The Two Towers Recompiled v1.9.3

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, but not everything works perfectly yet. Unlocked frame rates are experimental. It is recommended to play the game at 60 fps. See known issues.

Ultra textures, GameCube compatibility pack: download the GameCube high-resolution texture pack (GLOS69) separately from its author. It is not part of this release. https://www.moddb.com/mods/the-two-towers-textures-4k-ai-remaster/addons/the-two-towers-textures-4k-ai-remaster-575gb-version-native

Updating from 1.9.2 or earlier: unpack over your old folder, or into a new one and copy your game_files folder. Your saves and settings carry over. Copy the new textures_ultra\pairs.txt too (it comes with the download); a prepared GLOS69 pack is not prepared again.

• Runs natively on Windows, Linux and macOS (experimental), from your own disc.
• Languages (new): 33 languages besides English for every text in the game, subtitles included, plus the launcher and the F10 menu.
• Resolution and widescreen: internal resolution 1x–12x, 4:3 to 32:9 with the HUD at the screen's edges, widescreen cutscenes, menus that fill the screen.
• Picture: Direct3D 11, Vulkan (DXVK) or OpenGL; MSAA and FXAA, anisotropic filtering, brightness, sharpening and color.
• Ultra textures: sharper menus, text and HUD, and every texture with the GameCube pack.
• Frame rate: 30 fps as on the Xbox, or 60 / unlocked (experimental).
• Keyboard and mouse: every action rebindable, a Walk key, a mouse pointer in every menu, mouse aiming and mouse steering.
• Controllers: Xbox, PlayStation, Switch Pro and others with rumble; prompts that match what you play with.
• Menus: Display and Controls options pages in game, the F10 settings panel, an Exit item.
• Mods: the ECTS 2002 demo's HUD, orange health pickups, and seven new playable heroes.

The stripes and thin lines that crossed character shadows in every level, at any resolution, are not fixed completely, but some of the shadows are now filled in more (Direct3D 11 and Vulkan).

• Display mode now has Windowed, Borderless and Exclusive full screen (Options → Display, F10, the launcher, or [Display] fullscreen=2).
• Full-screen resolution chooses the display's resolution for exclusive full screen: the desktop's, or another the display offers, at its highest refresh rate ([Display] fs_resolution=1920x1080). Changing it keeps you on the Display page.
• The window and mouse follow every resolution change, so the pointer no longer drifts and W A S D keep working in the menus.

• In the main menus, a part push of the left stick moves the choice as the d-pad does. The main menu used to need a full push, and a push slightly to the side often did nothing. A held stick steps at the d-pad's pace.
• A held stick or d-pad no longer runs down the Options pages at high frame rates.
• Mouse steering and mouse aiming now take over the left stick only for the keys and mouse. Before, pushing a controller's stick up with steering on, or holding its LT with mouse aiming on, gave the stick to the mouse.

The 1.9.2 Mac build stopped at start-up on Apple silicon. Three fixes, from a player's report and tested patch (M2 Pro, macOS 27.2, Rosetta 2):

• The game window opens. macOS only lets the main thread make windows; the game drew no window ("NSWindow should only be instantiated on the main thread"). The window now runs on the main thread, the game on its own.
• No crash once the renderer is up. The OpenGL picture could be drawn from a second thread that had no OpenGL context (a crash in glBindFramebuffer).
• No crash at the first sound. Rosetta 2 reports the step the audio-register handling takes as a breakpoint (unhandled exception 0x80000003); it is now recognised as the step it is.
• A crash log line now also names the function it stopped in.

• Vulkan without a separate download. DXVK 3.0.2 now comes in the Windows download's dxvk folder: choose Vulkan as the Renderer in the launcher. Direct3D 11 stays the default.
• The Secret Codes page shows your controls: its L trigger follows the button prompts you chose (as R did), and its text names your keys with keyboard prompts.

• Under Wine (Direct3D 11): levels load and play with the shadow repair on, at 1x and 4x internal resolution; exclusive full screen starts; the main menu with scripted left-stick pushes at 30 %, 40 %, 60 % and full (both ways), and a held stick against a held d-pad; the orange pickups and the ECTS HUD.
• Linux (OpenGL): a level from boot. Windows, Linux and macOS builds compile.
• macOS: the reporter's version of these fixes, in their own build, reached the renderer, sound and the intro screens at 30 frames a second on an M2 Pro (Rosetta 2). This release's Mac build (with the window fix reworked) has not been run on a Mac; full play, controllers and Intel Macs are untested.

• Choose one in the launcher's Language list (on Linux and macOS: ./twotowers-setup, then l). English, French, German, Spanish (Spain and Latin America), Italian, Portuguese (Brazil and Portugal), Dutch, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, Polish, Czech, Slovak, Hungarian, Romanian, Croatian, Turkish, Greek, Bulgarian, Russian, Ukrainian, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Thai, Hindi, Hebrew and Arabic.
• Everything the game writes is translated: menus, hints, upgrades, the results and pause screens, credits, and the subtitles of the scenes and the bonus interviews. So are the port's own words: Options pages, key names, button hints, the extra heroes' names and upgrades, the launcher and the F10 panel.
• Letters the game's fonts lack are added to them at each font's size and weight, and to the Ultra textures' upscaled fonts too, so text stays sharp in every language. Hebrew and Arabic read right to left; Chinese, Japanese and Thai lines break between words.
• The lang folder holds only the translations. The game's files are copied with the language's text into lang_cache on first use (a few seconds); your game files are not changed. Spoken dialogue stays English.

• Legolas's mission results picture showed Aragorn with Ultra textures and the GameCube pack (the pack has no picture of him, and its second picture of Aragorn had been paired with it). It is his own now.
• Mouse steering: hold Walk with W and the hero walks while steering.

• Under Wine (Direct3D 11 and software): the title screen and menus in French, Japanese and Arabic; the largest level loads in Japanese and Chinese; the upscaled fonts of Japanese, Polish and Russian (Ultra textures); the results screen as Legolas with Ultra textures; the launcher in Japanese (Wine has no Japanese font, so its words showed as boxes there; Windows has the fonts).
• Linux (OpenGL): the title in Russian with the upscaled font. Windows, Linux and macOS builds compile.

Known issues

- Visual bugs: Character shadow bug. Sometimes the character shadows can appear stretched out or stringy, especially for larger NPC's. Some visual bugs with lighting as well. With the extra heros mod enabled, replaying the second level can sometimes show an odd texture covering the top of the upgrades screen after completing the level. This can be fixed temporarily by turning the mod off.
    - Vulkan: If you get any black screens when using the Vulkan rendering option, switch back to DX11. Also make sure that the dxvk folder is in the same folder as the games executable.
- Extra Heroes: Kicking animations and their range during the Deepening level can be off. Kicking works fine against enemies, but some of the new characters have to be angled to the side to kick down the ladders. Again kicking works fine against enemies but not the ladders during this level. NPC's like Sauron, Frodo, and Lurtz can kick them just fine, but Elrond, Boromir, the Uruk and Gandalf may have some trouble and need to be angled to the side.
- Extra heroes: Sauron and Lurtz are too tall for the end-of-level upgrade screen and are cut off.
- Extra heroes: your hero takes Aragorn's place in the cutscenes; where his own character also appears (Boromir, Gandalf and Frodo in Balin's Tomb), such a scene shows him twice. Also when playing as characters that have new weapons and ranged attacks, some of those weapons may show up on other NPC's. This doesn't happen with the mod turned off.
- Extra heroes: Currently the models used for the upgrade menu in the in game pause menu show up mangled. The models in the actual upgrade screen after a level is completed appear normal and play their animations.
- Unlocked fps is experimental: One Known issue with frame rates above 60 fps is that some of the NPC animations during the prologue level fail to complete during the end of the in game cutscene for that level. Example is both Sauron and an elf NPC not turning their heads properly. Another known issue is Sauron falling through the Gates of Moria level after the intro cutscene during gameplay. At 60 fps these issues don't occur, so it is advised to set the frame rate to 60 fps before beginning the prologue or when playing that mission with Sauron. Crackling audio can occur at unlocked frame rates as well.
- Widescreen is experimental: a few full-screen effects may not line up at the edges.
 - Chinese, Japanese and Korean use about 5–6 MB more of the game's memory for their letters; the largest levels load, but report anything that fails to load in those languages.
 - The "Loading..." picture and other text drawn into pictures stay English.

Bug reports are welcome, especially for Mac and Linux users. Please include twotowers_log.txt, which is next to the game.

Screenshots and Gameplay: