GamesFPSStar Wars: Dark ForcesThe circle is now complete: The developer of an open-source port of Dark Forces who consulted on the Nightdive Remaster is working on putting the remaster back in the source portWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

GamesFPSStar Wars: Dark ForcesThe circle is now complete: The developer of an open-source port of Dark Forces who consulted on the Nightdive Remaster is working on putting the remaster back in the source portWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

(Image credit: Future)

Star Wars: Dark Forces Remaster review

The relevant lines from thelatest Force Engine patch notesare as follows:

Essentially, luciusDXL is bringing the Force Engine to the point where you can enjoy every improvement of the Nightdive remaster in the open source engine—provided you have a copy of said remaster—with the biggest upshot being mod compatibility, including with luciusDXL’s upcoming Force Engine level editor.

To lay things out from the beginning, the Force Engine is to Dark Forces what GZDoom is to Doom: a new, open-source engine with more flexibility and modern accoutrements than the original could ever allow. Before Nightdive’s remaster on its own Kex Engine, the Force Engine was the hands-down best way to play Dark Forces, adding improvements, QoL fixes, and high resolution support.

But the remaster still had plenty to offer, including remastered assets and music, archival material from LucasArts, and even along-lost demo levelmade playable for the first time since it graced some early ’90s trade show floors. Also, even speaking as a retro PC freak, you just can’t discount the remaster’s approachability: Sometimes you don’t want to download a fan patch or source port off GitHub just to play an old game you liked when you were a kid, and the remaster also brought Dark Forces to consoles and handhelds for the first time.

This interplay between a DIY dev and an official remaster effort is particularly interesting to me: A journey from source port to remaster and back to source port. It’s maybe a best case example of game preservation in action, the DIY scene and a for-profit company working to ensure a game remains as playable as possible, in as many ways as possible.

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