As a big Star Wars fan I approve of this. STAR WARS: DARK FORCES is now officially available and supported on Linux and is available from GOG.
It's probably using DOSBox or something like that, so it's not exactly native, but with old classics who cares.
About the game
The New Order of the Empire stretches its evil clutches across the galaxy, consuming planets with devastating results. Through many struggles, the Rebel Alliance has learned of a new Imperial battle station, the DEATH STAR, with enough power to destroy an entire planet.
The evil empire is secretly building a massive army to complete their arsenal of domination and render their reign of terror unstoppable. Kyle Katarn, a formal imperial stormtrooper must join the Rebel Alliance's covert operations division, and re-take the empire from the inside, one battle at a time.
Unlike many other Doom-based games, Dark Forces attempted a realistic approach: The missions followed a specific storyline, sometimes cut up by scenes to progress the narrative. Each mission had its own briefing and objective. The levels were designed to represent actual bases, mines, facilities, and other known places from the Star Wars universe, like Star Destroyer interiors, Jabba's ship, Coruscant, etc.
Fully interactive environments - morphing walls and floors, moving platforms, and conveyors, 'realistic' lighting and atmospheric effects.
Arm yourself with 10 different weapons to fight twenty various types of enemies, ranging from rank-and-file Stormtroopers to the vicious Kell Dragon.
Explore the virtual Star Wars universe up close and personal as you blast your through 14 exciting missions
Climb catwalks, look and shoot up and down, jump off ledges, wade through garbage.
Will you be picking it up? While I am a big Star Wars nerd, I personally won't. It's just too low-res for me to enjoy it now, or is that me being silly, is it really that much of a classic? Educate me! Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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19 comments
The main thing that turns me off about Dark Forces is its lack of a proper in-level saving system.
Dark Forces II was one of the games I grew up with, but it sadly does not even work in WINE. Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy had their source code released a few years ago, which means that they run fine on Linux although as far as I am concerned they are far weaker than their predecessors in terms of ideas at the very least.
Still, it just might be worth giving the original another try at some point.
Dark Forces II was one of the games I grew up with, but it sadly does not even work in WINE. Jedi Outcast and Jedi Academy had their source code released a few years ago, which means that they run fine on Linux although as far as I am concerned they are far weaker than their predecessors in terms of ideas at the very least.
Still, it just might be worth giving the original another try at some point.
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Already own it on Steam...now just waiting for Steam to carry on Linux (note I bought the complete Jedi Knight series a while back before I planned on gaming on Linux).
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Wait, isn't it a dos game? You can run almost any of those on dosbox. (And the one from gog.com is most likely using dosbox.)
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The main thing that turns me off about Dark Forces is its lack of a proper in-level saving system.
Dark Forces II was one of the games I grew up with, but it sadly does not even work in WINE.
Hmm, according to WINE's AppDB Dark Forces II should work ok.
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=application&iId=122
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Metallinatus Jan 20, 2015
HOLY HELL finally Star Wars on Linux!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This just made my year :D :D :D
It's not THAT big of a game, BUT STILL.... FINALLY WE HAVE STAR WARS ON LINUX!!!!
Hoping KOTOR will be making a splash soon too ^_^
This just made my year :D :D :D
It's not THAT big of a game, BUT STILL.... FINALLY WE HAVE STAR WARS ON LINUX!!!!
Hoping KOTOR will be making a splash soon too ^_^
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GOG’s DOSBox "ports" are terrible from what I have seen so I avoid them now.Care to elaborate on that point?
I have not tried them extensively, but Duke Nukem 3D, Blake Stone, and Rise of the Triad all ran just about perfectly for me when I used them.
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Also, this means there's now an easy DRM-free source for Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, in case people want to get it to help with xoreos. *hinthint* :P
2 Likes, Who?
Dark Forces II was one of the games I grew up with, but it sadly does not even work in WINE.
Hey Hamish!
For me that seems not really correct at the moment: I've got the full game working under WINE: http://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/x3k5cr_Throgh_jedi-knight-spiele-und-unterhaltung/1#video=x2dirua :D
EDIT: Just to mention also got mods like "Jedi Knight Enhanced" working with WINE ... http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2dxjzj_jedi-knight-04-unterwegs-in-abwasserkanalen_videogames
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oldrocker99 Jan 20, 2015
Also, this means there's now an easy DRM-free source for Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, in case people want to get it to help with xoreos. *hinthint* :P
*hinthint* indeed! Neverwinter Nights (I clicked on the link, you sneaky devil) has had a native Linux client since 2003(!), and a client that still works (try that with a game written for WinXP without some serious tweaking under Win7 or (God help us) Win8.)
Purchasing NWN Diamond
from GOG and installing the Linux client is much harder than installing it from the DVD (I've done both). It would be terrific if GOG would make the Linux-client NWN available, either as the usual tar.gz file or as a .deb (Red Hat derivative users can use alias the same way Debian derivative users do). It would make one of the very first (if not the first) commercial games to support Linux easily installable by we (superior OS :D ) Linux users.Also, any DOS game (for Windows, OSX, or Linux) sold by GOG does use DOSBox...
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Also, this means there's now an easy DRM-free source for Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, in case people want to get it to help with xoreos. *hinthint* :P
I'd love to, but I'm afraid I'm not skilled enough.
Knowing quite a bit of C++, I'm completely lost when it comes to the required low-level reverse engineering.
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Also, any DOS game (for Windows, OSX, or Linux) sold by GOG does use DOSBox...That's my point, I don't see why it is such a big deal. Even if they didn't officially show the pengiun icon, you'd be able to download the windows installer, unpack it with wine and use it with a native DOSBox.
I agree with the point about DRM free version of kotor and kotor2 though, both games are amazing (and flawed, but who cares), both should work on wine.
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Purchasing NWN Diamond
Dunno, it's kinda a wash. You'll have to extra the 1.69 Linux critical rebuild patch anyway, since the DVD is not at 1.69.
Knowing quite a bit of C++, I'm completely lost when it comes to the required low-level reverse engineering.
Well, there's other bits and pieces that need to be done. Some of them don't need RE skills.
For example, we need a parser for some broken XML files that define the GUI in NWN2.
Another example is the GFF V4.0 format for Dragon Age, which is quite different from the already implemented GFF V3.2 format. Some write-up on how the new version works is here in the Dragon Age toolset wiki.
Many things that fall under "reverse engineering" can be figured out without touching disassembly, too. Just by observing what the original does, how the files it reads look and some educated guesswork. Plus some fuzzing, i.e. changing the data files and looking at how the original copes.
We also have a few links to some helpful notes about reverse engineering on our wiki.
If you're interested, please, grab the sources, read a bit and fiddle with them a bit. I'm also always open for questions; you can find me idling 24/7 on #xoreos on Freenode IRC.
1 Likes, Who?
Metallinatus Jan 20, 2015
For anyone worried about the quality of the "port", everything worked just completely fine for me, with the exception of the sound settings which crashed the settings window when I tried to enter in it.
But I don't know why someone would want to change something in there anyway.... the sound works completely fine with no exception.
My only real problem with the game is it's archaic controls.... were all Doom-like games like that back there? xD
But I don't know why someone would want to change something in there anyway.... the sound works completely fine with no exception.
My only real problem with the game is it's archaic controls.... were all Doom-like games like that back there? xD
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GOG’s DOSBox "ports" are terrible from what I have seen so I avoid them now. It seems they are doing a better job with Wine. But I’m also not very interested in such old games; I bought Duke Nukem 3D and Shadow Warrior Classic but barely touched the former and didn’t play the latter at all…
I had never heard of this Star Wars game before today.
How are those ports terrible? Do you mean they use some low quality settings or miss MIDI stuff and etc.?
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PublicNuisance Jan 21, 2015
Thanks for the heads up. Getting this for sure.
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Also, this means there's now an easy DRM-free source for Knights of the Old Republic II: The Sith Lords, in case people want to get it to help with xoreos. *hinthint* :P
*hinthint* indeed! Neverwinter Nights (I clicked on the link, you sneaky devil) has had a native Linux client since 2003(!), and a client that still works (try that with a game written for WinXP without some serious tweaking under Win7 or (God help us) Win8.)
Purchasing NWN Diamond
Also, any DOS game (for Windows, OSX, or Linux) sold by GOG does use DOSBox...
Then maybe you should consider voting this :
http://www.gog.com/wishlist/site/add_linux_version_of_neverwinter_nights_diamond_edition
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Cyba.Cowboy Jan 22, 2015
stan, did you send a full bug report to them?I didn’t, since I’m not using Ubuntu or Mint… Now that I think of it I tried the game quickly on Xubuntu 14.04 to check if there was the same problems and think most of them were present, but honestly I don’t remember. (The half-transparent window thing is probably caused by a combination of the game using an unusual way to open the window and me using Compton.)
How strange - I have a long, long list of DOSBox-based games from GOG.com, and they've all run fine since Day One...
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