The Jedi Engine is a game engine developed primarily by Ray Gresko for LucasArts. While not a true 3D engine, it is historically significant in moving forward the 2.5D first-person shooter genre with its ability to support a three-dimensional environment with no limitations in the 3rd dimension (Z). In Doom and earlier first-person shooters, environments or levels were limited to existing in the X-Y plane only—levels were laid out linearly, and while floor and ceiling heights could differ, earlier engines could not construct areas that overlapped vertically. The Jedi Engine introduced support for areas or rooms (called "sectors") on top of one another, and thus was the first engine in which an entire environment could exist in three dimensions. In the Dark Forces revision of the engine, the renderer could not display two rooms situated on top of each other at the same time. This capability was added for Outlaws.
The Jedi Engine was hailed as significant for many other improvements over earlier engines as well, including the ability to jump and crouch, the ability to look up and down, and atmospheric effects (achieved by careful manipulation of 256-color palette files). The engine is still limited in its rendering capabilities, however, and used two-dimensional sprites (pre-rendered in different angles) for most of its object graphics.
The Jedi Engine's popularity was short lived, and only used in two titles, Star Wars: Dark Forces and Outlaws. The sequel to Dark Forces, Jedi Knight, used the Sith engine.
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