AIrena

An experiment in authoring a Quake II-era temple deathmatch arena in Blender and bringing it into Jedi Knight: a sunken court, twin ramps, a sky bridge, a crypt and a solar shrine.

Can a Blender-authored temple arena preserve Quake II-era architectural richness and multiplayer flow in vanilla JK?

What the experiment built

446 Blender objects became 93 bounded 3DO batches and 115 initial things. The visible architecture and its physical collision sit inside one enclosing JKL sector. The layout connects a lower court and crypt with upper galleries, two ramps, a bridge and a solar shrine.

Eight automated checks passed in OpenJKDF2, covering traversal at both heights, a drop route, eight spawns, rifle pickup and projectile creation, and a collision-disabled control. These results establish useful mechanical evidence, but do not establish acceptable lighting, retail performance or multiplayer balance.

Keep the layout; change the geometry mix

The owner's review on October 14, 2026 found the arena design successful and the all-3DO rendering approach unsuitable. Main walls, floors and other structural surfaces should become level geometry. Protruding detail should use an appropriate mix of modular 3DOs and cuts or extrusions in the level geometry itself. Batching remains useful for repeated props.

The next iteration should be judged under actual JK lighting. The Blender render shown here is an authoring reference with different lighting, not an in-game result.

Finish the sky in Jedi Knight

The current sky is a uniform blue placeholder. Although the converter emits sky flags, it did not deliver the proper textured JK sky requested. The next pass needs a sky texture, the correct sky flags and projection, and an in-game check from both levels of the arena.

Where the project stands

Build 1 is preserved as experimental evidence. The next work is a hybrid geometry conversion and a lighting and sky pass, followed by renewed movement checks and human visual and gameplay review. The compatibility target remains vanilla Jedi Knight with thing and adjoin limit removers. No Library release is enabled.

Back to Research

Owner review: the arena design is good, but the all-3DO architecture does not take good lighting in JKDF2. The next pass should combine structural level geometry, cut and extruded architectural details, and modular 3DO detail. The sky also needs a proper texture and JK sky setup. Published as an experiment only; this is not a finished level release.

Standard Jedi Knight movement, jump and weapon controls.

Experimental build only: owner review calls for hybrid level geometry and 3DO detail, improved in-game lighting, and a proper textured JK sky before release.

This is a multiplayer level. Put P77.GOB in episode/ and host AIrena - Temple of the Dying Sun from the multiplayer episode list.

Compatibility target: vanilla Jedi Knight with thing/adjoin limit removers. No OpenJKDF2-only gameplay functions are used.

The concussion rifle is on the exposed bridge; the rail detonator is in the crypt; shields wait at the sun altar.

Eight automated gate rows pass in OpenJKDF2. Retail performance, two-machine multiplayer and player balance await human testing.

Original Blender architecture and conversion tooling created for the JK workbench.

Temple texture sheet: Gemini 3.1 Flash Image through OpenRouter; USD 0.1009.

Jedi Knight player, weapon and pickup assets remain the original game's assets.