XvT/XWA Obtaining and Installation
Note: XVT and XWA can be purchased on gog.com and steam now, so most of this help guide is going to be outdated. However if you still wish to try and get your CD version of the game(s) working feel free to use the below tips.
Tips and Tricks ongetting these older games to work on modern systems.
Obtaining
Compatibility
Installer Issues
Registry Settings
XWA 3D Fix
Fly All Ships in XWA
Enable Gunner in XWA Multiplay
XWA Multiplayer missions
Obtaining
If you have lost your game CD's both XvT and XWA can be obtained via torrents. If you are new to torrents you might do some reading about them on google. A decent easy to use client for beginners is Vuze.
Both of those are ISO and is recommended you burn an actual disk rather than use one of the many fake disk ISO mounters.
Compatibility
On XP, Vista, Windows 7 and on up... you must set compatibility settings for the game to run properly. Both games are typically installed in C:\Program Files\LucasArts\
For XvT right click both xwingtie.exe and z_xvt__.exe and select properties, then compatibilty tab. Set both to Windows 98, and also check Run As Administrator.
Do the same for XWA, the files are Alliance.EXE and XWINGALLIANCE.EXE
Installer
If the installer fails to work you are probably on a 64-bit OS. The installers are very old 16-bit and 16-bit support was removed from windows 64 bit OS'es. Not to worry there are ways around this.
One option is to install the game on a32 bit system and then copy the files over and import the registry settings. Registry settings can be found below.
Another option is to download VMPlayer, or VirtualBox (both are free) and create a 32 bit XP virtual machine. It's actually pretty easy. Then you can just play the game from the virtual machine window.
Here's a very promising method. http://www.markusegger.at/Software/Games.aspx He has created an installer which will allow you to make a a new CD that can be installed to a 64 bit system.
Registry Settings
Note that you only need these if you cannot install the game from CD
32 bit Registry files: XvT XWA
64 bit Registry files: XvT-64 XWA-64
Right click and save as on the links above. You will first want to edit the files in NOTEPAD prior to importing them. You must make sure your CD paths are pointed to your actual CD drive letter.
In XvT the line to look for is:
"Source Path"="F:"
Change the F: to whatever your CD drive letter is.
In XWA the lines to look for are:
"Source Path"="D:"
"CD Path"="D:"
"Analyze Path"="D:\\INSTALL\\SysCheck.exe"
"Source Dir"="D:\\"
Change D: to whatever your CD drive letter is.
After editing just save the files. To import them you must be/have administrator rights and simply double click the file(s).
XWA 3D
I was getting square black boxes in the texture of the 3d models during play. Not wanting to turn off 3d mode I found this hack:
XWA 3D Hack
The xwahacker file and the fixedclear.bat is all I needed.
Fly all Ships in XWA
To do this trick, you have to go into Windows Explorer or
whatever it is you use to look at all your computer files.
Go to your Alliance folder and look for a document called
shiplist.txt When you open it, it shows you ship names, classes,
etc. Near the end of the line, you'll see either the word
Flyable, or Nonflyable (they are case sensitive). To add a ship to the flyable list,
just put in Flyable in the place of Nonflyable.
NOTE: With the larger ships like Star Destroyers and Cruisers,
handling is EXTREMELY slow and the turrets don't work. Also,
with any of the added ships, engine sounds don't work and
sometimes cockpits don't show up.
Enable Gunner in XWA Multiplay
Thanks to Azis for finding this one.
This uses the same trick as above in making ships flyable except instead of "Flyable" or "Nonflyable" you will use "GunnerFlyable" (without the quotes) for any ship you want to have manned by more than one user. Note that these values are case sensitive. When you select the ship in multi-player, an additional green colored gunner position will be used adjacent to your ship selection slot.
Note: All players will need to have the edit done on the ship in question for it to be GunnerFlyable.
XWA Multiplay Missions
This allows you to play the XWA campaign missions in multiplayer. The files can be found here: repack.zip
Azis has wrote up a good tutorial about it.
