Posted by karjala on 2022-05-03 21:57:20 EST

Happy May the 4th Everyone!

 

We are excited to announce the release of the Dark Forces Community Patch with over 100 changes. We've been working on it for almost year and this is the first patch released since the game came out in 1995 ! 

 

The goal of this patch is to make Dark Forces accessible to new players in 2022. 

• Many aspects that were confusing or obtuse were rewritten.
• New objectives were added to direct players to their goals
• Switches now receive audio, visual and textual feedback
• Hidden passages are better highlighted with texturing, lighting and powerup changes
• UI feedback is improved (Ex: Code Keys now explicitly direct you to the PDA inventory)
• Puzzle guidance is improved with dynamic signs that display your progress.

 

 

 

Installation

 

The easiest way to install it is through the Dark Forces Launcher  For advanced users you can also manually download it Here 

 

For support - please visit our Discord and go to the #support channel.

 

 

Posted by karjala on 2022-04-21 16:47:37 EST

WDFUSE 2.61 Released

 

An update to the Dark Forces WDFUSE Editor is now available for map developers. It includes multiple improvements and bug-fixes over 2.60. You can download it Here

 

 

Some of the feature highlights are a toggleable ability to see all Wall Lengths

 

 

And you can now change a wall lengths right from the wall editor. Simply change the value and it will automatically change a height of your choice! 

 

 

This will also update the adjoined wall if it exists.

 

There is now a simple way to access all the Resources in the editor from the Menu

 

 

The Resource editor has been enhanced with search filters, automatic texture width mapping, and auto-assignment based on Texture Types (Ex: A Sky sector ceiling would automatically display Sky Textures.)

 

 

 

The Sound editor has been fixed after 25 years, you can now easily convert VOC audio to WAVs !

 

Additionally, you can now test your level by skipping all Cutscenes and briefings as well as automatically saving your project prior to GOBbing.

 

 

Now you have an option to save all your changes without having to press the Commit button. This saves a lot of time!

 

 

The INF editor now supports stops without hard-coded duration and start commands. Additionally there is no a Search and Replace buttons along with Sector look-up.

 

There are many more features listed below. If you get stuck or find a bug post it in the #level-editor channel in our Discord

 

Posted by karjala on 2022-02-12 19:00:35 EST

Dark Forces Launcher

 

The Custom Mission Launcher is ready for release! This tool combines multiple features useful to the Dark Forces Community and will make it a million times easier to play custom missions! 

 

 

Features

• Run Dark Forces base game as well as custom community-made missions
• Automatically update new missions as they are added to DF-21
• Support for the Modern Mouselook mod (available Here )
• Support for modern storefronts such as Steam, GOG, Origin as well as User-specified Custom Folder
• Support for multiple resolutions and aspect ratios (Useful for streaming)
• Video Walkthrough guides for the base game and custom missions
• Ability to restore DosBox settings (All storefronts) and game installs (Steam only).

 

The launcher is developed and hosted by DF-21.net and you can download it Here

Installation

You can read the instructions on our Steam Guide or you can watch the instructional video below. Thank you to PrincessRuri for providing the audio!

 

But suffice to say you download the zip, extract it, then Right Click on it and choose Run With PowerShell . 

And if you get prompted about the Execution Policy simply choose [Y]es

 

Usage

 

The Main Menu appears like this, you can easily press a letter on your keyboard to choose various options.

 

But suffice to say, what you really want is to play custom missions so press letter C !

Here you can switch pages with N or P or simply type a number to start playing a mission! 

To start, we support 50 missions you can find in the Modern Mission Archive . New missions will automatically download for you to enjoy as they become available. 

Go ahead - give Dark Tide 1 a shot! 

 

Bugs

This is the initial release so you are bound to have issues! Please post any problems in the #support channel of our Discord

 

Enjoy Everyone! 

Karjala

Posted by karjala on 2021-11-19 02:26:35 EST

The Force Engine (BETA)

After years in the making Lucius has released a beta build of the The Force Engine . This is a full reverse-engineer of the Dark Forces JEDI engine in C++.

The core game loop is now complete and all the AI, Rendering, Physics, Scripting is implemented. Here is how it looks like from the Main Menu. 

 

Here is a video showing off The Force Engine Engine and UI capabilities. 

 

 

You can also load custom mods that we host here at DF-21 ---> Mods

Here is how they look like in The Force Engine! 

 

You can now render in the classic 200 pixel resolution all the way to 4k! Here is a comparison.

200px (Original resolution)

 

 

1440px (2k) Resolution.

 

 

It really is night and day comparison. Give them a try. 

 

You can even see down the entire GROMAS hallway. No more pixelated silliness! 

 

 

Give the Beta a try and report all bugs here --> Force Engine Bug Forum

 

Keep up with TFE's progress by reading the blog at the Force Engine Dev Blog .

 

Cheers,

Karjala

Posted by karjala on 2021-09-17 07:27:17 EST

WDFUSE 2.6 Announcement  (BETA)

 

Greetings Everyone!

 

It's been a long time coming, but today, we are excited to finally announce the upcoming release of WDFUSE 2.6 , the updated Dark Forces mission editor. You can get the 3D Preview component Here !

This is something that we've been working on this summer and hoping it would spur folks to make some new maps! =)

Background

Dark Forces Utilities and Editor (DFUSE) is a mission editor created by Yves Borckmans , a programmer from Belgium in 1995. Here is the story of how he created the Windows version of DFUSE in 1996.

"Around 1995, when the Dark Forces DEMO came out, I started working on DFUSE (the DOS version, in C). I didn't release it then because it would have been a bit unethical (you could have made levels for the demo, never buying the game). When the full game came out, I did a few quick changes that were necessary (some formats changed slightly), then released DFUSE 1.0 on ftp.cdrom.com This included the first DF specs if I remember correctly. I made a couple of updates if I remember correctly, but nothing much. Later in that year, I also sent a copy of my C code to Brad Oliver, to help him start on the Mac editor (Dark Forge IIRC). Around 1996, I had to learn Delphi for work, so I decided the best way to learn was to use it to make a Windows version of DFUSE, and in a couple of weekends that became WDFUSE 1.0 I released a couple versions, then started preparing to move from Europe to the US to work at LucasArts. I enrolled the help of David Lovejoy, Alexei Novikov and Jereth Kok to help as I was working 2 jobs (my job + LucasArts) + preparing a transatlantic move lol We called ourselves The Code Alliance and they pretty much took over WDFUSE... many other people helped too! "

 

The editor was very popular in the editing community, even making it to various magazines such as this blurb from PC Zone magazine from August 1995 (page 118).

 

 

After Yves left to work for Lucasarts in mid 1996 to work on Jedi Knight, the Dark Alliance continued making updates to WDFUSE until they switched over to editors for Outlaws and Jedi Knight in 1997. And for almost 25 years the code was sitting on their hard drives. When DF-21.net staff started looking for WDFUSE source code earlier this year, the first person we reached out was Yves and unfortunately he lost it in a hard drive crash. The same story was for everyone else we reached out to until eventually, we got a hold of Alexei Novikov who kindly provided us with the source code which can now be found on our GitHub . 

 

The Code

The code itself, is written in Delphi, an Object Pascal for Application Development. It consists of about 100 .PAS Pascal (Source Code) files and the corresponding .DFM Form ( GUI ) files. 

 

The code, unfortunately, was in an unfinished state as development moved to Outlaws and Jedi knight. Worse, it was no longer compatible with modern systems. After a quarter of a century, basic object definitions have changed (Ex: A CHAR in modern Delphi is 2 bytes while it was 1 byte in the 90s). Throughout this summer we got the code to compile successfully on modern systems and patched every issues we discovered. 

 

Not content with doing the bare minimum we've modernized the editor and added many new features. So what does the editor look like now?

 

Preview

With that out of the way, here is what the new version looks like !

 

 

New Features

There are many bug fixes and new features that we've made to WDFUSE. Chief among them is 3D Preview provided for us by The MAZZTer , here is how it works in action!

 

 

Additionally, we've modernized the Editor to allow you to pan the map with the mouse and even zoom with the mousewheel.

 

 

We've added full support for modern storefronts and DosBox. You can now launch the game instantly with your Steam or GOG install!

 

 

We've also made it possible to copy and paste level elements between different instances of WDFUSE.

This means that your friend can COPY their sectors, send you the text representation of them, and you can then PASTE them into your own map! 

 

 

We've updated the container management system for LFDs and GOBs to easily drag and drop items of various types. 

 

 

We now allow you to easily see Palette previews for textures and updated the size limits to 1000% of normal texture sizes. 

 

Download

The WDFUSE 2.6 editor can be downloaded here --> Download

The 3D Preview component can be downloaded here --> Download

Remember, this is a BETA and is bound to have bugs. Please report any issues on our Discord in the #level-editor channel .

 

When reporting issues please do the following..

1. Describe the issue in as much detail as possible. 
2. If you can take a screenshot of a video of the problem
3. Send us your logs (F5) - they should be in the log folder where WDFUSE is installed.

 

Changelist

 

Projects

• Creating a New project will no longer automatically wipe your current working project.
• Opening an existing project will no longer automatically wipe your current working project.
• Added an option to automatically load your previously worked on project when WDFUSE starts.
• Added an option to Save Project As another name.
• Added an option to automatically test your Dark Forces project through DosBox
• Fixed a crash when loading Projects from drives not present on the current computer.
• Ensured that corrupted projects do not cause infinite load loops.
• Increased project path lengths to 255 bytes
• WDFUSE will no longer create dummy projects if you cancel out during the creation screen.

Editor

• Added an ability to pan the map with your Mouse
• Added an ability to zoom with your middle mouse button
• Added Steam Dark Forces support including installations across multiple drives
• Added GOG Dark Forces support.
• WDFUSE will no longer crash when choosing high-precision grid rendering.
• Added an ability to dynamically generate Grid sizes as you zoom.
• Added hotkey hints to most of the commands in the editor menus
• Added an ability to Copy and Paste content between instances of WDFUSE
• Added an ability to Undo and Redo commands.
• Expanded the Edit Menus to include common commands such as Adjoin, Extrude and Clear MultiSelections
• Expanded the Right Click abilities to include more common commands
• Added a new Sector Fill mode to differentiate sectors from Null Space.
• Panning while in Sector Fill modes will no longer re-render the fill values until you are done panning to speed up processing.
• Added easy-to-access Tools and Options buttons to the Main window
• Adjust window sizes to support modern width and heights.
• Added MouseWheel controls to easily switch between Grid while holding the Ctrl key.
• Added MouseWheel controls to easily switch between Layers while holding the Shift key.
• If available, the default layer will now always be 0 instead of the minimum one.
• Added a throttle for Mouse Zooming to prevent multi-grid redrawing.
• Windows now preserve multi-monitor positioning.
• Added X button to close the current window to all popups.
• Fixed level objects not drawing when moving very fast with a mouse.

GOB/LFD Container Managers

• Show the full path of the GOB/LFD during construction
• Allow for full drag and drop of files regardless of chosen folder
• Added an option to exit menus using escape
• Fixed numerous issues with GOB/LFD asset parsing
• Updated filters to include correct assets for each container type (Ex: BMs PLTTs, etc . . .)
• Reworked LFD display to correctly show the asset types and sorted them

Sector/Wall/Vertex/Objects

• Double Clicking will now open the highlighted level component.
• Added a checkbox to many pop-up windows to allow the windows to stay-on-top of the main map editor
• Added a button to the INF editor directly from the sector and wall editors
• Fixed the form not updating properly when highlighting a cell

Assets

• Fixed 3DO profile parsing issues
• Added additional zoom settings for BMs and FMEs and saved the default to the INI file
• Store the Brightness levels in the INI file
• Added Drop-In PAL selection with immediate update of texture assets in the resource picker
• All asset paths have size increased to 255 bytes

Misc

• Fixed and added back the link to the latest Dark Forces Specs File
• Added link to WDFUSE Support Discord
• Added links to DF-21.net
• Added an ability to wipe Editor UNDO cache.
• Added compatibility to Pre 2.5 WDFUSE INI files.
• Added X close window to all windows.
• Added automatic UNDO cache cleanup and added a undo limits to the INI file.
• Added shortcut hints to main menu fields
• Updated memory statistics to handle 64 bit systems
• Changed font to FixedSys to ensure Keys are aligned on all systems
• Muted the Scroll Window Out of Range popups but preserved the limit popups
• INF Font choice will now be preserved between sessions

Logging

• Added WDFUSE Logging to the log folder
• Added detailed INF parsing error logs

Known Issues

• If your map has many INFs it may take a second to UNDO / REDO commands as it recompiles the INF code
• Sector Fill drawing mode is not always accurate at certain scales and may flood the map with the color

 

This was a long project in the making but it means that we now have more time to work on other items for the Dark Forces Community! Expect more posts soon! 

 

- Karjala