STAR WARS™ Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II

STAR WARS™ Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II

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Personal instruction to run JKDF2 on Windows 10 the easy way
By PROTOTYPE
This guide may have content that is already discribed by other users in guides or forum threads, but I would like to give my methods to fix the game by "natural" means without mods, patches or stuff. Actually it will need a graphics wrapper, but it will not make the instruction more complicated, I will try to explain the methods as clearly as I can.
   
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Get and setup dgVoodoo 2
It's a free wrapper for old graphics API's made predominantly for W7/8/10 OS, also works with games and will help you to get the game working.
You can get dgVoodoo 2 from this website[dege.freeweb.hu]. Some users say that only several specific versions of dgVoodoo are fully compatible with JKDF2, but the latest worked fine for me, so you can look for the latest version too. Move to downloads page and look a little lower to find the latest version (currently it's 2.54).
After download, you will see the similar content of the zip archive:

Extract everything except html files (which are not needed) and launch dgVoodooCpl.exe. And this is what you will see:

To be pretty sure I did some changes in General tab. For Output API choose feature level 10.1, as it should be most optimal to run the game with less issues. For Adapter choose your primary graphics card (for laptops choose the external adapter as it provides better performance). In Full Screen Output list you will see the only display to choose (I'm not sure about multi-screen users).











Now switch to DirectX tab. You will see this:
There's no actually any option to be adjusted, but at the end make sure that Disable and passthru to real DirectX is UNCHECKED.
Hit OK and close the setup. Now let's get to the next step.
Make the game work
Go in to the MS folder inside the dgVoodoo 2. You will see three .dll files. We need two of them, these are D3Dlmm and DDraw. Copy them and head to the game's folder located in Steam Library. The path should look like:
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Star Wars Jedi Knight (for x64 users, otherwise you can see only Program Files folder in system volume).
Paste copied files into game's folder along with .exe files. Then backup or completely remove Jedi.EXE as it prevents the game to launch.
To be sure here are the screenshots how the game's folder should look before the changes ana after them.

Before:


After:

As you can see I did not delete Jedi.EXE file, however it's not necessary, at least it should be not called .exe.

That's it, nothing is left to do. Let's start the game.
Run the game
Before starting the campaign make sure that 3D Acceleration is Enabled.
Now the game should run perfectly.
In the end...
I have read other many guides from the Internet which also promised to fix the game on Windows 10, but they didn't help me, and the compatibility mode made some troubles for me... I hope these methods were quite clear and helped you to run the game without any problem.
Also, these methods work with the Mysteries of the Sith DLC. You can see the instructions here:
http://steamproxy.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=803936253
If you need additional help, leave a comment or contact me personally. Will be glad to speak with you all :)
Guide updates
6/28/2017:
  • dgVoodoo2 has been updated to 2.54
  • dgVoodoo2's .exe file is now dgVoodooCpl.exe instead of dgVoodooSetup.exe
  • Since Backbuffer in System Memory does not impact to game's performance and gameplay, this text was removed
  • Pictures updated according to new dgVoodoo2 version
  • Minor text corrections
19 Comments
DankMatter800 3 Jan @ 12:41pm 
This is actually amazing thank you. None of these garbage mods work but this worked right away perfectly.
PROTOTYPE  [author] 29 Aug, 2023 @ 2:50am 
I suppose you moved the conf file to the game directory?
I don't think there's anything to add in the guide since this is the first time it's happened to anybody and there really isn't a lot of information on the case you had. For now I assume you already had dgVoodoo pre-configured for another game? Please share some more info on your case and what've you done to fix it.
Nod 29 Aug, 2023 @ 2:30am 
ok it seems putting the whole dgvoodo thing in my jk directory fixed it update guide with this information?
PROTOTYPE  [author] 29 Aug, 2023 @ 1:20am 
Try running dgVoodooCpl.exe with admin rights and check/uncheck the "dgVoodoo Watermark" option, press Apply.
Nod 29 Aug, 2023 @ 12:20am 
uhm i some how have the watermark in game tried setting the options to get the 2 files checked off the show watermark but its still there help covering my ammo count
Ryan B 8 Jun, 2022 @ 1:02am 
This is all that works today, thanks lol, rip that jkhub or whatever it was called that got taken by a fire
Zeithri 16 Nov, 2021 @ 6:13pm 
Eyyy, finally a quick and simple way to get it working! :steamthis:
-=RelakS=- 30 Sep, 2021 @ 9:03am 
I don't have any alarm in Firefox or Chrome. I use ESET Internet Security.
Maybe, McAffee has some false alarm, especially if it was part of a bloatware.
PROTOTYPE  [author] 30 Sep, 2021 @ 1:12am 
It's the official source of dgVoodoo2, and in my case it pops out in google and other search engines, and it opens just fine. Also, there's a reason McAfee acts like that, because it's a total sh*te
lycosthewulf 29 Sep, 2021 @ 7:08pm 
DO NOT download anything from that website. Google, McAfee and basically everything else will block any downloads as viruses, and if you persist with the download and run voodoo2 McAfee will actually quarantine, terminate, and delete the virus.