Star Wars: Dark Forces is a somewhat obscure, but deeply beloved DOS game in the Star Wars franchise released back in 1997, set in the timeline just before the events of Episode IV: A New Hope, and detailed the events of the then canon stolen plans of the Death Star in the hands of rebel Kyle Katarn, before Disney acquired the rights and ditched the story as "Legends" material to make room for their Rogue One movie prequel.

The game takes into a 1st Person Shooter perspective, utilizing the innovative Jedi Engine developed by LucasArts, with some familiarity to FPS games of the time, like Doom and Duke Nukem, and featured cutscenes and voice overs. Since its release, the only possible ways to play this game were either through DOS, DosBox (which is what the current digital stores use when you purchase it) or its limited release on the PlayStation, but thanks to the effort of some passionate developers, Dark Forces can now be played with modern standards, with widescreen, high resolution and many other improvements.

The list of features for the current v1.0 release as listed by the developers:

• Full Dark Forces support, including mods. Outlaws support is coming in version 2.0.
• Mod Loader - simply place your mods in the Mods/ directory as zip files or directories.
• High Resolution and Widescreen support - when using 320x200 you get the original software renderer. TFE also includes a floating-point software renderer which supports widescreen, including ultrawide, and much higher resolutions.
• GPU Renderer with perspective correct pitch - play at much higher resolutions with improved performance.
• Extended Limits - TFE, by default, will support much higher limits than the original game which removes most of the HOM (Hall of Mirrors) issues in advanced mods.
• Full input binding, mouse sensitivity adjustment, and controller support. Note, however, that menus currently require the mouse.
• Optional Quality of Life improvements, such as full mouselook, aiming reticle, improved Boba Fett AI, autorun, and more.
• A new save system that works seamlessly with the existing checkpoint and lives system. You can ignore it entirely, use it just as an exit save so you don’t have to play long user levels in one sitting, or full save and load with quicksaves like Doom or Duke Nukem 3D.
• Optional and quality of life features, even mouselook, can be disabled if you want the original experience. Play in 320x200, turn the mouse mode (Input menu) to Menus only or horizontal, and enable the Classic (software) renderer - and it will look and play just like DOS, but with a higher framerate and without needing to adjust cycles in DosBox.

The developers are still hard at work on the engine, and have teased even more features for the upcoming 2.0 version, like support for its sister game in the same Jedi engine, "Outlaws". People interesting in playing Dark Forces with the Force Engine can checkout the official site of the engine on GitHub pages.

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[BaamAlex]

I didn't play that. But nice work.

 

[Marc_LFD]

Loving these retro releases! Kids these days don't know what gaming was like so maybe they'll start appreciating as they see more and more.

 

[mrcroket]

It needs perspective correction? I always thought that dark forces unlike doom had a real 3d world but with sprite enemies. Because it have rooms on top of each other. Also some 3d models like the ship.

 

[Purple_Shyguy]

Used to emulate the PS1 version which isn't at all ideal.

This is amazing work. And the kind of thing DF needs to be really recognised for how good it is. Kinda like how Doom 64 went under the radar for so long until Doom 64 EX and the official Nightdive ports.

Post automatically merged: Dec 20, 2022

It needs perspective correction? I always thought that dark forces unlike doom had a real 3d world but with sprite enemies. Because it have rooms on top of each other. Also some 3d models like the ship.

It did that thing in old first person games where it distorts when you look up and down. But the GPU renderer handles it like a true 3D game would.

 

[pustal]

Obscure? It's the first game in the Kyle Katarn saga, how is it obscure?

 

[ShadowOne333]

Obscure? It's the first game in the Kyle Katarn saga, how is it obscure?

It's overshadowed by Doom and Duke Nukem in popularity, and the fact that the levels tend to get very maze-y with weird objectives doesn't make it as accessible as the others.

 

[gnmmarechal]

Oh damn, been a long while since I've seen this game.

 

[Nikokaro]

Wow, hopefully someone will port it to DS (or at least DSi)! After Doom, Descent, Heretic, Hexen, Quake, Duke3D, it is the only old DOS FPS game not yet ported to DS. Maybe it will once again be our brilliant @elhobbs who will do it? I sincerely hope so. In the meantime, I'll take the opportunity to say hello and remember the gratitude we all have toward him.

 

[brunocar]

having played this on the older source port, man, am i glad that this happened, this game really needed some help on modern PCs

Post automatically merged: Dec 21, 2022

Wow, hopefully someone will port it to DS (or at least DSi)! After Doom, Descent, Heretic, Hexen, Quake, Duke3D, it is the only old DOS FPS game not yet ported to DS. Maybe it will once again be our brilliant @elhobbs who will do it? I sincerely hope so. In the meantime, I'll take the opportunity to say hello and remember the gratitude we all have toward him.

im gonna take a wild guess that if quake barely runs by pure miracle on DS, the best you can possibly hope for is this game running on DSi.

 

[Nikokaro]

...the best you can possibly hope for is this game running on DSi.

Sure, that would be fine. If we could then also load the available user maps/mods that would be perfect. Playing it on SD-slot of DSi on low resolution 320x240 (or similar) graphics, with 11.025 Hz of sound, maybe no BGM (as if running on an old 386 pc with dos/win95 installed) would be an absolute and unmatched delight.

 

[eduall]

having played this on the older source port, man, am i glad that this happened, this game really needed some help on modern PCs

Post automatically merged: Dec 21, 2022

im gonna take a wild guess that if quake barely runs by pure miracle on DS, the best you can possibly hope for is this game running on DSi.

no one is going to do that anymore cuz dsi is dead.

 

[FAST6191]

Glad a project finally managed to drag itself across the finish line. Saw several try and fumble over the years.

Hopefully we can get some nice mods, modernisations, tweaks and such like with this.

Others playing along at home might wish to note of all the "doom clone" engines then this is probably the most advanced* with several features missing in others barring whatever has been done in the open source or throwback world since. Certainly why you never really saw the game backported/remade for the other engines like we saw things that were not otherwise open sourced ported across.

*redneck rampage being of the few things that might pose a challenge but also not and some very blurry lines at that point as well.

 

[SylverReZ]

Glad a project finally managed to drag itself across the finish line. Saw several try and fumble over the years.

Hopefully we can get some nice mods, modernisations, tweaks and such like with this.

Others playing along at home might wish to note of all the "doom clone" engines then this is probably the most advanced* with several features missing in others barring whatever has been done in the open source or throwback world since. Certainly why you never really saw the game backported/remade for the other engines like we saw things that were not otherwise open sourced ported across.

*redneck rampage being of the few things that might pose a challenge but also not and some very blurry lines at that point as well.

I bet somebody is gonna port this over to everything, the same way as to what happened with DOOM.

 

[DS1]

Lol “somewhat obscure”.

I played this (the original, no mods) earlier this year for the first time in earnest, but could only get slightly farther than I did as a kid. Still worth a go for a few stages, especially with this great revamp!!

 

[nWo]

Damn. I played this on Playstation back in the day. THIS IS THE REAL STORY of how the rebels got the Death Star plans, how the Darktroopers where put into motion secretly and more importantly how even Boba Fett and Jabba the Hutt where involved on stopping Kyle Katarn.

It is an AWESOME story and a regular game.

 

[MikaDubbz]

Any chance this can be ported to the Wii U?

 

[swutch]

Cool didn't even know it existed until this post.

 

[lincruste]

I'll be honest, I didn't think Lucius would ever finish the task.
I had been following his progress on DaggerXL about 15 years ago, saw the Dark Forces project born and almost die.
I've played 3 levels this afternoon, it's a great job, congrats and thanks to him, I'm very impressed.

 

[TheDerpyDolphin]

Any chance this can be ported to the Wii U?

I’m sure it would be more than able to run it. Hopefully someone takes up the project. If not I’m sure someone will port it to the Wii.