Source Ports

This is one I've been chomping at the bit to try, but haven't gotten the chance to. It's been in development since 2002, and thanks to a lot of modern additions, makes the game look absolutely gorgeous.

Here's a video someone put together, that compares the original retail release, with FS2Open. It's really tasty.

A source port for Doom that supports vanilla and Boom formats. Fast and highly-configurable, my Doom source port of preference.

dhewm3 is a source port of the original Doom3. It’s known to work on Windows, Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, OpenBSD and AROS, but it should work on (or be easily portable to) any system that supports OpenGL 1.4 with ARB shaders, SDL and OpenAL.

This port looks great combined with upscaled textures.

Here's a video where someone threw together dhewm3 with HD textures, and the reshade wrapper with some tweaked lighting. Looks deliciously frightening!

Here's a pretty thorough video tour of the Half-Life Ray Traced source port. Looks absolutely amazing.

Latest release.

This is an interesting one. It's technically a "patch", though lore has it that NewDark was developed using a source leak of the Dark Engine. My best guess is that releasing it as a patch of the original executable, instead of a source port, means less questions and potential legal repercussion.

NewDark is a new game executable for Dark engine games which appeared out of nowhere in late 2012. It was created anonymously, but has been extensively tested and found to be completely safe, to the point that GOG includes it in their System Shock 2 release.

What NewDark does is upgrade the Dark engine to support many new and incredibly great features, such as full DX9 support, high resolution textures, native high resolution, widescreen and multi-monitor support (including extremely high resolutions like triple 2560x1600). All of these features work in Thief 1/Gold, Thief 2 and System Shock 2.

Here's a quick video of it in action with Thief Gold, including HD textures:

• Link

They've got the bloom cranked up a little too heavy for my tastes, but that is adjustable.

This one requires a little bit of dialing in of the settings, particularly the lighting and bump mapping. But after you do that, it's a pretty fun way to revisit Quake II.

I played through the SP and mission pack campaigns a couple years ago using this source port, and had a really good time.

OpenJKDF2 is a function-by-function reimplementation of DF2 in C, with 64-bit ports to Windows 7+, macOS 10.15+, and Linux. Files are organized as closely to the original game as possible, based on symbols from the Grim Fandango Remaster Android/Linux/macOS port, as well as scattered assertions from various other games.

Big DF2 fan, I played (and modded) it for hours and hours. It was a blast to play on MSN Gaming Zone, and occasionally wow or piss off people while testing the latest mods we were hacking together.

I'm unsure yet if this also supports the Mysteries of the Sith expansion.

Raze is a fork of Build engine games backed by GZDoom tech and combines Duke Nukem 3D, Blood, Redneck Rampage, Shadow Warrior and Exhumed/Powerslave in a single package. It is also capable of playing Nam and WW2 GI.

A couple of demo videos:

• Redneck Rampage
• Shadow Warrior
• Blood

Not necessarily a source port, but sweet baby ray, I hope a good port comes from this.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/642657

https://archive.org/details/far-cry-1.34-complete

This is gonna be another one that purists may want to skip.

My recommendation for the best experience, is to download the 3D model and hi-res texture packs from the addons page. Then remove the 3D models for all (wielded) weapons and enemies, instead opting to just use sprites. However, still retain the 3D models for pickups and other environmental objects.

This has become my preferred way to play SP Doom, Heretic, and Hexen.

I haven't tried this one yet, but I am very excited about the prospect.

... a redesigned jsH2 engine with external texture support for almost any object (tga, jpg, png, pcx formats, and for version 1.21+ - dds), Lit files for colored lighting, music in mp3 and ogg formats, addition of light effects, bloom, interpolation of object movement, chrome effects, etc.

I am currently in the middle of a play through of Hexen II, using this source port. It is a bit hit and miss for me, and definitely requires some settings tweaking.

For instance, the bloom and colored lighting are waaaay too heavy handed out of the box. Also, while the new HD environment textures are pretty good, I found the new weapon textures and models strayed too far from the source material for my tastes, so I turned those off.

Once you get the engine dialed in it is a really cool, new way to relive Hexen II.

Quake Epsilon is a graphically enhanced build of shareware Quake 1 for Windows/Linux/Mac, which can be upgraded to the full version of Quake along with it's mission packs Scourge of Armagon and Dissolution of Eternity by copying the full-version .pak files into the correct folders.

It's made out of the Darkplaces engine and many mods from members of the Quake One forums and elsewhere

This one probably won't tickle the fancy of the purists.

However, I recently did an SP play through of Quake and all the official mission packs, using Epsilon on Ultra settings with HD textures. It was so much fun. It was classic Quake campaign gameplay, but with a new shine.

OpenDUNE is an open source re-creation of the popular game "Dune II", originally made by Westwood Studios, and released by Virgin Entertainment. It attempts to re-create the original game and apply modern technology to it to allow it to be run natively on most operating systems.

DevilutionX is a port of Diablo and Hellfire that strives to make it simple to run the game while providing engine improvements, bugfixes, and some optional quality of life features.

This port has made it onto a number of platforms in addition to PC, such as the Vita and the 3DS.

The Force Engine is a project with the goal to reverse engineer and rebuild the Jedi Engine for modern systems and the games that used that engine - Dark Forces and Outlaws. The project will include modern, built-in tools, such as a level editor and will make it easy to play Dark Forces and Outlaws on modern systems as well as the many community mods designed to work with the original games.

Here's one I've been following ever since announcement. It's come along quite well, and I can't wait for Outlaws support.