Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance

X-Wing Alliance was released in 1999 and was designed to run on windows 95/98. Users therefore might run into some issues when trying to install and run the game on modern operating systems. Most notably the games' installer won't run in 64-bit windows so creating a fixed installer disc is necessary. The game is a spiritual successor to X-Wing, TIE Fighter and X-Wing vs TIE Fighter.

Patches

• 2.02

Latest official patch

• Font set

Official font set. Fixes garbled fonts on certain resolutions.

• XWAHacker

Includes a bunch of .bat-files that make useful tweaks to the game. Requires game to be patched to 2.02 to work.

Issues and Fixes

Game installer won't run:

The game installer is a 16-bit program meaning it will not run natively on a 64-bit machine. Fortunately there is a fix, even if it takes a little bit of work. Go to [1] and grab the appropriate installer (note that there is one for the German version of the game and one for the English/Italian). Follow the instructions here: [2] to create a fixed disc. If the autostart-menu doesn't pop up run SETUP.EXE directly from the disc. Also, run the game from XWINGALLIANCE.EXE not ALLIANCE.EXE

Graphical corruption when running in 3D-accelerated mode:

Download XWAHacker (requires game to be patched to 2.02 to work) and extract it to your game-folder. Run fixedclear.bat. Your .exe should now be patched to fix this issue. You can also try downloading this ddraw.ddl and put it in the main game folder.

Interface flashes rapidly:

Probably related to Crossfire/SLI. Try turning it off.

Fonts in-game are messed up

For lower resolutions you can try the official font fix above. You can also try the alternative fix by Guru Redeye here: [3] Note that text corruption might also be caused by forcing anti-aliasing.

Can't activate 3D-audio:

If you're a using creative sound card and have Alchemy installed try adding the following to it:
[Star Wars X-Wing Alliance]
RegPath: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC\X-Wing Alliance\v1.0\Install Path
Buffers=5
Duration=10

Graphical Tweaks

Widescreen/high resolution

Download XWAHacker and extract it to the game folder. Run changeres.bat. The program will ask you to pick a resolution to modify. Pick 800x600. Next input the horizontal resolution you want when prompted and then the vertical. Now go go the game and pick 800x600. The game will then run at the resolution you specified. To further improve graphics and performance also run 32bitmode.bat. Keep in mind that this messes up the colors of in-game menus though.

Multimonitor Support

Widescreen Gaming Forum.

Antialiasing

To make proper use of antialiasing you must first run 32bitmode.bat from XWAHacker to make sure the game uses 32-bit graphics. Then you should be able to force it from your graphics control panel. Note that forcing antialiasing might make in-game fonts distorted.

Anisotropic Filtering

See above. Patch the graphics to 32-bit before forcing.

V-sync

The game is locked at 30 fps. XWAHacker comes with a file called changefps.bat but unfortunately it only works for the menus, and maximum fps seems to be 60.

Performance Improvements

Patching the game to run at your native resolution as well as at 32-bit should smooth out the performance, but since the framerate is locked at 30 it doesn't make much of a difference.

Run Without CD?

The game requires the CD to be in the drive when launching the game.

Save Game Data

Folder Location

• Pilots are stored in

  \LucasArts\X-Wing Alliance

  as a .plt-file named after your character.

Game options are saved in config.cfg in the same folder.

Controller Support

The game supports joysticks and gamepads out of the box. Even rumble works!

Useful Links

• Lucasarts file repository
• X-Wing Wiki With lots of useful information
• X-Wing Alliance Upgrade project Community dedicated to replacing every ship in the game with updated models/textures.

See Also

• Star Wars: X-Wing
• Star Wars: TIE Fighter