A port of Star Wars: Dark Forces to the Nintendo 64, built on The Force Engine and libdragon (the open-source N64 homebrew SDK), plus a tool that turns your own copy of the game into a runnable .z64.

No copyrighted game data is in this repository. You supply your own Dark Forces files; the build packs them into the ROM.

• An Expansion Pak (4MB RAM upgrade), on real hardware or the equivalent option in your emulator. The game needs it and won't boot without one.
• Saves go to the cartridge's SRAM (256 kbit): your flashcart or emulator handles that automatically.
• On real hardware, a flashcart that takes 64MB ROMs (most do, e.g. the EverDrive-64 or the SummerCart64). The ROM is about 63MB: the level files are packed without their indentation and comments to make it fit (see tools/compact_levels.py); your own game files are not modified.

A legally obtained copy of Dark Forces (the original CD, GOG or Steam release). From its install folder you need:

• DARK.GOB, SOUNDS.GOB, SPRITES.GOB, TEXTURES.GOB
• LOCAL.MSG
• the LFD folder (*.LFD)

Copy them into gamedata/, keeping LFD/ as a subfolder. Letter case doesn't matter. You can also drop a single .zip of your install folder into gamedata/, or point the packer at the install folder directly with --gamedata.

Dark Forces' music is General MIDI. The project ships the SoundFont it plays it with, a Roland SC-55 style one (soundfont/SC55.sf2); every build converts it and packs it into the ROM, nothing to do on your side. See soundfont/README.md.

You only need Python 3 on your PATH (python --version). No Docker or N64 toolchain.

1. Grab the latest Release and unzip it.
2. Put your Dark Forces files in gamedata/ (see above).
3. Build it:
   • Windows: double-click build.cmd (or run it from a terminal).
   • Any platform: python tools/pack_rom.py
4. Wait for OK -> output/darkforces64.z64. That file is your ROM: run it in an emulator (e.g. Ares, simple64) with the Expansion Pak enabled, or copy it to a flashcart (e.g. EverDrive-64).

Other sources for the game files:

python tools/pack_rom.py --gamedata "C:/Games/Dark Forces/Game"
python tools/pack_rom.py --gamedata path/to/dark-forces.zip

The Release ships the host tools for Windows and Linux x86-64. On other platforms, build them with tools/vendor/bin/build-tools.sh (see tools/vendor/bin/README.md).

Working on the engine itself (the C++ code in src/ and tfe/) needs the full N64 toolchain, which runs in Docker via the libdragon CLI:

• Docker
• The libdragon CLI (npm install -g libdragon, see .libdragon/config.json)

Clone with the libdragon submodule:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/BigChat88/N64DarkForcesPort.git
cd N64DarkForcesPort
libdragon install        # first time only: builds the pinned libdragon into the container

With the game files in gamedata/:

libdragon make -j8

builds output/darkforces64.z64 straight from source. Useful options (see the Makefile):

libdragon make engine builds just the data-independent part (compiled engine + intro sprites + ROM header settings) into build/engine/, the same thing CI publishes in each Release. tools/pack_rom.py picks it up from there automatically.

GPL-2.0, like The Force Engine (see LICENSE). Star Wars: Dark Forces and its data are property of Lucasfilm; they are not included here.

The application was developed using AI. I'm just an enthusiast who wanted to create interesting projects. In this case, how it was achieved is not relevant to me.