Jedi (game engine)

Jedi is a game engine developed primarily by Ray Gresko for LucasArts.^[3] It is very similar to the Build engine used in Duke Nukem 3D. While not a true 3D engine, it supported a three-dimensional environment with no limitations in the 3rd dimension (Z). In Doom, environments or levels were limited to existing in the X-Y plane only – levels were laid out two-dimensionally: while floor and ceiling heights could differ, areas could not overlap vertically. The Jedi Engine had support for areas or rooms (called "sectors") on top of one another, a trait that it shared with the Build engine.^[2] In the Dark Forces revision of the engine, the renderer could not display two rooms situated on top of each other simultaneously. This capability was added for Outlaws.^[4]

The Jedi Engine also included the ability to jump and crouch, the ability to look up and down,^[3] and atmospheric effects (achieved by careful manipulation of 256-color palette files).^[5] The engine is limited in its rendering capabilities, however, and used two-dimensional sprites (pre-rendered in different angles) for most of its object graphics.^[4] Other LucasArts techniques such as the iMuse sound system were incorporated.^[1]

Its lifetime was short-lived, being used in two titles, Star Wars: Dark Forces and Outlaws.^[6] The sequel to Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, used the Sith engine.

There have been attempts of open source game engine recreations based on reverse engineering the original source code.^[7]