apparently he hasn't heard of this problem before. If ANYONE has a level in which there are messed up textures (you will know what I'm talking about if you've experienced it), PLEASE head on over to Darkjedi.com . There, you can go onto the message board and explain the problem exactly. Alex is interested in hammering out this problem, but the only way to do it is with the help of the people who are having it.

I had a great time on my vacation, there's nothing like a backpacking trip to breath the life back into a person. Anyway, thanks to 8t88 for making updates while I was gone.

Pele has been working on an anti-cheat patch that should discourage cheaters and hackers. Here is an update he posted earlier in his .plan at JK.net:

I have really worked out a lot of the kinks in the anti-cheat patch today...it is running pretty well. At this rate it should be ready for the weekend, no promises though...

Also, some other editing news from him:

Also, I am writing up a bunch of generic cogs for release with JED... if you have any suggestions/requests for cogs just send me an email.

Apparently things have slowed down since I've been gone, but rest assured #massassi will be making a comeback. I urge everyone to download an irc client ( mIRC is what I use) and join us. Some pretty good servers are as follows:

• irc.blackened.com port:6667
• irc.chat.org port:6667

If one doesn't work, try the other. Also, any other EFnet server you can find will work.

My email server was maxed out while I was on vacation, so if you didn't get a response to an email that needed one, please feel free to re-send it. I hate posts like this, but I think it's the best way to get the word out. Email: lozier@bigfoot.com.