The Force Engine (Jedi Engine Port/Replacement)

[Kyle07]

Thank you for all the efforts for this source port. Its like an remaster. :) Nice seeing Dark Forces getting so much love after all these years and even after some attempts in other source port(s) for this game.

 

I played this game for the first time in 2009 or 2010, when the steam version was released. Officially I shouldn't be able to purchase the game, since it was banned in Germany. But this was discovered some years later around 2014 or 2015. ^^

 

To be honest, I would like to play the game again. Whether again DOSDox or with this nice Source Port, when it will be done. :)

 

I think I like DOOM so much, because Dark Forces and Jedi Knight have a lot of common with the id software games.

[lucius]

It has been a while since the last update on the GPU renderer. I have been finishing up sprite clipping, handling 3D objects properly with vertical portal clipping, fixing sky adjoins (which were a pain), and general sky rendering. The GPU renderer will initially have two options for skies: 1) use a cylindrical mapping with a blend towards a solid color at the top and bottom (note cylindrical mapping to avoid too much warping of buildings since city backgrounds are somewhat common), or 2) use the same projection as the software renderer. (2) will look odd when you can look straight up, so that option will be best paired with a lower pitch limit.

 

The GPU renderer will have a few options here, actual vanilla (45 degrees), low (60 degrees, about what vanilla feels like), medium (~75 degrees or so), and maximum (almost straight up). Lower settings will preserve the look of sprites better while avoiding motion sickness when looking up and down but higher values give the player a lot more freedom to look around.

 

In terms of sky rendering, the current version of the renderer still uses 8-bit emulation, which includes palette changes for flashing and other effects. For that reason, I decided to go with an 4x4 ordered dither to blend between the sky texture and solid color. So the end result is an 8-bit value which later goes through the palette look up. The dither occurs in world space so that it matches fairly well with the already dithered skies in many cases.

 

Anyway, here are a number of images that show the sky rendering in both custom and vanilla levels. The GPU renderer is used in all of the screenshots.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited July 14, 2022 by lucius

[lucius]

Version 0.92

GPU Renderer Beta Release

Version 0.92 has finally been released and can be downloaded from: https://theforceengine.github.io/downloads.html

 

The main feature for the version 0.92 build of The Force Engine is the Beta release of the GPU Renderer. The GPU Renderer is a port of the software Jedi Renderer to the GPU utilizing OpenGL 3.3+ hardware.

 

 

 

   

GPU Renderer

The GPU Renderer has several advantages to help make playing Dark Forces (and eventually Outlaws) smoother using TFE.

• Greatly improved performance when using well supported GPUs - several orders of magnitude improvement on newer GPUs at higher resolutions.
• Greatly improved performance scaling with resolution.
• Perspective correct pitch - meaning no more distortion when looking up and down.
• The ability to look almost straight up and down, depending on settings.
• Cylinderical sky projection to avoid distortion when looking up and down, though the vanilla sky projection is avaiable.
• Perspective correct 3DO rendering - this fixes the texture swim / distortion when using 3DO geometry, which makes 3D objects used as architecture - such as bridges - much more seamless.
• The ability to disable autoaim if desired. This last option isn't dependent on the GPU Renderer, but was included anyway.

Known Bugs

• The GPU Renderer is still considered Beta and will have bugs. Here are the known bugs so far. These bugs will be fixed for version 1.0.
• The Escape Menu does not show the proper grayscale background when using the GPU Renderer (this still works correct for the CPU renderers).
• There is still some minor incorrect sprite clipping.
• There is at least one place where intersecting adjoins (portals) cause HOM.
• There is occassional z-fighting due to a part size bug.

Version 1.0

The next step, towards version 1.0, is to finish the Quick Save feature. Currently it is roughly 50% complete and I plan on finishing it up next before getting back to GPU Renderer bugs. Once that is complete, TFE will be feature complete for version 1.0. After that I will spend a few weeks going through the bugs, especially any crash or accuracy related bugs, in order to finish version 1.0.

 

New Features

 

Renderer Select

To change renderers, go to Configuration in the Escape Menu, and then select Graphics. From there find Renderer, which you can change from Software to Hardware.

 

Pitch Limit

Because pitch is now perspective correct, looking up and down can cause sprites to seem flat. To help with this, TFE can limit the pitch to fixed amounts - to give your the freedom to look up and down without distortion but not make the sprites look too flat. The default is Vanilla+ (60 degrees). The Maximum setting allows you to look up nearly 90 degrees.

 

Sky Mode

By default the GPU Renderer will use a Cylindrical projection to avoid sky distortion when looking up and down. This feels more natural than vanilla projection but looks different. If you want the game to look closer to vanilla, you should choose the Vanilla option here.

 

Cylindrical

 

Vanilla

 

Autoaim

Autoaim is very useful when looking up and down is clunky. But when you can look up and down freely, it can get in the way. So TFE now allows you to enable or disable autoaim in the Game settings.

 

Videos

 

 

 

Edited October 31, 2022 by lucius

[Wyrmwood]

Wow this looks really really good. Bought Dark Forces 1 and 2 for PC a few years back after playing the console versions when they released. Obviously wanted to start with the first one, played a few stages but the dosbox version felt very dated and I'm pretty sure there was no music, dynamic or otherwise. Ended up playing the second one instead. This though I can fully get behind, those vids looked great. Glad to see I didn't waste the $2 I spent on Steam! Looking forward to trying this out and may the force be with you.

[HorseJockey]

Really glad to see this. I loved the XL Engine and was really excited to see you start The Force Engine. I have played through a couple of times with the latest version and am impressed with the work you have put in. Can't wait to get my hands on that map editor, it looks fantastic! Keep up the great work.

[irukanjji]

Hi Lucius, thanks for your hard work, i´ve been tracking you since DarkXL, and TFE, its a most welcome port for Dark Forces fans, like me; a question, in the render settings, wich one i pick for a opengl render ?

[lucius]

43 minutes ago, irukanjji said:

Hi Lucius, thanks for your hard work, i´ve been tracking you since DarkXL, and TFE, its a most welcome port for Dark Forces fans, like me; a question, in the render settings, wich one i pick for a opengl render ?

The post points out the features and how to toggle them, look under Renderer Select above. You can also reference https://theforceengine.github.io/2022/10/30/version0_92.html - which is basically the same as the forum post.

 

From the Escape Menu, go to Configuration > Graphics > Renderer > Classic (Hardware).

 

I should probably rename it to just GPU Renderer or something to make it more clear. Originally I was planning on having a classic versus modern GPU Renderer - but it seems better to do that with options instead.

Edited November 2, 2022 by lucius

[irukanjji]

Thanks a lot m8

[lucius]

Version 0.93 - Save System Release

The main feature for the version 0.93 build of The Force Engine is the Save System - and Quick Saves. Most of the game and level state is serialized, so that games can be saved and then later continued. It tracks the “Agent” data, which can be reconstructed if needed so that you can continue the game, abort and play as normal.

 

The original lives/checkpoint system is still there, the save system preserves that data and does not interfere with the core game systems. Using saves and quicksaves is an optional feature and can be completely ignored if desired. When the game is saved, metadata is preserved - such as the time and date, a small screenshot, the name of the level, and all mods being used. Using this, it is possible to directly load a save even if you were playing a mod, the system will automatically load the same zips and gobs.

 

 

* Save System / Quicksaves

* Fixed a “random” crash caused by invalid addressing in the sound system.

* Fixed an issue with level progress not being preserved if you exited immediately after completing a level.

* Fixed pitch issues with turrets, they should look much more accurate now.

* Fixed mouse speed issues with the in-game menus.

* Improved the responsiveness of the PDA menu.

* And many other minor fixes.

 

 

[liPillON]

is there a way to tell the engine where the user data should go, instead of "%USERPROFILE%\Documents\TheForceEngine"?

 

[lucius]

3 hours ago, Delfino Furioso said:

is there a way to tell the engine where the user data should go, instead of "%USERPROFILE%\Documents\TheForceEngine"?

 

Not currently, but a portable option is planned.

[Yhe1]

Is Texture filtering now available? I prefer the filtered textures. Thanks!

[lucius]

1 hour ago, Yhe1 said:

Is Texture filtering now available? I prefer the filtered textures. Thanks!

There won't be texture filtering support until the true color mode has been implemented - otherwise, the filtering has to be done manually in the shader, which can be slow when using trilinear filtering + anisotropic filtering.

True color support is planned sometime after version 1.0 is released; version 1.0 is now feature complete and I am focusing on bugs for version 1.0.

Edited November 24, 2022 by lucius

[lucius]

Towards Version 1.0

 

I have been busy going through outstanding bugs, fixing issues caused by the Save System, and working on general stability. Now that things have settled, it is time to focus on version 1.0. To that end, I collected a list of tasks that need to be completed - in the form of a new post on the blog: https://theforceengine.github.io/2022/11/27/torwards-1.0.html.

 

The plan is to update that post as we go so everyone can see the progress toward the 1.0 release.

[HorseJockey]

27 minutes ago, lucius said:

The plan is to update that post as we go so everyone can see the progress toward the 1.0 release.

Awesome news, you are a champ. Keep up the amazing work!

 

Edit: Looking forward to the AI adjustments to Boba Fett!

Edited November 27, 2022 by HorseJockey

[taufan99]

Good job on the progress! As the port is reaching 1.0 and the Dark Forces side is reaching completion, I hope this gives a way for the Outlaws side so that its development goes more like a walk in a breeze.

[Wyrmwood]

Finally had time to check this out, it's fantastic. I'd forgotten about the lives thing, thought something went wrong when my character re-spawned. Adding quick-saves so I can play with only 1 life was great addition. Thanks so much for this, I'm more than happy with the current release but looking forward to 1.0. Great work!

[lucius]

Version 0.94 Released

The release goes a long way to finishing in-game UI: the floor numbers in the PDA map are now properly rendered, confirmation prompts and hotkeys in the Escape menu for quitting or aborting/advancing now work, the background and grayscale effect when the Escape menu is open when using the GPU Renderer is now correct, HUD end caps are now rendered when moving the Hud away from the screen, HUD scaling works correctly when using the GPU renderer.

 

The System UI was improved as well - instructions in the Input menu, the ability to unbind inputs, edit boxes and +/- buttons for greater control when adjusting the HUD position and scale.

 

And finally, a game option was added to make Boba Fett try to face the player more often when attacking. This defaults to "off" but can be enabled to make the AI behave better.

 

The release also fixes some bugs, including a crash bug when loading a quick save while in the middle of a cutscene using the hotkey.

 

Next Steps

The next major release will be version 0.95, which will focus on fixing the remaining GPU renderer bugs as well as a few software renderer issues. That will be followed by version 0.96 which will deal with any remaining AI/collision issues (not much left here, mostly more validation and a turret collision bug in some mods, like Dark Tide 2). And then we will skip ahead to version 1 Release Candidates. (Version 0.96 will be the last version before the release candidates due to misalignment with the versioning scheme).

[liPillON]

https://github.com/luciusDXL/TheForceEngine/releases/tag/v1.00.000

 

congratulations @lucius for reaching this milestone!

 

[lucius]

1 minute ago, Delfino Furioso said:

https://github.com/luciusDXL/TheForceEngine/releases/tag/v1.00.000

 

congratulations @lucius for reaching this milestone!

 

Thanks. I created a new thread for the 1.0 release, see