Star Wars: Dark Forces reverse engineered "Force Engine" v1.0 released
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.
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