Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds

Developers
	LucasArts
Mac OS (Classic)	Westlake Interactive
Publishers
	LucasArts
Japan	Electronic Arts
Mac OS	Aspyr Media
Digital	Disney Interactive Studios
Engines
	Genie
Release dates
Windows	November 9, 2001
Mac OS (Classic)	June 5, 2002
macOS (OS X)	June 5, 2002
Reception
Metacritic	75
Taxonomy
Monetization	One-time game purchase, Subscription gaming service, Expansion pack
Modes	Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing	Real-time
Perspectives	Bird's-eye view, Isometric
Controls	Multiple select, Point and select
Genres	RTS
Themes	Sci-fi
Series	Star Wars

Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds is a singleplayer and multiplayer bird's-eye view and isometric RTS game in the Star Wars series.

General information

GOG.com Community Discussions

GOG.com Support Page

Steam Community Discussions

Galactic Battlegrounds at LucasForums Network

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail		SafeDisc v2 DRM
Retail
GamersGate
		Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds Saga
GOG.com		Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds Saga
Humble Store
Origin		Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds Saga DRM-free when launched directly from executable Included with EA Play Pro.
Steam		Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds Saga

SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).

A preconfigured Wine wrapper for Linux is available for the GOG.com release.

A free demo version is available from GameFront.

Version differences

Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds Saga includes the base game along with the Clone Campaigns expansion.

The digital releases use the background music from the original release, rather than the Galactic Battlegrounds Saga re-release. The background music used in Galactic Battlegrounds Saga, formatted for use in-game, can be downloaded from the PCGamingWiki community site.

Monetization

Type	Notes
Expansion pack	The expansion pack includes new factions, units and campaigns.
One-time game purchase	The game requires an upfront purchase to access on platforms other than EA.
Subscription	Available via an EA Play Pro subscription.

DLC and expansion packs

Name	Notes
Clone Campaigns
Bonus Mission: Serapin's Bounty	Included on second disc of some releases of Clone Campaigns. Requires Clone Campaigns.

Essential improvements

Patches

Official

Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds v1.1

Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds - Clone Campaigns v1.1

Unofficial

Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds All-In-One Patch

A massive community patch that adds a variety of enhancements and stability improvements to the game. They include:

• Modern Windows support
• A DirectDraw rainbow color patch and wrapper
• Widescreen support for Clone Campaigns
• New in-game music
• Support for Italian & Russian
• New launcher for the games

Skip intro videos

Run the game with the -nostartup command line argument[citation needed]

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\Game\player.nfx <path-to-game>\Game\player.nf1 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC\Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds: Clone Campaigns\1.0
Mac OS (Classic)
macOS (OS X)
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/356500/pfx/

player.nfx is for the base game while player.nf1 is for the Clone Campaigns expansion.

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\Game\SaveGame
Mac OS (Classic)
macOS (OS X)
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/356500/pfx/

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
GOG Galaxy
Origin
Steam Cloud

Video

In-game options menu.

Graphics feature	State	Notes
Widescreen resolution		See Widescreen resolution.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen		See Widescreen resolution.
4K Ultra HD		See Widescreen resolution. Pixel-based scaling; Lossless Scaling in conjunction with Expanding Fronts set to 1920x1080 and windowed mode can help.
Field of view (FOV)		Uses 2D sprites. Real estate is increased with higher resolutions.
Windowed		Use Expanding Fronts.
Borderless fullscreen windowed		In Expanding Fronts, enable windowed mode and set window resolution to the desktop resolution.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS		Animations play at 20 FPS. The Expanding Fronts mod can speed up animations to 60 FPS.
120+ FPS
High dynamic range display (HDR)		See the glossary page for potential alternatives.
Color blind mode		Enable Friend or Enemy Colors. Expanding Fronts also adds larger text support.

Widescreen resolution

A No-CD executable is required for this. Note that the GOG.com version already ships a decrypted binary and does not require such.

This fix is already included with the Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds All-In-One Patch and Expanding Fronts.

Use a widescreen patcher[citation needed]

Download the fix from here. Go to <path-to-game>\Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds\Game. If using the GOG.com version, extract the contents from the GOG folder in the archive to that folder; for all other versions, use the CD folder. Run the SWGBWide_x1.exe executable and the patch will apply. Run the game from wide_battlegrounds_x1.exe and set the game to use the 1280x1024 resolution in the options If unable to select a resolution of 1280x1024 in the options, run the game from wide_battlegrounds_x1.bat instead.

Input

In-game key map settings.

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity		Scroll speed can be adjusted.
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support

Audio

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound
Subtitles		The game has subtitles for all the dialogue in-game; the campaign intros also have subtitles.
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio		Music adapted from the films.
Red Book CD audio		Replaced with Ogg Vorbis wrapper in digital rereleases. The digital releases use the background music from the original release, rather than the Galactic Battlegrounds Saga re-release. The background music used in Galactic Battlegrounds Saga, formatted for use in-game, can be downloaded from the PCGamingWiki community site. On Windows, CD music might not play correctly; see the troubleshooting guide for solutions.

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
French
German
Italian				Retail only. Digital copies require the All-In-One Patch.
Japanese				Retail only.
Brazilian Portuguese				Retail only. Main game and expansion pack.
Russian				Requires the All-In-One Patch.
Spanish
Ukrainian				Fan translation for the Saga release by TSF, download.

Network

Multiplayer types

Type	Native	Players	Notes
LAN play		8	Versus
Online play		8	Versus The official MSN Gaming Zone service has been shut down; use Voobly.

Connection types

Type	Native	Notes
Matchmaking		Zone.com support has been discontinued.
Peer-to-peer
Dedicated
Self-hosting
Direct IP

Ports

Protocol	Port(s) and/or port range(s)
TCP	2300-2400, 6073, 47624
UDP	2300-2400, 6073

Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) support status is unknown.

Issues fixed

Windows Vista and 7 colours

Windows Vista and 7 can have issues with displaying true colours in Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds correctly.

This issue does not occur on Windows 8 and later.

See DirectDraw troubleshooting for further details.

DirectDrawCompat[citation needed]
Use DDrawCompat.

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
DirectDraw	7
OpenGL		Mac OS and OS X only.

Executable	PPC	16-bit	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)
Mac OS (Classic)

Middleware

	Middleware	Notes
Cutscenes	Indeo codec
Multiplayer	MSN Gaming Zone

Modifications

Expanding Fronts

A fan-made expansion that brings new civilizations, units, maps, gameplay features, and quality of life improvements to Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds:

• Adds 4 new factions (Zann Consortium, Geonosians, First Order, and Resistance) with expanded vanilla factions and new units and techs.
• Handful of custom map randomizers, and an expanded map editor.
• Native widescreen support, and a windowed mode option through an external configuration tool.

The aforementioned configuration tool can also speed up animations to 60fps, as well as other experimental features such as large map support and larger fonts for some text.

Windows only.

Uses a separate executable from vanilla (battlegrounds_x2.exe). Hence, it does not interfere with a vanilla installation, but it needs to be renamed to launch with Steam/Galaxy or use online multiplayer restoration tools.

Configuration data for Expanding fronts is stored in <path-to-game>\Game\player.nf1 and HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC\Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds: Expanding Fronts\1.0. Changes made in the external configurator are stored in HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC\Star Wars Galactic Battlegrounds: Expanding Fronts\Configurator.

A higher resolution icon for this mod can be found here (choose battlegrounds_x2.ico).

Bodies Stay - A simple mod that just makes the bodies stay on the ground

System requirements

Windows

Mac OS (Classic)

macOS (OS X)

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	95	98, ME, 2000, XP
Processor (CPU)	Intel Pentium II 233 MHz AMD Athlon 233 MHz	Intel Pentium II 300 MHz AMD Athlon 300 MHz
System memory (RAM)	32 MB (95, 98) 64 MB (2000, XP)	64 MB (95, 98) 96 MB (2000, XP)
Hard disk drive (HDD)	350 MB
Video card (GPU)	2 MB of VRAM DirectX 8 compatible	4 MB of VRAM

Mac OS
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	8.6
Processor (CPU)	PowerPC G3
System memory (RAM)	64 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	350 MB