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Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire cover
Developers
LucasArts
Publishers
LucasArts
Disney Interactive Studios
Release dates
Windows September 17, 1997
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Third-person
Controls Direct control
Genres Action
Themes Sci-fi, Space
Series Star Wars
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on HowLongToBeat
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on IGDB
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on MobyGames
Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire on Wikipedia
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General information

GOG.com Community Discussions
GOG.com Support Page
Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
Disc check (requires the CD/DVD in the drive to play)
Windows
GamersGate
Icon overlay.png
Windows
Gamesplanet logo.svg
Icon overlay.png
Windows
GOG.com
DRM-free
Version: Patch 1.1 hotfix 2 (5 May 2016)
Windows
Humble Store
Icon overlay.png
Windows
Steam
Icon overlay.png
Windows
Origin
Origin
Included with EA Play Pro. Currently only visible in the EA App's Browse menu.
Windows
Digital releases use an external launcher compatible with modern systems.

Essential improvements

Patches

The latest official patch 1.1 enhances performance and provides support for more graphics cards. It is available at www.patches-scrolls.de and soggi.org.

Peixoto's patch

Gets the installer working on 64-bit systems
Forced resolution allows high resolutions with proper HUD scaling
Fixes the game's fog and speed issues
Fixes the CD music
Better compatibility with Xinput gamepads - force feedback support is still partial and some effects do not play

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\[Note 1]
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\LucasArts Entertainment Company\Shadows of the Empire[Note 2]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/560170/pfx/[Note 3]

Save game data location

System Location
Windows <path-to-game>\*.soe[Note 1]
Steam Play (Linux) <Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/560170/pfx/[Note 3]
Path can be selected in the launcher.

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy
Origin
Steam Cloud

Video

External launcher settings
External launcher settings
Digital version launcher settings
Digital version launcher settings
Ingame settings
Ingame settings

Graphics feature State WSGF Notes
Widescreen resolution
Resolutions higher than 1280x960 will result in cutscenes playing in upper left corner of the screen by default. See Select arbitrary resolutions without graphical issues for a workaround.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Minor cutscene rendering issues. Starfield rendered at 640x480.
Field of view (FOV)
Fixed FOV (widescreen resolutions are Vert-).
Windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS
Game speed tied to framerate.
A 30 FPS cap is recommended.
120+ FPS
Capped to 60 FPS in digital release.
High dynamic range display (HDR)

Input

Audio

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
CD music and sound effects
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio
Red Book CD audio
On Windows, CD music might not play correctly; see Missing background music

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
German
Fan translation; download.

Issues fixed

Installing on modern versions of Windows

Make necessary changes[1]
  1. Copy the CD contents to an easily accessible folder.
  2. Download the InstallShield 3 32-bit Generic Installer.
  3. Extract Is3Engine.zip to the INSTALL folder.
  4. Run setup32.exe and follow the steps. The CD contents' folder can be deleted after the installation is complete.
  5. Run the game and exit it.
  6. Run SOTE.exe in the installation folder.
  7. Uncheck CD Audio, Direct Movie and Enable Fog and click OK.
  8. Create a new player profile and run the game normally.
  9. It may be necessary to set SHADOWS.EXE to Windows 95 compatibility mode.

Game runs too fast

Cap framerate to 30 FPS[2]

Missing background music (retail only)

The background music from the CD will not play on Windows Vista and later.
Digital releases already include this workaround.
Convert music to .ogg format[citation needed]
  1. Rip the tracks from the game disc to .ogg format with the filename format Track##.ogg, starting with Track02.ogg (without spaces).
  2. Use fixed set of files (downloaded from Vogons or AssemblerGames) to accept this file format. Overwrite when prompted.

Select arbitrary resolutions without graphical issues

Stars do not render correctly if the launcher resolution is set higher than 640x480, and videos render in a corner at launcher resolutions higher than 1280x960. They also do not render correctly with Nvidia 3D Vision enabled on any resolution.
Use dgVoodoo 2 wrapper[3]
  1. Download dgVoodoo 2.
  2. Extract dgVoodooCpl.exe to <path-to-game>.
  3. Optional: Backup <path-to-game>\Sdata\DDraw.dll
  4. Extract MS\x86\D3D8.dll, MS\x86\DDraw.dll and MS\x86\D3DImm.dll to <path-to-game>\Sdata.
  5. Run dgVoodooCpl.exe from <path-to-game>.
  6. Select the game to run in a window and centred under the General-tab using the Resolution dropdown.
  7. Select the desired resolution under the DirectX-tab using the Resolution dropdown.
  8. When starting the game/launcher, set the Display Device to "dgVoodoo DirectX Wrapper", 3D Device to "dgVoodoo Hardware Accelerated Device", and Display Mode to exactly "640x480 16bpp". Any other option, higher or lower, will result in at least some graphical issues.

Notes

The UI will be scaled as though the game is actually running at 640x480.

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
Direct3D 5 Digital release uses Direct3D 9 wrapper.
Executable 32-bit 64-bit Notes
Windows

System requirements

Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 95
Processor (CPU) Intel Pentium 90 MHz
System memory (RAM) 16 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 40 MB
Video card (GPU) DirectX 5 compatible


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below %PROGRAMFILES%, %PROGRAMDATA%, or %WINDIR% might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore on Windows Vista and later (more details).
  2. Applications writing to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE will be redirected to other locations based on various criterias, see the glossary page for more details.
  3. 3.0 3.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in ~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/560170/ in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (560170) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.

References