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Emon
Ree-Yees
Joined: 10 Aug 2007
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 Posted: Sep 01, 2009 19:21 Post subject: PR campaign |
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Has anyone given thought to working towards establishing knowledge of DarkXL outside of this community? The Dark Forces series always had a small community compared to its counterparts such as Doom and Quake, but I'm willing to bet there are plenty of people out there who would show interest in the project.
A most basic method of garnering attention would be to go around to all the Star Wars gaming forum and plug the best screenshots (preferably of user made levels!) possible with a short, concise description of the project.
I'm not talking about "reviving" Dark Forces so much as letting people know a community, and a new engine, exist. The target audience would be people who have played DF or JK in the past as well as diehard Star Wars fans.
What are people's thoughts on this?
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Jimmy Chicken
Gamorrean
Joined: 09 Dec 2003
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lucius
DarkXL Developer
Joined: 17 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Sep 01, 2009 20:29 Post subject: |
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If anyone has any suggestions of where to post and how to get people interested, don't hesitate to make suggestions. If any of you want to do this, feel free to link to the screenshots on the blog - there are a lot there to choose from.
Thanks for the suggestion, Emon. 
Edit - I was typing up my post as Jimmy Chicken was posting. 
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DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com |
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GreggD
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
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| Posted: Sep 06, 2009 03:14 Post subject: |
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Well, you know I've linked this site to posts I've made at Giantbomb, though I can't get away with posting it in the off-topic forum. The mods will move it to the game's page, but quite frankly, no one is going to see it there. If you really want it to get noticed, it needs to be in OT. But like I said, that's virtually impossible, unless I sneak it into a blog post...
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"If they were created by man, then we can solve them by man." -Tim Sabien
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GreggD
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
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| Posted: Sep 09, 2009 20:23 Post subject: |
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So, I finally figured out a way to get my advertising past the mods. You can find it here.
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"If they were created by man, then we can solve them by man." -Tim Sabien
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lucius
DarkXL Developer
Joined: 17 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Sep 09, 2009 20:37 Post subject: |
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I noticed that for DaggerXL, some people put the project link in their signature. I actually get views at the wordpress blog everyday from that.
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DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com |
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GreggD
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
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| Posted: Sep 12, 2009 16:01 Post subject: |
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Looks like the whole Dark Forces/Jedi Knight series is coming to Steam. I may have to buy DF so I can test DarkXL on it. If it works, I'm going to post a link to your Wordpress blog in the forums.
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"If they were created by man, then we can solve them by man." -Tim Sabien
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lucius
DarkXL Developer
Joined: 17 Feb 2008
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Gez
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
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Tsophika
Gamorrean
Joined: 14 Jan 2008
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| Posted: Sep 12, 2009 18:39 Post subject: |
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Not on Steam though. I bought Loom and The Dig and both work natively on Windows 7 64-bit.
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GreggD
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
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The MAZZTer
Death Star
Joined: 25 Sep 2003
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Gez
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
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| Posted: Sep 12, 2009 22:04 Post subject: |
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GreggD wrote:
The only thing is there is some sort of linked DRM with old games on Steam. From what I understand, though, the old Doom and Heretic games run okay on Doomsday Engine from the Steam apps sub-folders.
ZDoom (and its derivatives GZDoom and Skulltag) can also find the data from the Steam location. It's nothing more complicated than adding one more path to check for when initializing the game.
That said, even source ports that did not implement that are able to work with the Steam dooms. All they need is the .WAD file, and you can copy or move it to another folder.
To give a more recent example, if you download from id software the latest Doom 3 and Return to Castle Wolfenstein patches, you can extract from them the "normal" exes -- these patches do not actually patch the executables, they merely overwrite it. So you can use these patches to replace the Steam-modified exes of these two games by the retail version, and the games work.
GreggD wrote:
The only thing is, you can't transplant the games into another folder. I tried it with Commander Keen, which didn't work at all.
Odd. I'll have to check that later. I haven't tried the CK games nor Wolf 3D, but all the other games I bought when they were discounting the Id Super Pack worked outside of their Steam directory when using source ports and/or retail versions of the exes.
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GreggD
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
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The MAZZTer
Death Star
Joined: 25 Sep 2003
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| Posted: Sep 13, 2009 00:58 Post subject: |
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Yeah that would seem to be the only conclusion I can come to. They're just sandboxed DOS games, moving them doesn't change how they would look in the sandbox.
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http://www.mzzt.net/ | I am a respectable admin with a respectable sig. |
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GreggD
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
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| Posted: Sep 17, 2009 15:19 Post subject: |
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The Jedi Knight pack is now on Steam. I'm going to try and finagle a copy of Dark Forces to test this out.
*edit* Looks like I'll be getting the pack tonight.
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"If they were created by man, then we can solve them by man." -Tim Sabien
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GreggD
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
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| Posted: Sep 20, 2009 16:12 Post subject: |
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So, the thread I posted in the Steam forums has about 32 views, I think, and three replies thus far. All three users who replied are really digging it.
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"If they were created by man, then we can solve them by man." -Tim Sabien
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lucius
DarkXL Developer
Joined: 17 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Sep 20, 2009 18:58 Post subject: |
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The DarkXL blog got over 1100 views yesterday. I don't think this many people have ever shown interest in DarkXL! I guess a lot of the problem before was the difficulty in obtaining a legit copy.
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DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com |
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GreggD
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
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| Posted: Sep 22, 2009 02:21 Post subject: |
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It's contagious! Check out the last post in that thread...
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"If they were created by man, then we can solve them by man." -Tim Sabien
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Gez
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
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| Posted: Sep 22, 2009 10:07 Post subject: |
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How about a "project status" block for the DarkXL blog as well? (Or a new release.)
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lucius
DarkXL Developer
Joined: 17 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Sep 22, 2009 17:07 Post subject: |
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I'll put up a project status after the next release. I was actually working on getting it out yesterday but I didn't have time to get it done. Soon.
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DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com |
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tnoyce
Ree-Yees
Joined: 20 Sep 2009
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| Posted: Sep 26, 2009 14:45 Post subject: DarkXL and Steam |
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DarkXL does appear to work correctly with the version of Dark Forces distributed with the Steam Jedi Knight Collection.
The only issue I've found, is that you will most likely have to either change the install folder, since DarkXL doesn't seem to process folder names with embedded spaces correctly, or copy the DarkXL files into the folder where the dark.exe file is located.
When I initially installed the collection, the exe for this game was put into "C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\dark forces\game" folder.
When I attempted to use this path in the config file for DarkXL, it did not parse correctly. (I have DarkXL in a different folder). It either failed to load, or displayed errors which indicated that the GOB files were not found, due to an invalid path.
I copied the DarkXL files into the install folder mentioned above, and specified ./ as the path in the configuration file for DarkXL. It appears to work now.
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Tim Noyce |
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Gez
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
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| Posted: Sep 26, 2009 18:22 Post subject: |
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DaggerXL has the same issue. A solution is to use the truncated MS-DOS names.
"C:\Program Files(x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\dark forces\game" becomes "C:\PROGRA~1\STEAM\STEAMA~1\COMMON\DARKFO~1\GAME" (or maybe PROGRA~2 if you have another directory with a name starting by "Program Files").
You can use the command "dir /X" in a command window to know for sure the truncated name of directories and files. Any file that has a name longer than 8.3 or a name that features characters that would be invalid for a file name in a FAT filesystem have an associated truncated name. "Program Files" is both too long and with an invalid character.
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lucius
DarkXL Developer
Joined: 17 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Sep 26, 2009 19:55 Post subject: |
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This will be fixed in the next build for both projects. I should have fixed it a long time ago.
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DarkXL....http://darkxl.wordpress.com |
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GreggD
Gamorrean
Joined: 05 May 2008
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| Posted: Sep 26, 2009 21:02 Post subject: |
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lucius wrote:
This will be fixed in the next build for both projects. I should have fixed it a long time ago.
Yeah, thanks for answering my query on that, Lucius. It'll really help broaden the user-base.
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"If they were created by man, then we can solve them by man." -Tim Sabien
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