Metaltech Series

EarthSiege 2

Game Install

You ready for this?... Really??

• ✔️ Download a free legal copy of the game from Hi-Rez Studios, the current property owners of the Tribes Universe. 👍

  • 7 free Tribes games here: www.tribesuniverse.com
    • Now archived here: web.archive.org
    • Downloads are still live from Hi-Rez (last checked on 03 August 2019) and all but Tribes: Vengeance appear to be downloadable from archive.org as well.
      • Tribes 2 patch is still on Hi-Rez's Google Drive: drive.google.com
    • The 8th game, Tribes: Ascend, is now "Free to Play" on Steam (unlisted): store.steampowered.com
  • Don't forget the quick reference card and/or manual at one of these locations:
    • SierraGamers
    • The Sierra Chest
    • The Sierra Help Pages

• ✔️ Mount the ISO image (or put the CD in the drive if you have a CD).

• ⚠️ Do not run the installer on the CD.

• ✔️ On your hard drive, create the folder where you want to install the game.

  • For example, this is the folder I created: C:\Games\Sierra\ES2

• ✔️ Download and unzip the RBXIT Win7 Tools (below) to the game folder you just created (ES2).

• ✔️ Run the CopyFromCDToHere.bat batch command file from the command line or by clicking on it (if clicking, DO NOT choose to run as admin, as this will set the current folder to \Windows\System32 which is probably not where you want to copy to).

  • When prompted, enter the letter of your drive with the game CD or the mounted ISO.
  • As the name of the file implies, this will then copy all the needed game files from your CD into the current folder. It will also create a couple of needed configuration files in the DATA folder.

• 🔷 Optional. If you want to change the language the help system loads, edit DATA\language.cfg and change the E (for English) to an F or G (for French or German).

• ✔️ Run the ES-Compatibility-Set.bat batch command file from the command line or by clicking on it.

  • This sets the following compatibility settings in the Windows Registry for ES.EXE, VSHELL.EXE, and DBSIM.EXE:
    • EmulateJoystick - only required for joystick use
    • GlobalMemoryStatusLie - various systems show a memory error at various times
  • These solutions come from this thread.

• 🔷 Optional. After making sure the game is working, set the compatibility mode for ES.EXE to:

  • Reduced color mode: [8-bit (256) color___|v]
  • I could have set this with ES-Compatibility-Set.bat but chose not to because the video on some systems (Windows XP, for example) looks better without it. Try it both ways and see what you think. If you don't set this, you get a nag message that you will miss out on the best performance. 😖 Not a problem on modern systems. 😸 Sometimes, 256 color must be set to see some 256-color animations, but I have noticed no such quirks in this game. (Video looks good either way on Windows 10, so you might as well set this to get rid of the nag message.)

• ❌ Set "Run in 640 x 480 screen resolution" at your own risk. It doesn't behave well for me with this game. Too much switching between the EXEs at 640 x 480 seems to really tick Windows 10 off (Explorer really). Your mileage may vary. (See Other Third-party Tools below for better luck with 640 x 480 on older Windows.)

  • If you find the game window to be too small (such as on a high DPI display), you can make it larger by going into your Display Settings and change "Change the size of text, apps, and other items" to a higher value (on Windows 8 and later, I believe). Or, change the resolution to 1280 x 720 (the smallest common 16:9 resolution). [Another thing to consider writing a PowerShell script and batch file for... like this.]

• 🔷 Optional. If you want to see (rather than just hear) the intro video and most of the other videos, you need to install better Indeo 3 and 4 video codecs.

  • Follow this: Indeo Video codec install ... but enable Indeo 3 and Indeo 4 with ffdshow instead of Indeo 5.
  • A rather ambitious, and silly, alternative to installing new codecs is to re-encode all the Indeo AVI files. But you must re-encode to one of the built-in VFW codecs which limits you on your quality options (built-in VFW being: Cinepak, MS RLE Video, and MS Video 1). Good luck finding an RLE Video encoder, Video 1 by ffmpeg looks terrible, so your best option is Cinepak which is okay and will change the colors slightly. (After testing ffmpeg to death, I thought about writing a batch for this but decided thems was craaazy thoughts. Hint: ffmpeg -i INTR_PT1.old.AVI -vcodec cinepak -acodec copy INTR_PT1.new.AVI .)
  • 🌟 This game probably sets the world record for most number of different codecs used in its video collection. It has Indeo 3 (the most common), Indeo 4 (ES2DROP3.AVI), MS RLE Video, MS Video 1, MS Video 1 with a second stream of Autodesc RLE Video (according to VLC), and Cinepak (CREDITS.AVI and ES2CREDC.AVI). Some of these AVIs appear to be unused tests.
  • If you are having trouble with other video, consider this MS KB article, or simply enable MS RLE, MS Video 1, Autodesc RLE, and Cinepak in ffdshow as well.
  • Another way to see the video is to play with the compatibility settings such as "Run this program in compatibility mode for Windows XP...." Doing that, however, usually jacks with other things worse -- especially the game play. If you can find Nirvana here, I would love to hear about it... maybe. (The demo also runs better in some of these modes, but that's another story.)

• 🔷 Optional. Windows Vista to Windows 8.1. If the help program does not load (and it will not unless you have already fixed this) try using one of the WinHlp32.exe installers from Microsoft. Attempting to open the help system in-game should take you to the appropriate MS page but, if it does not, look here. Microsoft does not support WinHelp32.exe on Windows 10. See Outstanding Issues below.

• 🔹 Very optional. The SOUND.CFG file has a setting for Multimedia (MME) versus DirectSound. It claims MME is faster but DirectSound is more responsive. I can't tell a difference on a modern system. 🎵 Note, however, that if you wan't to play your own background music, you must leave this at MME. (I also doubled the buffers to 10 just to be extra sure no sounds were cut from play.) The DirectSound option blocks all other audio sources from play.

• 🔷 Optional. The default joystick setup favors flight sticks. Without one, you will probably be happiest on just the keyboard. But, if you must... if you are using a dual-analog gamepad (such as a DualShock-style or Xbox controller) you will likely want to hit F12 in the game to show the Preference menu (ignore the wacky pirouetting herc, showoff!) and click Controls to change things. Note that your setup options are limited and you won't find a great setup without a programmable controller. You've been warned.

  • This is the best I have found for the land hercs (not flying hercs):

    HERC	default flightstick	suggested dual-analog
    JOYSTICK	MOVEMENT	MOVEMENT
    THROTTLE	NO THROTTLE	TURRET ELEVATION
    RUDDER	TURRET ROTATION	TURRET ROTATION
    HAT	TURRET	VIEWS

  • For the Razor (the flying herc), you may prefer the default or, maybe, this:

    RAZOR	default flightstick	alternate dual-analog
    JOYSTICK	PITCH / ROLL	PITCH / ROLL
    THROTTLE	NO THROTTLE	THROTTLE
    RUDDER	YAW	YAW
    HAT	THROTTLE / YAW	VIEWS

  • For crazy and advanced users only: If you have a dual-analog gamepad (such as an Xbox controller) you will likely want to find a tool to remap THROTTLE and RUDDER. Again, a programmable controller would be easiest for this but, if your controller does not come with remapping software, I have tested UCR with vJoy and it works well. UCR with vJoy is a bit of a pain to setup and manage, so here are some hints:

    • Before setting up UCR, download and setup vJoy with a device that has:
      • Axes: X, Y, Z, Rz (any R will do but Rz seems to be most popular)
      • Buttons: 8
      • POV: 1 Continuous (currently, UCR can't find a 4-dir POV)
    • If you try to change a vJoy device while UCR is running, Windows will ask you to reboot to finish setting up the device. Don't reboot. Just close UCR and try again.
    • In UCR, add a profile (call it "Flightstick Emulator" or "ES2" or whatever).
    • I suggest ignoring the XInput/Xbox options if you can. Instead, I chose the DirectInput version of my Xbox controller for the input device and vJoy Stick 1 (that I just created with vJoy) for the output.
    • In the profile, map 2 Axes to 2 Axes like so:
      • RotationX (right stick X) to Rz
      • RotationY (right stick Y) to Z
    • Map the left stick, the POV, and 8 buttons straight through (which is a bunch of boring busy work).
    • Finally, in Windows' Game Controllers tool ([Win Key] + "game controllers") use the Advanced button to set your preferred controller to vJoy Device.
    • 📣 Don't forget to reset your preferred controller and/or disable vJoy after playing your retro game (unless you want to play every game with vJoy as your primary controller). [TODO: maybe share my batch file that automates this; vJoyConfig must be run as Admin, which means this is not for everybody; so, maybe not.]

  • There is also a KEYJOY.CFG file to mess with in the DATA folder but it appears that it's only purpose is to reverse the direction of controls if you prefer to reverse the type of steering. Note that the game also writes a copy of this file to the TAPES folder (for whatever reason; I haven't looked into it yet).

  • For keyboard issues with the Razor, see the fix in Outstanding Issues below.

Sierra Updates

(There are no official Sierra updates for EarthSiege 2.)

RBXIT Win7 Tools

✔️ Installation and Compatibility Tools: EarthSiege2-Tools.zip

• I suppose I did all this work of providing an alternative to the below tools because I wanted to make something simpler, lower level, more future proof, more transparent, and more flexible with changes to the compatibility settings. Was it worth all the research I have here? I have no idea. ... It turns out, the tools below don't work for me on Windows 10. So, there you go -- maybe not wasted effort after all. 😁

RBXIT Win7 Patches

(n/a)

Other Third-party Tools

❓ Metaltech: Earthsiege II 32-bit Installer: The Sierra Help Pages - New Installers for Sierra Games

• This doesn't work for me on Windows 10 64-bit. Beware that this shuts down explorer.exe to run (a useful tactic on occasion). Thus, when it crashes, it is a real pain to recover from without rebooting. So, unless you're a geek who knows what to do, just reboot when it crashes.
• The work here to support ripping the music tracks to the hard drive is impressive. 👍 Andrew Branscom, "Collector", deserves many thank yous for the work he does and I don't mean to lessen the value of it just because my style is different (and not nearly as user-friendly as his). His work is vast and invaluable to what little I've contributed. Thank you, again, Collector! 😄

❌ EarthSiege II Compatibility Patch: The Sierra Help Pages - EarthSiege/Starsiege/Tribes Updates

• This appears to be specific to an older version of the 3rd-party installer listed above -- which now appears to both install and patch. I suspect this patch, then, is meant to be deprecated. Anyway... this program can't find ES2 when installed from the CD with Sierra's installer so I presume it is looking for something from the above installer. Also, by digging through the file, it appears to essentially do what my ES-Compatibility-Set.bat does plus some extra stuff to play ripped music tracks instead of requiring the CD for music.
• This doesn't work for me on Windows 10 64-bit. See notes above.

Music

Music? What about music? Oh, that!

Hi-Rez Studios only provides an ISO of the game. ISOs do not include the audio tracks from mixed-mode CDs. That would require a raw image of the CD. That was either an oversight, an attempt to keep it simple, or a licensing issue with the artists. Thus, I don't have an example CD to work from regarding this. The Sierra Help Pages has an installer that can do this ripping for you and mod the game files to play them (using a tool called _inmm.dll). See above under Other Third-party Tools in case you missed it. Use if it works for you and if this matters to you. That installer will also download MP3s of the tracks for you if you don't have them. I have no idea of the legality of that and take no responsibility for what you do there. Aside from all that...

• If you have the CD and want to fiddle with trying to play the music from the CD in-game, in theory it should work if you change the first line of DATA\drive.cfg to your CD drive. For example:
  • D:
  • C:\Games\Sierra\ES2
• If that doesn't work, try copying the SIERRA.INF file from your CD to your ES2 folder and add these two lines to the bottom (although, I bet they only apply to the installer and not to anything the game references):
  • [Misc]
  • SourceDir=D:\
• Otherwise, see this guide for more ideas on ripping and what to do next:
  • Playing background music tracks from Enhanced CDs (recommend trying the ogg-winmm solution here)
  • Also, see this discussion for my AHK script for ES2.
  • Also, see the step on SOUND.CFG under Game Install above.

Outstanding Issues

• The game can crash in Luna Mission 4 with this message: Assert: Line 69 in "objlist.cpp": ObjList: drawTable full. This appears to happen when you blow up too much stuff in that level. Thus, the best workaround appears to be: save before the level, have your fun in the level until it crashes, then load your saved game and just fly through all the way points without blowing anything up. More on this is in Issue #19.
• You can crash the game menu (VSHELL.EXE) every time by starting a new game, go to Mission, wait or click through the videos, then keep moving the mouse around while the "Alpha Sector" splash screen is trying load. This goes back to at least Windows XP and I suspect it goes back all the way. There is probably and old Windows programmer out there that knows exactly what this means but the odds are astronomical that they'll ever read this. Patient: "It hurts when I do this." Doctor: "Then don't do that."
• Running the game with a joystick plugged in seems to kill the keyboard-only setup for the Razor. To get the default keyboard setup back replace the DATA\PREFS.CFG file with the original from the CD. Alternatively, you can just delete it and the game will recreate it, except with all features turned off, which you will want to turn back on.
• The demo feature is broken... as are the other "tape" playback features (if they exists, don't know, haven't tried). If you're lucky, you might get through a demo without crashing DBSIM.EXE. Playing with the compatibility settings can bring some stability and normal play speed here... but at the cost of bringing jerkiness to the game play. Which would you rather have? Perhaps someday I'll dig into ACT and DxWnd and find ES2's world peace settings... but I've go so many other things to fix first.
• Similar to the clock problems with demo, other automated cameras and/or movement run too fast, such as when you hit F12 to open the Preferences menu in game and the camera around your herc spins way too fast.
• No help system under Windows 10 (as addressed under Game Install above)... until I get around to recompiling the help file like I did for CyberStorm.
  • Until then, @blam did us the favor of making a PDF of the help file.
  • There are some sites that describe hacks/patches for getting a version of WinHelp32.exe to work on Windows 10. I have not explored them and that work is up to you.

Extraordinarily Useless Information

• CopyFromCDToHere.bat, for the sake of being similar to Sierra's installer, copies the following unneeded files (in regards to later Windows versions). Remove at your own risk.
  • BWCC32.DLL - there is a weak reference to this one so maybe keep it around
  • HMIDRV.WIN
  • HMIMDRV.WIN
  • SOSLIB.INI
  • SOSLIBS3.DLL
• There are some other useless files in the subfolders but I didn't bother getting that picky.
• The ES2_*.* files are configurations for old Thrustmaster flightsticks. You can dump them if you don't know what they are.
• Do not copy DDRAW.DLL to a post-Windows-95 system (or even to some Windows 95 installs). It will keep the game from working in later DirectX installs.