http://www.savingcontent.com/xwing



Time to dust off your X-Wing, Tie Fighter, X-Wing vs Tie Fighter and X-Wing Alliance CDs.

I've just finished writing my guide on how to get these games running on Windows 7 (both 32-bit and 64-bit). This guide should also help you get it running on Vista or XP if you have problems but I haven't explicitly tested on those platforms (I mainly tested on Windows 7 64-bit). This guide also includes help on how to get the DOS versions working of X-Wing and Tie Fighter if thats your fancy (especially if you want to experience the games using iMuse).

And just so you guys know, this guide adressing getting 3D acceleration working on all of the games and also how to get 16:9 and Antialiasing in X-Wing Alliance like below:


I've included instructions on how to set these games up using an Xbox 360 controller, but I figure a lot of people here have flight sticks, so feel free to ignore those instructions if that's the case

If you have any troubles getting things running just drop a line here. I'm just hoping I didn't screw anything up.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. X-Wing
3. X-Wing (DOS CD-ROM Edition)
4. X-Wing Reconstructed
5. Tie Fighter
6. Tie Fighter (DOS CD-ROM Edition)
7. Tie Fighter Reconstructed
8. X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter: Balance of Power Campaign
9. X-Wing Alliance
10. X-Wing Alliance Graphical Upgrades
11. Keyboard, Mouse & TrackIR Support

----

I've also been working on an audio mod for X-Wing (Windows) and Tie Fighter (Windows) to:

A) restore the original music where its been completely changed from the DOS versions. This is especially egregious in Tie Fighter where they completely replaced the original soundtrack with John William's music
B) Have the non-Redbook audio music be much higher quality. LucasArts just recorded super low bitrate/mono WAVs of the DOS version's music of these games using what sounds like a crappy Adlib card. Theres a fellow by the name of Daniel Bennett who has been working on resynthesizing the music using some modern tools to make it sound like something you'd hear in a modern game and also be at a much higher KHz and in Stereo.

Its going to be a couple of weeks until the mods are available however. The Tie Fighter one may be coming sooner than later, but Daniel has a busy schedule and only has so much time to dedicate to this project.

Excellent! I was just about to re-install Alliance the other day when I read it doesn't work on W7. I'll let you off with the 'xbox controller' thing too seeing as you have made it work

Well, I just might try this. It's been a long time since I did any Xwing or TIE Fighter.



The Jedi Master

Wow, that looks awesome indeed. Too bad all of my X-Wing/Tie Fighter CD's are long, long gone.

I still have X-Wing Alliance. I'll give this a go this weekend! I'm rereading all the X-Wing books right now too so I've been really itching to play.

Can you fly X-Wing Alliance online in W7? We should all get together some night and do that.

I'm pretty sure I came across the resynthesized versions of Tie Fighter's music on youtube. Outstanding work! I noticed that one of the video descriptions mentioned that the resynthesized versions are to be included in the next update to the Tie Fighter Total Conversion Mod for X-Wing Alliance. Very, very cool.

About the audio mods (X-Wing/Tie Fighter Reconstructed?) you mentioned: you're saying they're going to change the music in the X-Wing Collector's Series versions (Win 98) back to the original (resynthesized) music? Has iMuse been restored (I know that's a longshot)?

Again, great stuff. As an owner of the Win 98 versions, I've been waiting for something like this for a long time!

Nice work! Thanks for this and for the link. Good for another generation now.

Oh man I wish I had a full weekend to get it going on my rig now. I would love to play X-wing or Tie Fighter on my 27" LCD.

So are these available on GoG or similar or is it a case of hunt-the-CD on Ebay?

Looks like a great guide!

Is it just me or are most of the graphical upgrades unavailable to download right now?

Well done! I had XWA running on Win7 a year or so ago, but somehow it stopped working and I never could figure out why. This guide got me back up and running in no time! Thanks!

The Tie Fighter Music mod is finally out: http://www.savingcontent.com/2012/05/tie...music-released/

Heres the bullet points of what it does:
- restores original DOS score with much better quality than before (except for the intro-- unfortunately its locked to 11khz mono, but we improved it as much as we could)
- restores better quality Voice from DOS CD-Rom version

I tried to re-install XWA recently, and ended up breaking one of my original cd's :p

Can we get this stickied up somewhere?

What Sound Generator/sound card/synthesizer are you using for this?

Hey, my name is Daniel 'Yitzchak' Bennett (not my real name, but it works), and I did the music for Abdul's mod.

I didn't use a Sound Generator or anything like it for making this mod...assuming that you mean a device through which I run the original MIDI like a synthesizer and record the output a la TIE FIGHTER Windows version did. I actually re-recorded the music using professional-quality sample libraries.

I'm using, almost exclusively, East West/Quantum Leap's Symphonic Orchestra Platinum Plus PLAY! Edition, with a few additions from EWQL Solo Violin, Stormdrum 2 Complete, and Pianos.

The music is taken from the actual MIDI files from the games, transcribed to sheet music, which I then play using my MIDI keyboard, the values of which are slightly quantized/corrected as needed. This allows me a lot more fluidity and naturalization of sound than simply copypasting the MIDI itself, as well as getting rid of a lot of the 'machine-gun' sound of computer replication.

I'm currently about halfway through the X-Wing Reconstructed Mod, so look forward to that in the coming weeks!

My problem is that I cant get my x-wing games to detect my logitech attack 3 joystick. I bought an upgrade so I can get windows xp mode to work. It does but my joystick only works on windows 7. I played one of my buddies games on windows 7 which was ww2 fighters by janes. Also it wouldnt play unless it was the smallest screen resolution on windows xp which I cant understand why. Logitech dont make drivers for xp anymore. I guess I am going to have to try getting another brand of joystick. I tried downloading zip files from another website via rebelsquadrons but I couldnt get it to work either. I am about ready to give up and sell my games since they dont want to work on my pc like they did on my old pc with windows xp. I am getting the feeling I am not doing something right when I try to get my games to work on my pc. I got my x-wing games to install but that is about it.

Thank you for posting the Music Mod also. More good work on a classic sim.

Thanks for the link.

Glad to see Markus Egger in the credits. About a year ago, I followed his instructions here:

http://www.markusegger.at/

and got my X-Wing / Tie Fighter / X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter / X-Wing Alliance installs all up to snuff. I might look at the sound improvements though.

I didn't see if color glitch was brought up in that article though, or if the hoops fix it. Sometimes when you exit/complete a mission in Tie Fighter or X-Wing, the color palette gets crazy.

The fix is to open your task manager and end the "explorer.exe" process. This kills your GUI desktop. Then, within the Task Manager, click "File", then "New Task (Run...)" and choose the pertinent shortcut or .exe for the game you want to play. It will start normally.

Once you're done playing, just reinitialize the "explorer.exe" from the Task Manager by clicking "File", the "New Task (Run...)", and type "explorer.exe".

Voila! No color glitches.

IIRC, Alliance came hardcoded with MSN Gaming Zone for matchmaking. Wikipedia says that multiplayer support ended in 2004. Alliance has been modded in all possible ways though, so you are sure to find something in a google search:

Myself and KlarSnow connected via LogMeIn (Hamachi) a while back. It was laggy, but it worked...