This jj2 remake won't work. It proved to be completely impossible to hack the jj2 file formats. They're so compressed and have so much tricks that even the developers wouldn't be able to decompress it without the source code.

Also, if you want to make a 3D game, consider this:

Making a full-featured 3D game takes many years, and that is for proffesional teams that work fulltime. Now you and a few people with almost no experience in games programming plan to create a game as big as that? You can't work at it fulltime, you don't have all the tools those people have, and you don't get money for it. How do you want to keep all these project members satisfied? Do you think you can push them to work at a project for 4 years, devoting all their free time to it and doing it without getting money? I doubt you do.

You simply won't get people working fast for 4 years. They lose faith, or slack. You really won't keep these people motivated for 4 years, especially because they are young. They want to have fun, they have to do home work, they go to college, have to do exams, etcetera. Possum(another ambitious project) is barely coming along because the programmer is in college. It IS coming along, but it is less complicated then a 3d game.

Please DO consider these things for starting a project like that. I know it isn't pleasant for you that I'm so skeptic, but you can't just go and decide to make a new game full of ambition, without thinking about the problems around it. This is real life. Hope and blind ambition doesn't cut the cake. It helps a lot, afcourse, ambition and hope are necesarry ingredients, but you can't just act to them blindly, just like in real-life. Wanting something is something different then doing something. We have seen the many jj2 projects and clans that died because the leaders did not understand that, please don't fall into the same pit.

Besides, another issue, you don't have the rights for the jj2 characters.

How funny, this same thread was there a long time ago, with possum. That game is coming along, but that is because of the very skilled programmers. Still, it has huge problems, like a lack of management. This means some group members don't even know what to do.

Conclusion:

Don't get all hopelessness because of my message. Just start doing this thing proffesionally, otherwise it won't work at all. If yo aren't organized well, this won't work. You need good management and documentation, like Haze said. Please don't fall into the same pit as all the other ambitious projects.. you can forgive these small projects because they don't matter much, but if this huge project comes off, you're going to create a lot of trouble if it doesn't work out because of bad organisation. If you start this project, you'll owe the people that believe in it a happy ending. That is quite some pressure on your back, can you take it?