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Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

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Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire cover
Developers
LucasArts
Publishers
LucasArts
Disney Interactive Studios
Release dates
Windows September 17, 1997
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on HowLongToBeat
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on IGDB
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on MobyGames
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on Wikipedia
Star Wars: X-Wing (series)
The Software Toolworks' Star Wars Chess 1993
Star Wars: Rebel Assault (series)
Star Wars: Jedi Knight (series)
Star Wars: Monopoly 1997
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire 1997
Star Wars: Yoda Stories 1997
Star Wars: Rebellion 1998
Star Wars: DroidWorks 1998
Star Wars: Rogue Squadron (series)
Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace 1999
Star Wars: Episode I - Racer 1999
Star Wars: Episode I - The Gungan Frontier 1999
Star Wars: Pit Droids 1999
Star Wars: Anakin's Speedway 2000
Star Wars: Force Commander 2000
Star Wars Math: Jabba's Game Galaxy 2000
Star Wars: Jar Jar's Journey 2000
Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds 2001
Star Wars: Starfighter 2001
Star Wars Galaxies 2003
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (series)
Star Wars: Battlefront (series)
Lego Star Wars (series)
Star Wars: Republic Commando 2005
Star Wars: Empire at War 2006
Star Wars: The Force Unleashed (series)
Star Wars: The Clone Wars - Republic Heroes 2009
Angry Birds Star Wars 2012
Angry Birds Star Wars II 2013
Star Wars: Commander 2014
Star Wars: Trials on Tatooine 2016
Battle Test: A Nissan Rogue 360° VR Experience 2017
Star Wars: Imperial Assault - Legends of the Alliance 2017
Star Wars: Droid Repair Bay 2017
Vader Immortal 2019
Star Wars Jedi (series)
Star Wars: Squadrons 2020
Star Wars Outlaws 2024
Star Wars Eclipse TBA

Key points

Modern systems need workarounds for some compatibility problems; see installing on modern versions of Windows.
Playing with a joystick is recommended.
Physics start breaking at high framerates. A 30 FPS cap is recommended.

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions
GOG.com Support Page
Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
Windows
GOG.com
DRM-free
Windows
Humble Store
Icon overlay.png
Windows
Origin
Origin
Included with EA Play.
Windows
Steam
Icon overlay.png
Uses external launcher compatible with modern systems.
Windows

Essential improvements

Patches

The latest official patch 1.1 enhances performance and provides support for more graphics cards. It is available at www.patches-scrolls.de and soggi.org.

Peixoto's patch

Gets the installer working on 64 bit systems
Forced resolution allows high resolution without shrinking the menus and HUD
Fixes the game's fog
Get the game running at the correct speed
Fixes the CD music
Better compatibility with Xinput gamepads - Force feedback support is still partial and some effects don't play

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\[Note 1]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\LucasArts Entertainment Company\Shadows of the Empire[Note 2]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/560170/pfx/[Note 3]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\*.soe[Note 1]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/560170/pfx/[Note 3]
Path can be selected in the launcher.

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Origin
Steam Cloud

Video

External Launcher settings
External Launcher settings
GOG Launcher settings
GOG Launcher settings
Ingame settings
Ingame settings

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
Resolutions higher than 1280x960 will result in cutscenes playing in upper left corner of the screen by default. See Select Arbitrary Resolutions Without Graphical Issues for a workaround.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Minor cutscene rendering issues. Starfield rendered at 640x480.
Field of view (FOV)
Fixed FOV (widescreen resolutions are Vert-).
Windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS
Game speed tied to framerate.
A 30 FPS cap is recommended.
Capped to 60 FPS in GOG release.
High dynamic range display (HDR)

Input

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
Certain keys and mouse buttons cannot be unbound
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse acts like joystick in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Full controller support
External mouse-only launchers used.
Controller remapping
Controller sensitivity
Controller Y-axis inversion
Additional information
Controller hotplugging
Haptic feedback
Digital movement supported
Simultaneous controller+KB/M

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
CD Music and Sound Effects
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Red Book CD audio
On Windows, CD music might not play correctly; see the troubleshooting guide for solutions.

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English

Issues fixed

Installing on modern versions of Windows

Make necessary changes[1]
  1. Copy the CD contents to a folder somewhere.
  2. Download the InstallShield 3 32-bit Generic Installer.
  3. Extract Is3Engine.zip to the INSTALL folder.
  4. Run setup32.exe and follow the steps. The CD folder can now be deleted.
  5. Run the game and exit it.
  6. Run SOTE.exe in the installation folder.
  7. Uncheck CD Audio, Direct Movie and Enable Fog and click OK.
  8. Create a new player and run the game normally.
  9. You might need to set SHADOWS.EXE to Windows 95 compatibility mode.

Game runs too fast

Cap framerate to 30fps[2]

Background music

The background music will not play on Windows Vista and later. The game reads the audio from the CD in audio-CD format in some fashion that is incompatible with more recent versions of Windows.
Fix Background Music[citation needed]

You can get the background music to work by converting it into .ogg format, using files found on this site: Diary of a Punk Rock Hacker: Cross-Platform Classic Game Hacking - this solution should work both in Windows and Wine, according to the programmer.

If the download is unavailable, you can try to get it from one of these locations:

VOGONS

AssemblerGames

Notes

Issue fixed in digital re-releases.

Select Arbitrary Resolutions Without Graphical Issues

Stars do not render correctly if the launcher resolution is set higher than 640x480, and videos render in a corner at launcher resolutions higher than 1280x960.
Fix Resolution Related Graphical Issues
  1. Install dgVoodoo 2 in the Sdata folder (located in the install folder).
  2. Run dgVoodooCpl.exe
  3. Select your desired resolution under the DirectX tab using the Resolution dropdown.
  4. When you start the game/launcher, set the Display Device to "dgVoodoo DirectX Wrapper", 3D Device to "dgVoodoo Hardware Accelerated Device", and Display Mode to *exactly* "640x480 16bpp". Any other option, higher or lower, will result in at least some graphical issues.

Notes

The UI will be scaled as tho you were actually running the game at 640x480.
Stars do not render correctly with Nvidia 3D Vision enabled regardless of launcher resolution.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 5 GOG release uses Direct3D 9 wrapper.
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 95
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 90 MHz
System memory (RAM) 16 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 40 MB
Video card (GPU) DirectX 5 compatible


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).
  2. Applications writing to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE will be redirected to other locations based on various criterias, see the glossary page for more details.
  3. 3.0 3.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/560170/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (560170) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References