Jedi (game engine)

Last updated
Jedi
Original author(s) Ray Gresko
Developer(s) LucasArts
Written in C [1]
Operating system MS-DOS, Mac OS [1] Sony PlayStation [2]
Type Game engine
License Proprietary

Jedi is a game engine developed primarily by Ray Gresko for LucasArts. [3] It is very similar to the Build engine used in Duke Nukem 3D . While not a true 3D engine, it supported a three-dimensional environment with no limitations in the 3rd dimension (Z). In Doom , environments or levels were limited to existing in the X-Y plane only levels were laid out two-dimensionally: while floor and ceiling heights could differ, areas could not overlap vertically. The Jedi Engine had support for areas or rooms (called "sectors") on top of one another, a trait that it shared with the Build engine. [2] In the Dark Forces revision of the engine, the renderer could not display two rooms situated on top of each other simultaneously. This capability was added for Outlaws . [4]

The Jedi Engine also included the ability to jump and crouch, the ability to look up and down, [3] and atmospheric effects (achieved by careful manipulation of 256-color palette files). [5] The engine is limited in its rendering capabilities, however, and used two-dimensional sprites (pre-rendered in different angles) for most of its object graphics. [4] Other LucasArts techniques such as the iMuse sound system were incorporated. [1]

Its lifetime was short-lived, being used in two titles, Star Wars: Dark Forces and Outlaws . [6] The sequel to Dark Forces, Jedi Knight , used the Sith engine.

There have been attempts of open source game engine recreations based on reverse engineering the original source code. [7]

Related Research Articles

id Software American video game developer

id Software LLC is an American video game developer based in Richardson, Texas. It was founded on February 1, 1991, by four members of the computer company Softdisk: programmers John Carmack and John Romero, game designer Tom Hall, and artist Adrian Carmack.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucasfilm Games</span> American video game producer

Lucasfilm Games is an American video game licensor and a subsidiary of Lucasfilm. It was founded in May 1982 by George Lucas as a video game development group alongside his film company; as part of a larger 1990 reorganization of the Lucasfilm divisions, the video game development division was grouped and rebranded as part of LucasArts. LucasArts became known for its line of adventure games based on its SCUMM engine in the 1990s, including Maniac Mansion, the Monkey Island series, and several Indiana Jones titles. A number of influential game developers were alumni of LucasArts from this period, including Brian Moriarty, Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and Dave Grossman. Later, as Lucasfilm regained control over its licensing over the Star Wars franchise, LucasArts produced numerous action-based Star Wars titles in the late 1990s and early 2000s, while dropping adventure game development due to waning interest in the genre.

<i>Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast</i> 2002 video game

Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast is a 2002 first- and third-person shooter video game developed by Raven Software for Windows and Mac OS. Westlake Interactive ported the game to Mac OS X, while the Xbox and GameCube versions were ported by Vicarious Visions; most versions were published by Activision and LucasArts, with only the Mac OS version published by Aspyr. The game is a sequel to 1997's Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, and the third main installment in the Star Wars: Jedi Knight series. The single-player campaign, set in the fictional Star Wars expanded universe two years after the Mysteries of the Sith expansion for Dark Forces II, follows returning protagonist Kyle Katarn, a mercenary working for the New Republic and former Jedi who cut his connection to the Force. Katarn must return to his Jedi ways to stop a branch of the Imperial Remnant led by the Dark Jedi Desann from empowering their army with the Force.

<i>Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II</i> 1997 video game

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II is a 1997 first-person shooter video game developed and published by LucasArts for Windows. It is the sequel to 1995's Star Wars: Dark Forces, and the second installment in the Star Wars: Jedi Knight series. The story, set in the fictional Star Wars expanded universe one year after the film Return of the Jedi, follows returning protagonist Kyle Katarn, a mercenary working for the New Republic, who discovers his connection to the Force and "The Valley of the Jedi", an ancient source of power. With his father having been murdered years prior by the Dark Jedi Jerec and his followers over the Valley's location, Katarn embarks on a quest to confront his father's killers and find the Valley before they do.

A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs such as a level editor. The "engine" terminology is akin to the term "software engine" used more widely in the software industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Voxel</span> Element representing a value on a grid in three dimensional space

A voxel is a three-dimensional counterpart to a pixel. It represents a value on a regular grid in a three-dimensional space. Voxels are frequently used in the visualization and analysis of medical and scientific data.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">OpenAL</span> API for rendering audio

OpenAL is a cross-platform audio application programming interface (API). It is designed for efficient rendering of multichannel three-dimensional positional audio. Its API style and conventions deliberately resemble those of OpenGL. OpenAL is an environmental 3D audio library, which can add realism to a game by simulating attenuation, the Doppler effect, and material densities.

2.5D perspective refers to gameplay or movement in a video game or virtual reality environment that is restricted to a two-dimensional (2D) plane with little or no access to a third dimension in a space that otherwise appears to be three-dimensional and is often simulated and rendered in a 3D digital environment.

A source port is a software project based on the source code of a game engine that allows the game to be played on operating systems or computing platforms with which the game was not originally compatible.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Build (game engine)</span> First-person shooter engine

The Build Engine is a first-person shooter engine created by Ken Silverman, author of Ken's Labyrinth, for 3D Realms. Like the Doom engine, the Build Engine represents its world on a two-dimensional grid using closed 2D shapes called sectors, and uses simple flat objects called sprites to populate the world geometry with objects.

<i>Star Wars: Dark Forces</i> 1995 video game

Star Wars: Dark Forces is a first-person shooter video game developed and published by LucasArts. It was released in 1995 for MS-DOS and Macintosh, and in 1996 for the PlayStation. The story is set in the fictional Star Wars expanded universe and begins shortly before the original Star Wars film, before flashing forward to a year after the film's events. The game's protagonist and playable character is Kyle Katarn, a mercenary working on behalf of the Rebel Alliance who discovers the Galactic Empire's secret Dark Trooper Project, which involves the development of a series of powerful new battle droids and power-armored stormtroopers.

A first-person shooter engine is a video game engine specialized for simulating 3D environments for use in a first-person shooter video game. First-person refers to the view where the players see the world from the eyes of their characters. Shooter refers to games which revolve primarily around wielding firearms and killing other entities in the game world, either non-player characters or other players.

<i>Outlaws</i> (1997 video game) 1997 video game

Outlaws is a first-person shooter developed and published by LucasArts on April 7, 1997. Set in the Wild West, it follows retired U.S. Marshal James Anderson, who seeks to bring justice to a gang of criminals who killed his wife and kidnapped his daughter. It uses an enhanced version of the Jedi game engine, first seen in Star Wars: Dark Forces. It is also largely credited as the first shooter game with a sniper zoom, as well as one of the first to feature a gun reloading mechanic. LucasArts' INSANE animation engine was used to render computer graphics animation sequences. These have special filters to look hand-drawn, and play between each mission and set up the action in the next area.

id Tech 4 Video game engine

id Tech 4, popularly known as the Doom 3 engine, is a game engine developed by id Software and first used in the video game Doom 3. The engine was designed by John Carmack, who also created previous game engines, such as those for Doom and Quake, which are widely recognized as significant advances in the field. This OpenGL-based game engine has also been used in Quake 4, Prey, Enemy Territory: Quake Wars, Wolfenstein, and Brink. id Tech 4 is licensed under the terms of the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later.

<i>Marathon</i> (video game) 1994 video game

Marathon is a first-person shooter video game developed and published by Bungie, and released in December 1994 for the Apple Macintosh. The game takes place several centuries into the future in outer space and sets the player as a security officer attempting to stop an alien invasion aboard a colony ship named the Marathon.

Star Wars: Jedi Knight, also shorted as Jedi Knight, is a series of first- and third-person shooter video games set in the fictional Star Wars expanded universe. The series focuses primarily on Kyle Katarn, a former Imperial officer who becomes a mercenary working for the Rebel Alliance, and later a Jedi and instructor at Luke Skywalker's Jedi Academy. While the first game is set a year after the events of A New Hope, the sequels take place in the decade following Return of the Jedi.

A variety of computer graphic techniques have been used to display video game content throughout the history of video games. The predominance of individual techniques have evolved over time, primarily due to hardware advances and restrictions such as the processing power of central or graphics processing units.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">First-person shooter</span> Video game genre

A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through the eyes of the main character. This genre shares multiple common traits with other shooter games, and in turn falls under the action games category. Since the genre's inception, advanced 3D and pseudo-3D graphics have proven fundamental to allow a reasonable level of immersion in the game world, and this type of game helped pushing technology progressively further, challenging hardware developers worldwide to introduce numerous innovations in the field of graphics processing units. Multiplayer gaming has been an integral part of the experience, and became even more prominent with the diffusion of internet connectivity in recent years.

<i>Star Wars Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith</i> 1998 video game

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Mysteries of the Sith is an expansion pack for the 1997 first-person shooter Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II, developed and published by LucasArts for Microsoft Windows in 1998. It was re-released on Steam in September 2009. The expansion includes a new single-player story mode and fifteen multiplayer maps. The single-player story, set in the fictional Star Wars expanded universe five years after the events of Dark Forces II, follows both returning protagonist Kyle Katarn, a Jedi Master and mercenary working for the New Republic, and Mara Jade, a character featured in numerous Star Wars expanded universe works, who is being trained by Katarn in the Jedi arts. After Katarn goes missing while investigating an ancient Sith temple, Jade continues her studies on her own while undertaking missions from the New Republic, eventually leaving to find Katarn.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Noesis (software)</span>

Noesis is software for viewing, converting, and reverse engineering data. Common data types supported by the software include images, 3D models, medical imaging (DICOM), and animation.

References

  1. 1 2 3 "Byte.com article on Dark Forces and the Jedi engine". Archived from the original on April 5, 2007. Retrieved January 3, 2009.
  2. 1 2 "Star Wars: Dark Forces". Internet Video Game Library.
  3. 1 2 Jedi at MobyGames
  4. 1 2 Lampert, Guilherme. "Reverse engineering LucasArts Outlaws". Lampert's game dev journal.
  5. John, Papadopoulos. "The Force Engine is a source port of the Jedi Engine, will support Dark Forces & Outlaws". DSOG.
  6. Paul Lilly (2009-07-21). "Doom to Dunia: A Visual History of 3D Game Engines". maximumpc.com. Maximum PC. Archived from the original on July 8, 2015. Retrieved 2016-01-16.
  7. Dawe, Liam (2020-05-19). "The Force Engine is a fresh attempt to rebuild the Jedi Engine". GamingOnLinux.