Mouse support in the original DOS Dark Forces was restricted to horizontal panning only, with
vertical pitch requiring the keyboard.

Can anyone advise if GOG's Dark Forces has modern mouse support?

I was going to ask that very same question. I tried downloading the old demo a while back to see if I was any better than when I was a kid. It seems FPS games were still in their growing pains and a standard mouse+WASD format wasn't standard yet. If only I could get that *now* standard control scheme, I'd pick it up again.

I tried to change the config but didn´t manage to do it. It´s nearly unplayable with this controls.

Mouse for rotating. Cursorkeys for back and forth. "," and "." for strafing and x for jumping :) I will try further to change this.

There is a free to download engine upgrade called DarkXL. As far as I know, it is currently the only way to get modern FPS style mouse support, including WASD. A quick search on Steam regarding the game will net the same result, as recent as November 2014.

Not only does it support WASD controls replete with mouse, but some brighter, crisper textures, higher resolutions, and widescreen support.

I don't know if I can link anything yet, since this is my first post. Search for XLengine or DarkXL.

Caveat: The website and the engine itself hasn't been updated since I think 2011/2012. It is currently in Alpha, and there's a warning by the author about the possible pitfalls of the engine; it may crash, and you may not be able to finish the game. I've used it for a couple of years, and haven't had any problems. Granted, I haven't beaten the game with the engine upgrade, so I don't know if you can complete the game.

Hope this helps.

EDIT: Check TheAvatar.783's post regarding late game bugs further down.

thnx TinMonk
i found alle the stuff you need to play the game with mouse support here:

http://xlengine.com/downloads/

and here:

http://www.openal.org/creative-installers/
"oalinst.zip"

seems to work fine so far!

Great, I'm glad it's working.

Thanks for posting the links, fish.

Note that DarkXL is not feature complete, but you can finish the game, mostly.

I recently played DarkForces using DarkXL and a few issues I noted were:

- can't kill the "mouse droids" that skitter about. Since these are a primary source of replacement batteries for your head-lamp (and night-vision) this means you won't get as much use out of those features

- some weapons aren't supported, such as the concussion rifle and assault gun. This makes the later levels harder to complete because you cannot use the more powerful weapons in your armory

- some scripting problems, where doors don't reliably open or enemies don't spawn.

- some bugs, such as a repeatable crash-to-desktop at the very last boss.

Most of these problems start showing up in the second half of the game. I still recommend using DarkXL over the vanilla game, however, because the improved graphics and mouse-look make the experience so much better.

Didn´t work here. Can you still start the game with Dosbox with the normal GOG-Startskript or do you need another way?

The build can become problematic depending on how you "install" it.

I always extract the zip to it's own folder (something like "XLEngine"), then start it within the folder, and point the launcher to the gog dark forces installation folder.

How did you initiate DarkXL? Thanks for the head's up!

It's mostly the mouse. While you can do some low level remapping of the keyboard using setup.exe, there is no way to enable a full "mouselook" natively, a la Doom. Dark Forces is hard coded to have vertical look mapped to PageUP and PageDown. There's no way around that without DarkXL.

I played through Dark Forces last year, in the original engine via DOSBox (as I imagine this GOG version does).

Now although true mouselook isn't possible, you CAN get quite close. More than close enough to play the game anyway. It uses the in-game settings, the DOSBox keymapper, and GlovePIE. The mouselook is done via GlovePIE, taking mouse forwards and backwards and mapping them to PageUp and PageDown. Worked quite well for me. I also used GlovePIE for weapon switching on the mousewheel.

My full control setup was as follows:

Mouse : Full mouse look
Mouse Left-Click : Fire
Mouse Right-Click : Alternate fire
Mouse Middle-Click : Use
Scroll Wheel : Cycle weapons forward/back

W : Forwards
A : Strafe Left
S : Backwards
D : Strafe Right

Space : Jump
E : Use
Q : Quickswitch last weapon
Ctrl : Crouch

1 : Hand to hand
2 : Modified Bryar Pistol
3 : Stormtrooper Rifle
4 : Thermal Detonator
5 : Imperial Repeater Rifle
6 : Jeron Fusion Cutter
7 : I.M. Mines
8 : Packered Mortar Gun
9 : Stouker Concussion Rifle
0 : Assault Cannon

F1, P : PDA (Map, Weapons, Inventory, Objective, Mission)
F2, G : Infrared Goggles toggle
F3, C, I : Cleats toggle
F4, M : Gas Mask toggle
F5, F : Headtorch toggle
F6 : Headwave toggle (weapon bob)
F7 : HUD toggle
F8, H : Holster weapon/unholster weapon
F9 : Cycle weapons forwards
F10 : Cycle weapons back

Pause : Pause game

R : Secondary fire
Shift : Sprint
Caps lock : Toggle walk
Tab : Overhead map

+ / - : Zoom map in/out
Arrow keys : Move around on map
[ / ] : Change map level (toggle between different floors)

Page up/down : Pitch camera down/up
KPad5, V, Backspace : Centre view vertically

Left Arrow : Look left
Right Arrow : Look right
Alt & Left Arrow : Strafe left
Alt & Right Arrow : Strafe right
Alt & +/- : Change screen size
Alt & F8 : Weapon automount toggle (Auto select better weapon on pickup)




For reference, my GlovePIE script is as follows:


PageDown = delta(Mouse.DirectInputY) < -1
PageUp = delta(Mouse.DirectInputY) > 1
Key.R = Mouse.RightButton // Alternate Fire
Key.F10 = Mouse.WheelDown // Cycle weapons with scrollwheel
Key.F9 = Mouse.WheelUp


Yes, alternate fire was also mapped via GlovePIE :)

I knew I got my info from somewhere. :)

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=286364447

A lot of info about how to use GlovePIE, the DOSBox keymapper and such for Dark Forces. Could be helpful and saves me digging out all the saved files and info that I used when I set it up to play last year.

I just had the idea to play it, like it was meant to play. So I started playing with keybord, like I played it when it was new. It´s a pain in the ass but that is the way gaming was back than :)

You can easily remap the keys via "Launch Settings" applikation in game folder. It opens the "dark forces installation utility" in dosbox.

to remap the keys:
configure controller setup -> configure keyboard

to disable mouse forward movement:
configure controller setup -> configure mouse -> set "Forward / Backward" to none

WASD mouse configuration works fine :)