Ah ok, so I got them confused... I thought it would be in the second (or some other) game as I recall it looking so high-tech., so certainly it wouldn't be in a 2.5-dimensional game looking like Doom...?

I have more memories of the sequels, namely, the demos for Mysteries of the Sith and Jedi Outcast. However, Dark Forces is one of those games that I really love to come back to here and there. As a massive Star Wars fan, anything that gives me a bit of an escape to the galaxy far, far away is enjoyable to me. While Dark Forces 2 and Jedi Academy are my favorites of the series, the entire Kyle Katarn saga is my favorite Star Wars gaming experience of all time. KOTOR, Battlefront 2 (both the old and new versions), even the Rebel Assault rail shooters, they're all extremely fun to me but the Kyle Katarn saga will always be my favorite.

The game is good, but the lack of mid-stage-saving has made me wary of replaying it.

I don't know about it being moot, but you went and linked the ancient XLEngine site, which has hardly any working pages and a forum populated largely by spambots these days.

Lack of a released source code kills modern enjoyment. Reverse-engineered stuff like the XLE base is close enough. Hopefully no nonsense ever transpires like what happened with Atari, Nightdive and Blood though. I can't see Disney deciding to go that route, so thankfully and somewhat regretfully, we're in the clear of another "they took back the code and there won't be anymore updates" situation.

Last I heard the game was not able to be completed and he stopped working on it.

You can easily change most of the key bindings in the setup file though, to get an almost modern movement scheme (WASD movement, looking sidewards by moving the mouse). The only thing I didn't get to work was looking up and down with the mouse, used arrow keys for that. Default settings would have been unplayable for me.
I played it for the first time just two years ago, and really liked it, there's some great level design in this game.

I can't play games like this without proper mouselook, so I tried using the Dark XL engine to play it. However, I kept having some problems. Mainly, the game would crash and I couldn't progress. I also found that when I would try to strafe right that the character would also start flying up. So I could unintentionally reach high points in the map by strafing "up" walls. It was funny at first until I realized I couldn't stop it.

Yes, I know. There was a similar thread here where I thought Lucius had died based on a comment I had read that I could never dig up the source for and someone pointed out that he was, in fact still alive.

But other people took the code he and another person made public and did further work on the XLEngine. Like you said though, it's still unfinished for a variety of reasons.

I have great memories on Dark Forces from my child hood when we play it in fathers work on "night" shift from Friday to Saturday nights. Unfortunately when I play it last year I realized, that this game is not catching to modern standard.

My comment after finnishing this game in 2019.

I know it came with some custom memory config utility, and even with that, I still couldn't get it to run back in the day. (I mean, I could run it straight from the CD-ROM, without installing, but then I was missing sound effects and/or music -- I don't remember exactly -- and that was a no-go.) Annoyingly, the demo worked just fine.

Sadly, I don't think I could stand to play very much of it anymore. One of these days, you're going to post something which hasn't been mangled into incoherence by auto-correct. I guess yesterday was not that day. :P

I know, right?!? And I check what I write and while I write it (a triple check just yielded 3 errors). I wrote better with T9. In my defense, I can't zoom big enough to see these darn letters because the typing box doesn't alter with the zoom.

I've mostly quit writing with my phone. I actually have an old-school word processor for when I write my books now. I just can't see the screen well enough and I hate lifting a laptop around

Anyway, I was trying to say that the game didn't age well visually, but it was still quite fun.

I think I'll quit writing with my phone. This will be my last message. You've convinced me.

Wow, remember the day this released. My business partner and I couldn't get any work done... because... STAR WARS

You both convinced me... and I'm not even using your phone. ;)

Nooo! That would be a great loss for unintentional comedy. D:
What have I done?!

;P

...Meaning you were writing books on your phone before? Books meant to be read by other people?

(I'm on my phone because I can't commit)

I wasn't writing on my phone (often), but with laptops. I used to carry a laptop with me everywhere but when I got a smartphone a few years ago, I quit doing that. I liked not having to lug the laptop, but the phone didn't suffice for that sort of writing. So I finally got a word processor.

Clearly, it doesn't work for gog either. :)