Star Wars: Dark Forces is the latest nineties' PC gaming classic to receive an overhaul from remastering maestros Nightdive Studios. But as this month's PC Gamer magazine reveals, LucasArts' shooter has proved unusually challenging from a technical perspective. Speaking to PCG's print editor Robert Jones, Nightdive's project lead on Dark Forces explains the game features a homebrew equivalent to modern multi-threading that was years ahead of its time.
"Dark Forces has been difficult to change, from the technical end of things, because it is very heavily over-designed," says Max Waine. "There were a lot of small details in how LucasArts did things at the time that made stuff particularly difficult." One of these things was the aforementioned multi-threading solution. "They managed to do multi-threading effectively, using a task system in the mid-1990s. We had to use sophisticated modern techniques to be able to get it to work nicely, while keeping the same basic idea."
