This page covers installing custom missions and falls apart in 3 main sections:
- Emperor's Hammer Guide
- General Installation 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. The Emperor's Hammer missions all come with premade battle files which saves you the bother of editting them. In that case you can just overwrite the exsisting files, but do read the notes.
1. Run full install of the game so the mission files will be on your hard drive. The game will take it's mission information by preference from the harddisc, but might still give a warning. In that case - Ignore.
2. Locate your X-W Directory and open the folder labeled "Mission", or "Classic" in X-W95. Copy the *.xwi, *.brf files of the custom battle into it.
4. Create a new pilot for the mission based on your name or PIN and the mission number. For example, SL Stele playing Free Mission 80 would make a new pilot file named "StelFM80." or a Pilot with PIN 2883 playing Free Mission 69 would make a new pilot file named "2883fm69"
6. Fly Battle as TOD 1!
Note: The Tactical Manual has all the data you need for Emperor's Hammer use.
1: Download XCD here or from the edittors section. (6k.)
2: Create a Mission directory on your root drive (if your root drive is C:, the directory would be C:\Mission.
3. Install XCD in your Windows directory and, to be safe, put a shortcut in your DOS directory.
4. Put the homemade xwi and brf files into the Mission directory you created. Make sure these files have names corresponding to the original missions in the tour you're trying to play (for instance, Mission 1 in Tour 1 is defect.xwi).
5. Restart your machine in the MS-DOS mode.
6. At the C:\Windows\ prompt (or whatever), type cd xwingcd and press enter. Then type xcd c and press enter (note there's a space between "xcd" and "c".
7. Type xwingcd and press enter.
8. When you click into your briefing and then again when you click into the mission, you should hear a beep, which signifies the homemade files are loading.
Unzipping: Do NOT just unzip any downloaded missions straight into your game directories. Always use an empty "Temp" directory.
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. This doesn't always work as nice for Discette versions, as they usually have everything "packed" on the discettes, so you'd have to reinstall completely.
Overwriting: Another way of installing missions is the plain old overwriting of the original mission files. If you have the disk version of X-Wing: MAKE BACKUP COPIES OF THE GAME'S ORIGINAL TOUR I BEFORE YOU DO ANYTHING ELSE! Then move the xwi and brf files from this game into your X-Wing directory to replace them. Problems that can occur in this way ares that the sounds are not corresponding and that again you loose access to your original missions. Also, while this works fine with the discette versions of X-Wing, the CD version don't really like it.
X-Wing 95: As I do not have the Windows 95 version of X-Wing - the one that came in the X-Wing Collectors Series - I cannot say for certain that the XCD utility works with that version. In the case it doesn't: try the overwriting way of doing things.