A fan reverse-engineered 1995’s ‘Star Wars: Dark Forces’ to make it simpler to play on fashionable methods | Engadget

By fashionable requirements, 1995’s Dark Forces would not appear to be a lot, but it surely’s rightfully thought of one of many more important Star Wars games ever launched. Not solely did it introduce essential technical improvements to the first-person shooter style, but it surely additionally went on to have an outsized impact on later Star Wars canon and spawned the Jedi Knight collection. However, like a variety of video games from the mid-’90s, revisiting Dark Forces will be difficult. Before at this time, your finest wager was to purchase a digital copy of the sport from both Steam or GOG and use DOSBox to emulate it on a contemporary pc. Dark Forces is one of the easier games to get working on DOSBox, however the software program will be intimidating for those who’ve by no means used it earlier than.

Enter The Force Engine. The project is primarily the work of LuciusDXL, who spent three years reverse engineering LucasArts’ proprietary Jedi Engine to make the 2 video games that had been constructed with it — Dark Forces and 1997’s Outlaws — simpler to run on fashionable methods. With model 1.0, TFE is appropriate with each the GOG and Steam variations of Dark Forces. Once you’ve got put in the software program, it’ll robotically detect the sport’s executable, and you can begin enjoying without having to do issues like adjusting cycles in DOSBox.

What’s extra, it provides a handful of options to make it simpler to understand Dark Forces in 2022. One large addition is help for contemporary widescreen resolutions, so you do not have to play the sport at its authentic 320 by 200 decision. Other non-compulsory quality-of-life enhancements embrace full mouselook help and a brand new save system that permits you to make quicksaves. If you are a fan of Outlaws, LuciusDXL says they’re engaged on including help for the cult basic shooter as a part of TFE’s model 2.0 launch. While there is no launch date for that but, LuciusDXL estimates it will not take them almost as lengthy now that they’ve gone via the method of reverse-engineering Dark Forces.

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