[luciusDXL]

Note: I had to post this video separately since I was at my media file post limit. See the last post on the previous page for more context.

[Fantinaikos]

If anyone cares.

DF-21 Mapping Contest: Mines Remake

Long story short: There's this one and only level of years ago by this guy Ari G called Mines, so ugly that has achieved the status of inter-joke inside the DF-21 community.

How much ugly is? Well...




Essentially, they gives the task to make Mines become something more decent by November 30th 2022 and even win a little prize (maybe to give as a gift this Christmas), following these rules:

1. You need to answer the question outlined in the contest. What is behind the Hall of Mirrors (HOM) in the Mines mission?
2. You have to preserve the Mines Geometry and Objects including the Spawn Point and the Death Star Plans (You can however, alter the geometry after the mission starts with scripting).
3. You can add as many objectives as you wish, but you must preserve the original one.
4. You do NOT need to create a mission briefing (i.e. - NO LFDs required)
5. You must submit the mission GOB to DF-21.net with the author template filled out --> Author Template
6. Your submission must be turned by midnight on November 30th 2022 EST --> Here
7. Most importantly - USE YOUR IMAGINATION AND HAVE FUN !

The winning map of the contest will be judged by our Discord users with the Member role. The highest voted on map will receive the Dark Trooper Attack Lego Set!
The Lego Set will be shipped to the author's address (even to Australia) after the winner is announced.
Important Note: DF-21 Staff cannot win the prize. If a staff's submission wins, the prize will be awarded to the second most votes.


Anyone who wishes to try, have to use the modern WDFUSE tool. Here's a step-by-step Tutorial.

Well, eventually even if someone does something beyond the date, it is quite likely that they will still go one level up on the site somewhere.

[NightFright]

I have just tried this again after a really long time. Particularly impressed about how easy and smooth it is to install addons. Playing Dark Forces custom levels without having to temporarily replace DOS files is nothing less than a breakthrough.

Naturally, I'll still wait with my playthrough at least until v1.0 since that missing quicksave function is pretty much a must-have for this game.

[X-Vector]

Dark Forces never had a quicksave function, it uses a lives system.
The smooth mouse aiming that's available today already compromises the current difficulty levels, so I don't see why quicksaving would be desirable, let alone necessary.

[NightFright]

If I read the plans for this port, version 1.0 will feature a quicksave function nevertheless. And it's something I wished the DOS version would have had back in the days. Sure, you could find 1ups which gave you additional respawns for the hidden checkpoints, but you were still forced to finish a level before your progress was saved.

[Dzierzan]

X-Vector, on 10 November 2022 - 12:26 AM, said:

Dark Forces never had a quicksave function, it uses a lives system.
The smooth mouse aiming that's available today already compromises the current difficulty levels, so I don't see why quicksaving would be desirable, let alone necessary.

Play custom levels. They're often hard and long. Or sometimes you wanna pause and play particular mission later. That's ideal for me as I nowadays I prefer shorter sessions.

Besides, you won't be forced to use saving, so in my opinion everyone wins. The more options, the more people you please.

Even take as an example PowerslaveGDX, that game also features life system and once it got actual saving, playability of this game increased for me.

[MusicallyInspired]

I'll never use quicksaves because it destroys the game's balance. Few games I would say about that, but Dark Forces is perfect the way it was. But the option will be there for those that want it though which is great too.

[NightFright]

Any game gets signifcantly easier with quicksaves (or saves in general) ofc since even the hardest parts turn into mere trial-and-error exercises. Anyway, I see this rather as a QoL improvement, especially for those who can't complete an entire level in a single session.

[MusicallyInspired]

I can fly through the game at this point on Hard difficulty without breaking a sweat and have max lives left over (especially with The Force Engine) so my opinion certainly doesn't matter anymore in that regard.

[NightFright]

I never found all secrets in all levels, so maybe it's soon my chance to see them all, including the easter eggs. There are also so many great user maps I never even touched, e.g. the Talos quadrilogy.

Maybe the completion of this port may even inspire some brave mappers to create fresh content. The game would certainly deserve it.

[NightFright]

(Posted in wrong thread, my bad.)

[luciusDXL]

The ability to save will, of course, make the game easier if you "save scum". However, the original system of lives and checkpoints will still be in place, saving is completely optional. Saving is very useful for newer players, who often find Dark Forces to be a very difficult game and give up part way through. Saving is also useful for long user levels, so you can save part way through and then come back to it later. It also has other uses for testing and making it easier to reproduce bugs (since you can send in the save file exhibiting the issue).

I realize that not everyone likes the idea of being able to save at any point, but the feature will be easy to ignore if not desired since you have to go through the System UI in order to use it. And you will be able to change the bindings for quicksave hotkeys, including binding them to nothing (aka disabling the feature).

[luciusDXL]

X-Vector, on 10 November 2022 - 12:26 AM, said:

Dark Forces never had a quicksave function, it uses a lives system.
The smooth mouse aiming that's available today already compromises the current difficulty levels, so I don't see why quicksaving would be desirable, let alone necessary.

You can change this in the Input Menu. Go to Config > Input > Mouse Mode, there you can pick how the mouse is used - Menus Only, Horizontal Only, Mouselook. You can also enable or disable Autoaim in the Game menu.

[NightFright]

Are all DF community addons ever made fully functional at this point or are there any known problems? I have the determination and willpower to go through all of them once this thing hits version 1.0.

[luciusDXL]

NightFright, on 16 November 2022 - 05:58 AM, said:

Are all DF community addons ever made fully functional at this point or are there any known problems? I have the determination and willpower to go through all of them once this thing hits version 1.0.

It's not really making the mods playable, but rather fixing any inaccuracies or bugs that keep them from being playable. TFE doesn't have per-level patches to get them to work, I would rather fix the root issue and use the data as-is.

Anyway, most mods work pretty well using TFE at this point but there are still a few bugs here and there. So if you want to start a fresh playthrough of the mods, it would probably be better to wait until version 1.0. The good news is the more complex mods that push the engine, generally, work really well - which is a good sign for complete support by version 1.0.

TFE has been tested against mods throughout development since fully supporting vanilla mods is one of the main goals of the project.

[Phredreeke]

Something I learned on the discord regarding TFE that I found very interesting. The hardware renderer does palette translation once the frame is fully rendered, just as the software renderer does.

[luciusDXL]

Towards Version 1.0

With Version 0.93 - The Save System Release, The Force Engine is feature complete for 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://theforceengi...rwards-1.0.html

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

[Phredreeke]

You made a typo in the link. The final period should not be part of the URL

[luciusDXL]

Thanks for fixing the link.

[luciusDXL]

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).