DF-21 Forums

[lucius]

Ok, it's time for the official DarkXL Alpha!
This game only works with the full ***RETAIL*** version of Dark Forces. Make sure that when installing Dark Forces to do a complete install with all data files on the harddrive, otherwise the game will not startup.

KNOWN ISSUES
*No iMuse MIDI yet.
*Remotes are missing.
*No secondary fire yet (Build 9).
*Texture issues on the top of flat 3DOs.
*Floating enemies don't move down to pass through adjoins.
*AI still needs more tweaking.
*Portal issues, which so up as a flicker near the beginning of Talay and the previous issues in SecBase. Note when loading your own custom levels that this will make an impact - some sectors aren't tesselated correctly but this will be fixed in Build 9.

INSTRUCTIONS
When you download the zip file, put it in any directory you like. Then open up DXL_Settings.txt and set the correct Dark Forces directory for "DForces". All other settings need to be set in-game using the Configuration menu. Eventually the settings text file will be completed removed. You'll probably need to change the resolution seettings, it defaults to 1024x768 fullscreen.

To load a custom gob, use the following command line: DarkXL.exe -uGobName.gob

If you don't have OpenAL installed you'll need to get and install that, link is at the bottom.
Also you may need to update DirectX, follow the DirectX WebInstaller link at the bottom to do so.

DEFAULT CONTROLS
Mouse to turn.
Forward: 'W'
Back: 'S'
StrafeLeft: 'A'
StrafeRight: 'D'
Slow: 'Caps Lock'
Run: 'Left Shift'
Crouch: 'Left Ctrl'
Nudge: 'Right Mouse'
Jump: 'Space Bar'
Shoot: 'Left Mouse'
PDA: F1
IR Goggles: F2
Headlights: F5
Map: TAB
EscMenu: ESC
Cheat - float upward: 'F'
Cheat - move through any adjoin: 'G'

MISSION
Build 8 has 3 levels, please play through all 3 and make sure they are beatable. Please provide any comments or issues that you have in the official release forum topic (this thread). Also please submit any new bugs or issues in the Issue Tracker.

Even if you think it's perfect (yeah right), atleast let me know if it works for you!

*****UPDATED******
****VERSION - Build 8.05****
The Alpha:
http://www.darkxl.df-21.net/Builds/DarkXL_Alpha_b8_05.zip

OpenAL if you need it:
http://developer.creative.com/articles/article.asp?cat=1&sbcat=31&top=38&aid=46&file=oalinst.exe

DirectX WebInstaller, download if any D3DX dll's are missing or if DirectX is out of date:
DirectX Web Installer

Please note that this is a large build, with many new features... so I expect there to be bugs and issues. To give you an idea, here is a list of new features:

*Titlescreen.
*In-game Configuration menu for settings such as Graphics settings and controls.
*Cutscenes.
*Agents and saves.
*VUEs
*Talay & Sewers/level progression.
*New AI: ReeYees, Sewer bugs, Probe Droids, Interrogation Droids.
*Proper Dark Forces fonts - no more Windows fonts.
*Water/sludge.
*Secondary sector height.
*New weapon: Thermal Detonator.
*PDA with inventory, map, weapons, objectives.
*Automap.
***and more***

_________________
DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com

[Burning Gundam]

OH SWEET!!!

I'ma check his out right now!!!

Okay, bug report time

- I cant shoot through a window if I'm standing against the wall the window adjoins to.

- The doors to the draw bridge in Talay don't open or close (The doors in the center of it).

- I was attacked by a dianoga on dry land when there was no water-source present (although it was directly below a water pipe, so it must have been eating me through the pipe )

-Thermal detonators explode on water

-Everytime I rounded a bend in the water pipes I heard what sounded like a door opening.

- I got caught on an adjoin of a waterfall leading to the largest sewer tank (the one that leads immediatly back the Crow).

- Dianogas attack earlier than the animation

- The explosion for the probe droids is incorrect (but still very much acceptable either way )

- It may be an issue with my computer, but the frame rate seemed to stagger a tiny bit in large open areas in talay. It may just be due to Vsync though, but I dunno.

_________________
I don't think outside the box... I customize it.

[DF4GL4ever]

Tres cool

Odd bug... when I click a key command to set it, it changes to INS. The command doesn't stay highlighted when I release the mouse, just sets to INS soon as I click it.

[Burning Gundam]

See my last post on bugs, but this was a real joy to play. I haven't been more excited about a game in a long time and this is just the fill I needed. Aside from said bugs and maybe a few more I overlooked, I was able to complete the missions with no issues.

And I just want to say that the VUE animations for 3DOs are absolutely BEAUTIFUL!!

It left me with a warm feeling inside when I was finished. My hat's off to you Lucius, this is great work!!!

_________________
I don't think outside the box... I customize it.

[klasodeth]

I noticed most of the bugs Burning Gundam reported, and found a few additional ones, one of which unfortunately can be a show-stopper.

The show-stopper bug invoves a door on the very first bridge in Talay that leads to the city. I'm not sure what happened but the first time I played through the level, on the way back the little elevator raised, closing the door on the bridge at the same time. With that door closed there was no way to get back to the Moldy Crow. I had to use the move through adjoin cheat in order to get through the door.

A bug that helped me greatly in the Sewer level was a less-than-zero bug. On multiple occasions in the level, the sewer monsters attacked me, bringing my health to exactly zero. When I went back to test, once I was down to zero health, it took an additional bite for the sewer monster to kill me.

I also got stuck inside the final door that leads to the Moldy Crow landing area in the Secbase level. It only happened once. On a subsequent playthrough, I was able to go through the door just fine.

One final bug is that on Secbase I was getting shot at by an invisible stormtrooper. I was able to kill it by shooting at the origin of its blaster shots. Oddly enough, I think the stormtrooper was somewhat above ground level based on the origin of its shots. But of course with it being invisible I couldn't be sure. I think I also got shot a few times by an invisible stormtrooper in Talay, but I was dealing with enough normal stormtroopers that I didn't get a chance to test for sure, so that could have been my imagination.

Otherwise, even with the bugs (which are no surpise in any work-in-progress) I had a lot of fun with it.

I'll make sure to log in to CodePlex a little later to officially report the bugs that I encountered.

[Jimmy Chicken]

Awesome! I knew you wouldn't let us down lucius!

edit: I got the startup screen but when I pressed the "launch" button, it gave me a pop up saying:

[Burning Gundam]

Oh yeah, it did that with me too, only it was the textcrawl that failed to load.

_________________
I don't think outside the box... I customize it.

[Jimmy Chicken]

[The MAZZTer]

Yes.

I imagine it contains the Dark Forces logo animation.

Also big bug: If you do not set your Dark Forces path correctly, the dialog box which tells you DarkXL can't find a GOB is obscured by the main window so it can't be seen.

Also it hard crashes after that.

When entering your agent name, Hold Shift, press a letter, release shift while still holding the letter. A second letter appears... this is not consistent with what users will expect.

When stormtroopers say their "Hey, we can see you!" initial sighting lines, they seem to be a little too loud... they sound a lot closer than they actually are (if you alert someone far away).

Also the mousebots seem too skittish. Even in the beginning of Secbase they're making a racket...

_________________
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[BlazingPhoenix]

AWESOME! Right when I come back from a trip too!

[Gez]

[klasodeth]

[dinohog]

Hi Lucious, played through all three levels on hard this afternoon and it is fantastic. There is a couple of places where I got caught in doors and I also couldn't shoot through some windows when I was standing right on top of them. I will play again over the next few days and post detailed descriptions of bugs.

A couple of comments about the talay level. It seemed to be a light brighter than I remembered and after I picked up the weapon, there were no other enemies generated which I thought there were in the original.

Also, I'm way out of practice, so an optional cross hair would be great for me. I couldn't hit the broad side of a sandcrawler about half the time.

Excellent work Lucious.

Dino.

[lucius]

As for the missing LFD files, that is a Mac issue. I will get Mac data support in there soon but for now it only works properly for DOS data. It is possible to massage the Mac data so that it works, I think. I have access to the Mac data so I'll get it working eventually.

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DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com

[Taton]

I ran into most of the bugs Burning Gundam did. Some additional ones:

*On the first level, I ran into a stormtrooper right next to the vault When I killed him, he dissapeared leaving only his rifle.

*On Talay, there's the big door that breaks once you go under it. On the backside of the door, the texture scrolls when it shouldn't.

*On Talay, I was unable to pick up the Shield Supercharge.

Sometheing that isn't a bug, but stands out very glaringly: the enemies aren't tough enough. They're to slow to fire, and they aren't accurate enough. Many places where I ALWAYS got shot in classic DF, I was able to easily kill the the offending enemy in XL.

Overwall, some great work Lucius. I can't wait for the next release.

_________________
"A fight should be clean and elegant, without waste"
-Asuka Langley Sohryu, Evangelion

[sheepandshepherd]

Mmmm, delicious update
Anyway, I've played through secbase and half of talay so far, and found a few bugs on both levels:

First off, on secbase, I got stuck inside the door to the landing pad when it closed. (btw, I think it closes way too fast)


I couldn't get out using the adjoin cheat either . . .

Second, there's a rendering bug in the beginning of Talay . . . not sure if this is the same one that was already mentioned, but here it is:

That white piece sticking out of the ceiling shouldn't be there . . . my guess is that it's the bottom of the sector above, showing through . . .

Third, there's a problem with overlaying sprites:

This one isn't really a bug, just another inconvenience of using sprites without a good alpha channel, and I'm not sure if there's any way to fix it besides just replacing the sprite with a better image format.

Fourth, I got stuck on one of the adjoins:

This ledge was a little hard to jump off.

I didn't run into the invisible stormtrooper bug, but I think it may have something to do with the invisible stormtrooper saying "Stop where you are" in the landing pad area . . . is it possible that both of these cases are caused by a stormtrooper in another sector that occupies the same physical space seeing or shooting at the player?

[Marley]

Can't get it work, crashes on load.

My specs

AMD Athalon 2.0GHZ (I think) 2 Gig ram, GEFORCE GT 7600, Audigy2 ZS graphics card.

The log says...

DarkXL Alpha, Build 8.
<System::InitLogFile 81> Log File Open
<WinMain 193> Initialize Game.
<Driver3D_DX9::Init 107> Using Hardware Vertex Processing.
<Driver3D_DX9::Init 118> Using Pixel Shader 2.0+.
<Driver3D_DX9::Init 196> Create Direct3D Device Failed!
<Driver3D_DX9::Destroy 262> Direct3D Device Destroy.

Installed OpenAL and followed the link to the Direct3D drivers.

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*ZaP*

[lucius]

That's strange, I didn't change any of the Direct3D initialization code. Have you updated your drivers recently? I'll add a command line parameter that allows it to default to windowed mode, that's the only difference I can think of off hand - it now defaults to fullscreen and the previous version defaulted to windowed.

And just to double check, you did set the Dark Forces path correct, right?

_________________
DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com

[Marley]

Also, I'm using a copied CD of my old (now unplayable) Dark Forces CD - would this make any differece?

_________________
*ZaP*

[lucius]

[Marley]

Just tried the previous build and that works fine - Do you want me to log this in the tracker? And yes the path is set correctly. Cheers

_________________
*ZaP*

[lucius]

[Gez]

I ran into another ghost shooter in Talay Tak base. He was somewhere in the grass courtyard.

Also, after putting the power station in use, I fell through one of the blades of the giant rotor. I just moved on it and stood there, waiting for it to be next to the docks, but before it reached that point I somehow fell through it (I wasn't moving at that time, if it helps) and got in the water. It wasn't too much of a problem because I didn't get stuck in it.

[The MAZZTer]

Marley: Run dxdiag.exe and run the Direct3D tests in the "Display" tab(s).

_________________
http://www.mzzt.net/ | I am a respectable admin with a respectable sig.

[Marley]

All test were successful.

_________________
*ZaP*

[lucius]

[RyMan]

I ran into a couple bugs both in Anoat City. I got stuck to the walls while on the moving water in a couple spots. Also the elevator that brings you into the long dark tunnel that goes back to the room with the 4-switch wouldn't come back down after I had taken it once. The sector is called "sucker" in the level file.

[Wulf]

Wow, thats just amazing work lucius. I really loved to play that game when it came out and it is great to play it again with much better graphics.
I played all three levels you did in highest resolution and compared them with the original ones running dos box. The gameplay is great but I also found some bugs:

I can shoot through my ship that should pick me up at the end of the missions.

Level 1:
Shooting through openings doesn't work properly close to the edge (this happens in all levels).
The mouse robots don't take any damage.

Level 2:
Sometimes the troopers disapear and get invisible but are still shooting.
In the building where the dark trooper weapon can be found is a secret area which is open before pressing the button on the wall.
The two doors on the rotating bridge do not work. One of them should always be closed.
The bridge over the river leading to the destroyed buildings can only be used one time after turning on the power. The second time I tried to cross it a wall moved up and I had to jump across the river to reach my ship.

Level 3:
When I opened the first sewer door a second time I fell through the level at the waterfall and got stuck. Could solve the problem by jumping and moving around.

In the options (F1):
Can't press the exit button by moving the mouse to the bottom of the screen because I can't reach this area at all.
Finding secrets doesn't change the shown percentage.

Thats all I found by now.

[lucius]

I appreciate the feedback. Make sure to report those bugs in the Issue Tracker if you can. Check the bugs already entered since some of these are duplicates (already reported).

Thanks again for trying it out, these bugs will be ironed out over time.

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DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com

[Magic_Al]

It looks amazing. In addition to the can't-shoot-through-windows bug, I had a weird thing happen in Talay: I went into the dark cantina and basically ran around shooting, and as I ran deeper into the darkest part where the pickups are, suddenly teleported back to Kyle's original spawn point on the map!

The issue tracker won't load for me right now.

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----- MagicAl`s DARK FORCES Niche -----
http://homepage.mac.com/anewmanagn/magic_al/

Armed only with a blaster pistol and an intimate knowledge of
Imperial methods, MagicAl prepares to go to lunch....