1.5

The Two Towers Recompiled v1.5

A native PC port of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Xbox, USA, 2002), made by static recompilation. It needs your own copy of the game, either the disc image (ISO) or an extracted folder. No game data is included.

⚠ Work in progress. The game is fully playable, but not everything works perfectly yet. It is recommended to play at 30 fps, the frame rate the game was made for. If the game crashes or freezes with higher frame rates, restart it: the same spot usually works on the next try.

Downloads

File	For
TwoTowers-Recompiled-v1.5-win64.zip	Windows 7 SP1, 8.1, 10, 11 (64-bit)
TwoTowers-Recompiled-v1.5-linux-x86_64.tar.gz	64-bit Linux, glibc 2.27 or newer (Ubuntu 18.04+, Debian 10+, Fedora 28+, Steam Deck desktop mode, …)
TwoTowers-Recompiled-v1.5-source.zip	Source code (LGPL-2.1)

Updating from 1.3 or 1.2: unpack over your old folder, or into a new one and copy your game_files folder (or point the launcher at your extracted folder again). Your saves and settings carry over. The Extra heroes mod's heroes folder is rebuilt automatically; the heroes' experience, upgrades and unlocks are kept.

What's new in 1.5

A fix for the Extra heroes mod (still highly experimental and off by default; turn it on in the launcher's settings, Mod: Extra heroes).

Boromir's and Frodo's attacks go where they face

Boromir and Frodo fight with Aragorn's attacks, fitted to their bodies. Aragorn's sword stance turns his body about 40 degrees, and the game makes up for that turn on Aragorn but not on them. So their heavy attacks and kicks went about 40 degrees to one side of the enemy they faced, and you had to stand at an angle to land them. Now their blows go where they face.

Measured in Hornburg Courtyard with heavy attacks pressed throughout, as the share of the sword's hit checks that land:

Hero	1.3	1.5
Boromir	about 10%	about 18%
Frodo	about 1%	about 25%
Aragorn (for comparison)	about 14%	about 14%

Also:

• Their shoulders and hips now sit where Aragorn's do during these moves, so their arms and blade follow his swing more closely.
• Boromir's skeleton gets the aiming data every other hero has.
• Gandalf and Lurtz fight with their own moves and are unchanged.

Everything from 1.3

• The Extra heroes play on their own skeletons, with their own walk, run, block, hit reactions and death.
• Their own weapons, shown everywhere they appear as the hero: Boromir's sword and shield, Gandalf's staff and his beam of light, Frodo's glowing Sting, Lurtz's Uruk-hai sword and bow.
• Their own pictures: character select poses, upgrade figure, end-of-level model, HUD portrait (with the ECTS HUD mod, Boromir, Frodo and Lurtz have their own icons in the e3hud folder), upgrade and results pictures.
• Unlocked one at a time by finishing the Tower of Orthanc as Isildur (2nd finish Boromir, 3rd Gandalf, 4th Frodo, 5th Lurtz); "On, unlocked for testing" shows all four.

Tested

• Windows: Boromir and Frodo in Hornburg Courtyard, their hits measured against Aragorn's (table above). Lurtz and Gandalf in the same test.
• Linux: the game built from the published source. A level with Frodo builds and plays its opening scene with no crash.
• The release was built from a fresh copy of the source, with the game code generated from scratch by generate.py.

Known issues

• Extra heroes: they have no voices of their own. Sting's glow is a tint of the blade, not a light. Gandalf's staff lands fewer heavy blows than a sword does.
• Rarely, the game froze during the movie before Amon Hen in 1.2 testing; the next try worked.
• With PlayStation prompts, on-screen text still names the Xbox buttons ("Press the A button…"). Only the pictures and button icons change.
• 60 fps and unlocked are experimental: crackling or music cutting out can still happen.
• Widescreen is experimental: a few full-screen effects may not line up at the edges.

Bug reports are welcome. Please include twotowers_log.txt, which is next to the game (for the Extra heroes mod, its [HEROES] lines).

1.4

The Two Towers Recompiled v1.4

A native PC port of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Xbox, USA, 2002), made by static recompilation. It needs your own copy of the game, either the disc image (ISO) or an extracted folder. No game data is included.

⚠ Work in progress. The game is playable, but not everything works perfectly yet. Play at 30 fps, the frame rate the game was made for. If the game crashes or freezes, restart it: the same spot usually works on the next try.

Downloads

File	For
TwoTowers-Recompiled-v1.4-win64.zip	Windows 7 SP1, 8.1, 10, 11 (64-bit)
TwoTowers-Recompiled-v1.4-linux-x86_64.tar.gz	64-bit Linux, glibc 2.27 or newer (Ubuntu 18.04+, Debian 10+, Fedora 28+, Steam Deck desktop mode, …)
TwoTowers-Recompiled-v1.4-source.zip	Source code (LGPL-2.1)

Updating from 1.3: unpack over your old folder, or into a new one and copy your game_files folder (or point the launcher at your extracted folder again). Your saves and settings carry over. If you played the Extra heroes mod in 1.2, its heroes folder is rebuilt automatically; the heroes' experience and upgrades are kept.

New in 1.4: the Extra heroes mod

⚠ Still highly experimental and off by default. Expect the odd visual glitch, and possibly crashes. Your saves are not changed by it. Turn it on in the launcher's settings (Mod: Extra heroes) or with [Mods] extra_heroes=1.

1.2 brought Boromir, Gandalf, Frodo and Lurtz to the character select, but they were stretched over Aragorn's body and fought with his sword and bow. In 1.3 each one is himself and in 1.4 they have their respective weapons shown in the menu/character select screens.

Their own bodies and moves

• They play on their own skeletons, with their own walk, run, block, hit reactions and death. Frodo and Lurtz are no longer distorted.
• Walks and runs are paced to each hero's stride, so their feet keep to the ground.
• Boromir and Frodo fight with the heroes' light and heavy attacks, fitted to their bodies. Gandalf and Lurtz fight with their own attacks, timed so the blow lands where the swing does.
• Heavy attacks now hit. The guests' blades swept beside where the game looked for a hit, so heavy attacks missed. Measured in Hornburg Courtyard, they now land about as often as Aragorn's.

Their own weapons

• Boromir: his sword, and his shield on his other arm.
• Gandalf: his staff, always in hand. His ranged attack is a beam of light from the staff's head, never arrows.
• Frodo: Sting, its blade glowing a pale blue.
• Lurtz: his Uruk-hai sword and his own bow.
• They carry them wherever they appear as the hero: in play, in the cutscenes before play, on the character select, and in the pause screen's upgrade figure.

Their own pictures

• Each has his own idle pose on the character select, his own pose when chosen and his own move when confirmed.
• His own figure on the pause screen's upgrades and on the end-of-level model.
• His own HUD portrait, upgrade-screen and results-screen pictures. With the ECTS HUD mod, Boromir, Frodo and Lurtz have their own portrait icons in the e3hud folder, as Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli do.

Unlocking, one at a time

• Each finish of the Tower of Orthanc as Isildur on a save unlocks the next hero: the 2nd finish unlocks Boromir, the 3rd Gandalf, the 4th Frodo and the 5th Lurtz. Locked heroes show as a faint shadow and are skipped.
• "On, unlocked for testing" (extra_heroes=2) still shows all four on any save, without changing it.

Fixes

• The new heroes sometimes missing from the character select after returning to the menu.
• ECTS HUD mod: the HUD is drawn only in play.

Tested

• Windows: all 14 levels load and reach gameplay without the mod, rotating Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli at 30, 60 and unlocked fps, with no crash. (The prologue's long opening movie outlasted the test run on the slow test machine, as 1.2 does there too.)
• Extra heroes on Windows: all four in the Plains of Rohan and Hornburg Courtyard: moves, weapons, Gandalf's beam, and heavy-attack hits measured against Aragorn's. Frodo and Lurtz holding their weapons on the character select; the four upgrade figures with their weapons.
• Linux: the game built from the published source; a level with Boromir builds and plays its opening scene with no crash, and the four upgrade figures build.
• The release was built from a fresh copy of the source, with the game code generated from scratch by generate.py.

Known issues

• Extra heroes: they have no voices of their own. Sting's glow is a tint of the blade, not a light on its surroundings. Breaking shields with heavy attacks has not been measured as closely as plain hits; reports are welcome.
• Rarely, the game froze during the movie before Amon Hen in 1.2 testing; the next try worked.
• With PlayStation prompts, on-screen text still names the Xbox buttons ("Press the A button…"). Only the pictures and button icons change.
• 60 fps and unlocked are experimental: crackling or music cutting out can still happen.
• Widescreen is experimental: a few full-screen effects may not line up at the edges.

Bug reports are welcome. Please include twotowers_log.txt, which is next to the game (for the Extra heroes mod, its [HEROES] lines).

1.3

The Two Towers Recompiled v1.3

A native PC port of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Xbox, USA, 2002), made by static recompilation. It needs your own copy of the game, either the disc image (ISO) or an extracted folder. No game data is included.

⚠ Work in progress. The game is fully playable from start to finish, but not everything works perfectly yet. Play at 30 fps, the frame rate the game was made for. If the game crashes or freezes, restart it: the same spot usually works on the next try.

Downloads

File	For
TwoTowers-Recompiled-v1.3-win64.zip	Windows 7 SP1, 8.1, 10, 11 (64-bit)
TwoTowers-Recompiled-v1.3-linux-x86_64.tar.gz	64-bit Linux, glibc 2.27 or newer (Ubuntu 18.04+, Debian 10+, Fedora 28+, Steam Deck desktop mode, …)
TwoTowers-Recompiled-v1.3-source.zip	Source code (LGPL-2.1)

Updating from 1.2: unpack over your old folder, or into a new one and copy your game_files folder (or point the launcher at your extracted folder again). Your saves and settings carry over. If you played the Extra heroes mod in 1.2, its heroes folder is rebuilt automatically; the heroes' experience and upgrades are kept.

New in 1.3: Extra heroes mod fixes/changes

⚠ Still highly experimental and off by default. Expect the odd visual glitch in cutscenes and during gameplay. Your saves are not changed by it. Toggle it in the launcher's settings (Mod: Extra heroes) or with [Mods] extra_heroes=1.

1.2 brought Boromir, Gandalf, Frodo and Lurtz to the character select, but they were stretched over Aragorn's body and fought with his sword and bow. In 1.3 each one is himself.

Some animations for Frodo, Boromir and Lurtz are not working as intended. More animations to come, but as of now these characters are slightly more challenging to use than the base game characters, and you will need to account/compensate for the new animations. These new animations are the ones the NPC's normally use, but reworked as the heros animations.

Their own bodies and moves

• They play on their own skeletons, with their own walk, run, block, hit reactions and death. Frodo and Lurtz are no longer distorted.
• Walks and runs are paced to each hero's stride, so their feet keep to the ground.
• Boromir and Frodo fight with the heroes' light and heavy attacks, fitted to their bodies. Gandalf and Lurtz fight with their own attacks, timed so the blow lands where the swing does.
• Heavy attacks now hit. The guests' blades swept beside where the game looked for a hit, so heavy attacks missed. Measured in Hornburg Courtyard, they now land about as often as Aragorn's.

Their own weapons

• Boromir: his sword, and his shield on his other arm.
• Gandalf: his staff, always in hand. His ranged attack is a beam of light from the staff's head, never arrows.
• Frodo: Sting, its blade glowing a pale blue.
• Lurtz: his Uruk-hai sword and his own bow.

Their own pictures

• Each has his own idle pose on the character select, his own pose when chosen and his own move when confirmed.
• His own figure on the pause screen's upgrades and on the end-of-level model.
• His own HUD portrait, upgrade-screen and results-screen pictures.

Unlocking, one at a time

• Each finish of the Tower of Orthanc as Isildur on a save unlocks the next hero: the 2nd finish unlocks Boromir, the 3rd Gandalf, the 4th Frodo and the 5th Lurtz. Locked heroes show as a faint shadow and are skipped.
• "On, unlocked for testing" (extra_heroes=2) still shows all four on any save, without changing it.

Fixes

• The new heroes sometimes missing from the character select after returning to the menu.
• ECTS HUD mod: the HUD is drawn only in play.

Tested

• Windows: all 14 levels load and reach gameplay without the mod, rotating Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli at 30, 60 and unlocked fps, with no crash. (The prologue's long opening movie outlasted the test run on the slow test machine, as 1.2 does there too.)
• Extra heroes on Windows: all four in the Plains of Rohan and Hornburg Courtyard: moves, weapons, Gandalf's beam, and heavy-attack hits measured against Aragorn's.
• Linux: the game built from the published source; a level with Boromir builds and plays its opening scene with no crash.
• The release was built from a fresh copy of the source, with the game code generated from scratch by generate.py.

Known issues

-Character shadow bug. Sometimes the character shadows can appear stretched out.

• Extra heroes: they have no voices of their own. Frodo's Sting glow is a tint of the blade, not a light on its surroundings. Breaking shields with heavy attacks is more difficult with all new characters, especially Frodo and Boromir.
• Rarely, the game froze during the movie before Amon Hen in 1.2 testing; the next try worked.
• With PlayStation prompts, on-screen text still names the Xbox buttons ("Press the A button…"). Only the pictures and button icons change.
• 60 fps and unlocked are experimental: crackling or music cutting out can still happen.
• Widescreen is experimental: a few full-screen effects may not line up at the edges.

Bug reports are welcome. Please include twotowers_log.txt, which is next to the game (for the Extra heroes mod, its [HEROES] lines).

1.2

The Two Towers Recompiled v1.2

A native PC port of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Xbox, USA, 2002), made by static recompilation. It needs your own copy of the game, either the disc image (ISO) or an extracted folder. No game data is included.

⚠ Work in progress. The game is playable, but not everything works perfectly yet. Play at 30 fps, the frame rate the game was made for. If the game crashes or freezes, restart it: the same spot usually works on the next try.

Downloads

File	For
TwoTowers-Recompiled-v1.2-win64.zip	Windows 7 SP1, 8.1, 10, 11 (64-bit)
TwoTowers-Recompiled-v1.2-linux-x86_64.tar.gz	64-bit Linux, glibc 2.27 or newer (Ubuntu 18.04+, Debian 10+, Fedora 28+, Steam Deck desktop mode, …)
TwoTowers-Recompiled-v1.2-source.zip	Source code (LGPL-2.1)

New in 1.2

Linux build (experiemental)

• Native 64-bit Linux version. Graphics use OpenGL 3.3, and sound and controllers go through SDL2 (Xbox, PlayStation 3/4/5, Switch Pro and most other pads, with rumble).
• Run TwoTowers.sh. On first start it runs twotowers-setup, which checks and extracts your disc image (or uses an extracted folder), lets you change a few settings and adds a menu entry. If SDL2 is missing, it tells you how to install it.

Windows 7 and N editions

• The game now starts on Windows 7 SP1 and 8.1, and on the "N" editions of any Windows. It no longer needs the Universal C Runtime or a Visual C++ redistributable.
• XAudio2, the shader compiler and Media Foundation are loaded only if present. Without them the game falls back to other sound output, the software renderer or no movie audio, instead of refusing to start.
• A graphics card or Windows 7 setup without Direct3D 11 feature level 11_0 now gets the software renderer and a line in the log, instead of a broken picture.

PlayStation controller support

• (Button prompts currently broken/not showing) Button prompts: with a PlayStation pad as player 1, the game's button icons (the upgrade screen's combo lists, "Help", …) show cross, circle, square, triangle and R2 instead of A, B, X, Y and the right trigger. Choose Automatic, Xbox or PlayStation under "Button prompts" in the F10 menu, or set [Input] prompts= in the settings file.
• Loading-screen controller diagrams: with PlayStation prompts, the control diagrams on the early loading screens show a DualShock 3, DualShock 4 or DualSense, whichever pad is plugged in. The game's own lines and labels still point at the right buttons. Use [Input] ps_pad=auto|ps3|ps4|ps5 to pick one.

Fixes

• Controls freezing with the last input held (Windows), for example Gimli aiming at the breach or Aragorn walking into a wall. The real cause was the thread-local storage in the MinGW Windows builds, which every thread shared by mistake. Pad input also now runs on its own thread, so a slow controller driver (Bluetooth, Steam Input, virtual pads) can't stall it.
• Crash in Helm's Deep at 60 fps / unlocked: a race in the game's sound engine.
• Crash entering Balin's Tomb on Linux.
• Timer overflow: the game would have frozen on its first frame if the PC had been on for about 10.7 days without a restart.

ECTS 2002 HUD mod

• Westfold: the villager counter is now the demo's two rows of villager faces, with a red cross over each one lost. The left villager's mouth is no longer cut off.
• Westfold: the villager faces no longer show on the results and upgrade screens after the level.
• Helm's Deep wall: the progress-bar picture is centred on the bar.

Extra heroes mod (new, ⚠ highly experimental, off by default)

This is an early preview and is partly broken: expect visual glitches, missing moves and possibly crashes. Leave it off for a normal game. Your saves are not changed by it.

• Adds Boromir, Gandalf, Frodo and Lurtz to the character select (eight heroes), made from the game's own models. Turn it on in the launcher's settings (Mod: Extra heroes) or with [Mods] extra_heroes=1.
• They unlock once a save has finished Hornburg Courtyard and the Tower of Orthanc. "On, unlocked for testing" (extra_heroes=2) shows them on any save without changing it.
• Each takes Isildur's place in the level, with his own experience and upgrades, kept in the heroes folder. They move with Aragorn's moves, sword and bow.
• Known problems: Frodo and Lurtz are visibly distorted when they move. Gandalf has no staff or magic yet. The upgrade screen and HUD still show Isildur's picture. After leaving a level, the new heroes are sometimes missing from the character select until a save is loaded again. Proper moves, weapons and pictures for each are planned for 1.3.

Tested

• Windows: all 14 levels load and reach gameplay, rotating Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli at 30, 60 and unlocked fps, with no crash. A run in Windows 7 compatibility mode also started and played normally.
• Linux: Has not been tested on a Linux machine personally, and as of now it is experimental. Anyone willing to test on a Linux machine should report any bugs or glitches found with the twotowers_log.txt

Known issues

• Rarely (once in about 30 test runs, on a heavily overloaded two-core machine), the game froze during the movie before Amon Hen. The next try worked.
• With PlayStation prompts, on-screen text still names the Xbox buttons ("Press the A button…"). Only the pictures and button icons change.
• 60 fps and unlocked are experimental: crackling or music cutting out can still happen.
• Widescreen is experimental: a few full-screen effects may not line up at the edges.

Bug reports are welcome. Please include twotowers_log.txt, which is next to the game.

1.1

The Two Towers Recompiled v1.1
A native Windows PC port of The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (Xbox, USA, 2002), made by static recompilation. It needs your own copy of the game, either the disc image (ISO) or an extracted folder. No game data is included.
⚠ Work in progress. The game is fully playable, but this is an early release and not everything works perfectly yet. More updates and bug fixes are coming.
Recommended settings
• Run the game at 30 fps, the frame rate it was made for. The 60 fps and unlocked options are experimental and make crashes and audio problems more likely.
• If the game crashes or freezes, just restart it. Problems are often one-time, and the same spot usually works on the next try.
New in 1.1
Optional mods
Off by default; turned on in the launcher.
• ECTS 2002 HUD (experimental): recreates the HUD from the pre-release build shown at ECTS 2002.
◦ Character portrait on the health sword, with a curved cross-guard.
◦ Plain blue experience gauge with a rune orb that fills as you enter combos.
◦ Combo names (Speed / Fierce / Special / Mixed) in the game's own font.
◦ EXP readout, and the kill rating moved beside the gauge.
◦ Matching loading-screen tip.
• Orange health pickups: the green health vials glow orange, as in pre-release and making-of videos.
Graphics
• New brightness, sharpening and colour settings, in the launcher and in game (F10).
• Improved character shadows.
• Widescreen no longer stretches the menus, so the level-select highlights line up with the icons.
Input
• Controller, keyboard and mouse only reach the game while its window is in front. Set background_input=1 to let the controller through anyway.
• The click that brings the window to the front no longer counts as an attack.
• Stuck keys are released automatically.
• A pushed controller stick takes priority over the keyboard.
Stability and audio
• Less sound crackling and fewer music dropouts at higher frame rates.
• Crashes, freezes and closed windows are now written to the log for bug reports.
• Texture dumping fixed, for mod makers.
Known issues
• Character shadows can still look off or stringy in some scenes.
• Occasional crashes and freezes, most often while a movie is loading or playing (for example going into Amon Hen). Restarting the game usually gets past it.
• Audio problems: some crackling and music cutting out, mostly at 60 fps and unlocked frame rates.
• The ECTS 2002 HUD mod is experimental, and a piece of it may appear out of place on an odd frame.
When reporting a bug, please attach twotowers_log.txt from the game's folder.
Install

1. Download TwoTowers-Recompiled-v1.1-win64.zip and extract it to its own folder. Don't put it inside your game folder.
2. Run The Two Towers Recompiled.exe and point it at your ISO or extracted game folder.
3. Set your graphics options, then press Play.
   See the README for settings, controls, troubleshooting and building from source.
   Downloads
   • TwoTowers-Recompiled-v1.1-win64.zip: ready-to-play build
   • TwoTowers-Recompiled-v1.1-source.zip: source code
   Disclaimer
   This is a fan project for educational and preservation purposes only. I own no rights to The Lord of the Rings or its affiliates. All rights to the game and its content remain with their respective owners. This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by them.