Talk:Star Wars: Dark Forces

message: Is it just me, or does this edit make no sense? You can't "assemble" a human trooper; you can only assemble a droid. --DocumentN (talk) 22:48, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not sure why you're having so much difficulty understanding the entire point of the edit, which is that the game never DIRECTLY states that they are droids. Using the word assemble is at best an implication, obviously not a direct statement. Furthermore, it in theory one might need to "assemble" a complex exosuit that is not a droid. Additionally, on the topic of "making sense," how much sense does it make that a man "obsessed with the honor of personal combat" would create an army of droids as his ultimate weapon? Regardless, I'm not arguing that the Dark Troopers are not droids, merely stating that the game never explicitly calls them droids. Some guy (talk) 23:09, 3 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: (1) It's because I misread the text I was correcting. Still, I don't see how it's useful for the article to discuss the distinction when it amounts to the same thing (that DTs being droids is canon). (2) An exosuit on its own couldn't be referred to as a trooper. (3) Enough, but that's irrelevant to the edit in question. (4) Acknowledged. --DocumentN (talk) 00:41, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nature of Dark Troopers 

message: I mentioned this before but only got one response... how many gameplay staples did Dark Forces add to the first-person shooter genre? I originally thought DF added the ability to look up and down, jump, crouch, and use a headlamp (flashlight precursor) and "nightvision) (I.R. Goggles). I can't remember if I thought it was the first game with secondary fire, but I did recently remove a long-unsourced claim to this effect from the article.
According to free look (thank DocumentN), Marathon was the first FPS to have the ability to look up and down (though this is not mentioned in Marathon article and is unsourced in the free look article, and Wikipedia is not a valid source anyway...). I am pretty sure that Marathon and Rise of the Triad are tied for the distinction of the first alternate-fire in an FPS (according to WP, they were released on the same day, but again I am using WP as a source which would not be valid in the actual article).
In addition to being immediately relevant to this article, this information would also go well on the first-person shooter and Duke Nukem 3D pages, which largely exist in an alternate universe where Doom was the first FPS game and Duke Nukem 3D was the second, and all features of DN3D were revolutionary new features never before seen in the genre. Some guy (talk) 01:16, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: All that comes to mind for me is that 1993's Pathways Into Darkness had a flashlight and night vision, although the latter was basically a flashlight that turned your display red. The Colony was another early FPS that had light and darkness, but only after a fashion (edit: meaning black lines on white versus white lines on black, IIRC). --DocumentN (talk) 02:03, 4 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Technology 

message: I mostly like the new version, it is a bit sterile for my tastes but it is more encycopledic. However, gameplay section is childish and horrible. We do not need to explain the most basic of core first-person shooter mechanics. The gameplay section would be much better off going into more detail about the gameplay, and what makes it unique, not 'things shoot projectiles which subtract health'. I think the gameplay section is perhaps the most important section of an article about a game, and it is far too common for these sections to be neglected and poorly detailed. Since all my previous content has been removed, I am somewhat relunctant to write anything new, but I hope someone can expand the gameplay section and remove the trivialities. Also, I am surprised that someone would write Dark Troopers as "darktroopers" - this suggests to me a serious lack of familiary with the game's content. This rewrite seems like a cookie-cutter article by someone who has never played the game... Some guy (talk) 06:10, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: There does need to be some explanation of how the game works per WP:VG/GL, we shouldn't let the reader assume too much about the details of the gameplay. The section is a little short so please don't feel reluctant to add to it. The issues the section had before were that it was unsourced and described the game with comparisons to Doom and other games. Technical developments like that are now covered in the development section. I'll have a look in the history and see what I can find and source. But again, please don't feel reluctant to edit, change, move around stuff, because we're all looking to improve the article here. By the way, this series of games is one of my favourites but I'll admit I haven't played Dark Forces for a very long time. I had forgotten how "Dark Troopers" was spelt so I checked the article with the interview with Daron Stinnet and Justin Chin that I was reading at the time, which had the single word spelling. Upon checking the official LucasArts page on Dark Troopers and the Essential Guide to Droids, you are right and it is two words. Thanks for the feedback. Bill (talk|contribs) 13:28, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks. Sorry I was harsh. The new content is a little better but I still don't like the wording (for example heavy use of passive voice), so I guess I'll try to fix it later. However, I think we should assume people know how an FPS works - that's why we have interlinking, so if they somehow have no idea, they can go read the first-person shooter article. I don't think there's anything wrong with comparing it to Doom - Doom was practically the single standard used to judge FPS games until Half-Life came out. First-person shooters used to be referred to as "Doom clones" and pretty much all games of the Dark Forces era were and are heavily compared to Doom. Some guy (talk) 20:44, 2 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I've had a go on fixing the article based on your comments. I've gone ahead and summarised the description of the gameplay elements. I read through it a few times and I suppose you're right, it is sort of redundant saying getting hit reduces health lol. I've also added a paragraph about how DF expands on the Doom gameplay to the gameplay section. However I've added more of the Doom clone viewpoint in the development section as I believe that's the most appropriate place for it. It's basically talking about developments as opposed to purely describing the gameplay. Bill (talk|contribs) 08:09, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I rewrote most of the gameplay section as it still suffered from awkward structure and wording. I hope the new version is satisfactory. Some guy (talk) 10:52, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Looks good to me, nice work. Is there anything else in the article you feel needs some serious attention? If the rest of the article is up to scratch we can start polishing it, fixing typos, rewording dodgy sentences, etc. before submitting it for a Good Article review. Bill (talk|contribs) 11:10, 3 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm not good with the ref system, it's confusing to me and I think properly formatted ref tags use way too much space in the raw text and make it a huge chore to edit. I used the game as a reference several times but since I don't know how to reuse refs, it is listed as four or five separate entries in the reflist. If someone wants to fix that, that would be good I guess. Some guy (talk) 02:25, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Gameplay 

message: Can someone add in the GOG release from today on the sidebar?
http://www.gog.com/news/release_star_wars_dark_forces
I am having difficulty figuring out the formatting. 50.79.0.254 (talk) 16:41, 20 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: I may be wrong on this point, but to the best of my knowledge, we don't usually note the release date of games on GOG unless it's a remastered version. Although, like I say, I'm not 100% sure. I'll ask over at the Video Game WikiProject. Bertaut (talk) 00:43, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, I checked on the project page. We don't note GOG releases. Bertaut (talk) 04:50, 21 January 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  GOG release 

message: I found this piece of reference material for Dark Forces in an old MacWorld archive: . JimmyBlackwing (talk) 03:52, 2 March 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  MacWorld reference 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Greetings everyone. I just amended the release date for the game to say March 10, 1995, instead of February 28, 1995. The new date was taken from the June 1995 issue of Games World: The Magazine, which states (in response to a reader letter):
 (emphasis added)
The former date was sourced solely to GameRankings, which we know is not reliable for dates (just like Metacritic). I've been trawling through a few old game sites for additional clues but results were mixed.
* GameSpots initial site for the game (1996) states the release date as "03/95". However, this was changed to "02/28/1995" around 2001 (five years later) for no discernible reason.
* This FAQ by Karsten A. Loepelmann (which was endorsed by IGN) claims that the game was "first released for MPC (MS-DOS CD-ROM) systems on March 7, 1995".
* "Available now" advertisements only started in the March 1995 issue of Computer Gaming World.
* The earliest known review (per MobyGames) is from March 1995.
* the current Steam page states the date to be February 15, 1995. Of course, this page was set up decades after the fact, likely by uninvolved people, but it's strange to see yet another release date.
* A newspaper clipping from March 10, 1995, declares that "Babbage's Software at Lakeview Square got  first shipment of the game Wednesday", Wednesday being March 8.
* At the same time, the game had been "just released" on March 4, according to another clipping.
Any help figuring out whether the release date as stated in Games World is correct, such as by finding an additional source, would be greatly appreciated.
Regards, IceWelder [✉] 16:01, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: Didn't found anything about March 95 date but the game was scheduled to come out in December 94 and was delayed to January 95 (and then was delayed again to March, I assume):
*PC Zone said in October that the game was going to be released in two months: 
*Announcement of the delay to January 1995 in PC Gamer: 
*The last time the game was listed on CGW's Pipeline section, the release date was estimated as January 1995: . --Mika1h (talk) 17:12, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
replies: text: PC Zone also, in the March 1995 issue, listed the release date as "March"; note that magazines come out weeks before the cover date. Also note that it's really hard to get a street date for games from the mid-90s and earlier, because they didn't really have them- the publisher often just shipped out stuff starting on a date, and whenever stores got them they stuck them on the shelves. It wasn't until the turn of the century that a specific date to start selling inventory became a consistent thing, unless the publisher really wanted it. --PresN 19:05, 24 October 2023 (UTC)
thread_title:  Release date