Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy Demo Available (1 Viewer)

[Jason Guardiano]

Download Mirrors listed at

http://www.massassi.net/

http://www.fileplanet.com/download.aspx?f=129982
http://www.fileshack.com/file.x?fid=3587

It's 187MB and it contains 2 levels (single player)

You can customize your Jedi character and pick single, double, or two sabers to fight with

 

[James T]

I didn't need a demo for Lucasarts to sell me the product, but thanks anyways. I'll have fun now and fun when I pass the levels a second time.

I just hope there's a more larger internet group than Outcast.

 

[Paul Richardson]

Gave it a try. It was fun to customize your character and such, and the graphics are pretty good. The level design, however, leaves a lot to be desired...as does all of the Matrix-inspired "bullet-time" effects. I think I'm going to pass on this one for now.

 

[Greg_S_H]

I've been a fan of this series since Dark Forces, but the Tatooine level isn't very fun, and it doesn't feel much like Tatooine. It felt like Bespin from the last game. The little I've played of the other level showed promise, though the only Jedi I've encountered so far have been push-overs (with the slight exception of the very first). Literal push-overs. As they jumped from their platform to get me, I gave them the old Force Push and sent them to their doom. I got at least three that way.

Don't know. I'm on the fence. I'll probably get it and probably enjoy it, but it seems like rehash so far. I wish it were more like the Call of Duty demo, which I just keep playing over and over again.

 

[James T]

I've finished both levels and from playing the demo, it's what I expected. The Tatooine level is only okay, but I think they threw it in there to give us the familiar faces and scene.

The other level was fun and interesting, but lots o jumping puzzles. I also like the new additinal moves to the saber stances(rolls, half-assed cartwheels, etc). It really felt like the multiplayer aspect from Outcast in the single player form.

The graphics were only a slight improvement, but they run damn smooth on 1280xwhatever resolution with everything turned high. I haven't ran a game this smooth in a long time.

The sound is pretty much the same as before(not really a bad thing), but it got annoying after the dark jedi kept saying the same stuff over(ie. "Now I am the master").

Like I said before, I'd still buy it, but it may be more of a multi-player game, than a single player.

 

[Greg_S_H]

It wasn't so smooth for me when there were three jedi on the screen, and I couldn't figure out where to go after beating those three guys in that room with all the crystals. I'm not really having much fun with this demo. I might take a pass on this one.

 

[JamesHl]

I'll buy it because I'm a Dark Forces series consumer whore. But I agree with most of your comments.

 

[Greg_S_H]

Some of the problems with the demo may have to do with it being a fairly story-driven game, and we're just being dropped into these levels without any context. Maybe that Tatooine level would feel more like Tatooine if we'd played the surrounding levels. I'm willing to grant it that.

I do wish I could solve my slowdown problems. I don't think I should have any with my system, but I do with most every game. This demo was fairly smooth, with the exception of when there were three Jedi on the screen as I mentioned before. But, I've got a P4 2.6GHz with a Radeon 9800 Pro and 512M of RAM. I'm playing in a low resolution (1024) with no AA. It should be glass smooth. I just wanted to mention this because James is probably right about it being a very smooth game. I just have a problem somewhere.

 

[Adam_Garris]

It should be glass smooth.

Just a suggestion, but more RAM couldn't hurt.

 

[Romier S]

Just a suggestion, but more RAM couldn't hurt.

With the Quake III engine? I doubt that will solve anything here. Even if Raven tore the engine apart and heavily modified it 512mb of ram is plenty to run this title at a fair clip at 1024X768 Adam. I have a 3.06gig PIV with 768mb of ram along with a 9700pro and the performance is quite sluggish in some spots (especially on that Tatooine mission). However with some testing and reading from various sources I believe there is a work around. The problem apparently is with the the "glow" effect added to the lightsabers and other light sources. Could be a problem only relegated to ATI cards from what I've been reading but I have not heard or seen anyone do any real testing to make that statement true or false. (wish I still have my GF4 to test with). Whats even more strange is Jedi Outcast did not exhibit this issue at all.

In the video options you should find a "Dynamic Glow" option. Turn it off and test your FPS then Greg. Also if your on a 9800pro under your Open GL menu go into the compatibility settings and enable triple buffering (force it). Both options boosted FPS heavily in my case. The difference with glow on/off is minimal also PQ wise. Again this could be a driver issue (ATI has been having some Open GL driver problems lately such as 16bit textures being forced in Open GL games) though someone with an Nvidia card may want to test FPS with glow on and off to see results. You can use a program like FRAPS to to check FPS by the way guys.

If you find this is a driver issue after some testing please report it here (I already have just in case):

ATI driver feedback

Also if your looking for FRAPS to test FPS go here:

FRAPS

 

[Greg_S_H]

It's not scientific, but I used the cg_drawfps and played from my quicksave, which was set in the hallway leading to the crystal room with the three jedi. The biggest boost I got was from turning off volumetric shadows. I think I was running in the high 50s with them on, and it went to about 76FPS with simple shadows. Turning off AS filtering seemed to help, too, but it didn't really take me above the 76 mark. I'll have to play around with it to see, but I didn't notice any immediate gains from turning off dynamic glow. But, I was doing things in exactly the wrong way: instead of turning off one thing at a time, I was trying all kinds of combinations. The main thing was, even with higher overall framerates, I still get some stutter when all of those jedi are around. It's nothing that makes it unplayable, but it's annoying.

I do have three components I want to change in my computer, but I'm not sure how much they would help with this problem. I only have a 250W PSU, so I need to boost that. But, would that cause stutter and slowdown? I would think a lack of power would cause more of a crash situation.

Also, I have a really bad sound card. I do notice some hitches on certain games when certain sounds kick in. Replacing that would help. But, again, I'm getting pretty consistent slowdown. I think it would be more random if the sound card was to blame.

Finally, I wouldn't mind taking my machine up to a gig of memory.

It is interesting that your more powerful machine had some problems, too, Romier. Maybe my expectations are just unrealistic. I thought my Radeon was going to be an unstoppable juggernaut, eliminating any and all slowdown. I guess it just doesn't work that way, when you have all these other components to think about, and possible driver issues.

 

[Paul Richardson]

Some of the problems with the demo may have to do with it being a fairly story-driven game, and we're just being dropped into these levels without any context. Maybe that Tatooine level would feel more like Tatooine if we'd played the surrounding levels. I'm willing to grant it that.

From what I read about the game (and the demo verifies this), once you reach a certain point you can "pick and choose" missions from a list. Each mission is part of a larger storyline, but they can be done in any order. So, for the Tattooine mission for example, it stands alone...there is no mission on Tattooine immediately before or after since you can do them in the order you choose.

Hopefully the final game is a bit deeper. I was shocked that the two levels they chose for the demo was a standard "crates and boxes" level and a standard "platform jumping" level.

 

[Joel Mack]

From what I read about the game (and the demo verifies this), once you reach a certain point you can "pick and choose" missions from a list. Each mission is part of a larger storyline, but they can be done in any order. So, for the Tattooine mission for example, it stands alone...there is no mission on Tattooine immediately before or after since you can do them in the order you choose.

I would guess that would be after you've done them once. That certainly does not eliminate the possibility of there being other Tatooine missions before and/or after the one in the demo.

I don't have any numbers, but I didn't notice any sluggishness or slowdowns @ 1024x768, with everything turned on, on my AMD XP 1600+ & GF4 Ti4200... Could be an ATi problem (which would, like totally, not surprise me at all)...

 

[David_N]

and I couldn't figure out where to go after beating those three guys in that room with all the crystals

You have to use Force "sense" and look at the door with the shiny symbol on it, then use Force "pull" to open it. Hope that helps.

As far as smoothness goes, I'm running on a P3 1.2 GHz W/512MB RAM and Gforce4 vid card, and didn't have any frame rate trouble at 1024X768 with all other settings at their default.


One issue I had with the story line was the Tattonie level seems to be taking place during "A New Hope" time (Chewy talking about finding Leia) and Luke, as a Jedi, sent you there.

 

[JamesHl]

I'm playing on an Athlon XP 2600+, 512 megs of ram, and a Radeon 9600. I had to turn the resolution down to 1152x864 for it to be acceptable. Perhaps it's a driver issue?

 

[James T]

It could be an ATI thing. As mentioned above, I run it at 1200xwhatver and have a GeForce4 P4 1.7. I have major slowdowns with GTA: Vice City and I remember Romier saying that he experienced no slowdowns on similiar resolutions, but different card(and processor).

So I guess Vice City was an ATi game and Academy is a Nvidia game?

 

[Yoshi Sugawara]

I was left unimpressed with the demo. It doesn't feel like a new game, and I think part of it has to do with the aging Quake 3 engine. Maybe I've been spoiled from the Call of Duty demo - but the level setup and design, how the characters move and "act", and the overall feel of the game make it seem outdated and more like a half-decent mod of Jedi Outcast. The Tatooine level, for example, looked like someone's garage with some cheap star wars prop - didn't feel like I was in Tatooine at all.

Another gripe I have about the game is that lightsaber combat is too chaotic - I was hoping they would make it more manageable, but combat involves circle strafing and wildy swinging your saber around. After you've felt like you've dispatched your enemy cleanly, you look at your shields and whoa, it's down from 99 to 14...And how do you swing the saber without strafing left and right and moving up and down?

The feature that supoosedly gives the game some non-linearity seems like its going to be a weakness. So now the story is more fragmented, and the "side" missions you get are nothing more than meaningless chores you have to do to get some force points ("investigate this" probably is going to mean "kill everything in sight").

Maybe it's too early to pass judgement, and maybe I was expecting more. But I'll just wait for the inevitable Star Wars mod based on half-life 2's source engine

 

[Yoshi Sugawara]

A note about performance, I also had some slowdowns/frame rate hitches on my P4 2GHz/ 768MB RAM/ GeForce 4 Ti4200 , running at max settings - I had to turn down to 1152x864 to get better performance.

 

[Romier S]

GTA: Vice City and I remember Romier saying that he experienced no slowdowns on similiar resolutions, but different card(and processor).

Vice City is one of the smoothest games I own to date. I can really bump up the the eye candy (ie more AA and AF ) with Vice with little hit to almost no hit framerate wise.

For posterity also Call of Duty which also runs on a modified version of the Quake III engine runs at absolute butter smooth speeds on my system. This is with all detail settings at max (only bodies is set to medium) and 4Xaa and 8Xaf. (Not too mention the game is just fantastic)

Not sure what the issues with Jedi Academy are but I loaded up Outcast just for the hell of it and that game still to this day runs beautifully with all the settings pumped and volumetric shadows on..../shrug

 

[Greg_S_H]

I would guess that would be after you've done them once. That certainly does not eliminate the possibility of there being other Tatooine missions before and/or after the one in the demo.

There are. I've seen the sarlaac in screenshots, and a few other shots outside of the city in a canyon. That's why I'm guessing this level may improve in certain ways once that context is established. Still, it's not a very fun level on its own.