Went back to Jedi Outcast after beating Jedi Academy. I give up. The way the game handles mouse input renders it essentially unplayable without OpenJK's raw mouse input support. White screen during load doesn't help either.
Found this
https://jkhub.org/files/file/1860-jedi-academy-outcast/
Checking it out, it seems to mostly work so far. There's some small shortcomings beyond the known issues (stormtroopers shout "stop the Jedi" before you're a Jedi, demo level will inherit saber settings from Academy if launched first) but it works with relatively little pain.
Now I remember why I don't replay Outcast like I do Academy, even before OpenJK. It's not just the FPS levels (which are meh by the standards of the time, though the enemy layout does encourage smart use of explosives and the chargeable pistol at times but it's too little too late) Raven Software had this bizarre fascination with incomprehensible puzzles. They got flack for it in Hexen 2, yet
kept doing it.
You've got an automated flying tram that goes through an area at regular intervals. You need to figure out a way to get onto it to get to a higher ledge it passes by. Sensible enough. Problem is the only place to get onto the tram is some radiation room that will kill you if you enter it while the tram is active. How do you get past this? Well you go outside, notice a piston below you that every few minutes (so you're very likely to never notice it simply by never being in the area at the same time) will pop out of the wall and let you jump down onto a ledge below it. After you've gotten yourself into what would otherwise be an inescapable position, it will then be clear the piston is hollow (you could only ever see it from above) and you can climb through. Once you've done that you encounter some machines with red shielding. The last level taught you such shielding reflects your shots, but here it means you can blow it up to disable the radiation room. What were they thinking?!
It doesn't end there either. After you complete that segment you blow up a machine to destroy the mine you're in (Which makes less sense when I think about it enough to type this because it the livelyhood of the prisoners you're trying to rescue and only temporarily under imp control and you've literally just called the New Republic to come liberate it.) and parts of the mine start colapsing. How do you progress after this? Well you go to the train station that was a dead end because it had no trains. Apparently the mine blowing up makes a train care come???
