Jeff Wayne's The War of the Worlds

Key points

The game will not work on XP and higher without fixes. See Issues fixed.

The game may not work on Windows Vista and later - even with the aforementioned user-made fixes - unless DXGL is used (see Issues fixed).

Resolution is not unified - strategic and tactical maps display in the resolution chosen in Graphics Settings, while videos, menus, and loading screens always display at 640x480.

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Rage\Jeff Wayne's 'The War Of The Worlds'\1.00.000^{[Note 1]}

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\SaveGame^{[Note 2]}

Video

All menu screens, including the graphics and audio settings screens, are unique for both the Human and Martian factions; however, they both have exactly the same wording, format, and settings, so the difference is merely superficial.

Graphics settings.

Audio settings.

Graphics feature	State	Notes
Widescreen resolution		Screen resolution can be changed in the registry value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Rage\Jeff Wayne's 'The War Of The Worlds'\1.00.000\Screen\Size, max width 1497.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen		Screen resolution can be changed in the registry value HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Rage\Jeff Wayne's 'The War Of The Worlds'\1.00.000\Screen\Size, max width 1497.
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed		Use DxWnd with "Suppress release on backbuffer" and "Do not notify on task switch" flags.
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.
High-fidelity upscaling		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS		30 FPS
High dynamic range display (HDR)

Input

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support

Audio

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls
Surround sound		Dolby Surround
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio		Game uses licensed music from Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds and cannot be natively substituted for royalty free equivalents.
Red Book CD audio		On Windows, CD music might not play correctly; see the troubleshooting guide for solutions.

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English

Issues fixed

Game crashes on start and/or has no CD audio

Under XP and higher, the game may be unable to read the CD Audio tracks on the Human (Disc 1/Installation Disc) and Martian (Disc 2) CDs, causing it to think there is no CD-ROM inserted into the disc drive.

Install angrylion's patch
Download and install the patch from here.

Game crashes after starting or loading a new game

Under Vista and higher, the game will crash as soon as the strategic map is loaded due to DirectDraw features the game relies upon being deprecated.

Install and configure DXGL^[1]
Install DXGL. Once installed, open dxglcfg.exe, DXGL's config application. Using the "Add..." button, add the following EXEs from the installation folder to DXGL's list of programs: WoW.exe and WOWStart.exe Run the game as normal.

Game crashes when transitioning to/from support screens

Depending on how the game is run (natively, with DXGL, with DxWnd), the game will occasionally crash when switching resolutions for support screens.

Set game resolution to same as support screen resolution

Edit "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Rage\Jeff Wayne's 'The War Of The Worlds'\1.00.000\Screen\Support screen size" to be the same value as "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Rage\Jeff Wayne's 'The War Of The Worlds'\1.00.000\Screen\Size"

Notes

This will make support screens occupy a 640x480 area in the top left surrounded by black borders, but will make screen transitions instant and will stop them occasionally crashing.

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
DirectDraw	6	No support for hardware acceleration
Software renderer		Via DirectDraw.

Executable	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	95
Processor (CPU)	Intel Pentium I 133 (133 MHz)	Intel Pentium II 333 (333 MHz)
System memory (RAM)	16 MB	64 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	120 MB
Video card (GPU)	1 MB of VRAM	4 MB of VRAM

Notes

↑ Applications writing to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE will be redirected to other locations based on various criterias, see the glossary page for more details.
↑ 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).

References

↑ Verified by User:Expack3 on 2013-12-27

[HKLM-1] Applications writing to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE will be redirected to other locations based on various criterias, see the glossary page for more details.

[gamedir-2] 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).

[3] Verified by User:Expack3 on 2013-12-27

[Note 1]

[Note 2]

[1]

Developers

	Rage Software
Publishers
	GT Interactive
Release dates
Windows	December 22, 1998