Guide: Play X-Wing Series on Windows 7 (with an Xbox 360 controller)
X-Wing Alliance
This is the last entry in the X-Wing series. It’s story telling goes far beyond what was in previous games and really is the definitive Single Player experience in the series.
What you’ll need
- Disc 1 and Disc 2 of X-Wing Alliance
- The following zip file which is a compilation of compatibility patches for the Windows 95/98 edition of Tie Fighter: XWA-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: XWA-X360.pdf (Included in XWA-win7.zip).
64-bit Installation
- Extract XWA-win7.zip into a temporary folder on your hard drive.
- Insert X-Wing Alliance Disc 1 into your CD/DVD drive. If the X-Wing Alliance Setup Window opens, close it.
- Go to Start->Computer. You should see XWA_DISK_1 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 XWACD somewhere on your hard drive, and Paste the contents of the CD-ROM there.
- Open X-Wing_Alliance_MSI_v1.0.0.0.zip from the folder where you extracted XvT-win7.zip and extract and run X-Wing_Alliance_MSI_v1.0.0.0.exe. Follow the steps and install it into the XWACD folder that you just created in the previous step. Click Yes to overwrite existing files. You may need to install Microsoft Visual C++ 2005 SP1 x86 Runtimes for this installer to work.
- Run X-Wing Alliance.msi from the XWACD folder and go through the installation steps.
- Open RegEdit (Start->Run->regedit) and browse to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREWow6432NodeLucasArts Entertainment Company LLCX-Wing Alliancev1.0. Edit the following entries and change C: to the drive letter that the X-Wing Alliance Disc is in:
Analyze Path
CD Path
Source Dir
Source Path - 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 XWA-win7.zip into a temporary folder on your hard drive.
- Insert the X-Wing Alliance Disc 1 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
- Run XWAUPD202.EXE from the folder with the Extracted Contents of XWA-win7.zip to Install XWA Patch 2.02.
- A common problem in XWA on modern video cards is the fonts appearing garbled or corrupted. To fix this, open XWA-AllRFonts.zip from the folder with the extracted contents of XWA-win7.zip and extract Fonts.dat into C:Program Files (x86)LucasArtsX-Wing AllianceRESDATA
- If you’d like to use a widescreen resolution and antialiasing, you’ll need to use a modified XWINGALLIANCE.exe. I’ve included fixed versions depending on what resolution you’d like to use in the AA(Fixedclear)+Widescreen Fix folder. Note that I bundled in fixes for the stock XWA 2.02 exe and the exe that you’ll get after installing UCP & XWAU (see the next page for details). You should not be applying the fixed XWA 2.02 EXE on an X-Wing Alliance install which does include either the UCP or XWAU. If you’d like to use other resolutions or edit an already customized EXE you have (due to installing mods), refer to the guide on widescreengamingforum. The XWINGALLIANCE.exe I’ve bundled also has the fixedclear.bat patch already applied from xwahacker.zip to allow the use of anti-aliasing (without this, you won’t be able to see 3d objects when playing the game if AA is enabled). The negative impact of this is that it causes ghosting of the 3D models in the Tech Room & Briefings.
- Go to your Video Card Settings (for nVidia Right Click on the desktop and click nVidia Control Panel). Create a profile for XWINGALLIANCE.EXE and Enable Overriding Application Antialiasing settings, 4x Antialiasing and 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.
- Insert X-Wing Alliance Disc 1 into your CD/DVD drive
- Ensure your Xbox 360 controller is connected and is the primary controller set up on your PC.
- Run the game from the X-Wing Alliance shortcut in your start menu (NOTE: Sometimes I’ve noticed the game does not start when running the shortcut. If you have that issue, try running XWINGALLIANCE.exe directly from your X-Wing Alliance folder in Program Files).
- The first time you run it, it will ask you to setup your 3D card, click yes to do it. Eventually you should end up in the XWA Launcher after going through those steps. Click Play X-Wing Alliance
- Once you’re in the main menu, go to config and ensure the Singleplayer and Multiplayer Graphics options are setup like follows. Note that if you’re using the widescreen hack, it won’t show the correct label for the resolution you want to use– if you want to use 1920×1080, it will be labelled 1280×1024 (assuming you have the modified EXE file for 1920×1080)
- Go to the Sound Options and increase the number of Channels available to 32.
- Then click Joystick to go to the Joystick Configuration and turn off the Rudder control (if you’re using an Xbox 360 controller, this will end up being on the wrong axis– will fix it with JoyToKey). Then go to remap controls 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: G – Toggle Gunner/Pilot Position
Joystick Button 8: O – Target nearest Objective
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.
- Exit the game to ensure the Settings Save
- If you’d like to use your controller to navigate the menus and add additional mappings to the Right Stick, Open the JoyToKey.zip archive from the folder where you extracted XWA-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 XWA 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.
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.
If the rudder is a little too sensitive for your liking, you can disable the mapping on Axis4 in JoyToKey, and then either re-enable it in game (which would have it be RS-Up/RS-Down to roll left and right) or just leave it disabled. You’ll still be able to roll using the “X” button.
If you’d like to use 3D Sound support in Windows Vista/7, you’re going to need to use Creative ALchemy. Unfortunately this is only officially available for PCs with Creative Sound Cards.
Credits
- Markus Egger (Homepage): MSI Installer
- Ryo Ohkubo (JoyToKey English Homepage): JoyToKey
- EX-TFA_Stranger (LucasFiles): XWA All-resolution Font Set
- BooTx & ERADEEJAY (widescreengamingforum): XWA Widescreen hack.
- Reimar (XWAHacker): Includes various fixes for problems you could have with XWA.
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.