X-Wing Alliance: Installing Patches
Tech | Missions

 

This page covers installing patches into X-Wing Alliance and falls apart in 3 main sections:

- Craft Installation Guide
- Useage In Missions Guide
- Important Notes

You'll need WinZIP or PKUnzip to unpack most of the downloads. Most downloads contain .doc or .txt files, often called "readme.txt", read these! They contain valuable information about what you downloaded and how you should install it.

Most of the patches in the archive contain automated install/uninstall scripts, making manual installation unnecessary. Some older patches require manual installation and some people may prefer to install patches manually, so detailed instructions are set out below.
Most manual installations will require TIE patch for windows. It may be obtained from the File Archive.
Patches Requireing Manual Installation: All Infiltrator Wing Patches, Some TIE Corps XWA Patches, all patches on Windows XP machines.

If you got any other questions or if you got hints yourself, don't hesitate to contact the SCO. If you need another type of help, use the links below the titlebar.

 

  Craft Installation Guide
Originally by Fleet Admiral Zoraan top

 

  • Place the following files from the zip in the appropriate Locations:
    SHIPLIST.TXT - main XWA folder (REPLACES original)
    SPECDESC.TXT - main XWA folder (REPLACES original)
    STRINGS.TXT - main XWA folder (REPLACES original)
    .OPT - FLIGHTMODELS folder
    SPACECRAFT0.LST - FLIGHTMODELS folder
  • The file with the .XWA or .202 extension *must* be patched into your copy of XWA for the craft to function correctly. Place this file into a temporary folder of your choice, and do the following:
    1. Download TIE Patch for Windows (TPWin) from the EH Science Office. (Note that only TPWin, not TIE Patch for DOS, should be used for patching XWA.) Extract the program into a folder on your hard drive, where it is recommended you leave it installed for future installations. This document will assume C:\TPWin. (Make sure you extract the entire program and not just the EXE! You'll get errors on execution if some of the files aren't there.)

    2. Go to the TPWin folder, and run TPWin.EXE. (Click CONTINUE in the credits dialog box that pops up.)

    3. You will next be presented with a "Select Patch File" dialog box. First, set the "List files of type:" field to "All Files (*.*)", then go to the folder to which you extracted the patch (.XWA or .202) file, select it, and click OK.

    4. You will next be presented with a "Help me find FLIGHT.OVL/Z_TIE__.EXE" dialog box. You won't be using either of those filenames, but it will still work so long as you make sure that you set the "List files of type:" field to "All Files (*.*)", as you did in the previous step. Once you've done that, go to your XWA folder (on most systems this is C:\Program Files\LucasArts\XWingAlliance\), select XWINGALLIANCE.EXE, and click OK. (Note that TPWin is a 16-bit program, and does not support long file names. Thus, a folder such as "C:\Program Files" will appear as C:\PROGRA~1, or similar.)

    5. Next, you find yourself at the TPWin main screen, with your source file and destination path both reflected therein. Out of the two options presented to you, do NOT select "SideWinder Patched" (this is only for TIE Disk/CD), but do select "Make Backup". Click the "Patch!" button.

    6. In the resulting "Save Backup as..." dialog box, select a folder and assign a filename to what will be a backup copy of your current XWINGALLIANCE.EXE file. Note that you may only use DOS 8.3 format for filenames in this program.

    7. Next, you will get either one or two dialog boxes, the last of which should report a successful patching. Click OK, and exit from TPWin.

 

  Useage In Missions Guide
Originally by Fleet Admiral Kermalius top

 

To make a mission for X-Wing: Alliance using a custom ship is quite simple & similar to the process on other platforms. When creating the mission, you make it as per normal but when you are specifying the ship type for a flight group, you need to specify a different value.

You should set the craft type to the number specifed in the readme of the patch (eg. '184').
For patches which do not specify a number, set the craft type to '184'.

All of these values are down the bottom of the list, below Astromech & Backdrop (in Allied).

You must mention that the patch is required in the readme for you mission, including the patch with the battle is generally a welcome curteosy. Without the patch XWA will exit to the desktop.

Ship Specific Info: Sovereign Class Super Star Destroyer
It is recommended that, for fairness reasons, battle creators avoid using the Sovereign alone in battles, or in missions where the aim is to prevent it being destroyed. This is both because the ship has an immense ammount of shielding (approx. 7.2 times that of an SSD) and because of the unlikely hood of it every being without escort, nor of the Rebelion/New Republic gathering a fleet capable of challenging it.

Other concerns to watch out for include inconsistent distribution of turbolasers on the hull and the frame rate on on low end machines. However, battles & missions using the Sovereign are highly appreciated, any using it well are destined for greatness.

 

  Important Notes
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Unzipping: Do NOT just unzip any downloaded patch straight into your game directories. Always use an empty "Temp" directory. Unzip with support for subdirectories

Back Ups: all your original files are backed up on your CD - don't worry, it's easy to repair anything. As long as you keep everything devided over the folders in the same way they are on your CD. If all else fails you can always reinstall it.

Newer Patches: Newer patches do not distribute the full .txt and .lst files to save bandwidth. Instead they feature *.1, *.2,... files with just the bit of the .txt or .lst file that has been changed. You'll have to copy paste these lines into the corresponding .txt or .lst files manually.

Windows XP: Windows doesn't like the .bat setup of the EH patches, instead use the XP installer.

 

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Site/page created 22/aug/99, updated 02/apr/01. Version 3.0b. Copyright © 1999, for BS4U by Ender mBind