Star Wars: Dark Forces is making a grand return, but turns out, the journey to get it there has been no cakewalk. Nightdive Studios spilled the beans on the cosmic struggle to bring this fan-favorite to our modern gaming rigs.
Hold your lightsabers because the release date is February 28, 2024, hitting all platforms, including the good ol’ PC. But Max Waine, the brains behind the Star Wars: Dark Forces project, spilled some juicy deets in a heart-to-heart with PC Gamer’s 30th-anniversary special.
Now, why was this such a mission? Well, according to Waine, the game’s technical setup was like a complicated puzzle box. LucasArts in the ’90s had their own secret sauce in designing things, making it a headache to tweak for today’s gadgets.
Here’s the techie scoop: Star Wars: Dark Forces was ahead of its time with multi-threading in the ’90s. Waine confessed, “They managed to do multi-threading effectively, using a task system in the mid-1990s.” To make it jive with our 2020s tech, Nightdive had to pull out all the stops with modern wizardry.
Guess what? They even had the golden ticket – the original source code. But, and it’s a big but, dragging this classic into the present day wasn’t a stroll in the park. “We had to modernize 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,” explained Waine.
And just when you thought the drama was over, there’s more. Updating the user interface was like trying to teach an old dog new tricks. Those mouse-controlled menus from back in the day? Yeah, Nightdive had to make them dance with today’s controllers, all while keeping the original vibe alive.
