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Star Wars: Rogue Squadron 3D


Genre: Space combat simulator
Release Year: 1998
Developer: Factor 5
Publisher: LucasArts
Age Rating: 12+
Playability Status: Perfect (Windows 8), Playable (with significant issues) (Windows 7)
Tested On: Windows 8 x64
Availability: Copyright retained - Still sold

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Another game set in the lucrative Star Wars universe, Rogue Squadron casts you in the role of an elite rebel fighter pilot, tasked with defending rebel strongholds and striking back against the evil imperial forces. You’ll get to fly a variety of nimble starships as you blast your way around the galaxy.

Installation

Rogue Squadron should install without any issues on a 32 bit operating system. Unfortunately, yet again LucasArts have used a 16 bit installer program for this game therefore rendering it incompatible with 64 bit operating systems. Luckily there are several replacement installers you can use. User Medfreeman has created two replacement installers on Github. Visit this page then scroll down until you see “Installation”. You should now see links to two installers, RS3DInstaller-0.96_nglide_102.exe and RS3DInstaller-0.96_nglide_103.exe. As you can see from the page, one installer makes the game run more smoothly while the other doesn’t crash at the end of every mission. Choose whichever one you like.

Before we learned of these replacement installers, we also created one of our own, you can download it here (link broken? Let me know here). Simply download the installer, pop your game CD into your computers optical drive and then run the installer and follow all on-screen prompts. Our installer does not NOT install the latest patch or automatically configure the game, so it can be useful if you want to experiment with alternative patches or configurations.

Patching

Before you attempt to play the game you should install the 1.21 update patch. You can download the patch here (link broken? Let me know here). If you installed the game using Medfreeman’s replacement installer, you do not need to install this patch. Simply run the patch once it has downloaded and it will detect the games installation directory and update the files appropriately. There’s one more thing you need to do before you start playing, so read on to the next section.

Configuring the Game

Before you can start flying your X-Wing, you will need to configure some basic game settings using the games configuration tool. Open the games installation folder and find the “Rogue.exe” file. Right click on it and choose “Run as Administrator”. You will need to enter your administrator password and/or click “Yes” when Windows User Account Control prompts you to do so. The window shown below will then appear.

 

rogue-squadron-config

 

Click on “Hardware Configuration”. A Sub menu will then appear.

 

rogue-squadron-config2

 

Click on “Change 3D Video Card”. Another menu should appear now.

You can play the game using either Direct3D or 3DFX/Glide using a suitable Glide wrapper. Use the menu here to choose your preferred method. If you are intending to play using nGlide, please see the notes under “Playing in 3DFX/Glide mode”. When you have selected your preferred 3D rendering method, click on “Accept”. You will now be returned to the previous menu. You may also wish to click on “Joystick Options” and make sure your preferred controller is selected. When you are finished configuring these options, click on “Done”.

You will now find yourself back on the previous menu. You should now click on “Exit to Windows”, rather than launching the game directly from this menu. Do not attempt to uninstall the game from this menu if you installed it with our replacement installer.

Playing the Game

You can start the game by running “Star Wars Rogue Squadron” from the Start menu or Start screen. No compatibility settings should be required. Running the game as administrator is not necessary either, though you must always run the configuration tool as administrator if you want to make any changes.

Tweaking Game Settings

There aren’t too many settings you can configure in Rogue Squadron. Start the game and then click on “Settings”. This will open a sub menu with several settings menus you can configure. Under “Video”, you can set the games resolution. Set this to the highest available mode, which should be 1280×1024. Under “Audio”, you can enable surround sound if you have a suitable surround sound setup attached to your PC.

Playing in 3DFX/Glide mode

When Rogue Squadron was originally released, the now defunct 3DFX accelerator cards were still very popular and so the game fully supports the Glide standard that the 3DFX cards used. It is actually possible to play the game in 3DFX mode using the nGlide wrapper software. By doing so, you can improve the graphics and force the game into higher resolutions and widescreen screen modes. Unfortunately, the current version of nGlide isn’t compatible with the fan-produced fix for the game. That means, the game will crash and need to be reloaded after every mission. A fix for this problem is promised for when version 1.4 of nGlide launches.

If you want to give nGlide a try, first install the program if you have not done so already. If you installed the game using Medfreeman’s replacement installer, nGlide should be installed for you automatically. If not, you can download nGlide here. It should then just be a matter of following the steps under “Configuring the Game” but choosing “Voodoo Card (driver: GLIDE)” instead of “”Primary Display Driver (Driver: D3D)” when setting up the video card. On our system this was not sufficient however. If you find the game still won’t launch in 3DFX mode, despite being configured to do so, you may need to fire up the registry editor (run it as administrator) and add the following string.

For 64 bit systems go to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC\Rogue Squadron\v1.0”

For 32 bit systems go to “HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC\Rogue Squadron\v1.0”

Add a new string value called “VDEVICE” (if it doesn’t exist) and set the value of the string to “Voodoo (Glide)” (without the quotes).

If you are unfamiliar with editing the registry, see this tutorial.

When you have successfully configured the game to run in 3DFX/Glide mode, you can use the nGlide configuration tool (search for “Configurator” on the Start menu or Start screen) to force the game into any resolution of your choice.

Configuring controllers

Rogue Squadron supports all manner of joysticks and actually works really well with the Xbox 360 controller without the need for any additional software such as Xpadder. Start the game and go to the Settings menu, then choose “Joystick”. You can then redefine all the inputs on your gamepad or joystick to taste.

Troubleshooting and known issues

Camera does not follow players fighter craft – Playing under Windows 7 we encountered this camera glitch. For reasons unknown this didn’t seem to affect the game under Windows 8, but your mileage may vary. During play, if you play with the chase camera you may notice the camera slowly gets further and further away from your craft. This will continue until your fighter is way off in the distance, making controlling it absolutely impossible. Several workarounds were suggested on the web, from recording the game with the FRAPS game recording/benchmarking tool to enabling antialiasing on the graphics cards control panel. Nothing we tried seemed to work though. Your only option is to reset the camera to a different view using the function keys. Cockpit view works well, but playing the game in this view can be somewhat difficult. Note that several customers report that this happens on the GOG.Com re-release of the game too.

Game crashes at the end of a mission – If your game crashes at the end of every mission, you can try downloading a fan-made fix for the game here. Simply download the zip file then extract the contents to your Rogue Squadron game folder (that’s “c:\Games\Rogue” if you used the default directory when installing the game with our replacement installer). The file will overwrite the existing game executable, so you might want to take a backup first. We tested the fix and it seemed to work well for us, though the original creator stressed that it needed more testing, so it might be a good idea to keep the old version handy too. This fix may also have compatibility issues when running the game in Glide mode.

Problems saving games – Like many older games, Rogue Squadron places its save game files and various configuration files in the same directory that it is installed to. Profiles and save games are stored in a sub-folder called “PlayerProfiles”. This should not cause any problems if you installed to the default location when using our replacement installer. If you saved to another folder you can manually check and edit the permissions on the folder by following this tutorial.

Screenshots

Click on any screenshot to enlarge it.

Rogue_Squadron_PC

Rogue_Squadron_PC-shot2

29 comments

  1. Stranno says:

    It works perfectly with nGlide 1.02. The after-mission crash was introduced in 1.03, it will be fixed in 1.04.

    With the original 1.21 executable, nGlide doesnt work with the modded one anyway.

    • BuckoA51 says:

      What’s the secret to getting it to work with nGlide then? After mission crash affects DirectX version too so it wasn’t introduced by nGlide.

      • Stranno says:

        There’s an ultra-technical detailed explanation here.

        http://www.lucasforums.com/showpost.php?p=2475538&postcount=24

        I guess its related to nGlide behaviour too. What i can say is that i almost finished the game without any post-level crash, there are some ingame crashes but i doubt its nGlide related, the game looks like a mess.

        • Stranno says:

          Oh and (sorry for double post) here’s the Zeus reply saying it will be fixed and some technical details about the bug.

          http://www.zeus-software.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=729&p=3914

          • BuckoA51 says:

            Great, I re-write the installer and then find out someone else already did it :) Anyway the game simply doesn’t work with nGlide for me. I set it to Glide mode in the games configuration file, I tried putting -voodoo3 on the games shortcut, nothing works, it always launches in DirectX mode, so what am I missing?

            • Stranno says:

              The shortcut thing doesnt do anything, as far as i tested.

              The launcher control the render mode, GLIDE or D3D. I think it store the value on.

              HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC\Rogue Squadron\v1.0

              Driver=GLIDE

              There’s another entry on.

              HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\LucasArts Entertainment Company LLC\Rogue Squadron\v1.0

              But this doesnt seems to work coz i set D3D there and game still going on GLIDE.

              Nothing more. Spanish game installed through updated installer, 1.21 patch and nGlide 1.02.

              • BuckoA51 says:

                Yep, registry key is set on my rig too, still no nGlide. nGlide does work for me in other games (e.g Future Cop, Pandemonium).

                Perhaps the other replacement installer is doing more than my installer does, I will take a look at it. Are there any glide/voodoo related DLLs in your game folder?

                • Stranno says:

                  No, no wrapper in game folder, it seems to detect it in system folder.

                  Its a Glide2x game so try moving glide2x.dll to game folder.

                  Or maybe ‘installing’ it manually. Extracting the ROGUE folder from CD, moving DSETUP libraries and ROGUE launcher. It could fixes some unofficial installer related problems.

                  • BuckoA51 says:

                    Tried the replacement installer on Github and that didn’t work on my system either (fails at the point where it is supposed to install the update). Tried reinstalling the game, copying the DLL over, nothing, game always goes to DirectX mode, no Glide no matter what I try. I will have to boot over to Windows 7 to see what happens there.

                  • BuckoA51 says:

                    Nailed it! The missing registry key was VDEVICE which should be a string set to “Voodoo (Glide)”.

                    Game doesn’t work for me under Windows 7 though, I get the camera glitch that many other users have reported.

                    • Stranno says:

                      Great. Yeah, the camera problem is annoying but i finished it without much problem, and the misaligned camera is somehow useful for some combats.

                      It seems its a desync problem with fixed framerate. Some people reported its fixed using single core but it doesnt work for me setting it through task manager.

                    • AdrenAlineSK says:

                      I found a workaround to this. It’s a bit fiddly and does not work with the bonus missions (they don’t have cutscenes), but worth it if you want to fly the superfast A-Wing.
                      Get FRAPS (the recording software) and set it up – 1. Choose a folder for recorded movies, 2. Make it record only half-sized videos, 3. Make it not record sound. All this is to save space (also, delete the videos after each gaming session). Now, start FRAPS, then the game. Anytime during the mission intro cutscene, start recording (F9). After the cutscene ends (or when you end it by pressing something) stop recording – it’s important you stop recording in-game, I tried to press F9 twice during the cutscene and it didn’t work. The camera bug will be fixed for the duration of the mission. Another way is to commit suicide, but you lose a life so not worth it.
                      Here’s a youtube link I got the solution from: /watch?v=TKHn8PLEJBs
                      As the guy says, it would be nice to know the reason why this works so it can be fixed without FRAPS, but I could not find anything.

  2. VirtuaIceMan says:

    Just been playing with this, I installed it differently, copying the CD files to Desktop and using the InstallShield 3 updated 32 bit file (same approach as Shadows Of The Empire), then tweaked Registry settings so the ones that did point to Desktop location now point to CD-ROM.

    Glide was detected (nGlide) in setup menu and using it adds the line to Registry in my case.

    I seemed to improve the crashes on exit (Glide mode) by setting Compatibility of both ROGUE.EXE and Rogue Squadron.exe to Win95 or 98, however on the downside the menus became sluggish and on my fancy monitor, GSYNC only kicks in without this Compatibility fix.

  3. juli says:

    finally i could install it, and see the graphics with the Glide aplication, but when i’m about to start the first mision it crashes… how can i solved this?

  4. TPil007PL says:

    Can you add Star Wars Ep.1: Battle for Naboo, pc version

  5. David says:

    Does anyone know how to configure an xbox one controler for this? I’m trying from the joystick menu but the only button I can assign is the “A” button (the game reads this as button 1).

    • BuckoA51 says:

      In windows the Xbox One controller kinda sucks, especially with old games, can you try the 360 controller instead?

      • David says:

        I’ll see if I can find one from a friend, I’m really looking forward to this nostalgia trip!
        When I get one is there anything I need to configure on the 360 controller?

  6. Lftoscano says:

    Hello guys. After the last time my windows 10 updated I have not been able to run any software in win95 or 98 compatibility modes. Looks like it only works for win xp sp2 and later versions. Anyway, if I don’t use the compatibility mode the game does not start at all. When I use it, it does appear to run well, but does not recognize my thrustmaster hotas, and even without a joystick or mouse (that is, by playing exclusively with the keyboard) I can’t play it because the craft keeps firing all the bombs/torpedoes as if the trigger button was constantly pressed. I tried putting all configurations to default but nothing happened. I’ve read that by not using compatibility mode this problem would be solved, but as I wrote, I can’t start the game at all without compatibility. Any ideas?

  7. I’m having a problem with the in-game fix for the post-mission crashes that was posted. I can’t run the game with the new .exe file. Do I new to reinstall the game?

  8. arturo says:

    solucion a la camara en win 7….
    hay que poner en el programa nglide la frecuencia de refresco del monitor igual que este en el pc. la diferencia es total

  9. arturo says:

    solution to the camera in win 7…. you have to put in the nglide program the refresh rate of the monitor the same as this one on the pc. the difference is total Answer

  10. Julia says:

    Hello
    has anobody runs it on win 10? I can#t download the github installer. The other installer don’t start.
    Thanks at all Julia

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