June 23, 2005
Although thousands of Dark Forces players are Macintosh users, there is no Mac version of Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II. But I didn't let that stop me from playing JK on my Apple Power Macintosh G3! This page is about getting optimal performance from the Windows 95 version of JK on a Macintosh.
UPDATE - June 23, 2005
I recently tested (briefly) JK in Virtual PC 7.0.1 running Windows 95 on a current iMac G5 with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Without hardware 3D acceleration in VPC I wasn't expecting much, but was pleasantly surprised to see that Moore's Law has brought the emulation of this 8-year-old game running on a 10-year-old OS up to reasonable frame rates in software rendering, meaning I might be able to play it for the first time since I was running my old G3 with a VPC 3-supported Voodoo2 card. I might try it for real sometime.
Last week Aspyr Media announced they will, in fact, be publishing Jedi Outcast for Mac! Happy day! With this release, the absence of JK for Mac becomes far, far less painful, though Star Wars/Dark Forces fans like me would still love to have it! For my perspective of the history of JK and the Mac, read on. And in unrelated news, since the last update I now have a flat-panel iMac. I have not yet attempted to play JK via emulation on it.
Petition alert! There's a chance to request (again) a Mac version of Jedi Knight, so that Mac users won't miss the middle part of the Dark Forces trilogy when, as expected, Jedi Outcast (JK2/DF3) is ported to Mac. Although I had given up this issue for dead, my hopes are renewed because programmer Brad Oliver, who once upon a time wrote the Mac DF editor Dark Forge (available here with "DF Gold"), now works for Mac game porting house Westlake Interactive and has volunteered to port JK for free! Westlake has already ported LucasArts' Escape From Monkey Island for Mac, so a business relationship that could make JK for Mac a reality is in place. This is the best and last chance to make this happen. Please sign this petition to bring Jedi Knight to the Mac.
The upgrade to Connectix Virtual PC 4.0 does not support the Voodoo 1 or 2 card or any other hardware 3D acceleration. So, there's probably no current solution to play JK well enough on the Mac. However, newer games for the Mac such as Deus Ex and Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force offer very good first-person single-player action/adventure in the meantime. Star Wars Jedi Outcast: Jedi Knight II is coming from the makers of Elite Force and would seem to have a decent chance of getting ported to the Mac after it's released in Spring 2002 for Windows.
I've just upgraded to Virtual PC 3.0. I've also replaced my TechWorks Power3D card with a 3Dfx V2 1000 PCI card (replacing the old Glide drivers with those included with the card), and I've overclocked my processor to 300MHz. I have also updated DirectX for Windows from 5.0 (included with JK) to 6.0 and I don't know how responsible, if at all, this is for fixing problems, but I recommend it since it isn't causing problems. I highly recommend Virtual PC 3.0, as many of the problems I had before are now GONE. Yippee! ;)
Sound synchronization problems have been nearly eliminated! I still recommend playing with Mac OS virtual memory off to avoid pauses, both in cutscene movie playback and in the game.
Input lag is nearly gone and it's now possible to play with keyboard and mouse.
"Free look" with the mouse works pretty well, although with free look always enabled, there is a maddening inability to turn more than about 360 degrees with the mouse that I've not yet solved. Keep turning right or left with the mouse, and you hit a "wall" where your movement is stopped, forcing you to complete the turn with the keyboard or joystick to "recenter" the mouse's field of movement. You can increase mouse sensitivity in the game to allow yourself to turn around more, but there is still a limit, and the greater sensitivity makes control harder. I don't know if this is a Virtual PC issue, or simply bad mouse-control design in the game. USB support will be enabled with Mac OS USB drivers 1.3 (shipping with Mac OS 9) so it will be interesting to see how a USB mouse or other input device behaves.
You need some heavy-duty gear to get close to enjoyable performance. Here's what I have:
Apple Power Macintosh G3 with 266MHz PowerPC 750 and 96MB RAM. You probably need 64MB RAM.
Connectix Virtual PC 2.0 or 3.0 (4.0 does not support hardware 3D, 3.0 strongly recommended, see UPDATES, above). RealPC with Windows 95 installed should also work, but I haven't tried it.
TechWorks Power3D card. This is a 3Dfx Voodoo1 full-screen 3D graphics accelerator card for games. Any 3Dfx Voodoo1 PCI card sold for PCs will work with Glide-enabled PC games run in emulation on Macs and with Glide-enabled Mac games if the card has or works with Mac 3Dfx drivers. Voodoo2 doesn't offer any further SPEED improvements over Voodoo1 for PC games because emulation (at least on a G3/266) doesn't provide enough processor horsepower to reach even the maximum framerate of a 4MB Voodoo1 card. However, Voodoo2 cards will allow you run games in higher resolution with no additional speed penalty.
Gravis Mac Firebird programmable joystick. I never used a joystick with Dark Forces and I didn't want to with JK, however it's necessary for JK because of keyboard control problems I encountered (no longer a problem with VPC 3.0, see UPDATE, above), and I've since come to like using the stick for 3D-shooter games. A Gamepad or other programmable input device might also solve the problems, but I can only vouch for the Firebird. VirtualPC has since added support for USB input devices but I have not compared these.
Here are some setup instructions. I'll assume you already have all of the above items set up the normal way.
Gravis Firebird Setup: Game control will be handled jointly by Mac OS and Windows. You want to set it up so Mac OS reads your Firebird's buttons while the built-in joystick support in VPC/Windows/JK reads your stick's directional control. Therefore, you need a Firebird control set, just as if you were running a Mac game. Download mine here. Open the set with your Mac Firebird Control Console, go to the Controls menu to make sure Application Aware is on, and set Select Application to Virtual PC. Also go to the Utilities menu and make sure AppAware is Enabled, and that Set Loader is installed. Save, then quit the Firebird Control Console. When you launch VPC, you should hear the voice say "Firebird control set loaded." You do NOT need to install any PC Firebird software into Windows -- I'm not sure it would do any good. NOTE: I've experienced loss of Firebird control if I switch between VPC and Mac, so stay in VPC. If you lose control, quit VPC and relaunch.
VPC Setup: You need Virtual PC to have enough RAM allocated to it so Windows 95 will think it's on a 32MB PC, at least. Allocate at least around 43MB to VPC, then when you run it, check Preferences in VPC's Edit menu to see if PC memory reads at least 32MB. While in Preferences, set MMX and Ethernet to disabled if you don't need them.
Windows 95 Setup: I fiddled with Windows quite a bit, so I may have forgotten some helpful steps, but here's what I remember. Go to the Display control panel (Start menu -> Settings -> Control Panel). Make sure the Display Properties window has a 3Dfx Voodoo tab; you don't need to go there, but if you see the tab it means Windows is seeing your 3Dfx Voodoo card (if you don't see the tab, make sure your Power3D is installed correctly, and try reinstalling Virtual PC). What you NEED to do is click on the Settings tab, click Advanced Properties, and click the Performance tab. Set Hardware acceleration to None. If you don't, JK's setup screens won't refresh properly. Next, go back to the Control Panel window and open Game Controllers. If the selected controller isn't VirtualPC Joystick, click Add and add it. Click Properties, and perform any testing and calibration needed to make sure the stick is behaving properly.
Jedi Knight Setup:Do a FULL install of JK, with low-res sounds. Install DirectX (unless you already have a newer version of DirectX), and DON'T let it replace any existing files if it asks. After JK is installed, run it. When you get to the main menu, go to Setup, and click Display. Make sure Enable 3D Acceleration is checked. I haven't noticed much difference in performance among the different resolutions. Click OK, then click Controls. Click Mouse, and if you intend to use the Firebird, remove all mouse control settings -- you must do this otherwise the game will get conflicting mouse/joystick input from the Firebird. Click OK, then click Joystick. Remove all control settings for all joystick buttons -- your joystick buttons will be fed to the game via your Mac OS Firebird software and the button settings in JK will conflict if you don't remove them. Click OK. Finally, you may want to go to Options and enable Always Run. You will be able to control whether you run or walk by how hard you push the stick, and it may be easier to use Always Run mode than to hold down the run mode button while moving the stick when you want to run. Click OK to leave Setup.
Gameplay Performance:On my G3/266 with Virtual PC 2.0, I got a framerate as high as the mid-20s when there were no enemies present and the scenery was not too complex. It gets worse with multiple enemies. I experienced some slow left-right drift sometimes, but keeping a grip on the Firebird kept it under control. Sometimes sound would fall out of sync behind the graphics; this could be fixed on the fly by doing a quicksave, escaping, and reloading the quicksaved game. (Virtual PC 3.0 fixed many of these problems, see UPDATE, above) Speaking of sound, you may notice you can't control the music volume with the game's settings (although you can turn it off). This is because the music is on standard audio CD tracks which VPC uses the Mac OS to play! Unfortunately, if you switch out of VPC to adjust audio CD volume, you may lose Firebird control, so you might want to set the volume on the AppleCD Audio Player before you launch VPC.
Playing Mysteries of the Sith:LucasArts released a set of add-on missions which is actually a whole new game based on JK. You can play this just as you play JK with the steps above. Performance is somewhat worse. MotS has an additional display setting, Enable Colored Lighting, and having it on does make performance a bit slower, although the lighting is cool -- your choice.
Multiplayer Games:You are able to setup and enter multiplayer games, but don't count on it being smooth enough for you to compete. (Whether or not you want to tell the other players you're on a Mac is up to you!) If you just want to explore the multiplayer scenery, you can start a LAN game with no other players and run around. The Mysteries of the Sith add-on has some cool recreations of Star Wars movie locations.
To encourage LucasArts to publish a Mac version of the upcoming Star Wars: Jedi Outcast: Jedi Knight II (Dark Forces III), write them!
LucasArts Entertainment
UPDATE - June 2, 2002
UPDATE - November 17, 2001
UPDATE - May 20, 2001
UPDATE - September 26, 1999
How To Play Via Emulation
Support Mac versions of future Dark Forces/Jedi Knight games!
LucasArts has asked that email be used for technical support only. In the past they have offered this snail-mail address for feedback from Mac users:
PO Box 10307
San Rafael, CA 94912
Attn: Product Support
Attn: Macintosh Feedback
MagicAl
This page is not affiliated with Lucasfilm Ltd. or LucasArts Entertainment Company. DARK FORCES game © 1994 Lucasfilm Ltd. and LucasArts Entertainment Company. STAR WARS®-based items are intellectual property of Lucasfilm Ltd. and distributed without permission for non-commercial, exclusive use by licensed users of DARK FORCES software. Trademarks are the property of their respective owners. Allen Newman disclaims all liability for damages incidental or consequental to exposure to any file or link on this site. © 1997-2001 Allen Newman
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