Open Jedi Project

The Open Jedi Project (abbreviated OJP) is a modification for Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. It aims to work on fun, interesting, and useful game features from which everyone can benefit. It is categorised into two parts: Basic and Enhanced. The team is currently led by "Razor Ace". Most members currently contribute to the project in their own spare time.

The Open Jedi Project is open source; thus, its source code is freely available. Modders can download the code for their own mods. They may also contribute materials to the project by contacting Razor Ace.

History
The idea of an open source mod was initially founded in the late days of Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast by Razor Ace, "Emon", and "RenegadeofPhunk". Many had felt that the Jedi Outcast modding community lacked cooperation between developers. As such, they got together and founded the OJP team.

Emon later left due to lack of interest, and RenegadeofPhunk went on to work on a mod called Movie Battles II.

Razor Ace, however, believed in the project and refused to give up on it, working on most of the mods initial code. Its progress caught the attention of more modders, such as Tinny and Keshire who contributed much to its development.

Many of the features today are inspired by Masters of the Force, a mod for Jedi Outcast, whose team was originally led by Razor Ace.

Distributions
Currently, The Open Jedi Project is available in two different packages, Basic and Enhanced. There are also the Skins and Vehicles packs that are not related to gameplay.

Basic
Basic has two main features. One is bug fixes and balance fixes, neither of which will severely alter game play. They are designed to be the "unofficial patch" for bugs and gameplay issues. Basic can still be considered vanilla Jedi Academy. The other main feature is map enhancements. Things such as new entities, expanded AI, vehicles, scripting, and an effects system can allow mappers to create far more immersive and fun maps. Since Basic also aims towards recreating all the single player entities and code, it is possible for mappers to create full featured cooperative and single player games and levels using the multiplayer engine. This allows modders to make other enhancements such as new weapons, AI, etc., not possible using the single player engine.

Enhanced
Enhanced is a superset of Basic, meaning it has anything and everything included in the Basic distribution. The difference is that it adds many significant gameplay alterations. On its own, it is a fully playable mod, with major gameplay alterations that deviate from default Jedi Academy. Players get a full mod that offers almost totally revamps lightsaber gameplay (see below). Developers get a solid, flexible code base that includes the basic, fundamental features people would want to find in most mods, allowing them to spend their time on what makes their work truly unique.

Skins and vehicles
The Vehicles package is a collection of additional vehicles for Jedi Academy. Including them in the project allows compatible maps to use additional vehicles without having to include said vehicles in their release packages.

The Skins package is a collection of quality modder created skins that have been turned into customizable player classes. This is done to allow more player options, to allow SP usage of these skins, to allow servers and players to quickly get a pack of quality skins, and to prevent a lot of redundant data from clogging up the game directory.

Cooperative Mode
Both OJP Enhanced and OJP Basic feature Cooperative Mode, where players can team up to fight NPCs and complete certain objectives in respective Singleplayer maps.

Most of the default Jedi Academy maps are playable in Co-op mode. The OJP team has made plans for a Singleplayer Cooperative campaign to be released, but no development has gone underway yet.

Tabbots
Tabbots are bots specially developed to adapt to the new gameplay features in Open Jedi Project, such as the new combat system. Siege is now playable with Tabbots.

Key gameplay features in Enhanced
While Basic is more of an unofficial patch, Enhanced is essentially a mod on its own, with gameplay features that are constantly being tweaked upon and added.

New saber combat system
Players now have much more control over the lightsaber. Saber attacks are completely controlled by the player now. If the player attempts to continue attacking in the same direction after an impact, he will have to return to the idle/ready position before swinging in that direction again. In addition, sabers now have to physically transition between attacks, bounces, etc. Running while attacking greatly increases the chances of getting stunned.

Attacks can be chained indefinitely, but are dependent on one's Force pool. Therefore, being too aggressive will result in Force points being deducted. A Force pool of less than 10 points will cause players to become fatigued.

Players now automatically bodily dodge physical attacks that would normally kill the player. This makes the game more true to the movies, since sabers rarely take more than two hits to inflict fatal damage. Dodging is dependent on the Dodge pool on players' HUD.

Sabers automatically block incoming saber attacks from all directions (except straight back). This blocking action costs a slight amount of Dodge Points. A new feature, called Parrying, has also been added. This allows players to block with little or no DP cost, and at the same time reduces enemies' defences by causing them to go into "bounce" mode, where users temporarily lose their control of the saber.

Force Powers
Existing Force powers are being tweaked to balance gameplay. The only new Force power added so far is Force Fall. It allows players to descend from great heights with minimal injury by sacrificing force points.

The Saber Throw mechanics have also been completely reworked. Saber Throw now acts more like it does in the movies. Thrown sabers only move in a straight line but will defy gravity as long as the saber throw button is held. Once the button is released, or the saber moves out of range, the saber will fall to the earth under normal gravity. Sabers that hit the ground or hit a target now remain on the ground until the saber is called back to the player. The player can recall their saber by reusing Saber Throw or by pressing the lightsaber weapon selection button.

TrueView
TrueView is a mode that is made to simulate what players would normally see from the eyes of their characters. Unlike the traditional first person view, TrueView shows not only the weapons held, but any of the characters' physical features that can be observed from their eyes. This also re-introduces first personal perspective for lightsaber combat in multiplayer (and the view can be configured to display everything, not just a floating saber blade).

Miscellaneous features
There are many miscellaneous gameplay features and bug fixes, such as ledge grabbing. For more information, download the latest distributions of OJP from its website. There is new original music, composed by Jed Smith of betafish music.

Future plans
The team is currently working on bug fixes and gameplay balancing issues. Expansion of the skilltree system, addition of new weapons and powers and general augmenting of current gameplay are all on the to-do list.

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See Also

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