Pre-alpha footage and all, but that looks sort of bad. I prefer The Force Engine.

i don't know if my heart is ready for Star Wars Dark Forces Special Edition

Remaster'd Vader isn't as moving, and I think fullbright colors and weapon lighting aren't implemented yet

I have no complaints with how the original looks or sounds, I think it's glorious, but I would be interested in a version that de-mazed some of the maps 😁

The KEX engine, is a fantastic engine. But it feels like in some ways a mixture between a good Unity engine, and a cheap quick SDL source port in the long run. Sorry for my sour burp, but KEX really irks me in the long run . Even though the engine is pretty spiffy and good. In some ways, it just feels like a cash grab to some extend. And I have nothing against Nightdive Studios. It just feels off, but not as much off, as the Unity engine feels, and heck there are great games made on the Unity engine too. And I assume, this version of the game uses the KEX engine.

I re-watched the teaser announcement and Mon Mothma looks kinda creepy.

Other than that, the remastered art looks okay I guess. But perhaps they should take a more laborious approach to upscaling the cutscenes for the final release, seeing as how they are patched together from live action and hand-drawn characters against CGI backgrounds.

Seems I started to set the topic on a bit of a negative direction. Probably should be a bit more positive, after all at least Dark Forces will finally be available on more platforms. And they have a good relationship with Lucius (The Force Engine's main developer): https://theforceengine.github.io/blog.html

ZellSF wrote on 2023-08-31, 12:30:

Seems I started to set the topic on a bit of a negative direction.

Why, it's perfectly okay to discuss criticisms if they are fair, at least it's better than mindlessly cheering at anything because nostalgia.

I'm a fan of Dark Forces, which to me is the best Star Wars thing -- and I guess part of the reason why I liked Rogue One more than anything else in nu Star Wars (although it is objectively a good film). But I'm perfectly aware of the fact that the remastered version, however good it might turn out, will never be the same thing as playing the DOS version when I first discovered it. Of course I'd like the remaster be as good as possible, though.

I remember seeing Dark Forces on my mate's PC, when it was released. It was amazing, it really looked, sounded, and felt like Star Wars. But for some reason, even though I loved good Doom style games, when I got my first PC a couple of years later, I never picked up Dark Forces, so I probably only played through a couple of levels, on my mate's PC.

How good is the game, really? I placed Dark Forces 2, Jedi Academy, and Jedi Outcast, and all were fun, so is Dark Forces still fun to play today?

When you think about it, Star Wars fans are really lucky, video-game-wise. There have been a million games based on the franchise, and some of them are excellent. Star Trek fans had far less games, but still some very good ones. Doctor Who fans have never gotten a good video game. Not one. And Blake's 7 (my favourite science-fiction program, which not many people remember nowadays) never received a single game.

leileilol wrote on 2023-08-29, 22:15:

Remaster'd Vader isn't as moving

Yeah, the much lower resolution but more animated Vader, from the original cutscene, looks much better. It's strange that NDS decided to show that in the trailer, as surely whoever put the trailer together must have thought that it was not at all an improvement.

The cons (in my mind) with the KEX engine, is that the word remaster for the FPS games, they have made a "remaster" of (if we take it grammatically). Is a fallacy, since they do NOT use the source code. From the original games. Neither Quake 1 and 2 "remasters" and for that matter Blood , PowerSlave: Exhumed. Rise of The Triad , heck even their version of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (where they indeed had acces to the source code) . Which all use the KEX engine. It is not the game itself, or them remaking them is irritating, heck not even the KEX engine. Which I think is a brilliant engine. And I did mention I have NOTHING against Nightdive Studios at all.
To me a remaster is, where they use the source material, whether it is in films, such as the Godfather trilogy, where everything was cleaned up, and a LOT extra material was cleaned up too. And shown as extras. Or when it comes to games, then they take the source code, if available. And build from there, or else it is actually a remake. As far I know. One of my old dreams, is that the holder of the source code to One Must fall 2097, releases the old source code to a selected few(or just plain old releases the source code). That will then perhaps recode into pure C, or some one or more people gets down , and reverse engineers/disassemble the source code. So it can be ported to other machines and systems. So I am NOT saying bad things about Nightdive Studios, or the KEX engine. I am saying, thanks to the legal stuff, and shenanigans. Then they do "easy" way ( I know very well it is NOT easy). And uses their inhouse engine which is KEX.

Never a fan of any "remaster" or "HD remake". It might look better but it could never replace the feeling of first excitement of playing any original game. Just my opinion.

WolverineDK wrote on 2023-09-01, 15:07:

The cons (in my mind) with the KEX engine, is that the word remaster for the FPS games, they have made a "remaster" of (if we take it grammatically). Is a fallacy, since they do NOT use the source code. From the original games. Neither Quake 1 and 2 "remasters" and for that matter Blood , PowerSlave: Exhumed. Rise of The Triad , heck even their version of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (where they indeed had acces to the source code) . Which all use the KEX engine. It is not the game itself, or them remaking them is irritating, heck not even the KEX engine. Which I think is a brilliant engine. And I did mention I have NOTHING against Nightdive Studios at all.
To me a remaster is, where they use the source material, whether it is in films, such as the Godfather trilogy, where everything was cleaned up, and a LOT extra material was cleaned up too. And shown as extras. Or when it comes to games, then they take the source code, if available. And build from there, or else it is actually a remake. As far I know. One of my old dreams, is that the holder of the source code to One Must fall 2097, releases the old source code to a selected few(or just plain old releases the source code). That will then perhaps recode into pure C, or some one or more people gets down , and reverse engineers/disassemble the source code. So it can be ported to other machines and systems. So I am NOT saying bad things about Nightdive Studios, or the KEX engine. I am saying, thanks to the legal stuff, and shenanigans. Then they do "easy" way ( I know very well it is NOT easy). And uses their inhouse engine which is KEX.

Interesting point there, I've never thought about it before. So Fallout 1 with high resolution patch is a remaster, while DarkXL is a remake, am I correct?

Malik wrote on 2023-09-02, 06:59:

Never a fan of any "remaster" or "HD remake". It might look better but it could never replace the feeling of first excitement of playing any original game. Just my opinion.

Have been enjoying The Force Engine myself lately, mostly with my four years old daughter on my lap, I say I enjoy the remake so much. The polygon is hi-res, but the textures are low-res and unfiltered. Sprites remain sprites, while cut scenes, while extrapolated to higher resolution, still look very crude. But TFE remake's biggest attractions to me are mouselook and the ability to save your games.

First, mouselook. Perhaps it's just me, but once I play an FPS with mouselook, I just can't go back to the old arrow keys. Heck, I even customized MDK's keyboard controls (thankfully they are customizable) to resemble mouselook and WASD, despite no Y axis available. Second, the ability to save game. I have to admit that Dark Forces is too hard for me, that the reason I've never finished the game on the first place (gave up on Moff Rebus level) is because I couldn't save. With saved games, the game has become more manageable. Well, to each his own I guess.

Now, if only there were remakes for Their Finest Hour and Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe, I'd be a happy camper. 😀

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2023-09-02, 08:34:

WolverineDK wrote on 2023-09-01, 15:07:

The cons (in my mind) with the KEX engine, is that the word remaster for the FPS games, they have made a "remaster" of (if we take it grammatically). Is a fallacy, since they do NOT use the source code. From the original games. Neither Quake 1 and 2 "remasters" and for that matter Blood , PowerSlave: Exhumed. Rise of The Triad , heck even their version of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (where they indeed had acces to the source code) . Which all use the KEX engine. It is not the game itself, or them remaking them is irritating, heck not even the KEX engine. Which I think is a brilliant engine. And I did mention I have NOTHING against Nightdive Studios at all.
To me a remaster is, where they use the source material, whether it is in films, such as the Godfather trilogy, where everything was cleaned up, and a LOT extra material was cleaned up too. And shown as extras. Or when it comes to games, then they take the source code, if available. And build from there, or else it is actually a remake. As far I know. One of my old dreams, is that the holder of the source code to One Must fall 2097, releases the old source code to a selected few(or just plain old releases the source code). That will then perhaps recode into pure C, or some one or more people gets down , and reverse engineers/disassemble the source code. So it can be ported to other machines and systems. So I am NOT saying bad things about Nightdive Studios, or the KEX engine. I am saying, thanks to the legal stuff, and shenanigans. Then they do "easy" way ( I know very well it is NOT easy). And uses their inhouse engine which is KEX.

Interesting point there, I've never thought about it before. So Fallout 1 with high resolution patch is a remaster, while DarkXL is a remake, am I correct?

As far I can gather, then yes DarkXL is a remake . But I consider and I call both The Force Engine, and Strife: Veteran Edition a remaster. Because with Strife: Veteran Edition, they used Chocolate Doom and reverse engineered Strife too. Since the source code has been lost.

Kerr Avon wrote on 2023-08-31, 23:57:

I remember seeing Dark Forces on my mate's PC, when it was released. It was amazing, it really looked, sounded, and felt like Star Wars.

That was my first impression of the original game as well (I found the demo sometime in mid-2000s and played it in DOSBox). It basically transports you inside Star Wars -- and that with me not being that much of a Star Wars fan in the first place.

Kerr Avon wrote on 2023-08-31, 23:57:

How good is the game, really?

I haven't played to completion, only reached I think level 10 (Imperial City), but I had fun with it, for the most part. The constant change of scenery and intricate level design is a very fresh take compared to the many Doom clones, and even Doom itself.

WolverineDK wrote on 2023-09-02, 12:04:

As far I can gather, then yes DarkXL is a remake . But I consider and I call both The Force Engine, and Strife: Veteran Edition a remaster. Because with Strife: Veteran Edition, they used Chocolate Doom and reverse engineered Strife too. Since the source code has been lost.

I'm not sure why you guys brought up DarkXL, it's an abandoned project which is the predecessor of The Force Engine, and I think it never reached the stage where it was actually playable. I mixed this up with DaggerXL, sorry.

As far as I'm concerned, The Force Engine is correctly classified as an engine recreation, in this case, based on careful reverse-engineering of the original binary executable (although other engine recreations may be based on external observation of a game's behaviour, for example). As such, it acts as a regular source port, but without actually being built from the source code. There is nothing specific that would make it a "remake" more than any Doom source port is a remake, for example. I guess the Night Dive version could be called a remake, or I guess "recreation" also goes, but not of the same variety as TFE, because of the different engine.

As I said elsewhere, the problem with the term "remaster" is in that it's been borrowed from the realm of completely different media, namely music records and films. Both types allow somewhat different kinds of manipulations with them compared to video games -- for example, you could take Dark Forces and replace all character/enemy sprites with higher resolution versions, and it would still be technically the same game, whereas should you reshoot a film with different actors using the same script and even the same sets, I guess these would be two different films? And certainly no one would call the second film a "remaster" of the first one. Basically, a remaster is supposed to improve the quality of a work, but there is a big difference between what constitutes improved quality of music and films on the one hand, and of video games on the other.

But generally, I'd expect a video game remaster to retain the original gameplay mechanics intact, with possible QoL improvements, while significantly upping the visuals, for example redrawing all art in a 2D game in higher resolution. Something like StarCraft Remastered or Command & Conquer Remastered Collection. The problem (of sorts) here is, that in the past decades there have been various official re-releases that did exactly this, sometimes appearing just a couple of years after their original counterparts came out, but none were ever called remasters, likely because the term wasn't in fashion yet.

On the other hand, one probably has to accept for a fact that publishers today use the term "remaster" in a very loose fashion. Personally I wouldn't call either Strife Veteran Edition or Rise of the Triad Ludicrous Edition remasters -- they're just source ports with some added bells and whistles plus some extra content (well, in the case of Strife it is, again, not a source port but a source-port accurate* engine recreation).

*that's the term lucius uses for TFE

The 90s were such a great time for Star Wars games. We had Dark Forces, X-Wing, Tie-Fighter, etc. These games came out at the perfect time too imo. The original trilogy was over and the prequels hadn't come out yet, so it gave fans more Star Wars media to get excited about. Because there weren't any recent movies, the devs didn't have to design their game around a tie-in, which often takes away from the game. Also, this was a time when most people had a Sound Blaster or a compatible card. Because the Star Wars music and sound effects are so iconic, I think these were important for immersion.

WolverineDK wrote on 2023-09-01, 15:07:

The cons (in my mind) with the KEX engine, is that the word remaster for the FPS games, they have made a "remaster" of (if we take it grammatically). Is a fallacy, since they do NOT use the source code. From the original games.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I alway thought that KEX engine is sort of a "middle man" between original game code and some modern stuff. So you are still playing the original game, maybe a little bit tweaked, but with modern things added on on top. Release of Quake 2 remaster source codes even states: "This codebase is a combination of the separate game modules that were part of the original game: baseq2, ctf, rogue, and xatrix."

MrFlibble: I still consider a carefully reverse engineered engine recreation a remaster. Cause it is working with a "source", even it is only the Dark Forces binary. The same goes to Strife Veteran Edition(if you use a source port and people have reverse engineered the original Strife, then it is in my mind anyway a "remaster") . But Rise of the Triad Ludicrous Edition is using the KEX engine. If it used the source code of the original game, I would consider it a remaster. Again, I am not saying it is bad.

sledge: you are basically saying, that the KEX engine is an "emulation layer" ?

MrFlibble wrote on 2023-09-02, 21:08:

I'm not sure why you guys brought up DarkXL, it's an abandoned project which is the predecessor of The Force Engine, and I think it never reached the stage where it was actually playable.

Soon after posting this (I went to sleep) I realised that I was wrong and mixed up DarkXL and DaggerXL (lucius's Daggerfall project which was abandoned as well). I believe DarkXL was pretty much playable, but I never tried it. It would still be an engine recreation, although likely miles less accurate than The Force Engine, as far as I know.

WolverineDK wrote on 2023-09-03, 12:10:

MrFlibble: I still consider a carefully reverse engineered engine recreation a remaster. Cause it is working with a "source", even it is only the Dark Forces binary. The same goes to Strife Veteran Edition(if you use a source port and people have reverse engineered the original Strife, then it is in my mind anyway a "remaster") . But Rise of the Triad Ludicrous Edition is using the KEX engine. If it used the source code of the original game, I would consider it a remaster. Again, I am not saying it is bad.

Following what I said in my previous post, I'm not sure if "remaster" is a term that serves any useful purpose at all. I mean, if a community-based source port of an open source game like Doom adds features such as high resolution support, coloured lighting, texture filtering, mouselook and whatever (which is essentially what Strife Veteran Edition does), does it also count as a "remaster" to you? If yes, then what are the criteria which will distinguish a remaster from a regular source port? Wouldn't you then have to designate a large number of community made ports as remasters?

Back in the 90s, early 3D games such as Tomb Raider, Descent and Scorched Planet (and even Blood and Shadow Warrior) received free patches for 3D accelerated video cards of the time. These would enable hardware acceleration, high resolutions, HiColor graphics, texture filtering and possibly some other features like coloured lighting and such. Do we now have to call these updates "remasters" based on the extended feature set and the undeniable improvements to graphics quality that they provided? I think not. On the other hand, how are these updates essentially different from modern source ports or re-releases of 90s games such as Strife Veteran Edition?

As for Rise of the Triad Ludicrous Edition, at this point I'm pretty much confused about what the KEX engine does and how it relates to the games that use it in Night Dive releases. It does not seem reasonable to think that this version did not use the original source code of ROTT, because there was no reason not to. So I guess KEX provides some kind of framework for porting the code to modern systems, like support for video and audio output, controls methods and such? I don't know for certain, but I would be very surprised if it turned out that this release was not based on the DOS ROTT code at all but instead recreated the game on the KEX engine by some other means.

If Ludicrous Edition is indeed based on the original ROTT code, then it is a source port, regardless of what role the KEX engine played (whether it indeed only serves as a layer for modern hardware compatibility, or possibly offers other features like its own renderer instead of the original ROTT one).

I'm willing to consider projects that are based on reverse engineered/reconstructed source code a type of source ports (but it needs to be explicitly noted that the code has been reconstructed, not officially released), to better distinguish them from other engine recreations which often tend to be less accurate in reproducing the original game mechanics.

As for the term "remake", I believe it is pretty vague too, but I would call remakes games that have been completely remade from scratch, as opposed to engine recreations which, like source ports, use original game data to run. In the 2000s, there were plenty of "retro remakes" of games from old platforms like ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and the like which did exactly that: the code was written anew and new art was created, taking advantage of the 256 colour and higher palettes of PCs.

MrFlibble: You are a cool human being 😀 we agree on many things, and yes I admit. That some "remasters" are source ports. Others are indeed remakes. semantics are probably what some people can be confused about. But as you mentioned "retro remakes". Well those are indeed remakes 😀 And bloody hell, I hate the buzzwords , which is what the whole remaster, remake and so forth are becoming. And the patches are not remasters, as far I see them as. Other times, certain source codes are in a legal limbo, which blows. To go a bit off topic. Then the source to Witchaven 1 and 2 plus Tekwar has been leaked for quite a few years. Even though Wikipedia has not mentioned it, but it is on the "leaker´´s" website and on github 😀

WolverineDK wrote on 2023-09-02, 12:04:

Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman wrote on 2023-09-02, 08:34:

WolverineDK wrote on 2023-09-01, 15:07:

The cons (in my mind) with the KEX engine, is that the word remaster for the FPS games, they have made a "remaster" of (if we take it grammatically). Is a fallacy, since they do NOT use the source code. From the original games. Neither Quake 1 and 2 "remasters" and for that matter Blood , PowerSlave: Exhumed. Rise of The Triad , heck even their version of Turok: Dinosaur Hunter (where they indeed had acces to the source code) . Which all use the KEX engine. It is not the game itself, or them remaking them is irritating, heck not even the KEX engine. Which I think is a brilliant engine. And I did mention I have NOTHING against Nightdive Studios at all.
To me a remaster is, where they use the source material, whether it is in films, such as the Godfather trilogy, where everything was cleaned up, and a LOT extra material was cleaned up too. And shown as extras. Or when it comes to games, then they take the source code, if available. And build from there, or else it is actually a remake. As far I know. One of my old dreams, is that the holder of the source code to One Must fall 2097, releases the old source code to a selected few(or just plain old releases the source code). That will then perhaps recode into pure C, or some one or more people gets down , and reverse engineers/disassemble the source code. So it can be ported to other machines and systems. So I am NOT saying bad things about Nightdive Studios, or the KEX engine. I am saying, thanks to the legal stuff, and shenanigans. Then they do "easy" way ( I know very well it is NOT easy). And uses their inhouse engine which is KEX.

Interesting point there, I've never thought about it before. So Fallout 1 with high resolution patch is a remaster, while DarkXL is a remake, am I correct?

As far I can gather, then yes DarkXL is a remake . But I consider and I call both The Force Engine, and Strife: Veteran Edition a remaster. Because with Strife: Veteran Edition, they used Chocolate Doom and reverse engineered Strife too. Since the source code has been lost.

I see.

Well when it goes to Doom and derivatives, I stick with GZDoom, for obvious reason.

Ensign Nemo wrote on 2023-09-02, 21:31:

The 90s were such a great time for Star Wars games. We had Dark Forces, X-Wing, Tie-Fighter, etc. These games came out at the perfect time too imo. The original trilogy was over and the prequels hadn't come out yet, so it gave fans more Star Wars media to get excited about. Because there weren't any recent movies, the devs didn't have to design their game around a tie-in, which often takes away from the game. Also, this was a time when most people had a Sound Blaster or a compatible card. Because the Star Wars music and sound effects are so iconic, I think these were important for immersion.

Even Rebel Assault sold pretty well despite its mediocre gameplay. In any case, my best Star Wars experience during that time was TIE Fighter. It was the game that made me root for the Empire.