Star Wars: Dark Forces was the first Star Wars FPS and predecessor to the Jedi Knight series, and finally Z Doom (opens in new tab) process. Developers luciusDXL, winterheart, and gilorem560 have released the 1.0 build. force engine (opens in new tab)an open-source reverse-engineering of Dark Forces (and soon its lesser-known cousin Outlaws), with modern conveniences and playable in high definition.
Released in 1995, Dark Forces firmly reflects the “Doom Clone” era of first-person shooters. With its slippery, speedy boomer-shooter movement, excellent weapon selection, and sprawling maze-like levels, the presentation is truly innovative. Dark Force nails the music, sound effects, and appearance of Star Wars while also telling a highly detailed storyline in which Han, similar to his solo, Kyle his Katarn fights Imperial He Remnant.
These days, Dark Forces is overshadowed by the Jedi Knight series sequel, which sees Kyle become a Jedi and engage in some of the best lightsaber combat anyone has ever done in a game. Outlaw (opens in new tab), meanwhile, is the western-themed Lucasarts FPS that reuses Dark Forces’ original Jedi Engine. This shared DNA will allow the little-known Outlaws to ride the Dark Forces momentum into his 21st century with just a little extra effort from the Force Engine team.
The Force Engine’s 1.0 release lets you play Dark Forces all the way through with a selection of highly customizable quality-of-life features, including mouse appearance and high resolution support. Force Engine now also supports GPU rendering, as opposed to the original archaic software renderer, and has a mod loader for past and future user-created mods. The Force Engine team has indicated that full Outlaws support will come at a later date with his 2.0 update to the project.
Installing both the Force Engine itself and the mod is straightforward.To get started, you’ll need a copy of Dark Forces — it’s not available for free, it’s included in the source port like Bungie’s Marathon in Aleph One — can be found at vapor (opens in new tab) Also Gog (opens in new tab) Normally $6 (as of this writing, it’s on sale on GOG for $2!) After downloading the mod, run the Force Engine executable and it will automatically detect the game’s installation path.
Simply drop your user-created maps or tweaks into Force Engine’s Mods directory and choose which map to load from the options on Force Engine’s launch screen.In Shadows Fan Mission: Fortress Quadrigon DF-21 (opens in new tab) I created a repository for the Dark Forces mod and had it up and running in seconds.like GZ Doom (opens in new tab) or aleph one (opens in new tab)Force Engine not only makes playing old classics more comfortable and convenient, but also opens up a whole world of free FPS levels.
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