Sol JK (SJK)

Sol JK, or SJK for short, is Sol's client for Star Wars Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy multiplayer: the game as Sol sees it, developed by Sol in Rust.

SJK aims to be a true JKA+: everything players expect from today's community clients, from the retail look and feel to mod servers such as JA+ and JoF and modern screens, in a client that stays clean and fast, without the bloat some clients have accumulated.

SJK includes a graphical client and a dedicated server, with support for the legacy protocol, PK3 content, maps, models, movement and combat. The renderer uses wgpu. The client includes a server browser, console, configurable controls, HUD, audio, screenshots and demo playback.

Highlights

• the SJK UI, SJK's own menus over the live map, the default;
• a classic menu style after the retail menus: main, profile, setup, controls and server browser pages, retail connect and loading screens, the animated logo and glows with the SJK emblem in the ring, and no map behind the menu;
• a classic scoreboard with client IDs, and HUDs drawn from the game's own menu files, so the retail HUD and custom HUD packs work;
• JA+ support: the client identifies as the JA+ plugin, predicts JA+ movement, saber rules, g_debugMelee, the grapple and duel pass-through;
• client mods loaded on the servers they are for: JA+ tools (japlus.* admin teleports, auto login and plugin options) and JoF tools (jof.*);
• vector versions of the retail game fonts on every retail text surface, tighter console and chat rows, and text that scales at high resolutions;
• a renderer settings page, sharp levelshots, and MOUSE1, MOUSE2 and ESC locked in the controls editor;
• more reliable joining of public servers (lost handshake packets and lost gamestates are recovered) and support for older 72-bone player models;
• an FPS cap that holds its exact rate and can follow the monitor's refresh rate;
• optional rend2-style material maps for world surfaces, with a local generator;
• gameplay and presentation fixes (third-person camera, Force Speed afterimages, saber trails, death animations, key names for non-US keyboard layouts and more);
• a personal debug_panel console command: an in-game checklist of the changes in this build and how to test them.

Sol (Sol-Vulpes) develops SJK and decides where it goes. Contributors send pull requests, Creyon first among them; see CREDITS.md.

The programs are sjk (the game) and sjk-server (the dedicated server). Settings have neutral engine names (r_*, cg_*), the source crates are sjk-*, and the client's own folder is GameData/SJK/.

Download

Ready-to-run Windows x64 and Linux x64 builds, and an experimental, unsigned build for Macs with Apple Silicon, are on the releases page and the SJK website. Extract the ZIP for your platform into Jedi Academy's GameData folder, beside base, and launch sjk (sjk.exe on Windows, SJK.app on a Mac).

Releases are built by the SJK release workflow when a tag named sjk-v<version> (for example sjk-v0.2.0) is pushed. It builds the same drop-in ZIPs as the GameData packages workflow, smoke check included, names them SJK-<version>-<platform>.zip, and publishes them with their checksums and the matching source snapshot.

Build

Install Rust 1.88 or newer, Cargo, a C/C++ compiler, CMake and pkg-config. On Linux, development packages for ALSA, Wayland and XKB are required, along with working Vulkan or OpenGL graphics drivers.

cargo build --release -p sjk-viewer -p sjk-dedicated

This builds target/release/sjk and target/release/sjk-server (.exe on Windows).

SJK is developed and tested mainly on Windows 11. It keeps its Linux support, but changes are not routinely tested there.

Game data

A legally obtained Jedi Academy installation is required. Put sjk (sjk.exe on Windows) in its GameData directory, beside the base folder containing assets0.pk3 through assets3.pk3. Game data is not included in this repository.

Client

Launch the client from that folder or a shortcut to open the main menu. No game-data path, environment variable or particular working directory is needed. Put sjk-server (sjk-server.exe on Windows) beside it too for Create game and local devmap support.

Connect directly to a server:

./sjk --connect 127.0.0.1:29070

If keeping the binary elsewhere, use JKA_GAME_DATA=/path/to/GameData or the saved game-data setting; known installation locations are also checked. The explicit positional form sjk /path/to/GameData --connect HOST:PORT remains supported. See client launch for discovery order. Use the in-game menus for controls, graphics, audio and player settings; Settings > Interface > Menu style, or First setup's first row, switches between the SJK UI and the classic menus.

Settings and player-created files live in GameData/SJK/: config.cfg, marks.txt, favorites, friends, screenshots, demos and optional chat logs. If that directory cannot be written, the client uses its per-user folder instead. The console's path command shows the active location. See configuration and content.

Dedicated server

./target/release/sjk-server \
  --game-data /path/to/GameData \
  --map mp/ffa3 \
  --bind 0.0.0.0:29070 \
  --hostname "SJK server"

Server configuration uses familiar cvars and commands, including +set launch arguments. For example, append +set g_gametype 0 +set fraglimit 20 for a free-for-all match. UDP port 29070 must be reachable for remote players to join.

Source layout

All source is under crates/:

• sjk-viewer: graphical client and platform integration (builds sjk).
• sjk-dedicated: dedicated server and game integration (builds sjk-server).
• sjk-game-jka: shared Jedi Academy game rules and movement.
• sjk-client, sjk-network, sjk-protocol: client state and legacy networking.
• sjk-bsp, sjk-scene, sjk-runtime: maps, scene data and world state.
• sjk-materialgen: offline generator of local material maps from installed textures (see rendering).
• Remaining crates provide formats, content loading, collision, navigation, scripting, audio, UI and the console.

Legacy formats and game-specific behavior stay in compatibility modules; engine services use their own data structures.

Documentation

The project wiki covers architecture, development, the client, the dedicated server, rendering and networking. Start with current status and priorities for verified behavior and open work. AGENTS.md contains shared contributor and AI guidance, including updating relevant documentation alongside code changes; SJK conventions adds the rules specific to SJK.

License and credits

GPL-2.0-only; see LICENSE. SJK is by Sol (Sol-Vulpes) and contributors; CREDITS.md lists who made what. Any SJK binaries are built from the source published here, which is their corresponding source.

NOTICE holds the copyright notice. The license requires every copy and modified version to keep it, and, under section 2(c), to keep the copyright and no-warranty announcement the client and server print when they start. The "Sol JK" and "SJK" names and the SJK emblem are not licensed with the code: a modified version uses its own name and emblem and credits SJK as its origin.

OpenJK and TaystJK are compatibility references for Jedi Academy behavior. The bundled Inter fonts retain their license. Other dependencies retain their respective licenses. The code license does not grant rights to retail game assets or third-party PK3 content.

SJK began in October 2026 as a modified version of JKR, an engine by Bishop (Bishop-R) and its contributors. As section 2(a) of the license asks, the changes to those files, with their authors and dates, are recorded in this repository's git history.

Star Wars, Jedi Knight and Jedi Academy are trademarks of their respective owners. SJK is a fan project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Lucasfilm, Disney, Raven Software or Activision.