Greetings. Hopefully your February is going as quick to pass as it is for me. February is the worst month. Looking ahead to March and spring, things will be warmer (hopefully), greener, and more lively around here. I want to highlight a couple things for you guys.
Applicant voting
First off, I have implemented a new voting system for member applications. The way this works is, when a new person applies for the clan, there will be a second thread created in a private forum, with a poll attached. This will be where all members will be able to have their voice heard on whether or not applicants are accepted. The reason for this is, communication between a lot of you guys and me is not the greatest. I heard about grievances for applicants far after they are already accepted, and if I had known about the issues beforehand, I would have used that in my decision to allow them to join. If you don't want to come to me with issues, then at least use this system to make your concerns known to me and the rest of the clan.
You will vote a simple yes or no, but you can also post your thoughts on the person as well. I know not everyone will even bother with this, but I really want you all to use it. Expect me to bug you about it a lot. Part of being a member of the clan is interacting with other members, and this is a small responsibility that everyone has.
Before an applicant is accepted, their poll thread will be moved to a private Council-only forum, to avoid any drama. And I ask that people keep everything in those threads confidential. You can find the Application Poll section at the link below.
[button=https://shadoworder.com/forums/applicant-polls.101/]Application Polls[/button]
Jedi Temple map
So it's been no secret that our clan map's development has been in a very long hiatus. We gave the basic functions that we needed and then my desire to work on it diminished. I ended up not liking the atmosphere I created and lost the drive to continue. I still plan to revamp it at some point, but no promises on it being soon. I decided to do something else.
I took the best looking Jedi Temple map that was already created and made it a little more tolerable for our needs. The map was originally made by a modder named =Tom=, and then later added to the Movie Battles II mod with some modifications. Since it was made for MBII, there were a lot of scripts I had to remove and alter to make most of the areas accessible. I also added teleports to make navigation a little quicker from the spawn.
From the spawn, you will have a large open area to FFA in, which is important in a JKA map. In certain areas, you'll see these big switches that will teleport you elsewhere. The one in the main hall will send you to the small training room. There's one in the training room that will send you back to the main hall. Then one in the Council Chambers that will also send you back to the main hall. No teleports will take you to the Council room, mostly because really only council sessions will take place there. But if you are there, a teleport will take you back conveniently. All teleports will tell you where they go before you use them.
There's a door behind the main hall switch that will take you to the training arena. This arena will be the new home of the Shadow Cup, as well as many other events. This map was made by JamyzGenius years ago, so all credit goes to him. I thought it was the perfect size for duels and big FFA events. If you load the map in duel mode, spawns are already set here.
In addition, there is a second version of the map that has FFA spawns set to only spawn in the arena. This should be used for events that will take place in the arena, so people aren't spawning in the main hall. There are also health packs in there. I also made a much higher quality texture of the floor that was used there. This is optional, because only people using OpenJK can use it. So the ZIP includes one pk3 with that texture (JediTemple_OJK), and one without. If you try to use the OJK pk3 on vanilla JKA, it will crash.
Other than those things I added, the rest of the map is very cool. It has the Jedi Archives, the security wing, the briefing room (where we will have clan meetings from here on out), Council chambers, training room, etc. I plan to give purpose to all those areas in some way. (like adding text popups in the Archive for info on the clan). But until then, at least it all looks pretty. 🙂
Again, this is a map I did not make and can't edit too much. I can edit via entity modding. So if you know the limits of that and have a request, let me know. Like I said, this map will serve as our main clan map from now on. I personally would like to see it used often.
My plans for a future release is to make a tag team map like in our Shadow Fortress map and attach it as well, so we can just scrap the old map completely. I can only include small maps, so if you have another small map idea to add, let me know. You can download the map on the Downloads page, of course. Or at the button below.
[button=https://shadoworder.com/downloads/maps/JediTemple.zip]Download Jedi Temple map[/button]
