Dear GOG Community,
here is a short tutorial on how to run SOTE in windowed mode and/or very high resolutions*

* Sadly I cannot try beyond 1080p/Full HD, because I don't have a screen with bigger resolution. Hope other people will try it and have success beyond FHD. It should work even on 4k, 5k and beyond (the limit is your GFX card/drivers/screen)

So, let's start ...

1. Download dgVoodoo from here:
http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2.html
http://dege.freeweb.hu/dgVoodoo2_51.zip (direct link)

Actual version in time of this writing is dgVoodoo v2.51 (released: 12.03.2016)

2. Open the zip file in your favorite extractor.
If you don't have anything installed, you can try the free opensource 7-zip.

For visual help, look at the attached image 0_dgVoodoo2_51_archive.png

3. Extract dgVoodooSetup.exe to default installation folder of SOTE (C:\GOG Games\Star Wars - Shadows of the Empire)

For visual help, look at the attached image 1_dgVoodoo1_SOTE_folder.png

4. Before we extract the content of the MS folder, that you can find inside the dgVoodoo2_51.zip archive, we must make a backup of the original ddraw.dll (just in case), that is located in the subfolder Sdata of SOTE installation (C:\GOG Games\Star Wars - Shadows of the Empire\Sdata)

Rename it to anything, like ddraw.dll1 or similar ... so, that you will know in the future, that this is the original ddraw.dll from GOG.com installation if you will need it or want to restore the original. In my case, I renamed the file as ddraw.dll_gog_original

Now copy/extract the content of the MS folder, that you can find inside the dgVoodoo2_51.zip archive into the Sdata folder.

So in Sdata folder you must have the following 3 files:
DDraw.dll
D3DImm.dll
D3D8.dll

Once again: all these files must be located in the Sdata folder C:\GOG Games\Star Wars - Shadows of the Empire\Sdata\

For visual help, look at the attached image 2_dgVoodoo2_SOTE_Sdata_folder.png

5. That was the hard part. Now we need to open dgVoodoo:
C:\GOG Games\Star Wars - Shadows of the Empire\dgVoodooSetup.exe

... and configure it as you can see on screenshots/attached images No. 3 and 4

In General Tab you must choose/check under Appearance -> Windowed and Centered
Also it is good to check under Miscellaenneous the option Keep window aspect ratio

For visual help, look at the attached image 3_dgVoodoo 2.51_Setup.png

6. Let's go to the DirectX tab inside the dgVoodoo setup file.

- Under Videocard choose dgVoodoo Virtual 3D Accelerated Card, the memory can be set to whatever you want, but it should be at least 16 MB.

- The Resolution part can be set to Unforced, because for this we will use the GOG launcher from SOTE
- Antialiasing -> use, whatever you want
- Miscellanneous -> I recommend you to check Force vSync, also here you can turn on/off the dgVoodoo Watermark

For visual help, look at the attached image 4_dgVoodoo 2.51_DirectX_tab.png

That's it. Not press Apply and OK.

7. Now let's try us to run the game in windowed mode. Open the GOG Launcher, that you can find on your desktop.
Set the resolution to whatever you want, but it should be lower, than you full desktop resolution, if you want to play in a window.

For visual help, look at the attached image 5_SOTE_GOG_Launcher.png

For this test, I tryed 800x600@16bit.

I will also attach some screenshots in the following post to show, how the game looks in windowed mode.

Tested under Windows 8.1, Core i5 CPU, Radeon R7 250 GPU, but it should work on anything, that can run this game.

p.s.: I have still the original 1.0 GOG release, that had some "problems", like disabled fog by default etc. All that was already fixed in the hotfixes, that followed after the next days of the release.

Showing ingame options menu and gameplay.

Thanks for this!

I haven't tried it yet, but with this wrapper, is it possible to run the game in fullscreen, at 1080, in a 4:3 pillarbox, without distorted star-fields and miniature HUD and text?

Huh, good question. I just tryed to the windowed mode ...

But you can try to set the resolution to 1280x1024 in the GOG launcher and in dgVoodoo check fullscreen (look at attachment).

Also, here you can see some of screenshots (1080p, fullscreen, 8xAA, dgVoodoo):
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/os1crgwhf634zkz/AACItdl3D-ClY7hwubGg3xf6a?dl=0

Eh. No luck on what I'm after - I played with all the settings and couldn't get anything to work. Basically there needs to be a way to tell the 2D elements of the game that they are still running at 640X480 while setting the 3D elements/application window to 1440x1080 (for proper aspect ratio support), and then have the 2D elements stretched to match the screen size.

Ah, now I understand. That is quite a complicated wish, you have :)

Your welcome.

I have also finished this game three times already in the past 18 years. But it never becomes boring. :)

Thanks so much for your help! Sadly, this didn't work for me - despite setting the game to windowed/centered (and otherwise copying all the options you suggested), it still runs in a stretched widescreen! Any ideas? Let me know what I can provide for diagnosis.

Edit: Also causing mouse artifacting errors. Hmm. Hang on for now - I gotta figure out what is this mod and what is just the GOG release!

Try unticking "Application controlled fullscreen/windowed state" and "Disable Alt-Enter to toggle screen state", and press Alt+Enter ingame.

EDIT:

Here's the error: dgVoodooSetup.exe (and dgVoodoo.conf) have to go into the Sdata folder as well.

Was the fixed-size starfield also a problem with the original game above 640x480? Because other 2D things like the cockpit do scale up.

thank you, this fixes my 1440p video problems. now i just need to limit the framerate back to 30Hz and fix my controls :)

After following the steps, I get an error, "No RGB lighting mode" - Solved

EDIT: Now all the text looks blurred together and the pause screen is white. I am using dgVoodoo 2.63.2