How to Get Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II Working on Modern Windows

Jedi Knight is nearly twenty years old now, but I still consider it to be one of the best Star Wars games ever made. It is a straight-up, no-nonsense, you're-a-Jedi-now-go-kill-some-Stormtroopers FPS packed with cool weapons, force powers and secrets. But before I get carried away with reviewing it, I should come to the purpose of this guide: how to get the damn thing working on Windows 10?

Main Menu

This guide also covers the installation of several mods to bring the game's graphics up-to-date (thanks to phanboy4's modding guide for the tips).

I am using the Steam version of the game, but this guide should be relevant to other versions as well. In fact, the first step is to replace the game's executable with the non-Steam version, which is apparently far less problematic.

Step-by-Step Guide

  1. If you are using the Steam version, download the Steam Fix. I believe this is just an unmodified v1.0 Jedi Knight executable. Backup your original JK.exe, and replace it with this one. The included "Resource" folder is a no-CD patch, but I found it wasn't needed.

  2. Download dgVoodoo 2. This is a wrapper that allows modern versions of Windows to use old graphics APIs. Copy the 2 files "DDraw.dll" and "D3Dlmm.dll" from dgVoodoo's "MS" folder into your game directory. Further graphics configuration (e.g. removing the dgVoodoo watermarks) is possible by running dgVoodooSetup.exe.

    dgVoodoo2
  3. As far as I can tell, this step is optional unless you have problems with crashes.

    Create a shortcut to "JK.exe", go into the shortcut properties, and append "-windowgui" (without quotes) to the target parameter. This disables fullscreen in the menus, which may be useful, e.g. if you want to have a walkthrough open at the same time. The same can be achieved in Steam by right-clicking on the game in your Steam library, clicking "Properties", and then clicking "Set Launch Options".

  4. See if the game runs! It should work just fine by this point (using the shortcut you just created), but keep reading if you want to install some mods to make it look way better.

  5. Ensure JK.exe is not read-only, and then install the Unofficial Jedi Knight Patch. Download the version labelled "LATEST for JK". Check the readme for installation instructions, but basically you just need to put the files in your game directory and run "patcher.bat".

  6. Install Jedi Knight Enhanced. Grab "JK_Enhanced.zip" and put the "JKE" folder in your game directory. To use the mod, you need to run the game with "-path JKE" in the launch parameters, in the same way that we added "-windowgui" earlier.

  7. Install the Jedi Knight Retexture Pack (JKR). Just download the latest "jkr.zip" and put "JKR.gob" in your game's "Resource" folder.

  8. Install the JK HUD Revamp ("jkgui.gob" and "jkhud.gob"). This is a larger HUD that is much better suited to high resolutions than the original. Just like JKE, you need to direct the game to use these files using the "path" parameter. Since we are already using JKE, we can just put these files in the "JKE" folder and the game will pick them up.

That's it!

The Lost Planet of the Jedi

Any problems, please let me know!

Published 15/08/2016