Dark Forces Out For Steam

[theshadowcult]

yeah, im going through the whole jedi knight collection on steam... jedi academy excluded

no kyle katarn= no love from me

It took me a while to research and downloading everything needed to make them all work properly though, so you have been warned. besides Jedi outcast, the first two games require tweaking.

Damn, oh well it'll be worth it. I started playing through Academy, just to remind my self of why i thought it was crap... it's still crap...

[GanjaStar]

reached level 10 today.. and I am pulling my hair out

you spawn with only fists, you have to beat up 5 monsters that each take 15ish hits to die. I think the original game only required you to kill one and then run through the next part, but for some reason in the dosbox version that won't work.

There is a switch you need to activate to climb around the room, but if any of the monsters are near the switch operated ledges, they reset the whole thing.... I don't think that's supposed to be happening.

and these ****ers are resistant to circle strafing so its basically pray and punch

taking a break, because I don't wanna break my monitor in half....

[GanjaStar]

comleted this badassery

took me around 15 hours on hard. This is the oldest FPS I enjoyed. doom is a bit primitive for my tastes. I enjoyed it, but there was nothing besides shooting.

Dark Forces is actually the first step towards the half-life era of FPS's that is still in place. It has meaningful level design. some platforming. other stuff besides key hunting. All in all, a great look into early days of the genre.

Proof of skill

[theshadowcult]

Well done Now play a real game with Dark Forces 2

Force speeding into walls, or force jumping into the roof... insta kill

[GanjaStar]

Well done Now play a real game with Dark Forces 2

Force speeding into walls, or force jumping into the roof... insta kill

Check the screenshot thread

Started playing Dark forces 2 as a continuation of my kyle katarn marathon

can't believe the game has 1680x1050 as an in game res. also installed texture and model mods

[SubCog]

DarkXL engine:
[yt]ghz8vR14ZIo[/yt]

[theshadowcult]

You evil murderous bastard. What did they ever do to you? They asked you to stop, they ask you to surrender and you just kept killing them... sad panda is sad

[GanjaStar]

DarkXL engine:

just to prevent dissapointment, the game cannot be fully completed with darkXL yet.
and the developer seems to have rl issues that prevent updates atm.

[SubCog]

just to prevent dissapointment, the game cannot be fully completed with darkXL yet.
and the developer seems to have rl issues that prevent updates atm.

yeah, he got a little too ambitious, trying to add support for elder scrolls and a couple of other games. These kinds of projects always go this way: the author needs to open-source the project before real life catches up with him, otherwise we'll never see the project completed.

'not sure how the dark places guy does it.

[SubCog]

'Don't know if anyone else is following development on the Dark XL engine, but I think its worth pointing out that there's been some progress happening recently. Hopefully there will be a release in the next few months?

http://xlengine.com/blog/

[General Lee]

'Don't know if anyone else is following development on the Dark XL engine, but I think its worth pointing out that there's been some progress happening recently. Hopefully there will be a release in the next few months?

http://xlengine.com/blog/

I might still have my original Dark Forces disk around here somewhere. To play that game again with mouse look would be AWESOME! Thanks for the info.

[SubCog]

Well, the Dark XL site is dead... he didn't post any updates since last springtime either. I think this project is probably dead.

[SubCog]

Not sure how many people here are interested, but there's a bit of movement on the DarkForces sourceport front. LuciusDXL, after going dark for years, has retired the DarkXL engine and started working on something he's calling The Force Engine, which sounds like he's using some of the assets from his previous work, but wants to eventually rewrite everything.

https://theforceengine.github.io/

The roadmap suggests a Nov 2020 beta release, although he's definitely missed deadlines (or worse) before. However, he's pretty much the only guy doing anything with Dark Forces, and alot of his DarkXL work was very impressive for being a reverse-engineering project rather than an actual source-port. He also seems to have learned some valuable lessons from the previous project's failure... he says this time he's focusing the project only on Jedi-engine games, and open-sourcing everything from the beginning.

We'll see how this goes. I would love to see a version of Dark Forces running with mouselook & perspective correct rendering. It's pretty much the only popular fps game from that era that hasn't gotten a popular modernization port yet.

[acroig]

Very cool, thanks for the update!

[SirBaron]

I really hope he does it this time, I love the dark forces series and would love it to see it get the same care that Doom gets with it's many modern open source engines.

[SubCog]

For anyone who's interested in following progress on LuciusDXL's Force Engine, he does have a working build released. Still missing tons of features, but it's nice to see forward progress.

https://theforceengine.github.io/blog.html

[acroig]

For anyone who's interested in following progress on LuciusDXL's Force Engine, he does have a working build released. Still missing tons of features, but it's nice to see forward progress.

https://theforceengine.github.io/blog.html

Nice! TY

I have mine working on the Dark Engine.

[SubCog]

Tried the newest build on LuciusDXL's Force Engine. It's fully playable now, with enemy AI and everything. Even supports widescreen, which is nice. I'm still waiting for the perspective correct renderer though, as the default renderer makes me pretty queasy to play. But some folks are saying they've played through the whole game on the current build.

Looking forward to more progress this year. We're getting pretty close to having a proper Dark Forces source port, with the expected quality-of-life features you'd expect from such a project.

https://theforceengine.github.io/blog.html


----------

Makes me think about going back and replaying all the great 90s 2.5d shooters with modern source ports. Many of which I never played at the time, or have never finished.

• Doom 1&2
• Duke 3d
• Heretic
• Hexen
• Blood
• Dark Forces
• Shadow Warrior

Does Descent count? I played the heck out of that at the time.

I occasionally revisit Wolfenstein 3d, although honestly I can't see myself playing more than 20 minutes at a time. Modern source ports do nice things for it, but it's still a VERY primitive game.

I've tried to get into Rise of the Triad several times, but just never really got it.

[SubCog]

Also, there's this:
[yt]W7YTBKhGCqU[/yt]

[ugly]

Makes me think about going back and replaying all the great 90s 2.5d shooters with modern source ports. Many of which I never played at the time, or have never finished.

• Doom 1&2
• Duke 3d
• Heretic
• Hexen
• Blood
• Dark Forces
• Shadow Warrior

Does Descent count? I played the heck out of that at the time.

I occasionally revisit Wolfenstein 3d, although honestly I can't see myself playing more than 20 minutes at a time. Modern source ports do nice things for it, but it's still a VERY primitive game.

I've tried to get into Rise of the Triad several times, but just never really got it.

I've actually sort of been doing this.

I did Wolfenstein 3D a few years ago. But I played the original.

I did all of Doom, Doom II, The Master levels using GZDoom with the texture packs.

Did Heretic, also on GZDoom. I was in the middle of Hexen, but took a bit of break and haven't gotten back into it.

It's been fun, and the modern engines make the games easier to get into. Particularly with the standard FPS keyboard and mouse controls (but also makes it easier).

That's a pretty solid list, and pretty much the ones I was going to do. I have Redneck Rampage as well. And Blake Stone.

Dark Forces was one I wanted to do, but it was tough to get into. I don't think it had quicksave, so it was a bit of a pain. I'll have to check out that new engine.

[Destroy]

Impressive. Most impressive.

[SubCog]

The Force Engine just got a 0.92 release, which finally includes the perspective-correct renderer. Can't wait to try it out myself!

https://theforceengine.github.io/downloads.html

[yt]_VULDNdbW64[/yt]

[theshadowcult]

thats really cool. another set of games that could genuinely get a remake.

[SubCog]

thats really cool. another set of games that could genuinely get a remake.

There's been a couple of projects started to rebuild Dark Forces in the Quake3-engine games. I think they never got very far though.

I've also seen a bunch of Doom mods that bring in the DF weapons and enemies, but nobody's taken the next step and put them in the levels.

[John C Flett]

I hadn't heard of the Dark Engine. Sounds like a good escuse to play dark Forces again though I'm really looking forward to support for Outlaws.

[SubCog]

Looks like we're getting close to a v1.0 release for The Force Engine. He's just put out his 3rd release candidate in the last day. Anyone who wants to try Dark Forces but with proper mouselook, it's just about time.

https://theforceengine.github.io/downloads.html

[SubCog]

1.0 release!

[Destroy]

You need to own the original game, correct? Its $2 on GoG.com right now fwiw.

[SubCog]

You need to own the original game, correct? Its $2 on GoG.com right now fwiw.

Yup, this runs just like any source port for any other game. You need to acquire the game files somehow, and for $2 its an easy choice.

[pax]

Tried the newest build on LuciusDXL's Force Engine. It's fully playable now, with enemy AI and everything. Even supports widescreen, which is nice. I'm still waiting for the perspective correct renderer though, as the default renderer makes me pretty queasy to play. But some folks are saying they've played through the whole game on the current build.

Looking forward to more progress this year. We're getting pretty close to having a proper Dark Forces source port, with the expected quality-of-life features you'd expect from such a project.

https://theforceengine.github.io/blog.html


----------

Makes me think about going back and replaying all the great 90s 2.5d shooters with modern source ports. Many of which I never played at the time, or have never finished.

• Doom 1&2
• Duke 3d
• Heretic
• Hexen
• Blood
• Dark Forces
• Shadow Warrior

Does Descent count? I played the heck out of that at the time.

I occasionally revisit Wolfenstein 3d, although honestly I can't see myself playing more than 20 minutes at a time. Modern source ports do nice things for it, but it's still a VERY primitive game.

I've tried to get into Rise of the Triad several times, but just never really got it.

Blood has a spiritual sequel called Cultic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4ZK8_XAeXM

Looks like an update 2.5 build engined game.

[Silent-Runner]

How about Dark Forces 2 Unreal Engine?

https://www.patreon.com/posts/dark-forces-2-v1-78228910

DARK FORCES 2 UNREAL ENGINE REMAKE V1.0

Welcome to my first Unreal Engine project.

The goal was to recreate one of my favorite games back from my childhood while keeping the base look, feeling and gameplay

and of course learning the engine itself.




After nearly 3 years of development the project is finally at a point where I feel ready to share it with you.




Original game by Lucasarts from 1997




Version 1.0 comes with:

- 2 offical levels from the original game

- 4 Survival levels

- a Sandbox mode

- 3d model viewer

- bonus level for testing

- some secrets...




Download Version 1.0:

Password: DF2




Download Link 1

-----------------------------

Download Link 2

-----------------------------

[pax]

Wish they would do dark forces one with that.

[Silent-Runner]

Wish they would do dark forces one with that.

well, you can tell 'em and hope for the best