Guide: Play X-Wing Series on Windows 7 (with an Xbox 360 controller)
Tie Fighter
This game is the follow up to X-Wing (1993). It was originally released in 1994 and significantly improved on the visuals of it’s predecessor and felt like a more polished game overall with better cutscenes and dialog. This guide is for the 1998 edition of the game for Windows 95/98 which was remade to work in the X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter engine and supported 3D acceleration. Both the 1998 editions of X-Wing and Tie Fighter were controversial releases among hardcore fans because they ditched the MIDI-based dynamic music system (iMuse) from the DOS editions in favour of Digital Redbook Audio. The advantage of Redbook Audio obviously was that the music sounded exactly like the music from the movies. The downside being was that it was simply just a looped version of the Star Wars score and didn’t offer anything different. iMuse was able to allow the music to match the action that was happening on the screen a lot more closely and offered a wider range of music. The downside of iMuse was that it only sounded as good as your computers MIDI capabilities.
If you’d like the ultimate Tie Fighter experience, after you’re done installing you’ll also want to check out the Tie Fighter Reconstructed page which is a mod we’ve created to greatly improve the quality of music in Tie Fighter (Windows) and restore some of the changes made from the DOS soundtrack, including restoring the gameplay music to the DOS version (but re-synthesized to sound much better).
What you’ll need
- The Windows 95/98 version of Tie Fighter. It was released on a CD-ROM originally as part of the X-Wing Collector Series (1998) (includes X-Wing, Tie Fighter and X-Wing vs Tie Fighter: Flight School). It was later re-released as part of the Star Wars: X-Wing Trilogy (2000) which included all of the contents of the X-Wing Collector Series (1998) and X-Wing Alliance (1999).
- The following zip file which is a compilation of compatibility patches for the Windows 95/98 edition of Tie Fighter: Tie95-win7.zip
- An Xbox 360 Controller (Wired or Wireless+Wireless Xbox 360 Receiver). If you have another controller you’d like to set up for this game, you should be easily able to after doing the Installation steps with this guide.
- A print out of the following Quick Reference Guide for playing the game with an Xbox 360 controller and a Keyboard: Tie95-X360.pdf (Included in Tie95-win7.zip).
You can try obtaining Tie Fighter (or one of the compilations it came in) from eBay or Amazon. Unfortunately, this game is currently not available on any digital platforms for download. Make sure you get the correct version as there are also DOS Diskette and DOS CD-ROM versions of this game.
64-bit Installation
- Extract Tie95-win7.zip into a temporary folder on your hard drive.
- Insert the Tie Fighter CD-Rom into your CD/DVD drive. If the following Window Opens (XWINGTIE.exe), close it.
- Go to Start->Computer. You should see TIE95 as the label of the disc. Right click on it and click Open.
- You should now see the contents of the CD-ROM. Select everything and Copy it. Create a temporary folder called TIECD somewhere on your hard drive, and Paste the contents of the CD-ROM there.
- Open XCS_TIE95_MSI_v1.0.0.0.zip from the folder where you extracted Tie95-win7.zip and extract and run XCS_TIE95_MSI_v1.0.0.0.exe. Follow the steps and install it into the TIECD folder that you just created in the previous step. You may need to install Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 x86 Runtimes for this installer to work.
- Run XCS – TIE Fighter 95.msi from the TIECD folder and go through the installation steps.
- Continue following the steps in the Setup section Below.
Note: Alternate instructions for 64-bit Installation made by Markus Egger can be found HERE if you’re having problems with this method.
32-bit Installation
- Extract Tie95-win7.zip into a temporary folder on your hard drive.
- Insert the Tie Fighter CD-Rom into your CD/DVD drive. Go through the normal installation steps.
- Continue following the steps in the Setup section Below.
Note: Throughout the rest of the tutorial I may refer to C:Program Files (x86). On 32-bit systems this is just C:Program Files.
Setup
- Copy tie95.bat from the extracted contents of Tie95-win7.zip and paste it into C:Program Files (x86)LucasArtsTie95. Note that this batch file closes Windows Explorer before starting the game, because it can cause colour issues. It will start Windows Explorer again once the game exits.
- Find the Tie Fighter 95 Shortcut in your start menu. Right Click it and click Properties. Change the shortcut from TIESTART.EXE to tie95.bat and click OK to close the window
- You should notice that the icon for the Tie Fighter 95 shortcut has changed to something generic. To fix it, go back into the properties of the shortcut and click Change Icon. Browse to C:Program Files (x86)LucasArtsTie95TIE95.EXE and click OK
- Go to your Video Card Settings (for nVidia Right Click on the desktop and click nVidia Control Panel). Create a profile for Tie95.exe and ensure you Disable Antialiasing and Enable 16x Anisotropic Filtering. Apply the settings and then exit the Control Panel. If you have an ATI card, I imagine it shouldn’t be too different to do this.
- Open XWTIE95.zip from the extracted contents of Tie95-win7.zip and then extract and run XWTIE95.exe to prevent the game from crashing in D3D mode. Note that you can skip this step if you already did it for X-Wing.
- Ensure your primary CD/DVD drive has the game disc in it. You may need to use Computer Management (use at your own risk!) to ensure that the CD/DVD drive you want to use for the game is the first lettered CD/DVD, otherwise you won’t get music in the game.
- Copy B6M3GW.TIE from the extracted contents of Tie95-win7.zip and paste it into C:Program Files (x86)LucasArtsTie95Mission. This is an official patch released by LucasArts to fix an issue with Battle 6, Mission 3 locking up.
- Ensure your Xbox 360 controller is connected and is the primary controller set up on your PC.
- Run the game. Once it starts, hit the Esc key. Change the Graphics mode to 3D Hardware and Texture Res to High.
- Then click Joystick to go to the Joystick Configuration and set it up as follows (hit the keyboard key assigned to the action to quickly map it to the joystick control):
Joystick Button 1: Space – Confirm critical orders
Joystick Button 2: E – Target closest fighter targeting you
Joystick Button 3: Alt-3 – Roll/Target ship in sights
Joystick Button 4: T – Next target
Joystick Button 5: W – Cycle weapon settings
Joystick Button 6: Alt-2 – Fire weapon
Joystick Button 7: F8 – Cycle Beam Settings
Joystick Button 8: B – Beam On/Off
Joystick Button 9: Enter – Match targeted craft’s speed
Joystick Button 10: Backspace – Full Throttle
Joystick POV U: X – Cycle Firing Settings
Joystick POV R: S – Cycle Shield Settings
Joystick POV D: F9 – Laser Recharge Rate
Joystick POV L: F10 – Shields Recharge Rate
Then Click Back to Options. And then Click OK to close the dialog.
- To ensure the settings save, Log in/Register your character, Back out to the Registration and then hit Esc and Exit to Windows
- If you’d like to use your controller to navigate the menus, Open the JoyToKey.zip archive from the folder where you extracted Tie95-win7.zip and extract it to a location where you’d like to store the program (i.e. C:joytokey), ideally in a folder that is not controlled by Windows (folders that are controlled by Windows are: Program Files, Users, etc). Run it and select the Tie95 profile. This essentially enables mouse emulation on the controller, so you can use this also to navigate your Windows Desktop if you’d like. Just make sure you don’t keep JoyToKey open when running other games in the series that support both the controller and mouse as that can cause input conflicts. Also, due to this game requiring the shut down of Explorer before it is run, when you exit out of the game, the JoyToKey icon will disappear from the system tray but it will still be running in the background. You can run JoyToKey again to get it to open up the Window and then click on File->Exit to close it.
Notes
…and enjoy! Remember to check out the Quick Reference Guide PDF and print it out for quick reference. You’ll still need access to your keyboard while playing the game to access some of the least common or least urgent controls. So if you plan on hooking your PC up to your TV to play, you will want to have a Bluetooth keyboard close by to enjoy this game.
The steering will be a little sensitive because the Xbox 360 controller doesn’t have a deadzone set whereas Tie Fighter doesn’t manage the deadzone either. But I still was able to play the game fine despite that. I’m sure with the use of some custom drivers you could tune the 360 controller better to work with this game, but I prefer my 360 controller to be recognized correctly in modern games that support it, so I’ve stayed away from using them.
Credits
- Markus Egger (Homepage): MSI Installer
- Craig Perry (LucasFiles): D3D compatibility Patch
- Ryo Ohkubo (JoyToKey English Homepage): JoyToKey
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- X-Wing
- X-Wing (DOS CD-ROM Edition)
- X-Wing Reconstructed
- Tie Fighter
- Tie Fighter (DOS CD-ROM Edition)
- Tie Fighter Reconstructed
- X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter: Balance of Power Campaign
- X-Wing Alliance
- X-Wing Alliance Graphical Upgrades
- Keyboard, Mouse & TrackIR Support
Contact the author at @AbdulBCRT on Twitter if there are any issues with the guide.
Trackbacks & Pingbacks
- Guide: Play X-Wing Series on Windows 7 (with an Xbox 360 … - xbox-360-controller
- Your Questions About Laptops Under 500.00 | Laptopsunder500bucks.com
- mujeres article
- Tie Fighter 95 Reconstructed Mod restoring original DOS music released! « Saving Content
- My Homepage
- OutletPC’s Interview with Scott Ellison II of Saving Content! | OutletPC.com Blog
- Delizia.pl
Scott Ellison II 
Great guide, but still having problems getting iMUSE to work (downloaded the Tuzito version last week actually and have been trying to get it to work since then). I have the CD in and my CD drive is my D: drive. Any other ideas why in-game music isn’t working?
You should probably go on eBay or Amazon to buy the games.
Don’t pirate such a great game; go out and buy it.
One of the tricks I learned about Tie Fighter is that it streams music from the Drive it was installed from due to a registry entry. However, if the TIE CD is in a drive with a LOWER-letter (alphabetically speaking), this lower-lettered drive takes priority. Try creating a Daemon Tools virtual drive as A:. Mount an image of your REAL, PURCHASED CD to this drive and play. Enjoy your music.
Any update on the X-Wing/Tie Fighter Reconstructed mods? It’s going to be so great to play the win 98 versions with the DOS music – the best of both worlds!
I’ll ping Abdul to give you an update as he’s working on it. But I can assure you there is progress on this, currently.
Its done!
Finished playing the first couple of missions of Tour I. I’ve got to say, someone should have done this years ago. I’ll always miss imuse, but having the original battle music does so much for the game’s atmosphere, and having engine noise and better graphics definitely makes up the difference. Great work!
Some suggestions:
1) Are there any plans to add even more music? The concourse, main bridge where you talk to the flight officer/view mission map/etc and tech room still have their Win 95 ambient noise tracks instead of the original dos music. I think having the ambient wav files replaced with the original music would make a big difference.
2) Similarly, are the battle cutscene music tracks going to be remastered? I noticed that the music for battle 2’s cutscene has been replaced by a remastered version of some other track, not the actual battle 2 music, while the other tracks haven’t been touched.
Just some ideas. This is great, but if it was a little more comprehensive, it would really be something. Thanks again!
Just noticed the cutscene music error. Abdul, that should be the HARKTALK1.wav file, not BATTLE2.wav.
Okay, I’ve got it fixed, and have sent the files to Abdul. The concourse, tech room, tour of duty room, and all cutscenes now have the proper music playing, and in better quality. There are volume issues, with some of the music being too loud over the voices, but that can be fixed at a later date.
So is iMuse playback in the 95 games a lost cause? I vaguely remember finding a couple of references to it in the game files but didn’t take it any further.
oh please don’t think I’m trying to take away anything from what you’ve done here. The new (old) music is fantastic!
How do you stop the throttle from automatically going to 50% when you use an XBox 360 pad?
Unfortunately the only thing you can do is use the keyboard keys at that point to get the *exact* throttle you want. But if Full Throttle/Match Throttle is mapped to keys on the controller those should be sufficient in most cases.
Thanks for the reply.
I ended up ditching the 360 pad and dug out my Flightstick joystick instead which works well enough and all the extra HAT switches etc come in very handy 🙂
Only issue I have now is the crash that usually occurs upon completing one mission and then starting another.
Just got the Tie Fighter mod all set. Can’t wait to try it out! Thanks!
Hi, all. My name is Dan ‘Yitzchak’ Bennett (not my real name, but it works), and I did the music for the reorchestration. I’m honestly surprised at how much love there is for this project and this game, and I see that several of you are asking about the missing music. I don’t know why it wasn’t included in this mod (probably something to do with the obnoxious Windows version of the game and its lousy choices re: music), and I’m here to tell you that the entire soundtrack (including the music that wasn’t included in this mod) is available from my Youtube channel; specifically, my video of the Tie Fighter Intro Theme at /watch?v=kZCVgJq9sKc.
The album is free, but donations are always welcome…
Hey, I absolutely love the guide, however, I keep getting a message that setupex.exe doesn’t exist for my NiftyZip, what up with that?
There is no .exe in either RAR. There must be a problem with your unzipping program. Might I suggest 7-Zip, if nothing else?
I agree, I would use 7-Zip as your Zip program. I have zero issues when using it.
i did all things and witn a ps3 control the game works perfectly. However, when I try to use my xbox control the game stuck with black screen after the Mission Briefing, this msg appear: Game could not start. I tried to re-install but the same problem happens. Thanks for you support!
hi i followed all the instructions but when i tried to start mission 1 i get a black screen and an error msg. What can i do?
Im using xbox 360 controller through wireless receiver..
I just reinstalled the Reconstructed mod with the updated files. The concourse music does flow into the battle room nicely but there’s still no music for the registration screen nor the briefing map screens. I noticed that the music for these (registration at least) is nowhere to be found in the modified “MUSIC” folder. Could it be that they were accidentally left out?
I’m not entirely sure but my guess is that these pieces originally were not in the Windows version of Tie Fighter so we can’t replace them if they never existed in the first place.
This is loooooong overdue; the real world’s got me too, I’m afraid!
A while back, I actually dug deeper into this and discovered that music does in fact play during those scenes if you drop the appropriately-named track into the “MUSIC” folder. The answer lies within Daniel’s complete soundtrack download (not sure if he’s posted that here, but I found the link on Youtube), which contains the three tracks I mentioned with titles that appeared similar to those of the tracks already in the TIE95 music folder. I converted those files to WAV and dropped them into the folder. I think I had to add/delete “1” on the end of a couple of the titles, but with some trial and error with renaming, I managed to get the new songs to play in their respective areas!
Here are correct song titles for the MUSIC folder:
-Registration: REGISTER
-Briefing Map: BRIEFMAP1
-Combat Chamber Briefing Map: FIGHTMAP
The question is, do those titles work as the result of something Pete Jatz did? If they’ve always worked but lacked the necessary tracks, that’s beyond lazy on LA’s part. In any case, those three songs complete the scope of the mod, so you should consider another update. For my own enjoyment, I also modified the battle music by cutting the silent beginning/end pauses out and creating a new ISO file, which sounds a lot truer to the timing of the original; no more 2-3 seconds of silence before the victory/failure music kicks in. You might want to look into doing this on all of the tracks, as it creates a much smoother looping effect.
Would you be able to somehow share the New ISO file with your updated battle music??
Good stuff. Nice to get XW:A running again. I seem to be having a problem in that it did not ask me to set up my 3D card. The game runs fine as long as I don’t have 3D hardware set to ‘Yes’ in-game. When I turn it on, I can crank the resolution up, but I get a lot of jagged background and poorly drawn images. Everything on the Heads-Up display is good, but looking out the cockpit is rough.
Running on Win7x64, AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series. Suggestions? Thanks!
Hmm. I’m not sure. 3D hardware works fine when enabled with nvidia cards provided you use the compatibility fix.
I have the same issue, running a pair of AMD cards. Runs fine in software mode, but unplayable with 3d hardware enabled. Still, glad to have Tie Fighter back. I’ll continue to experiment, will let you know if I find a combination of settings that get this working.
For anyone else with ATI cards, I found that following the directions here, worked, but I’d get strange texture black box issues which messed things up for me any time the 3d hardware was enabled. I’ve now got all three games working fine, only change was to use xwahacker on the exe’s for all three games. Running the ‘fixedclear’ bat files on each got things running great, having so much fun with some of my all time favorites again.
GREAT JOB
for us rebel´s out there
when is X Wing Reconstructed Coming Out?
Not sure. Daniel has been pretty busy unfortunately :(. It might not ever come out. But I’m happy that we got the Tie Fighter one done as that was the most important one to do since I think its the better game and has the greater benefit with restoring the original soundtrack.
Oh, it’ll come out. Life has been crazy, though. I’m half-way done with the soundtrack…and have been for several months. I might be OOC until after the New Year, but I swear that I will finish this.
Working crazy hours, my mixing board dying (and needing to be replaced), some financial stuff, Hurricane Sandy, and other real-world considerations have put a serious damper on my music and the time available in which I am able to work on it.
Hi, I’ve followed the guide, and everything seems to work great, except one thing. My pilot doesn’t update with progress for missions completed in the historical combat section, and doesn’t register completion of the first mission on the Tour of Duty. Any ideas? 😦
I need help. X Wing loaded just fine following this method, but TIE isn’t. I keep getting an error message referring to DXSETUP.EXE. How can I get around this to make it work?
Awesome mod. I downloaded everything, and followed instructions to the T. Game plays great but I get an error message on startup saying there audio music files cannot be played do to other audio files running simultaneously. I have nothing else operating. I am running Windows 7 Ulimate 64 bit and I am using an Nvidia GeForce 550ti
any xwa project for windows 8?
I did install it on windows 8 pro with proper instructions, with the new craft pack that recently came out and still , first time I press the key “T”, my instruments disapeare and I don’t see nothing else than stars and screwed up-invisible interface
i also tried on win8 with same results you mentioned. No lasers show up, no enemy models etc. Any solution?
Just tried the installs … got XWing 95 and Xwing Alliance to work but Tie Fighter dosen’t … i starts to laod then just shuts down and drops back to windows … any sugestions?
whenever i try a single player combat simulator mission, it just shows a black screen, but when i try the simulator with multiplayer, it works. Anyone know why is this?
Thank you guys for the awesome guides provided here! I do have a question though. I’m attempting to install X-wing 95 on my Acer Aspire One which has Win 7 32-bit, bu t the install process freezes just after starting to copy the files. It usually freezes up on the trenchtexture file. I’ve tried the CD as well as the iso of the CD with the same results. Trying to install TIE95 also results in a freeze, but at a different point the process. Any help would be much appreciated, I’ve tried searching across the internet, but haven’t had any luck coming up with a solution. Thanks in advance!
This is great. I’ve been able to play XWA again but I seem to have a problem with the 360 controller. While I’m playing the camera suddenly switches modes from facing forward to tracking the target. Kinda odd when I’m trying to shoot something then as it passes by I’m suddenly looking at the back of the cockpit and can’t see where I’m going. I quickly switch to turret and back to fix it, but it’s annoying because it happens too damn often and I finally give up playing. I’m thinking pressing multiple buttons at once on the controller combines the buttons and the game thinks I pressed another command.