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Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic cover
Developers
Triumph Studios
Publishers
Retail Gathering of Developers
Digital, original Triumph Studios
Digital, current Paradox Interactive
Release dates
Windows July 25, 2003
Reception
Metacritic 82
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing Turn-based
Perspectives Bird's-eye view, Isometric
Controls Multiple select, Point and select
Genres 4X, Strategy, TBS
Themes Fantasy
Series Age of Wonders
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic on HowLongToBeat
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic on IGDB
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic on MobyGames
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic on Wikipedia
Age of Wonders
Age of Wonders 1999
Age of Wonders II: The Wizard's Throne 2002
Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic 2003
Age of Wonders III 2014
Age of Wonders: Planetfall 2019
Age of Wonders 4 2023

Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic is a singleplayer and multiplayer bird's-eye view and isometric 4X, strategy and TBS game in the Age of Wonders series.

General information

Official Discord for game series
Official Paradox Plaza forums
GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page
Steam Community Discussions
Age of Wonders 2 Heaven with Shadow Magic support as well.

Availability

Essential improvements

Patches

The latest official patch is v1.30.0.2616.

Skip intro videos

Change settings[1]
  1. Open the game's setup executable (AoWSMSetup.exe).
  2. Uncheck the box labelled "Show Intro".
  3. Press OK.

Improve performance

On modern systems, the game's input is sluggish if not modified.
The following methods may also fix the issue related to the error message Runtime error 217 at 4000C2DE.
Method 1: Use dxwrapper[2]
  1. Download dxwrapper
  2. Extract dxwrapper.asi, dxwrapper.dll, dxwrapper.ini and Stub\d3d8.dll to <path-to-game>.
  3. Open dxwrapper.ini with a text editor.
  4. In the [Compatibility] section, set D3d8to9 and DDrawCompat to 1.
  5. Save the file and close it.
  6. Run AoWSMSetup.exe and enable Direct3D.
Method 2: Use dgVoodoo 2
  1. Download dgVoodoo 2.
  2. Extract dgVoodoo.conf and dgVoodooCpl.exe to <path-to-game>.
  3. Open the MS\x86 folder inside the archive and extract the 3 DLLs to <path-to-game>.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Triumph Studios\Age of Wonders Shadow Magic\
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/61520/pfx/[Note 1]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\Save\[Note 2]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/61520/pfx/[Note 1]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Steam Cloud

Video

General settings (external application)
General settings (external application)
Gameplay settings (in-game)
Gameplay settings (in-game)

Input

Keyboard and mouse State Notes
Remapping
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Controller types

Audio

Sound settings (in-game)
Sound settings (in-game)

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
Sound effects, music
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Using Alt+Tab from a fullscreen (non-Direct3D) setting will render a black screen, forcing a hard exit from the game.
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
French
Retail only.
German
Retail only.
Polish
Retail only.

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Players Notes
Local play
Hot seat
LAN play
8
Online play
8 Does not have a native online lobby; used GameSpy Arcade for matchmaking.
Asynchronous multiplayer
Play by Email

Connection types

Issues fixed

Can not run game in fullscreen on later versions of Windows

This problem shows up as Window being the only display option available.
Set AoWSMSetup.exe to run in compatibility mode for Windows XP SP3 or 16-bit (65536) color mode.[3]
Install dgVoodoo 2.

Gibberish text

This occurs when using very high resolution, likely breaking the character mapping in the fonts.
Use a lower resolution (e.g. 1920x1080)[4]

Shaders do not work in windowed mode

This problem has numerous effects, such as:
  • Red overlay that indicates areas pioneers can't build an outpost doesn't appear.
  • Red overlay that indicates targets that are out of range doesn't appear.
  • Zoom level is stuck at 100% and can't be changed.
  • Bloom effect around lights is not present.
Configure dgVoodoo 2
  1. Install dgVoodoo 2.
  2. Open dgVoodoo.conf and edit the following lines to say the following: FullScreenMode = false,ScalingMode = centered,WindowedAttributes = Borderless and AppControlledScreenMode = false.
  3. Open the game's setup executable (AoWSMSetup.exe) and change the Display Mode option to the monitor's resolution. Also make sure that Use Direct3D is enabled.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 7
DirectDraw 7
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Audio Miles Sound System
Cutscenes Bink Video

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 98, ME, 2000, XP
Processor (CPU) 450 MHz
System memory (RAM) 128 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 900 MB
Video card (GPU) DirectX 8.1 compatible


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 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>/61520/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (61520) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.
  2. 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).

References

  1. Verified by User:Plok on 2022-11-27
  2. Verified by User:Plok on 2023-04-15
  3. Verified by User:Plok on 2023-01-04
  4. [missing title] - last accessed on 2023-01-13