RGB Classic Games Forum

Feel free to rate and discuss this game.

the 30 minute loading time on my 40mhz w/ 32mb still haunts me to this day

That's crazy! The system requirements for the demo are:

486 Microprocessor or better recommended
8 Megabytes of RAM
Sound Blaster TM-compatible or Pro AudioSpectrum TM sound card
Microsoft TM-compatible Mouse

I could see a long wait time on a 40 MHz machine if the game required a Pentium, but even then, 30 minutes?

Yeah, I remember this one. It was pretty badass, but for some reason it's become somewhat obscured over the years. Worth checking out, even today.

DOSGuy wrote:That's crazy!

Well I DID have a 120mhz dx4 at the time, the 40mhz was in a seperate case and all (and was the previous part). The CPU was sold and the ram became back to my 486 making it 64mb (a monster for 95 it was). Could have been a hard drive or caching issue.

Although I've never been an avid Star Wars fan, I immediately liked this game. It has a very unique feel the sequels somehow failed to reproduce, and you immediately get immersed in the Star Wars world. The downside of the game is that it sometimes gets really hard, and the checkpoint-based saving system doesn't make it any easier. Still, it's a true work of art, and the demo has a few extras for an attentive player Another noteworthy feature is the excellent music, with alterations between the "stalk" (exploration) and "fight" themes depending on the situation, which is one of the early examples of dynamic soundtrack in FPS games.

On a related note, I remember reading somewhere that SWDF was released in a response to a number of Star Wars-themed Doom WADs, yet when I tried looking for such, I only managed to find some that were already using the graphics from SWDF. Do you people know those old WADs?

It's quite possible that this is the Star Wars-themed Doom TC that prompted the development of SWDF:
http://www.doomwadstation.com/main/starwars.html

I doubt it. That uses Dark Forces and Shadow Warrior sprites even. It's way after.

Check here, rather than the worst self-promoting Doom site in the world.


FYI: There's an earlier Dark Forces demo on the Full Throttle CD iirc.

leilei wrote:I doubt it. That uses Dark Forces and Shadow Warrior sprites even. It's way after.

Well, the page I linked to hosts several Star Wars TCs and compilations thereof, and the first one that is mentioned (with the blue digits on the status bar) seems to me like it might have been released before SWDF. I'm not very well versed in Doom TCs and other extras though, so I might very well be mistaken.

leilei wrote:Check here, rather than the worst self-promoting Doom site in the world.

Nice, great thanks for the link! I haven't visited DoomWorld in quite a while, I think last time I checked (around 2005) there were way more downloads there, or am I thinking about a different site?

leilei wrote:FYI: There's an earlier Dark Forces demo on the Full Throttle CD iirc.

Wow, interesting! It is my understanding that LucasArts used to put exclusive demos of some of their games on CD releases of other stuff. Is it downloadable anywhere? And, more importantly, does it have significant differences from the later version?

In fact, an old school friend of mine has the Full Throttle CD (I even remember that birthday party when he got it as a present from another of our schoolmates ), but we haven't been communicating much lately

I'm only going by my fuzzy IIRC memory. Strange because the newer demo was already out when Full Throttle came out in '95. On the other hand, a 1994 demo of Full Throttle was on the Dark Forces CD.

Differences to begin with is that the hud is a bit different, and there are no difficulty settings. red5 still grants all the arsenal, not much different there.

Unfortunately it's not in a zip and yes it is a CD exclusive demo...

MrFlibble wrote:

leilei wrote:Check here, rather than the worst self-promoting Doom site in the world.

Nice, great thanks for the link! I haven't visited DoomWorld in quite a while, I think last time I checked (around 2005) there were way more downloads there, or am I thinking about a different site?

Doomworld just uses the official gamers.org idgames/ FTP archive for downloads. LOTS AND LOTS of stuff to plow through here from 93 and up.

leilei wrote:

MrFlibble wrote:

leilei wrote:Check here, rather than the worst self-promoting Doom site in the world.

Nice, great thanks for the link! I haven't visited DoomWorld in quite a while, I think last time I checked (around 2005) there were way more downloads there, or am I thinking about a different site?

Doomworld just uses the official gamers.org idgames/ FTP archive for downloads. LOTS AND LOTS of stuff to plow through here from 93 and up.

I vaguely remember a site with lots of downloads organized in a table of about 3 or 4 columns wide, on a black background. Some WADs had small screenshots IIRC. I downloaded Aliens vs. Predator vs. Terminator TC and also a Stargate TC (don't remember the exact title) from there. Whether it was DoomWorld or DoomWADStation or something else I no longer remember, although I'm pretty sure I visited both sites back then (it was somewhere in 2005 or maybe 2006).

(I just realized that I might be able to check both sites' versions from that time through arhive.org ).

Here's a comparison of the demo and the full version, with lots of screenshots:
http://home.comcast.net/~ervind/dfdemo.html
The only thing the author missed is the different graphics for the laser weapon cartridge pickup.

There's also a page with various pre-release screenshots of the game on the same site:
http://home.comcast.net/~ervind/dfearly.html

Even if I weren't an old Star Wars fan, I'd still praise this game for its responsive controls (on par with Doom; in many inferior clones the player "swims in the air" etc.), good arsenal (grenades bouncing off the walls!) and exemplary level design.

And back then my starwarsishness was at its peak! It made this game one of my all time favorites, fondly remembered to this day.