After years I finally came back to play some rounds of Jedi Academy. I had many different issues with my Intel HD4000, Windows 10, OpenGL and others. After spending many hours browsing the web I found solutions for all the things that I was struggling with, namely:

Runability, Graphics and Mods.

To save time, i thought setting up a small guide might help you to get much faster ingame and enjoy the imho best star wars game ever. Enjoy!

Updated: It's holiday season! And while the newest Star Wars movie is in theatre, it seems like a good idea to update my guide for 2019. I hope you enjoy!


Original:
Below i will show you what is currently most common and at least in my opinion nesessary to enjoy Jedi Academy in 2016!

Widescreen is nowadays standard but back in the days it was not used. Therefore it's not used in the menus but can easily obtained by writing some lines in an autoexec.cfg . Trust me, it's easier than you might expect.

Just navigate to your Jedi Academys base folder. In my case it's

D:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Jedi Academy\GameData\base

now rightclick on blank white background and choose "New -> textdocument". In this textdocument put the following:

-----

seta r_customheight "1080"
seta r_customwidth "1920"

seta r_mode "-1"

vid_restart

-----
or whatever your resolution is ;-)


and save it as "autoexec.cfg". Remember to check if the ending is only .cfg and not .cfg.txt !!!



Troubleshooting

Sometimes if you want to join a multiplayer server, your game crashes. To fix these issues, install OpenJK.

First of all i want to introduce OpenJK to you. Especially if you are having issues with JAMP.exe or JASP.exe running on a newer OS you should try OpenJK. It's aim is to improve Jedi Academy codewise and make it run on newer OS like Windows 10. This also helps in case you are struggeling with the CD-Key in Multiplayer.

As it still gets updated reguarly (even in 2019), its files are on github:

https://builds.openjk.org/

Just scroll down to the first windows file you see (if you use windows obviously) and download that one. Then simply extract it to your Jedi Academy folder in which your "jamp.exe" and "jasp.exe" is and start the new exes in the future.

Jedi Academy is finally playable with Xinput-Controllers. In case that's something for you of course ;-)

https://www.moddb.com/mods/jedi-outcast-jedi-academy-xinput-controller-support-mod

I can't say much about this mod as I don't play JA with controller but it seems like it really "just" adds support for xinput and doesn't add any other fancy stuff.

Okay, now at least the game itself should run fine. But what can you do additionally? Well of course you can improve your graphics. Unfortunatly there's no totally complete texture overhaul but at least some basic tweaking is possible:





QEffects Pro



This alters the shaders, adds Motion Blur and bloom to the game as well as changing the saturation and contrast. Each option can be modiefied all alone. In my opinion it improves the visual quality much though i only kept bloom and a small reduction in saturation active.

To Download and further notes, visit
https://jkhub.org/files/file/1484-qeffects-pro/





Texture Overhaul



I think this is kind of self explaining. This mod replaces many (but as mentioned not all) of the old textures

http://www.moddb.com/mods/the-jedi-academy-texture-overhaul

The jedi academy modding scene is huge and awesome. There are so many mods and creative stuff it's impossible to mention all of them. But as a start I'm going to link the most popular ones (that have been released so far and are no WIP or dead or placeholders).

Movie Battles II

Team-oriented Multiplayer-shooter set in the Star Wars Galaxy with completely new Maps, improved visuals etc.

http://www.moddb.com/mods/movie-battles-ii




JA+

Though i'm not a big fan of that mod, it's nesessary to mention it. JA+ improves many small things and adds new stuff to the game like a grabhook or swords.
But, on the other hand, it also adds many client improvements when it comes to downloading files inside the game when connecting to a server. For further information, visit

https://jkhub.org/files/file/952-ja-client-side/


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Below are some mods with updated forks for 2018/2019


Evolution of Combat III / SerenitySaberSystems [2012]

Improves the Combat of the game and brings it to a whole new level. Looking for manual Blocking? Here you go:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/serenitysabersystems


SerenitySaberSystems 2.0 [2019]

Basicly the same idea (and core?) as Evolution of Combat. I'm not too familiar with these mods but according to the author this one fixes some stuff and is partly rewritten.

https://www.moddb.com/mods/serenityjediengine-20




Movie Duels II [2009]

This is a single-player mod which lets you replay all the movie fights you always wanted to fight. It's a really cool mod and i had tons of fun with it:

http://www.moddb.com/mods/star-wars-movie-duels


Movie Duels Remastered [2019]

Though there is no " II " in it's name, it's the latest fork of Movie Duels II. Movie Duels II is nearly 10 years old so this remastered version brings in some changes regarding HD-textures. Also - in comparison to Movie Duels II - this one is using the openjk-engine. So in case you want some updated Movie Duels II or have issues running the original one, here you go:

https://www.moddb.com/mods/movie-duels

Here are some places to find mods:

ModDB:
If you've ever modded a game, chances are high you came across this website. Has a database for 100s of games. Seems like the biggest Modding-Site to me.

https://www.moddb.com/games/star-wars-jedi-academy/mods

JKhub:
JKhub is the ultimate Jedi Academy-Modding-Site. Usually mods get posted here first and many of the skins and maps never don't get posted on moddb. It's always a good idea to check that site if you're looking for that one random guys' skin from the background of a picture in the comics [You know, the one left behind Vader on page 23].

https://jkhub.org/files/

MrWonko:
Has a huge database of files which are mostly older ones. Might be the third best site to get maps and skins but sometimes lacks screenshots. As it's basicly a copy from the old filefront-database it doesn't get updated anymore.

https://mrwonko.de/jk3files/Jedi%20Academy/

I am not related to any of the mod authors or whatever.

The only reason i made this compact guide is that when i first started to play jedi academy after 6 years i was really overwhelmed about all the possibilities and must haves and whatever. I had many issues to get that game run smoothly and visual attractive on my machine and i hope that maybe at least someone will be helped with this guide.