A fan reverse-engineered 1995’s ‘Star Wars: Dark Forces’ to make it easier to play on modern systems
By trendy requirements, 1995’s Darkish Forces would not appear to be a lot, but it surely’s rightfully thought of one of many extra essential Star Wars video 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. Nonetheless, like loads of video games from the mid-’90s, revisiting Darkish Forces will be difficult. Earlier than as we speak, 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. Darkish Forces is likely one of the simpler video 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 Drive Engine. The mission 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 — Darkish Forces and 1997’s Outlaws — simpler to run on trendy techniques. With model 1.0, TFE is suitable with each the GOG and Steam variations of Darkish Forces. As soon as you have put in the software program, it should routinely detect the sport’s executable, and you can begin taking part in with no need to do issues like adjusting cycles in DOSBox.
What’s extra, it provides a handful of options to make it simpler to understand Darkish Forces in 2022. One huge addition is assist for contemporary widescreen resolutions, so you do not have to play the sport at its unique 320 by 200 decision. Different optionally available quality-of-life enhancements embrace full mouselook assist and a brand new save system that lets you make quicksaves. In case you’re a fan of Outlaws, LuciusDXL says they’re engaged on including assist for the cult traditional shooter as a part of TFE’s model 2.0 launch. Whereas there isn’t any launch date for that but, LuciusDXL estimates it will not take them practically as lengthy now that they’ve gone by the method of reverse-engineering Darkish Forces.
All merchandise advisable by Engadget are chosen by our editorial workforce, impartial of our dad or mum firm. A few of our tales embrace affiliate hyperlinks. In case you purchase one thing by one among these hyperlinks, we might earn an affiliate fee. All costs are right on the time of publishing.
