Just so this doesn't get buried under a mountain of garbage from other sections, it would be such a bother to reply to these questions over and over again. So one more time, for you reading pleasure:

Quote Originally Posted by lordkator View Post
The JTL issue is it was written by a totally different team and the mechanics of the engine and the way game play worked was completely different than the ground game.

Unless someone who is passionate AND very skilled in tick based 3d space games steps up to work on it then we will waiting for JTL until the end of time...

Sorry, that is the brutal truth.
Quote Originally Posted by Miztah View Post
There's been a fair amount of JTL work done, but it's largely stuff like ships and many of the various portions that interact with the client. It's pretty functional as a single player space crafting game with flying and no enemies. The back end that actually handles large scale multiplayer movement/projectiles/etc in a 3d space environment is the mountain of a hurdle that has to be resolved.
Quote Originally Posted by lordkator View Post
We did a lot of investigation, I don't want people think we just threw our hands up, a couple devs (I won't name names) beat their brains out on it for months and made some progress here and there. But as we started to dig in deeper some of these things really smashed our hopes and dreams:
  1. JTL is a space game, the ground game is not really 3d, so we need different spatial indexing tech
  2. In space, projectiles "tick" (they move in a direction with a velocity) and they collide with another object, on the ground you can't dodge a rifle shot, in space you can dodge a missile.
  3. Since the game was written by different devs, some subtle things are different like the coordinate system is not the same as the ground game (i.e. x/z/y etc.)
  4. core3 was not designed for "ticks", we might be able to hack it in but it would be a nightmare
  5. In space nobody can hear you scream!!!!
Now all this said, it CAN be done, its a lot more work than any of the current devs can afford to dedicate.

I personally lack the drive/interest/passion to make the space game work. It was "ok" to me but never inspired me, I'm a MMO guy not a FPS'er or 3d Space kind of player.

I would be happy to see a new "SIG" (Special Interest Group) form around JTL in the swgemu community, if we can find a couple talented and passionate devs who would like to leverage our CI/CD pipelines, test hosting etc then I'd be more than happy help and support.

No matter what happens we are progressing towards 1.0, just at this point we do not see a path that includes full JTL emulation for it.

We will hit the 1.0 milestone (no dates yet) and then launch a new server that will include on-going content expansion and other things the "new" server community will be passionate about.

We have numerous ideas in this direction, and for me personally this is more interesting than waiting 5 more years while we try to reverse engineer more of JTL.
Quote Originally Posted by xirad View Post
Thanks for the additional info. I'm guessing you didn't expect to get ambushed like you did!
Quote Originally Posted by lordkator View Post
Nobody twisted my arm, I have wanted for some time to discuss this, it just felt right to do it now. The hardest part about great product management is saying "No" and the second hardest part is explaining why. I am a product manager by trade, I deal with this in real life everyday, and here I felt it was time to just open it up and be blunt about the situation.
Quote Originally Posted by xirad View Post
I think what you suggest makes a lot of sense and I think pretty much everyone here would agree with the path we're on toward 1.0 & Suncrusher sooner rather than later. I doubt there are THAT many players who are idling away on the ground game simply waiting for JTL. We're all here and play regularly because we love SWG. JTL would be a nice addition (I loved it on Live) but it's not the be-all end-all of the game.
Quote Originally Posted by lordkator View Post
I don't totally agree, we know MANY players who wanted JTL which is why this discussion is so difficult. In the end we really want people to be happy, to enjoy the version of the game we enjoyed, but you don't always get what you want, hopefully you get what you need! :-)
Quote Originally Posted by xirad View Post
Starting a JTL SIG sounds like a great idea and would possibly allow some brainstorming without sidetracking the devs working on the ground game.
Quote Originally Posted by lordkator View Post
For the right team, I'm happy to dedicate my time to devops support, some space on the community site, some test server containers and cpu etc. But to be clear, they need to convince the dev team they might have a reasonable chance of pulling it off. We don't need to get people's hopes up and then crash them on the rocks again.
Quote Originally Posted by xirad View Post
Since as you mention it might require hacks of core3 would it need to be a completely separate game engine? I'm curious how Lucas Arts/SOE did it back in the day. I'm wondering how a game engine like Unity might work. Of course then there's licensing costs, etc.
Quote Originally Posted by lordkator View Post
Its unclear what the final design might look like, we have considered a second engine with a bridge between them to make it seamless for the player to come in and out of the ground game.
Look on the bright side (or don't, it doesn't really matter at this point), without JTL, 1.0 is much, much, MUCH closer now.


Hugs and kisses,
Vlada