XLEngine for Dark Forces and Daggerfall is now open source

So, how much work would it take to get Daggerfall ported natively to Linux?

Quoting: DolusSo, how much work would it take to get Daggerfall ported natively to Linux?

It builds and runs on Linux, so it's already "ported". Unfortunately Blood doesn't work (or at least I get a black window using game data from the GoG version).

Quoting: Guesti just realized that dark forces is on linux on GOG and i have it,that takes care of that lol

But it runs on DosBox (even on Windows). Having a native engine will be very cool in order to play at high res.

Man. I would love to revisit these games on Linux. These were some of the games that made it a bit hard to walk away from Windows 98 SE all those years ago. I ended them and moved on to UT99 on Linux and never looked back.

Quoting: Guesti just realized that dark forces is on linux on GOG and i have it,that takes care of that lol

Yep, will certainly purchase, amongst probably about a hundred other titles on GOG, when Galaxy for Linux is out..

Dark Forces on Steam installs but doesn't launch for me. Having this will probably help :D

Note to myself: I should have gotten old Star Wars Games on GOG instead of Steam.

Recently played Dark Forces using DosBox via Steam Link and a Steam Controller on a 40" TV and it was an awesome experience with the right scan line filter. Looking forward to trying it out with this engine. Hopefully some sensible enhancements can be done with it though I'm not sure what I'd actually change?

Quoting: Perkeleen_Vittupää

Quoting: Guesti just realized that dark forces is on linux on GOG and i have it,that takes care of that lol

Yep, will certainly purchase, amongst probably about a hundred other titles on GOG, when Galaxy for Linux is out..

I hope Galaxy crashes and burns. Not interested in a client for Linux unless it's as simple as the itch.io client. Let me buy and install my games and get out of my way.

I think GOG did not make the right move by making that client. They should have made their "client" browser based - friends list/chat/game, list games owned - list game being played (optional) and call it a day.

Getting an error when I try to compile right after it hits 96%:

/home/desum/Downloads/XLEngine/networking/NetworkMgr.cpp:7:10: fatal error: enet/enet.h: No such file or directory
#include <enet/enet.h>
^~~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.
make[2]: *** [CMakeFiles/XLEngine.dir/build.make:1025: CMakeFiles/XLEngine.dir/networking/NetworkMgr.cpp.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/Makefile2:105: CMakeFiles/XLEngine.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [Makefile:84: all] Error 2

Quoting: Dolus/home/desum/Downloads/XLEngine/networking/NetworkMgr.cpp:7:10: fatal error: enet/enet.h: No such file or directory
#include <enet/enet.h>
^~~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.

Looks like your missing enet. On Debian and Ubuntu, the relevant package is libenet-dev. On Arch, it's enet. On Gentoo, it's net-libs/enet.


Last edited by DrMcCoy on 9 April 2018 at 4:48 pm UTC

Quoting: DrMcCoy

Quoting: Dolus/home/desum/Downloads/XLEngine/networking/NetworkMgr.cpp:7:10: fatal error: enet/enet.h: No such file or directory
#include <enet/enet.h>
^~~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.

Looks like your missing enet. On Debian and Ubuntu, the relevant package is libenet-dev. On Arch, it's enet. On Gentoo, it's net-libs/enet.

I happen to be using Fedora 27 atm, but that seemed to do the trick.


Last edited by Dolus on 9 April 2018 at 4:56 pm UTC

Seems the engine is having problems reading/loading the data files even if you point them to the right place.


Last edited by Dolus on 9 April 2018 at 5:47 pm UTC

Quoting: Patola

Quoting: RafiLinuxI hope Galaxy crashes and burns. Not interested in a client for Linux unless it's as simple as the itch.io client. Let me buy and install my games and get out of my way.

I think GOG did not make the right move by making that client. They should have made their "client" browser based - friends list/chat/game, list games owned - list game being played (optional) and call it a day.

Then you will like games_nebula. It's an unofficial GOG Client. When coupled with my time-logging scripts, it satisfies all my non-social needs.

Interesting, this is almost exactly what I was thinking as a client. How stable is it, anyone tried it as of yet? Would definitely get me buying from GOG more if it worked decently. Love Itch.io client, can say what you want but sometimes simpler is better.

Quoting: x_wingUnfortunately Blood doesn't work (or at least I get a black window using game data from the GoG version).

Try BloodGDX

Never mind graphics, I wonder if this engine could allow you to change the control scheme of Dark Forces to something more in line with today's shooters (e.g. wasd movement and mouse aim). Having to deal with the awkward and antiquated controls is my biggest hurdle to playing this gem again.

yes! yes! yes!

Hey there... psi29a here, just to give a heads up on the status and call for help!

With a bit of work, we've managed to get something compiling on Linux. Sadly there is more work to be done to get XLEngine to 1:1 parity with the Windows counter-part. That being said, there seems to be a lot of missing functionality that was available in the very last build. Not to mention the individual game plugins (DarkXL, DaggerXL, etc.)

We're thinking that the dump we got (with no SVN history) seems to have been in the middle of a re-write with many things commented out. We know that LuciusDXL had abandoned this version of XLEngineV1 and took what he had learned to create XLEngineV2 which was using the DosBox debugger to decompile the running game engines and re-implement those functions in C. This was started in 2011, so many of the features he showed off in the videos are not in the dump we got.

That being said, we're making progress and focusing on Linux support of Dark Forces and Daggerfall. We do have someone working on the Windows side as well but we would love to have others who have experience with OSX to help out there as well so we have the support of the "Big Three". I'll personally be pushing for Raspberry Pi support like I have been with OpenMW.

We haven't even looked at BloodXL nor OutlawsXL, but they do compile. If anyone is interested in picking these up, please do.

To be more explicit, if people want to help... come, help us test this, write bug reports (github's issue tracker), send us pull-requests... even for low hanging fruit, there is plenty of it.
https://github.com/Mindwerks/XLEngine/issues

If you have questions, want to help or otherwise keep in the loop, we're all on the OpenMW forum thread here:
https://forum.openmw.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5073

Cheers,
Bret (psi29a)


Last edited by psi29a on 10 April 2018 at 10:35 am UTC

Quoting: psi29a....That being said, there seems to be a lot of missing functionality that was available in the very last build....

Maybe that was the april fools joke...cruel to give out half finished code.

Not sure I'm doing this right just yet, but it definitely does something

For those interested, here a short screencast of the status of XLEngine...
View video on youtube.com