Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast counts for many Star Wars fans as one of the best titles when it comes to exciting adventures in a galaxy far, far away. However, the game was released in 2002, which is why it is unlikely to be attractive, especially for younger players. Thanks to a hard-working modder, there is now a ray of light on the horizon, because he implemented the game as a ray tracing version!
Old engine is breathed new life
A passionate project: Behind the complex mod is the modder »Mr. Cyanide ”on his website a little project FAQ published. According to his own statement, he has always been enthusiastic about ray tracing and now wants to learn everything about it, since the technology can be used in games with high performance.
A few months before the first Nvidia RTX graphics cards were released, he discovered that the Jedi Knight 2 source code was published under an open source license. Since he likes the game around ex-Jedi Kyle Katarn anyway, it made sense to use this foundation for his raytracing attempts.
If you want to refresh your knowledge about ray tracing, you can read all about it again here:
more on the subject
What is ray tracing? – Radiation tracing explained
Porting more difficult than expected
As a starting point for his project, the modder uses the same path tracer that already enables ray tracing in the classic shooter Quake 2. Since Jedi Knight 2 relies on the related Quake 3 engine, the modder assumed that it would be relatively easy to take over many parts of the code.
A serious mistake: It quickly became apparent that porting would be significantly more complicated than initially assumed. Some components of the two engine versions should be similar, but others should be completely different. Outdated technical documents and forum entries from bygone times made him almost despair when he understood the code.
In the meantime, however, the raytracing mod is largely running without any problems. In order to present the current status of his work, “Mr. Zyanide «has released its first trailer. Of course, the game as a whole still looks old-fashioned. But interior spaces in particular benefit from modern rendering technology thanks to realistic reflections and better illumination:
Link to YouTube content
Release still unclear
But you still have to be patient. Even if one or the other has an itchy fingers: Unfortunately, you can’t try the mod yourself yet. The modder has not yet completed the work on it and before that he will not come out with a download link. He would like to fix other bugs first and bring the code up to date as best he can.
