JP: Dark Secrets 11th Anniv.

Released! - Discuss progress and updates on the biggest Trespasser level endeavor ever, JPDS - a dark Tres mod by Draco and co.

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JP: Dark Secrets 11th Anniv.

Post by Draconisaurus »

Hello! On this day in 2011, JPDS was released to the public. It had been in production since December 2004, bringing production time to around 6.5 years, or one ten millionth of the time since they say Dinosaurs ruled the Earth (circa 1993). We spared no expense. The JPDS Team varied in its membership over time but eventually we pulled through and released a finished, though incomplete, mod to play.

MikeTheRaptor was a great conceptualizer, and modeler, a good friend to bounce ideas with. JPXTom, originally showed me TresCom at the JPToys.com forums. DemonCarnotaur did some great concept art sketches, including the initial area of a helicopter crash by an Ankylosaur and dead Pterosaur. RyanEaglesfield, was hard to work with sometimes but in the end gave some great material. TrikeUatra gave us a great menu. SecondIlliteration did TONS of Dino skin work. Mickey was invaluable for his musical ear, and his sense of a good natural environment in Tres. Nem helped a bit, and Slash_Master. But the mod would never have been finished in time without Tatu arriving on Site B to fix the foliage height errors from JPDS's bizarre 4096^2 terrain. He even did some level work in the Plains area. 8 )

In recent times I've finally gotten a nice amount of feedback on the mod. Youtube playthroughs are quite standard these days and people seem to mention playing JPDS somewhat frequently. I'm glad everyone enjoys it! I myself learned a ton from the experience. Sadly I doubt I'll ever have a mod project going on so massive as JPDS was.

First point for the anniversary is the screenshot archives. Tatu was good enough over the years to save a ton of Tres stuff from all over the place, including my old Tres screenshots.

JPDS: https://photos.app.goo.gl/hDt42rn6s7Y8bLt6A
JPDS~testing: https://photos.app.goo.gl/kN5MuUgJ4gf85zVz8

Second point, discuss! Any memories, or comments, pros/cons of the mod, whatever. Also it's possible one day JPDS will be re-released, with at least the level-linking load triggers being connected. And, may the future bring many more mods from many members.

~Drac
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Re: JP: Dark Secrets 11th Anniv.

Post by Second Illiteration »

I remember I don't think I ever played the level, but I remember going through it in Tres Ed. I think at the time of it's release, I was pretty much on to other things, and didn't really have the time/energy to play the game. But I really enjoyed just flying through the level in TresEd and checking things out :)
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Re: JP: Dark Secrets 11th Anniv.

Post by TheIdiot »

Ah, JPDS. The most epic Trespasser mod. I think this one is probably the most monumental achievement scale-wise in the history of the game.

My memories of this mod still continue to be made to this day as I find myself coming back to it every now and then since there is always something new to discover. The first time I played this, I remember being blown away by how vast it was - the fog served to do a good job at making things feel even larger, and then when you go look at the levels in TresEd you actually realize that they are larger than you'd thought! It was this mod that really established what you could do with the engine and all of the creative stuff you can come up with, which served as a big inspiration to me when I was working originally on RTJP.
I distincly remember my first time in Streams, walking around the jungle, seeing the allosaur in the fog, trying to work out what the utility shed was for, and then ultimately ending up at the Visitor Lodge area and climbing that insane jumping puzzle - and then continuing to be blown away when the Rex woke up and proceeded to smash down everything. This was on ATX as well so the performance was kind of crap but it was still worth it every step of the way. I remember first discovering the entrance to Plains and failing to get inside, finding the JP3 fence (the Hazardous Species Paddock) and wondering what was on the other side. Then finding my way into Trails and wandering around for quite some time trying to work out what the hell I was doing there until I finally got stuck in the sinkhole and had to revert to Streams. It wasn't until later that I finally reached the EA complex in Forest, and I recall being blown away seeing that recreated at such a scale, and struggling for hours to try to find the way inside.
Then of course there are other great moments which I only discovered later on...Death Valley, the airfield, the dam puzzle, the quicksand swamp, the Mayan island and tunnels, the DX zombie marsh, the Plains themselves, the weirdly difficult Amber Mine, the high hide, and of course that strange little dino skeleton sitting by the bluffs. All of these things are so memorable to me and the fact that you can keep playing and always find something new really stands as a testament to how much work and creativity went into this mod.

I still find myself wishing that we could have seen the rest of Tasha's adventure as you've described to me as I'm sure that there would have been so much more of this cool stuff. The EA compound, the Hazardous Species Paddock, the Aviary, Operations Centre, the train, and all of the never realized story moments would have probably made this the most impressive Trespasser mod ever. I still think what you guys did here is absolutely incredible, though. Amazing that it's been so long since it was first release...I've been playing it since day 1. :)

EDIT: I'm looking through your screenshot album and I can't help but notice some things I don't recognize from the final version...have any idea what these might be?
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Some kind of bunker in Plains? There's nothing like this anywhere in the final build.
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Is this the collapsing wooden bridge in Streams with the styracosaurus? Also Mount Watson is visible in the distance but isn't there in the final version...was it ever intended to be seen in the mod?
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The waterfall at the beginning of Streams looks quite different here. Seems like at one point you guys had an actual unique mesh for the area before it was replaced with those square rock meshes?
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The hunter camp seemed to have a different fence here, made of electrical wire instead of a laser?
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Another hunter camp one, this time with a concrete machine gun nest?
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This skin doesn't appear anywhere in the final mod, I believe only the vanilla Tres Raptors appear in this scheme? I recall you saying that the hi-poly models lagged the game more than the low-poly ones.
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This skin is also nowhere to be found, seemingly replaced with a similar skinned version of the vanilla Raptors.
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Is this some remnant of the Fast Travel bus system? I guess you needed a schedule in order to use the transport system?
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Re: JP: Dark Secrets 11th Anniv.

Post by Draconisaurus »

Thanks SI. Your skins were a critical part of JPDS to look as it did, along with that vocal gathering for the TPAs. All that Dino skinning continues to be an old and new resource for levels.

Thanks for sharing your feelings TI. I used to think only a handful of people played/appreciated JPDS, like yourself, but more recently I've been taking a critical eye to old fan mods and have seen that JPDS assets are used all over the place. As you say it does seem to be useful for inspiration. Glad I put it out there.

It is too bad the rest of Tasha's adventure didn't get put into JPDS. Although, a lot of the "pieces" of later JPDS content have sprung up elsewhere (the BioSyn-oriented ingame journals, the Aviary, some mushrooms from TrespasserGuy, the water treatment plant). So it seems to me as if the full concept of JPDS lives on through others' mods.


TheIdiot wrote:
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Some kind of bunker in Plains? There's nothing like this anywhere in the final build.
While Ryan Eaglesfield was on the team, I asked for an herbivore observation building for the plains. He modeled what you see there, and I textured it. If I remember right, I told him I wasn't fully pleased with the design, but he may have said he thought it was good as it was. Eventually I replaced it with a tower from TptDac's level.
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Is this the collapsing wooden bridge in Streams with the styracosaurus? Also Mount Watson is visible in the distance but isn't there in the final version...was it ever intended to be seen in the mod?
Nah not that one. This is the bridge that goes from the Old Forest area over to the game trail. It was replaced by that new model which uses textures from the harbor pier.
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The waterfall at the beginning of Streams looks quite different here. Seems like at one point you guys had an actual unique mesh for the area before it was replaced with those square rock meshes?
No that is still a set of individual rock models. I believe it's the same model but with different textures. It was made in part because JPDS started crashing from the overall terrain detail level.
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The hunter camp seemed to have a different fence here, made of electrical wire instead of a laser?
No that's still the laser fence. Looking at that photo, I may have thought it was too see-through and given it a more opaque AlphaChannel.
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Another hunter camp one, this time with a concrete machine gun nest?
That is there in the final version, part of the scenario if you use a certain call box...
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This skin doesn't appear anywhere in the final mod, I believe only the vanilla Tres Raptors appear in this scheme? I recall you saying that the hi-poly models lagged the game more than the low-poly ones.
Yeah. I used the low-poly Raptors where I could, to spare the engine. But things like RaptorJF needed to be kept and I couldn't go about remaking their skins. I 'enhanced' the tiger Raptor skin for my version, giving it starker colors, and then made a brown version for the females.
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This skin is also nowhere to be found, seemingly replaced with a similar skinned version of the vanilla Raptors.
Sooo this was a stage of SecondIlliteration's extended attempt to recreate the JP/// male Raptors. A version of it appears in JPDS~testing. It wasn't quite right and he made a new one which was used in JPDS instead, which does use the TC Isle Raptor base.
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Is this some remnant of the Fast Travel bus system? I guess you needed a schedule in order to use the transport system?
Nah, that was part of my bus-jokes for the mod. That is the bus stop over by the North Utility Shed, and that Alberto is the Dino who lived there instead of Big Al until nearly finishing the mod.

Thanks for helping relive a couple memories there.
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Re: JP: Dark Secrets 11th Anniv.

Post by tatu »

Love the questions TI. I will write my memories later this weekend. I still have several JPDS versions that I've kept. The majority of them are just sub-levels to make it easier to work with the level late in development when JPDS1 was split into a few levels. While most doesn't contain anything cut, as Draco knew what he wanted, I might make them available just to show how we worked on the mod in the late development. :)
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Re: JP: Dark Secrets 11th Anniv.

Post by Hilwo »

I had a blast playing through most of it a few years ago, great stuff :D Here's to many more!
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Re: JP: Dark Secrets 11th Anniv.

Post by TheIdiot »

Regarding the laser fence - isn't it red in the final version? That's probably why I thought it was wire.

You know, I'd like to see if we could somehow re-combine all of the JPDS levels to see whether we can get it to work in CE as originally intended. It's possible that it might work with the correct settings and some tweaking, considering tatu managed to get BE-JR-PH-IJ-IT all in a single level that actually somehow worked for him. JPDS certainly seems to be decently optimized object-wise - I can run Streams in CE with the draw distance massively cranked up and still get 30-45 FPS (the below screenshot also had ReShade in-use as well as a custom skybox...this was where the FPS got the lowest in the whole mod, but it was still around 20-25.):
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And here's another one looking west-east across the whole level...still had around 25-30 FPS.
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Re: JP: Dark Secrets 11th Anniv.

Post by tatu »

TheIdiot wrote:You know, I'd like to see if we could somehow re-combine all of the JPDS levels to see whether we can get it to work in CE as originally intended. It's possible that it might work with the correct settings and some tweaking, considering tatu managed to get BE-JR-PH-IJ-IT all in a single level that actually somehow worked for him. JPDS certainly seems to be decently optimized object-wise
I'd say it is not possible. I actually checked the object count just the other day. Not counting TrnObj, all levels have over 80,000 objects.

As of my memories from JPDS. I only joined the team and helped Draco finish of JPDS the final year of the mod. By that time, it was mainly him doing all the work. I don't recall when I first picked up the interest of JPDS, but I remember nagging Draco about beta testing it hehe. I did have 1 or 2 fan sites I made about JPDS but sadly there are no backup of them.
My main work with JPDS was foliage height-fix. And let me tell you, it was really time-consuming with JPDS's terrain that looked different in-game comparing to TresEd, but I did convince Draco to recreate the Plains terrain after JPDS was split into smaller levels, and I did all the grass there 8-)

(I haven't gotten around to make a good package of the early JPDS stuff, will do it sooner rather than later ;) )
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Re: JP: Dark Secrets 11th Anniv.

Post by Draconisaurus »

Nah the laser fence was always a transparent white color, as the concept art for TLW.

Tatu is quite right, the levels can't really be combined. The first level alone gets near the obj limit (though that's with trnobjs).

Those are great screenshots. I especially like the clouds. I'm guessing you put that together specifically for JPDS...

Yeah, Tatu's work on JPDS~plains was really helpful. Otherwise probably a rather poor version of the game would have been released by the time of my deadline to move across the country to the Pacific Northwest.
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Re: JP: Dark Secrets 11th Anniv.

Post by TheIdiot »

Hmm, shame about the re-combined levels. I know that apparently there is actually no object limit per-level, but yeah, it'll probably crash anyway with that much stuff. Hopefully we get another engine update one day that can run massive levels like that.
Those are great screenshots. I especially like the clouds. I'm guessing you put that together specifically for JPDS...
Yup! :D The screenshots are from a modified version of JPDS I made a while ago with the intent to create a CE-friendly package (with functioning maps, videos, fixed puzzles (especially the Amber Mine!), that kind of thing, in addition to much-enhanced draw distance, HD textures, bumpmaps, and better dino models). The skybox was based on the unused sky texture which is normally hidden during gameplay.
I also did some new loading screens:
Image Image Image Image Image
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Re: JP: Dark Secrets 11th Anniv.

Post by Draconisaurus »

Pretty cool. Well maybe for the 12th anniv you can release it. I'd be interested to see. That sky texture was actually based on a dusk photograph I took where I lived, after a storm I believe.
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Re: JP: Dark Secrets 11th Anniv.

Post by TheIdiot »

Draconisaurus wrote:Pretty cool. Well maybe for the 12th anniv you can release it. I'd be interested to see..
If I ever get around to it, it'll definitely see a release. I could just release the new skybox version as well, but it does need a bit of performance tweaking due to the long draw distance (2-3km I believe). I'd also like to add a trigger to increase the fog density when you get below the treeline and increase it when you're above in order to keep the JPDS fog aesthetic but make it a bit easier to work out where you're going.
That sky texture was actually based on a dusk photograph I took where I lived, after a storm I believe
Quite cool then that I ended up using it for the clouds in this sky! Who would have thought a random picture like that would come so far.
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