DF-21 Forums

[The MAZZTer]

Some people have had problems getting mods from the site to work correctly with Dark Forces purchased over Steam (and this probably applies to D2D as well). Here's a crash course on how to run mods in Steam/D2D Dark Forces.

== HISTORY LESSON, FEEL FREE TO SKIP ==

Most of these mods were made at a time when CD Dark Forces on Windows 9x and DOS were the most popular ways to run it, and it worked fine. Today, things work a bit differently, but Dark Forces does not. LucasArts lost the source code to all of their old projects long ago, thus we are stuck with the same version of Dark Forces that came on CD. For Steam/D2D, LucasArts simply applied a no-CD crack. This no-CD crack is not set up to work if you simply run the mod BAT or dark.exe (not that the game would run well anyway even if it did), we need to use DOSBox instead.

DOSBox is free, open source DOS emulation for a variety of systems, including PC, and is very useful since Windows no longer comes with DOS and instead comes with NTVDM, which is built-in DOS emulation. It is not suitable for playing games, unfortunately, thus the need to use DOSBox instead, which was created with gaming in mind. We don't need to download anything since LucasArts already decided DOSBox was an acceptable solution to the lack of DOS gaming support in Windows, and bundled it with Steam/D2D Dark Forces.

== END OF HISTORY LESSON ==

First step to run a mod is to run DOSBox. You can find it in the Dark Forces folder under "dosbox\dosbox.exe". For the Steam version, this is located in something like "C:\Program Files\Valve Software\Steam\SteamApps\common\dark forces\dosbox\dosbox.exe". Of course if you installed Steam elsewhere you'll have to change the path appropriately, it shouldn't be too hard to find. You'll have to figure out where D2D installed it on your own, as I've never used it.

Once you run DOSBox, you'll get a DOS-style command prompt: Z:\>. You'll want to type the following commands, one per line, and fixing the path the same way you had to find it above (though note it's slightly different now):

mount c "C:\Program Files\Valve Software\Steam\SteamApps\common\dark forces\game"

c:

If you did it right, the prompt will say C:\> instead of Z:\> and there should be no errors on screen. If not, check the path and try it again.

This is what Steam (and I assume D2D) does in order to set up DOSBox to run Dark Forces. Normally, what it does next is to do the command "dark.exe" to launch Dark Forces. BUT instead, type the name of the mod's batch file (ex: filename.bat), and the mod should run instead!

Once you're done playing you should use the in-game menus to quit Dark Forces instead of closing the DOSBox window to avoid the possibility of data loss. Once at the C:\> prompt you can close the window or type "exit" to quit DOSBox.

As a bonus, while at the C:\> prompt, you can type "install" to access a tool for changing your Dark Forces key bindings and other misc settings (there is no need to modify the sound configuration, so don't mess with it).

Feel free to post questions or suggestions in this thread, or even to rewrite parts or the entire guide if you think you can make a better one. I will make sure the best pieces end up in this post to help others.

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