Guide: Play X-Wing Series on Windows 7 (with an Xbox 360 controller)
Its been over a decade since the last proper Star Wars flight sim was released from LucasArts, and many of us who were fans of the original series have been patiently waiting for a new installment for quite some time now. Recently there have been rumblings of a new X-Wing series game finally in development.
It has been puzzling for me as to why Totally Games didn’t ever try to bring the series to consoles after the popularization of dual analog controls. The (artificial) requirement of a Joystick was a limiting factor for X-Wing vs. Tie Fighter (1997) and X-Wing Alliance (1999) and my mind is what could have caused the decline in popularity for the series. But with dual analog controllers, with some streamlining of gameplay systems and some intuitive control mechanics (like a multi-function radial dial similar to what is in Mass Effect 2 on consoles), you could likely bring the controls over to a dual analog controller without compromising the depth of the game.
So having an itch to play these games again, wanting to show that these games are possible to be played on a controller, and also wanting to show gamers who have not played these games what they’ve missed out on lead me to write this guide on how to get the games in the X-Wing Series working on a modern computer while looking and sounding at their absolute best. Its not easy to get these games running on a modern PC either, so even if you have a flightstick that you’d rather use, you can still make use of these guides.
This guide can’t make controls context sensitive nor can it help you control the finer details such as deadzone settings and acceleration, and some functions on the controller are also locked down. So while this is definitely not the absolute perfect controller setup, it still is a great way to experience those games on a controller that most PC gamers should have. And if you don’t have an Xbox 360 controller, it is extremely easy to obtain now. Or if you’d like to use a flightstick, you can still use this guide to get the games running.
One final note, these guides were tested on PCs running Windows 7 (64-bit) running nVidia Graphics cards. From what I’ve read, configuring these games shouldn’t be different on Windows Vista or Windows 7 32-bit edition. There may be one issue in X-Wing Alliance that appears on nVidia cards that don’t appear on ATI/AMD cards either, but configuration should be nearly the same as well.
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.
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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.