[MusicallyInspired]

Excellent progress!

[NightFright]

Never thought I would live to see that day. I almost forgot what Dark Forces actually is/was. Hopefully, I will soon be able to remember - and also finally play all those amazing DF custom maps I have skipped in the last few decades.

[MusicallyInspired]

Thinking ahead a bit, I'd love to make an SC-55 music pack for this game. Is digital music replacement something you have on the todo list? I can't remember. I know that DF uses iMUSE and a collection of MIDI stems that trigger dynamically based on location/action, is there currently an easy way to extract these MIDI files?

[luciusDXL]

MusicallyInspired, on 13 September 2021 - 10:20 AM, said:

Thinking ahead a bit, I'd love to make an SC-55 music pack for this game. Is digital music replacement something you have on the todo list? I can't remember. I know that DF uses iMUSE and a collection of MIDI stems that trigger dynamically based on location/action, is there currently an easy way to extract these MIDI files?

Digital music replacement and additional music formats are planned, post version 1.0. TFE needs to support OGG playback for Outlaws, so this is required anyway. As for extracting the midi files, that is certainly possible with existing tools (see df-21) and TFE will have built-in tools that will help in that regard as well.

[MusicallyInspired]

Nice. Now, I know that the stems can trigger abruptly sometimes. And forgive me for thinking ahead (I do that), but just abruptly interrupting one stem with another with digital files would sound jarring, are you thinking about a way to handle that? Like crossfading, or better yet fading out the initial stem and starting the second one without fading in, maybe that would work better.

[luciusDXL]

MusicallyInspired, on 13 September 2021 - 07:20 PM, said:

Nice. Now, I know that the stems can trigger abruptly sometimes. And forgive me for thinking ahead (I do that), but just abruptly interrupting one stem with another with digital files would sound jarring, are you thinking about a way to handle that? Like crossfading, or better yet fading out the initial stem and starting the second one without fading in, maybe that would work better.

I remember reading some "digital iMuse" research and ideas in the past. So I will probably brush up on that before implementing anything (post version 1.0).

[MusicallyInspired]

I'll gladly help test this with you when you get to that point. Until then, looking forward to future updates and a playable release!

[luciusDXL]

I have just finished integrating and testing all of the weapons, including secondary fire. This means it is finally time to move on to the AI agents. This weekend I hope to get at least the Mousebot and exploding barrels done, and hopefully, the rest of the AI can be integrated next week.

In the meantime, I recorded a short video showing the weapons in action (I don't know why the media isn't embedded):
https://youtu.be/U9vxcwoUk5g

[Fantinaikos]

The other great news is the Beta 1 release of WDFUSE 2.60 with the 3D Preview level exploring component (based on Unity I guess), added features should facilitate and speed up new level creations even for beginners. I've metioned it various time for the DN3D/DOOM function that unfortunately it has been removed, but on the other hand among new interesting editor properties there is the possibility of use GOG release of Dark Forces, compatibility with both 32 and 64 systems, no problem in working with older .INI versions, direct drag&drop resources and Discord support.



Full news

Entire changelist:

Projects
- Creating a New project will no longer automatically wipe your current working project.
- Opening an existing project will no longer automatically wipe your current working project.
- Added an option to automatically load your previously worked on project when WDFUSE starts.
- Added an option to Save Project As another name.
- Added an option to automatically test your Dark Forces project through DosBox
- Fixed a crash when loading Projects from drives not present on the current computer.
- Ensured that corrupted projects do not cause infinite load loops.
- Increased project path lengths to 255 bytes
- WDFUSE will no longer create dummy projects if you cancel out during the creation screen.

Editor
- Added an ability to pan the map with your Mouse
- Added an ability to zoom with your middle mouse button
- Added Steam Dark Forces support including installations across multiple drives
- Added GOG Dark Forces support.
- WDFUSE will no longer crash when choosing high-precision grid rendering.
- Added an ability to dynamically generate Grid sizes as you zoom.
- Added hotkey hints to most of the commands in the editor menus
- Added an ability to Copy and Paste content between instances of WDFUSE
- Added an ability to Undo and Redo commands.
- Expanded the Edit Menus to include common commands such as Adjoin, Extrude and Clear MultiSelections
- Expanded the Right Click abilities to include more common commands
- Added a new Sector Fill mode to differentiate sectors from Null Space.
- Panning while in Sector Fill modes will no longer re-render the fill values until you are done panning to speed up processing.
- Added easy-to-access Tools and Options buttons to the Main window
- Adjust window sizes to support modern width and heights.
- Added MouseWheel controls to easily switch between Grid while holding the Ctrl key.
- Added MouseWheel controls to easily switch between Layers while holding the Shift key.
- If available, the default layer will now always be 0 instead of the minimum one.
- Added a throttle for Mouse Zooming to prevent multi-grid redrawing.
- Windows now preserve multi-monitor positioning.
- Added X button to close the current window to all popups.
- Fixed level objects not drawing when moving very fast with a mouse.

GOB/LFD Container Managers
- Show the full path of the GOB/LFD during construction
- Allow for full drag and drop of files regardless of chosen folder
- Added an option to exit menus using escape
- Fixed numerous issues with GOB/LFD asset parsing
- Updated filters to include correct assets for each container type (Ex: BMs PLTTs, etc . . .)
- Reworked LFD display to correctly show the asset types and sorted them

Sector/Wall/Vertex/Objects
- Double Clicking will now open the highlighted level component.
- Added a checkbox to many pop-up windows to allow the windows to stay-on-top of the main map editor
- Added a button to the INF editor directly from the sector and wall editors
- Fixed the form not updating properly when highlighting a cell

Assets
- Fixed 3DO profile parsing issues
- Added additional zoom settings for BMs and FMEs and saved the default to the INI file
- Store the Brightness levels in the INI file
- Added Drop-In PAL selection with immediate update of texture assets in the resource picker
- All asset paths have size increased to 255 bytes

Misc
- Fixed and added back the link to the latest Dark Forces Specs File
- Added link to WDFUSE Support Discord
- Added links to DF-21.net
- Added an ability to wipe Editor UNDO cache.
- Added compatibility to Pre 2.5 WDFUSE INI files.
- Added X close window to all windows.
- Added automatic UNDO cache cleanup and added a undo limits to the INI file.
- Added shortcut hints to main menu fields
- Updated memory statistics to handle 64 bit systems
- Changed font to FixedSys to ensure Keys are aligned on all systems
- Muted the Scroll Window Out of Range popups but preserved the limit popups
- INF Font choice will now be preserved between sessions

Logging
- Added WDFUSE Logging to the log folder
- Added detailed INF parsing error logs

Known Issues
- If your map has many INFs it may take a second to UNDO / REDO commands as it recompiles the INF code
- Sector Fill drawing mode is not always accurate at certain scales and may flood the map with the color


The only way for bug reporting seems their Discord Server in #level-editor section. When you expose the problem you have to describe it in detail, with if possible a screenshot or a video, and include a Log file that you can obtain pressing F5. It will be saved in the Log folder where WDFUSE is.

[MusicallyInspired]

luciusDXL, on 17 September 2021 - 10:42 PM, said:

I have just finished integrating and testing all of the weapons, including secondary fire. This means it is finally time to move on to the AI agents. This weekend I hope to get at least the Mousebot and exploding barrels done, and hopefully, the rest of the AI can be integrated next week.

In the meantime, I recorded a short video showing the weapons in action (I don't know why the media isn't embedded):
https://youtu.be/U9vxcwoUk5g

Youtube shorthand links don't work. It's gotta be the full URL:

[luciusDXL]

MusicallyInspired, on 18 September 2021 - 01:14 PM, said:

Youtube shorthand links don't work. It's gotta be the full URL:

Thanks for letting me know.

Fantinaikos: For posting large WDFuse updates or other general Dark Forces updates or news, that should probably go in its own thread for better visibility, similar to the Dark Forces Voxel Pack. I'm not a moderator, though, so it is just a request.

Small update
Several bugs were fixed, so weapons are done* - and it's time to start integrating the AI code. So hopefully the next video will feature things shooting at me.

Bugs fixed:

• Fusion Cutter, not alternating fire direction from left to right and then right to left.
  
• Repeater primary mode firing too fast.
  
• Assault Cannon's primary firing rate being slightly off.
  
• Not being able to fire the Repeater faster by mashing the button versus holding it down (it is only slight but noticeable).

* done, for now, more bugs may be uncovered during testing.

[Dzierzan]

Quote

Fantinaikos: For posting large WDFuse updates or other general Dark Forces updates or news, that should probably go in its own thread for better visibility, similar to the Dark Forces Voxel Pack. I'm not a moderator, though, so it is just a request.

This is why I made my own thread about voxels here in the end, although on Doomworld forum, I prefered to use your thread mainly due to my shameless self-promotion, as I want more people to know about my mod. It's also more viewed than duke4 thread.

Anyway, great work so far. Looking forward to seeing more.

[luciusDXL]

The Core Game Loop Release gets closer with the Integration of Dark Forces Actor/AI system. Each AI Actor consists of a number of shared components, running independently and communicating over callbacks. This video shows several AI agents - the "Troopers" (Stormtroopers, Officers, and Commandos), Mousebots, "Scenery" (animated bits in the environment that can be destroyed like the red lights), and not shown but fully working - exploding barrels and pre-placed landmines.

Note: there are several known issues that will be visible/audible in the video:
* lack of iMuse (future release)
* Kyle not going down properly with elevators (falling).
* I need to double-check the threshold for the landing sound.
* audio falloff doesn't quite match DOS (future release)
* there is an INF bug related moving walls/doors that will be addressed for this release.

I expect to see the rest of the AI should come online quickly. Unless there are hidden surprises, I expect to be finished before the end of next week.

[luciusDXL]

All of the basic enemies and a few of the bosses have been integrated - leaving only three bosses to finish.

So I decided to take a step back and deal with other loose ends - Level Completion, VUE Animations, Enemy Generators, and fixes for various bugs and issues. This video shows this work by running through Talay, where the VUE animations, Enemy Generators, and other features can be seen.

[NightFright]

Amazing to see all this progress within a short period of time! Out of curiosity: There was a time, actually many years, when the project seemed to be dead, with no news or status update at all. What was going on back then?

[luciusDXL]

NightFright, on 14 October 2021 - 09:17 PM, said:

Amazing to see all this progress within a short period of time! Out of curiosity: There was a time, actually many years, when the project seemed to be dead, with no news or status update at all. What was going on back then?

If you mean DarkXL / XL Engine, then basically all development stopped. Due to real-life issues, work was halted - with the idea that I would return eventually (which is why it wasn't just outright canceled until TFE was underway). When deciding to start TFE, several things were immediately apparent:

* DarkXL was a dead end, due to the approach used and would never be as accurate as I wanted it to be.
* The XL Engine was too broad, so any new project needed much tighter focus.
* It needed to start as an open-source project.

Anyway, in terms of code and implementation work - there is no direct connection between the Force Engine and DarkXL. They don't share systems, The Force Engine was rebuilt from the ground up and the project uses reverse-engineered code from Dark Forces in addition to the TFE framework to handle the System UI, OS interactions, blitting to the screen/window, etc. (which is very different from DarkXL). Most of the past year has been spent reverse-engineering and rewriting the Dark Forces code, the recent rapid progress is fueled by the slower progress over the life of the project (which will be two years of development in a few months).

[NightFright]

OK, that makes sense. Wasn't aware this is a completely new engine with (almost) no connection to DarkXL at all. Guess it was a painful process after hitting the reset button, but as you wrote, you realized things wouldn't work out as intended otherwise. For what it's worth, you seem to move forward quickly now, so the long waiting time paid off.

[Skull-Haver]

This is looking amazing, i'm in awe of how faithful the gameplay videos look. I am in awe of anyone who can program or make art or anything creative, let alone how hard reverse engineering a whole engine must be. Keep up the great work you are doing what I think we've all wanted for over a decade at this point!! All in all you KICK ASS!!

[Dzierzan]

TFE now supports higher resolutions!

[MusicallyInspired]

It's beautiful. I never thought I'd see the day.

[DisgustedGrunt]

A surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.

[jkas789]

We are slowly getting closer to the release of TFE. And beyond finally having a proper port for Dark Forces, we are finally getting closer to a proper port for Outlaws.



My approval is unmeasurable and my day has been made.

[Phredreeke]

Remember last year's Spaceballs DBP? Wouldn't it be awesome if someone made a Spaceballs campaign for TFE when it's done?

[MusicallyInspired]

Why that'd be just fine.

[NightFright]

These days I wouldn't be able to play this game in 200p any more. It simply gives me headaches, not sure why. So Dark Forces available in HD resolutions is definitely good news. I also like how it changes resolutions on the fly, btw.

[Dzierzan]

I already managed to finish DF using new high resolution build and it's fucking great. Feels like DarkXL but better ^^. And yeah, 200p might be a buzzkill. Although I finished DF like that using Dosbox. It's about getting used to it as you play.

[jkas789]

Dzierzan, on 16 November 2021 - 09:12 AM, said:

I already managed to finish DF using new high resolution build and it's fucking great. Feels like DarkXL but better ^^. And yeah, 200p might be a buzzkill. Although I finished DF like that using Dosbox. It's about getting used to it as you play.

OH! It's playable?! Hot damn son! I'll still wait for the proper release though.

[NightFright]

There are quite a few amazing user maps and even episodes for DF out there. I assume there will be a way to play those as well at some point? Some push the DOS original to its very limits and crash occasionally.

[Dzierzan]

LuciusDXL already stated that the next build will have mod/usermap support, here are pictures from the Discord server:

[MusicallyInspired]

Oh he's got a Discord? I gotta get in on that.