JLR Alpha 19

September 1, 2024 by Chris

We are continuing our journey towards customisable teams in JLR. This release brings the ability to create and edit the team kits!

Kit Customisation

• Change the colours of any part of the jersey, shorts or socks that the game supports.
• Use the colour picker or hex code to get the exact colours you want.
• Add as many kits as you like to each team.
• Edits are saved in a simple json format which allows you to edit them outside of the game too.

Player Pacific Nations Cup

The new Pacific Nations Cup format was launched this month. They now have 2 pools of 3 and come together for a semi final and final. This has been added to the mod. Find it under Tournaments > Global.

• Pool A
  • Fiji
  • Samoa
  • Tonga
• Pool B
  • Canada
  • Japan
  • USA
• Playoffs
  • Semi final
  • Final

Bug fix

The "Random" option for stadium, weather, or wind settings now correctly randomises each time you move to the start match screen, instead of only randomising once when the settings are saved.

JLR Alpha 18

August 1, 2024 by Chris

This month's release brings you the latest in international rugby.

Updated Test Lineups

I've refreshed all Tier 1 nation lineups to reflect the current state of international rugby after the 2024 Six Nations and mid-year internationals.

New Tournament: Random World Cup 🏆

Keep it fresh with a new tournament option!

• Play a World Cup with a randomised draw
• Uses current team lineups and ratings

2023 World Cup Teams Preserved

For those who want to relive the 2023 Rugby World Cup:

• All 2023 World Cup teams are still available in the "2023 World Cup Tournament" and "Friendlies" modes
• These teams retain their end-of-World Cup ratings

JLR Alpha 17

July 1, 2024 by Chris

This month's release introduces international team selection!

International Team Selection

Now you can choose your ideal lineup for international teams, selecting from all eligible players in the game.
In previous versions, international teams had fixed lineups. Now, you can to create your own team from a pool of all eligible players.

• Select players from any club team in the game
• Build your ideal starting XV
• Experiment with different combination

Player Eligibility

Players are eligible for each Test Team based on their nationality in the game.

Save & Load

Your custom international line-ups are saved automatically with your game progress.

JLR Alpha 16

June 1, 2024 by Chris

This month's release shows you the selected player on the screen.

Overview

In the original game, New Zealand was clearly the best regular team. But the next best team was up for debate. According to the stats in the game code, Australia is 2nd, England 3rd and South Africa 4th with France rounding out the top 5.

However, in reality South Africa could actually be better to play as due to the fact that they had Chester Williams on the left wing.

Left wing is the main strike player in every team (I detail that here) and Chester Williams was easy to identify because he had different skin colour to the rest of the team. This made it easy to know who to pass to.

This is all due to one of the few aspects of Jonah Lomu Rugby that it was worse than other games, the UI would not show you who had the ball.

I've fixed this in the mod! It now shows at the bottom of the screen which player is selected from each team and their position number.

This makes it much easier to use the best players for the job and allows you to concentrate on gameplay rather than worrying about figuring out who is who.

Performance Setting

Reading the game memory to retrieve the selected player can slow down the games frame rate a small amount on slower PCs.

Because of this I have added a setting to reduce the load on the PC (High, Medium or Low) or to turn the feature off completely.

This setting reduces how often the selected player is retrieved resulting in better performance but a larger delay in the name appearing on screen.

JLR Alpha 15

May 1, 2024 by Chris

This month's release introduces Tours!

Starting with British and Irish Lions 🦁

We are starting with a British and Irish Lions Tour of New Zealand. More tours will be added next time. Let me know, which tours you want added! Contact

Tour

Play an entire Tour of a country including matches against Clubs and a 3 Test series.

Team Selection 

Select your starting lineup at the start of the tour and at anytime throughout the tour.

Select from a set of eligible players.

Save & Load

Save a tour to view or continue later, on the current or new device.

JLR Alpha 14

April 1, 2024 by Chris

This month's release is updating the old and starting something new...

Updated Teams

With all Tier 1 club teams in the game, I'm now focussed on keeping the lineups up-to-date and current. Two of the most out of date teams were Super Rugby and the English Premiership.

I've updated all 26 of those teams to their new starting lineups and added new kit colours for 2024.

I have kept their old kits around if you prefer those too.

Edit Teams

I am also starting the journey to let you edit and create content for the game. We are starting out with basic team editing, which means you can change the existing teams Name, Country of origin, Category and menu accent colour.

I understand that player lineup and kit colour editing are the most important aspects of editing a team. So I'll be working on those soon.

Controller Setting

Finally, I have added the ability to turn off built in controller support. This is useful for those who want to use their own controller mapping software to configure their own button layouts.

JLR Alpha 13

March 1, 2024 by Chris

This release brings 7 new Tournaments.

Tournaments 🏆

Champions Cup

• 4 Pools of 5 teams
• Quarter finals, Semi finals, Final.

Super Rugby AU

• 5 teams
• 4 rounds, Qualifying final, Final

Super Rugby Aotearoa

• 5 teams
• 4 rounds, Final

Territories Cup

Irish Shield

• 4 teams

Welsh Shield

• 4 teams

South African Shield

• 4 teams

Scottish Italian Shield

• 4 teams

JLR Alpha 12

February 1, 2024 by Chris

United Rugby Championship!!

The biggest Tier 1 club competition is in full swing, and now you can play it in Jonah Lomu Rugby too.

New teams 👕

Benetton

Bulls

Cardiff

Connacht

Dragons

Edinburgh

Glasgow Warriors

Leinster

Lions

Munster

Ospreys

Scarlets

Sharks

Stormers

Ulster

Zebre Parma

Tournament 🏆

URC

15 rounds, Quarter finals, Semi finals, Final.

JLR Alpha 11

January 1, 2024 by Chris

Bonjour and Happy New Year!

This month brings the French Top 14 to Jonah Lomu Rugby.

New teams

Bayonne

Bordeaux Bègles

Castres

Clermont

La Rochelle

Lyon

Montpellier

Oyonnax

Pau

Perpignan

Racing

Stade Français

Toulon

Toulouse

Tournament 🏆

Top 14!

Changed bonus point system to also support getting a Loss Bonus Point for a margin of only 5 or less.

Changed bonus point system to also support getting a Try bonus point for scoring 3 more tries than your opponent.

Changed playoff system to support 6 teams in the playoffs. The top 2 teams get a Bye in the first round of the playoffs.

Game Launcher Improvements

Updated the Launcher to support a new file.

Updated the Launcher to look for the file in the Downloads folder and automatically load it if found.

JLR Alpha 10

December 1, 2023 by Chris

This month's release is the all-new Territories Cup! Read on to see all the details.

Fusion Cup.

Americas Cup.

European Cup.

Extraordinary Cup.

New Territories Cups 🏆

In addition to the 6 Nations and Rugby Championship, I've added European Cup, Americas Cup and Pasifika Cup.

Now, just like the original game, you need to win all the Territories Cups to unlock two special tournaments, which I'm calling the Fusion Cup and the Extraordinary Cup.

The Fusion Cup is contested by teams made up of players from multiple countries: the B&I Lions, Barbarians, Pacific Islanders and South American XV.

The Extraordinary Cup, like the original game has a few fictional teams along with the World XV.

New teams 🌍

Available right away:

Spain

USA

Canada

Unlockable:

Barbarians

British & Irish Lions

Pacific Islanders

South America XV

World XV

JLR All-Stars. - A team of regular players, but each with one exceptional ability.

Ant another special team.

Unlockables

Winning the Fusion or Extraordinary Cup with a team will unlock that team for use in Friendlies.

Features

Added a trophy icon every time you win a Territories Cup.

JLR Alpha 9

November 1, 2023 by Chris

Congratulations South Africa, World Cup Champions for the 4th time! 🎉

We are celebrating the end of the World Cup by adding all of the World Cup Champions to JLR!

New Champions Tournament 🏆

Celebrate the World Cup champions by participating in an epic Champions Tournament.

Take part in a round-robin competition, Semi finals & Final

New teams 🌍

10 new teams that have made their mark in World Cup history, including the latest 2023 champions, South Africa.

1987 New Zealand

1991 Australia

1995 South Africa

1999 Australia

2003 England

2007 South Africa

2011 New Zealand

2015 New Zealand

2019 South Africa

2023 South Africa

Unlockables

Winning the Champions Tournament with a team will unlock that team for use in Friendlies.

JLR Alpha 8

October 1, 2023 by Chris

After 2 months of adding teams and tournaments, this month I am back to adding features.

The focus of this release is Management.

Game management

I'm bringing Live Sim to JLR! This is a feature I've been wanting to build for a long time.

Live sim means that you can simulate a game while watching the progress. At any point in the 2nd half you can choose to take over control of the game, and influence the end of the match. You can pause and manually progress the Sim. The live Sim shows the result of each phase and which player scored. It also shows possession stats as the game progresses.

Live Sim screen.

Team management

Want to move Ardie Savea back to 7? Do you think Robbie Henshaw is better at inside centre?

Now you can select which position the players play.

For friendly games it changes the player positions for just that game.

For tournaments it is saved along with the tournament, so you can change the player positions for multiple games.

The player stats, and therefore the teams stats, change when a player is moved.

E.g. if you put a prop on the wing their ratings will drop significantly due to their lack of speed.

There's nothing stopping you though!

Select players screen.

JLR Alpha 7

September 3, 2023 by Chris

The World Cup release!

It's September and the World Cup is right around the corner and now you can play it in JLR!

This release has a massive, 24 new teams!

World Cup teams.

Release Notes:

New teams

Uruguay

Namibia

Tonga

Romania

Fiji

Georgia

Portugal

Japan

Samoa

Chile

All teams have both home and away jerseys.

I also updated the Tier 1 teams to their World Cup squads.

Added 14 Auckland Club rugby teams. (Thank you Brad R for all your help!)

Club team select screen.

New Tournaments

2023 World Cup

Auckland Club season

Unlocks

Winning the 2023 World Cup unlocks the 2015 World Cup winning NZ team.

JLR Alpha 6

August 1, 2023 by Chris

The International release!

International team select screens.

Release Notes:

New teams

Argentina

Australia

New Zealand

South Africa

England

France

Ireland

Italy

Scotland

Wales

New Territories Cups

Rugby Championship

Six Nations

JLR Alpha 5

July 1, 2023 by Chris

It's that time again! In this new version I have focussed on Territories Cup mode and unlockables.

Territories Cup screen.

Release Notes:

Territories Cup

Added all Original Territories Cup tournaments.

American Cup

Asian Cup

Five Nations

Pacific Cup

Tri Nations

Added a selection of new Derby Cup tournaments.

East Australian Cup

London Cup

South Island Cup

Super City Cup

Pacific Island Cup

Unlocks

Winning an NPC, Premiership or Super Rugby tournament now unlocks a special team.

Winning all Territories Cups unlocks the Special and Extra Cups (like the original game)

Winning the Special or Extra Cups unlocks the team you played as. You can use these teams in friendlies.

This means you can unlock Team Lomu & Rage All Stars to play as in friendlies!

Save and load

Updated loading tournaments to show progress in save file.

Unlocks persist between play sessions.

JLR Alpha 4

June 1, 2023 by Chris

The new feature in this release is Classic Matches!

Release Notes:

New teams

6 Australian and Fijian Super Rugby teams.

4 special teams only available in Classic Match mode for now.

Classic Match

Reimplemented the 8 Classic Matches from the original game.

Added 8 new Classic Matches.

Added the ability to unlock Classic Matches by completing the first 4.

Supports saving your progress.

Classic match screen.

JLR Alpha 3

May 1, 2023 by Chris

The focus of this release has been Tournaments! 🏆🏆🏆🏆

Release Notes:

Tournaments 🏆

Premiership

• 11 teams
• Semifinals & Final

NPC

• 2 pools of 7 teams each.
• Quarterfinals, Semis & Final.

1995 World Cup

• 4 pools of 4 teams
• Quarterfinals, Semis & Final.

Supports single player, multiplayer or no players (e.g. simulate a season)

Multiplayer allows as many players as there are teams in the tournament.

Non player matches are simulated. Simulation is random and the odds are based off of the team stats of Possession, Attack and Defense. Which are based off player attributes.

Ability to view upcoming and past fixtures.

Ability to view the points tables.

Supports saving the tournament to continue at a later date.

New teams

11 new teams from the English Premiership.

Updated the player stats of the Super Rugby and NPC teams to be relative to the Premiership teams.

Tournament overview screen.

JLR Alpha 2

April 1, 2023 by Chris

The focus of this release has been the controllers 🎮🎮.

Release Notes:

Local Multiplayer

Support for 2 players.

New screen to selection which team each player is controlling.

Support for controlling the same team/ co-op.

Controller

Support for a wider range of controllers.

Automatically detects and configures the controller type.

Fixed issue where controller would not work while Steam was running.

Updated settings page to show what controllers are connected.

Controller buttons setting now only changes the look of the buttons that appear on-screen and on the loading pages. This setting will update automatically when possible.

New teams

14 New Zealand NPC teams have been added.

Team Patreon.

New player select screen.

JLR Alpha 1

March 1, 2023 by Chris

The first release of the JLR mod. This is an exciting day for me. Hopefully for you too.

Because this is a mod and not a new game, it preserves what made the game great: the beloved commentary and the fast and simple gameplay. While enhancing a few features that were stuck in 1997: the ability to play on modern PCs, the teams, players and the limited menu system.

Release Notes:

Key features:

NZ based Super Rugby 2023 teams and players.

Updated jerseys home and away.

Updated players: Name, appearance and player stats.

New Menu system

Runs on modern Windows PCs

Modern controller support (Xbox and PS4)

Better team select which shows team ratings and gives the ability to select the jersey colours.

Better match presentation. Pre match player lineups, settings editor, shows controls on game load.

New team select screen.