Play DS9: Dominion Wars on Modern Hardware

What's your favourite episode? How is romulan ale brewed? - Star Trek in general :-)
posted on April 30th, 2014, 4:10 am
Hello,Someone asked me how to play Dominion Wars on modern hardware. I think that if I posted here it could benifit more people than private message.
First, the game I'm refering to is this:
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Star_Tr ... inion_Wars
Not any mods that might use same or similar name/titles.

The following procedure has been tested on US version of Dominion Wars on Windows 7 Sp1 x64. Other game versions and/or Windows versions might work or not.
You should be able to install Dominion Wars using the CD-ROM disc. So I'll skip this part.

I recommend update the game to v1.04. There are multiple different patches for different version of game. If you run the wrong patch, it will fail and come up with file CRC errors. These are the known game versions:
US version retail 1.01
US version patched 1.03
Europe English vesion 1.03
German version 1.03
Since you will not be able to run the game just after installed. You may need to try all the patches to find out which one work for you. :(
After you successfully applied the patch without any errors. Let's get start with the tricky part:

You will need a hex editor, I recommend xvi32:
http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/f ... /xvi32.htm
You also need to download the Dominion Wars wrapper here:
http://jiridvorak.webpark.cz/dw/
(Just type captcha if you see it)
Download 0.0.1 version and extract the ddra2.dll to your Dominion Wars folder.

Run xvi32 or other hex editor you use and open ds9dw.exe
2014-04-30_115538.jpg
2014-04-30_115538.jpg (149.14 KiB) Viewed 11656 times

Search and find "DDRAW" (Case sensitive, all upper cased)
2014-04-30_115952.jpg
2014-04-30_115952.jpg (28.67 KiB) Viewed 11656 times

Change the DDRAW.DLL string you found to DDRA2.DLL
2014-04-30_115839.jpg
2014-04-30_115839.jpg (164 KiB) Viewed 11656 times

There are two strings need to be changed. click F3 to find next string. make sure you don't miss any one. Save file after you changed both strings.

Some additional notes:
The screen resolution must be smaller than 1600x1200. Be sure to change resolution to 1440 or smaller before you run the game!
The game will not work on multiple GPU configurations, e.g. Crossfire, SLI.

That's it. Try to run the game and hope everything works... :)
posted on February 3rd, 2019, 1:20 pm
Hello yochenhsieh, I just tried to install it on Win10 with your instruction. Sadly, the game doesn't start with original CD. I always get the message CD not found. Even with a edited no-cd.exe it doesn't work. Do you have any idea how to fix that bug?
posted on February 3rd, 2019, 3:16 pm
Sorry, I can't help you because I don't have win10 now.

It's known that win10 has a lot of compatibility problems with older games. I'm certain the guide in first post will work on win8.1 and win7, though. Last time I run this game in win10, there's terrible clipping sound and mouse issue making it unplayable.

Some additional notes I can think of:
1. I remember the no cd exe still needs a empty cd-rom drive available, whether it's real hardware or software emulated (virtual drive). If you don't have a cd-rom, try install this: https://www.elby.ch/products/vcd.html
2. You may try compatibility mode set to win98 or winxp and see if it works.
3. If you use a no-cd exe, you still need to hexedit it to include the external wrapper dll so the game can be run.
4. Sometimes when it compains no CD-ROM, try click "OK" instead of "Cancel".

Hope you get it work. This is a nice game. I still have it in my PC.:)
posted on February 7th, 2019, 12:33 am
Thank you for your quick responds. Sadly the game still doesn't want to work.
If you or anyone else have more ideas, please let me know.

With best regards,
Sisko
posted on April 13th, 2021, 5:28 am
Hey there, I came across this older post while struggling to get Dominion Wars to work. I just wanted to say that following the OP's instructions worked perfectly! I do have a Windows 7 64bit machine to try this, and I did need to set the compatibility mode for the executable to Windows XP SP3 after making all the other changes.

Like the OP mentions, if the title does launch but the opening movies or main menu fail to work, make sure you are not in a resolution higher than 1600 x 1200. As soon as I lowered the resolution of the display I was off to the races.

I'd like to store all this information in https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Home. This particular Star Trek game seems to have little support online for modern systems and I'd like to make sure the information is saved is as many places as possible.
posted on October 16th, 2021, 11:21 am
i have a hard copy of dominion wars. when i install from disk, i dont have a ds9dw.exe file. anyone know what's up?
posted on October 24th, 2021, 8:46 pm
Hm that's strange. I installed from a North American/English copy and the file is there.

Here's what I see in the directory after following the OP's steps:

Directory of D:\Program Files (x86)\Dominion Wars

04/11/2021 <DIR> rs
09/11/2021 <DIR> savebackup
07/31/2001 binkw32.dll
12/31/2016 ddra2.dll
09/07/2001 ds9dw - Copy.exe
04/12/2021 ds9dw.exe
06/20/2001 FAQ.txt
06/05/2001 GameSpy.ico
07/31/2001 gizmolog.ico
06/06/2021 options.ds9
08/16/2001 readme.txt
09/14/2021 wrapper.log
posted on November 12th, 2021, 9:35 pm
I've recently been able to get this to run in PC EM (PC Emulator) and 86box.
posted on November 14th, 2021, 2:12 pm
bigboss10783 wrote:i have a hard copy of dominion wars. when i install from disk, i dont have a ds9dw.exe file. anyone know what's up?

Could you list the files in your game folder after install? I wonder if you have an European English or German version. It would be helpful if you can show the file dates.
posted on December 4th, 2021, 12:37 am
I'm not the one you're responding to but I have the same issue. The only thing inside the install DIR is the rs DiR. It and it's contents have the date of installation. The date of the rs DIR on the disk is 9/10/01. I see no indication to which local version it is. Readme only mentions 1.02 update. I tried a year ago and gave up. Trying again without much luck.

EDIT: Solution found! Uninstall what you have using setup. Set Setup to winXP sp2 compatibility mode and then run as admin. All files installed finally.
posted on February 6th, 2022, 11:47 pm
If anyone has tried these troubleshooting tips and is still struggling to get the game running, try this: https://collectionchamber.blogspot.com/ ... -wars.html
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