Nightdive says Dark Forces has been 'difficult to change

[John Elden Ring]

Nightdive says Dark Forces has been 'difficult to change' because LucasArts created its own version of multi-threading years before it became popular

"It is very heavily over-designed".

www.pcgamer.com

Star Wars: Dark Forces is the latest nineties' PC gaming classic to receive an overhaul from remastering maestros Nightdive Studios. But as this month's PC Gamer magazine reveals, LucasArts' shooter has proved unusually challenging from a technical perspective. Speaking to PCG's print editor Robert Jones, Nightdive's project lead on Dark Forces explains the game features a homebrew equivalent to modern multi-threading that was years ahead of its time.

"Dark Forces has been difficult to change, from the technical end of things, because it is very heavily over-designed," says Max Waine. "There were a lot of small details in how LucasArts did things at the time that made stuff particularly difficult." One of these things was the aforementioned multi-threading solution. "They managed to do multi-threading effectively, using a task system in the mid-1990s. We had to use sophisticated modern techniques to be able to get it to work nicely, while keeping the same basic idea."

Nightdive was able to make this work, Waine says, because "unlike other projects, we managed to get the source code from the start." Yet even with immediate access to the source code, it wasn't easy. "We had to modernise all these concepts that worked for programming in DOS for your 486 or Pentium, but do not fly on your 16-core, infinite gigahertz modern processor."

 

[KiryuRealty]

These clowns have to be the least competent developer out there. Everything they do is years late in shipping, and they have huge issues when they do manage to launch.

They’re a bad joke.

 

[Zzero]

These clowns have to be the least competent developer out there. Everything they do is years late in shipping, and they have huge issues when they do manage to launch.

They’re a bad joke.

They started with a random non-developer getting pissed that he couldn't buy System Shock on GoG, and I'll always respect them for that.

Anyways, LucasArts really were a God-tier studio back in the day. Its a shame that Adam Orth killed them trying to push always online live service bullshit in the late 2000s.

 

[KiryuRealty]

They started with a random non-developer getting pissed that he couldn't buy System Shock on GoG, and I'll always respect them for that.

Anyways, LucasArts really were a God-tier studio back in the day. Its a shame that Adam Orth killed them trying to push always online live service bullshit in the late 2000s.

I’d respect them more if they’d delivered System Shock when they announced it would be released, rather than years later and broken to boot.

 

[Dr Bass]

Using the word "over-designed" is odd. That usually implies a bad thing in programming, but clearly the LucasArts guys back then were doing things that just didn't exist out of the box.