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.

• 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.