Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy - Development

Development

After Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast was completed, LucasArts approached Raven to develop a sequel. Production began and Raven was set a one year development cycle. Like Jedi Outcast, Jedi Academy uses a heavily modified Quake III: Team Arena game engine. The development team was made up of people who worked on Jedi Outcast, as well as Star Trek: Voyager – Elite Force.

An early decision to be made during development was whether or not to use Kyle Katarn as the playable character. This was due to the character already being a powerful Jedi Knight, and starting off with the force skills would affect the gameplay. To resolve this issue, Raven chose to make the playable character a student in a Jedi Academy. By using a completely new character, the developers were able to insert features that allowed the player to customize their character. Customizable features include the race and gender of the character, as well as the lightsaber color, hilt, and type. The Kyle Katarn character was then made an instructor in the academy and integral to the plot to ensure that Jedi Academy was built upon the existing Jedi Knight series storyline. Raven extended the customization further as the game progresses by allowing the player to choose specific force powers to train upon completion of missions. This was done with the intention of giving freedom to choose the way and style the game is played.

Another decision made early on was to include locations and aspects from the Star Wars movies. The designers desired locations such as Tatooine and Hoth, as well as the Rancor creature. To develop the map for Hoth, a location featured in The Empire Strikes Back, the designers obtained as much source material as possible so to create an authentic reproduction. Level Designer Justin Negrete says that Hoth was one of the most challenging areas to design. The general level design process started by planning out the level on paper. These ideas were then "fleshed out" to get the size and flow of the level. Once this had been done, features of the Quake III engine were used to add more detail such as lighting effects. The final stage of level design was adding aspects that improved the gameplay and fun of the level.

The mission based format of Jedi Academy was used by Raven to reduce the linearity of the game, allowing the player to progress through levels mostly in the order they desire. The reduction in linearity was also achieved by only requiring 80% of levels be completed before the plot can move on.

Raven provided modding tools with Jedi Academy, however the company specified that they're unsupported by customer support, so to avoid receiving many calls on the subject. Brett Tosti, a producer for LucasArts stated the opinion that the customization of the player that is provided by the game out of the box will mean that people are less likely to need to create their own "skins".

Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy was published and distributed within the United States by developer LucasArts. Activision took control of publishing and distributing the game in territories outside the USA.