Blood Source Port Through DarkXL

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quakegod667
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Blood Source Port Through DarkXL

Post by quakegod667 »

DarkXL, a source port for Star Wars: Dark Forces, in a future version, will also support the games Outlaws and Blood. This was announced on Christmas. http://darkxl.wordpress.com/2010/12/22/ ... mas-bonus/

Quite a nice present, if I do say so myself. :gargoyle:
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Re: Blood Source Port Through DarkXL

Post by Tchernobog »

Interesting, but he will need to demonstrate it first before I get my hopes up too high. But he does seem fairly competent, so it does seem definitely interesting.
Right now DarkXL only supports Windows XP and Windows Vista. Support for other platforms is planned but not until later. Possible platforms include: Linux, Mac (with a volunteer since I don’t own a Mac), XBox 360 (using XNA) and a possibility of a 2.5D version on the DS if I’m feeling up to it (rendering in software similar to the original game). The DS version would be last if done at all – it’ll really depend on the demand and if I still want to do it after all the other versions. :) Also I’ll probably do the Linux version myself (and all non-Mac versions), which will make porting to the Mac pretty easy I think.
http://darkxl.wordpress.com/about/faq/
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Slink

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Re: Blood Source Port Through DarkXL

Post by Slink »

I haz confuz. Why would it support Blood?
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ZedSlayer
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Re: Blood Source Port Through DarkXL

Post by ZedSlayer »

Slink wrote:I haz confuz. Why would it support Blood?
Not sure of the specifics but it seems hes found a way to reverse engineer the game without source and build from scratch, his work with Dark Forces looks nice and I know this can be done because I've seen how Strife, a Doom Engine game, was made compatible with source ports by creating a new source code.
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Re: Blood Source Port Through DarkXL

Post by Tchernobog »

ZedSlayer wrote:I know this can be done because I've seen how Strife, a Doom Engine game, was made compatible with source ports by creating a new source code.
Yes, Vavoom ran Strife quite well last time I tried. When I first tried to use it it had the serious problem that the first door would not open though, but they managed to fix that. :P

Still, isn't Jedi to Build similar to LithTech to Quake? Aren't they completely different code bases?
Last edited by Tchernobog on Sat Jan 22, 2011 10:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Corbin
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Re: Blood Source Port Through DarkXL

Post by Corbin »

Reverse Engineering something is completely different than building from source. That's why they are trying to implement full Strife support, rather than partial (or, better put, "guesswork"). This is how Hexen was also being done before Raven released the source.

I'm still skeptical but as far as faith in the man goes, I'm behind him.
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Re: Blood Source Port Through DarkXL

Post by Tchernobog »

Corbin wrote:Reverse Engineering something is completely different than building from source. That's why they are trying to implement full Strife support, rather than partial (or, better put, "guesswork"). This is how Hexen was also being done before Raven released the source.
Yeah, I understand that, but with both HeXen and Strife they both shared a common Doom heritage, meaning that it would have been a much easier process as you would only have to focus on what makes them different. But because Jedi and Build do not share any code (as far as I am aware), what makes them different one would think would be fairly substantial. Compare the success of iostvoy to the OpenMOHAA project, because the code was a lot closer for Holomatch to Quake III than MOHAA was one developer was able to make something releasable and quite stable. OpenMOHAA seems instead to have died, even though it had a larger team. Actually, in the case of iostvoy, it was mostly just change the format support as far as I am aware.

Still, by all means I hope this can be done, but like Corbin, I remain sceptical. But as I said, the guy does seem to be fairly competent.
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Maligned
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Re: Blood Source Port Through DarkXL

Post by Maligned »

He's doing one hell of a fine job, that's for sure.

Dedication seems rare these days.
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Slink

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Re: Blood Source Port Through DarkXL

Post by Slink »

I was just recently pondering reverse-engineering giving similar code. Hmm.
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Re: Blood Source Port Through DarkXL

Post by ZedSlayer »

Maybe he is going to try to combine Duke source with Shadow Warrior source to make a Blood source?
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Re: Blood Source Port Through DarkXL

Post by Tchernobog »

The guy posted some more Screenshots on the DarkXL forums.

http://darkxl.freeforums.org/blood-dark ... ts-t9.html
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Re: Blood Source Port Through DarkXL

Post by Ransu »

Well it looks like the maps work in the editor at least. I could also see the 3D items and objects from Blood. I'm just wondering if DarkXL will be able to fully support everything in the game because that would be amazing. :D
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Re: Blood Source Port Through DarkXL

Post by Tchernobog »

I decided to check up on this guys progress and some dramatic changes have happend. He has mergerd his sepeate engines projects into one unifed engine simply called The XL Engine, and has now also done some work to make it support the Bethesda Softworks title The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall as well as Star Wars: Dark Forces, Outlaws, and Blood. The Daggerfall game was released as freeware in 2009 if anyone is interested:

http://bethblog.com/index.php/2009/07/0 ... -for-free/

The XL Engine itself now has a new website showing some tantalizing screenshots of all the supported games, with further Blood screenshots being posted in a recent Blog post:
http://xlengine.com/
http://xlengine.com/?p=209

So it looks like work is continuing at a fair odd lick. Platform support is still currently limited to Windows, though Mac OS X support is coming with the Beta of DarkXL with Linux following shortly thereafter. :)

EDIT: Strange coinicidence of timing, I go check on my Phoronix reading and for some reason they are mentioning it now:
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=n ... &px=OTY5NA
http://phoronix.com/forums/showthread.p ... post219489
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