Upgrade Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith!

Hi, I was reading Star Wars: Year by Year and somewhere in the book was posted a screenshot from Mysteries of the Sith, it was a picture of Mara Jade decapitating stormtroopers with her saber and it occured to me I don't remember these games having that good graphics! If I remember correctly the faces in these games looked like a picaso painting, and the lightsabers looked like glow sticks. In fact I believe Mara's saber had yellow inside of the purple, weird. Well, does anyone know if these games can be improved, will they run on Windows 7 or would it require an emulator? I've gotten kind of nostalgic about these games and I was considering buying them. Does anyone remember these games being more frusterating than fun? It seemed like every level was a maze.

 

These are some of my all time favorite games! Certainly the 1997 graphics look dated today, but I personally find those games to be more fun than the subsequent offerings in the series (Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy) - just imho. I know they are currently available for download from steam for something like $5 bucks, so if you're looking into picking them up that's probably the way to go.

As for compatibility... well, I don't know about Windows 7, but I've had lots of trouble getting them to run on Vista (XP, on the other hand, seems to handle them fairly well, but the FMV cutscenes in JK are a little glitchy). I know the copy of Dark Forces available on steam comes bundled with the DOSbox emulator to get it to run easily, although since JK and MotS aren't DOS games I don't know what compatibility measures they've taken.

By the way, I actually thought about starting a topic on this, but does anyone here know why Jedi Knight wasn't ported to one of the contemporary consoles of it's time (PS1 or N64)? I've been playing Dark Forces on my PS1 more than the PC recently just because of the convenience factor, and it sure would be nice if there was a similar option for JK or MotS...

 

I've heard of a Dark Forces mod project for Jedi Academy, so maybe there's a JK/MotS mod for that game, too.

 

From the title of this thread I thought the original post would be a call to LucasArts to remake these games with modern graphics. Despite that not being the case evidently, I am going to ask for that here. Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight was one of the most seminal pieces of media in my life; it was the catalyst which sparked both my love of Star Wars and PC gaming. Its successor, Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, served as the best lightsaber simulator even to this day, and its multiplayer remains one of the best of all time (my friends and I were still dueling in it years after the game was released). Plus, despite the fact that Raven makes consistently excellent games (Marvel: Ultimate Alliance, X-Men Origins: Wolverine), they don't seem to have a lot in development at the moment, giving them plenty of opportunity to revisit their magnum opus.

 

If you don't know if it will work on Windows 7, then that doesn't really help me. One of the nice things I liked about Jedi Knight, Mysteries of the Sith, Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy, is with the exception of one level from Rouge Squadron 64, these are the only four Star Wars games that take place during the New Republic era.

 

I got the Jedi Knight game pack through steam which includes - Dark Forces, Jedi Knight & MOTS Expansion, Jedi Outcast & Jedi Academy. All of them seem to run perfectly on Windows 7 through Steam, although I have disc versions of all the old games and none of them run on my PC anymore which is why I got digital Steam copies.

 

Cool, but some questions. Do the live action cut scenes on Jedi Knight function properly? Furthermore, does downloading from Steam put your computer at risk?

 

Put your computer at risk from what? Steam is perfectly safe. It's like asking if buying things from the iTunes store puts your computer at risk.

 

Sorry, but I just had to make sure. I've never heard of Steam before, for all I know it could have been a scam.

 

As far the Steam forums are concerned, posters are still trying to come up with fixes to improve compatability. It still seems like you would have to download this, run it in this, make sure these are set to this, etc. It's hard for me to believe it would run smoothly on a modern OS. Especialy with the color problems peeps are saying they are having.

 

Jedi Knight enhanced:

http://jkhub.net/project/show.php?projid=242&section=screenshots

http://www.jkhub.net/project/show.php?projid=242

Plus a retexture pack

http://www.jkhub.net/project/show.php?projid=345

 

Whoa, let me see if I understand what this is. It's a mod that replaces the polygon people with more realistic character models, equivalent to say Xbox or PS2 graphics? Impressive, most impressive. I wonder what kind of risk there would be in downloading this. Too bad they don't have any screenshots of lightsabers, I would like to see what they did with that. Did they do this for MOTS as well?

 

There are 15 pages of screenshots.

http://jkhub.net/project/show.php?projid=242&section=screenshots

Some with lightsabers.

And yes, safe to download.

 

There it is! If you dig enough in the projects there is a Mysteries of the sith enhanced, but it seems to only improve character models, not textures like Jedi Knight enhanced mod. Perhaps they are not done with it yet.

 

They never are with mods. I've been waiting for the Black Mesa mod for Half life which would completely revamp the game to look like Half life 2. It was promised in 09, it still has yet to see the light of day and maybe never will.

 

I just bought the Steam bundle pack, but Jedi Knight II (and presumably its expansion which I didn't try yet) keeps crashing, and its limited to a small window. Every time I pause the game and try to unpause it says something along the lines of "Jedi Knight II Main Executable has stopped working". How do I fix this? Everything other game works perfectly.

 

Thank you. You have convinced me not to buy the bundle. On the forums that are working on the mod, in the above posted link, they are still working on fixes like this. First, I would like to ask you what OS are you running it on?

 

JK2 from steam runs fine for me (though I think the FMV cutscenes may be small), and considering it's like $3 or something on sale right now, it's worth the outlay.

 

If you haven't gotten it by now you'll want to act quick. The Steam sale ends Jan 2. But even if you don't pick it up on sale it's still pretty cheap.

 

How small are the FMVs? Can you post an example? The thing is Jedi Knight and Mysteries of the Sith are far more dated than Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy. In JO and JA people actually looked and moved like people, in JK and MOTS the characters are box shaped and the lightsabers look like glow sticks. The enhanced mod for JK looks good. Have you seen the footage on youtube? It almost looks like JO Kyle with a green lightsaber. If someone were to release a mod like this for MOTS I would jump at it.

 

Jk scenes are bik format, so ~ 5 mb per min of video

 

Eh? So...what is your point? Speak up man, before I start blasting random body parts.

 

When I said small, I meant in dimensions, not length or filesize. IThe game is fullscreen, but I think the cutscenes play in native resolution - 640x480 or whatever.

 

Yeah, back in the day I guess that was the default or best resolution for CRT monitors and your average video card. But considering how godawful (FX and acting-wise) those FMV cutscenes were, I think it's a bit of a blessing that you're not seeing them on full HD 1080P "glory".

 

either delete the local content and redownload the game, or have steam run a validation check on the files. failing that, take it to the steam forums and see if anyone there has had the same issue.