Do I need the original game?
Yes. The client reads its artwork from your copy and will not run without it.
Before you install
How it works.
Where the artwork comes from, what you need on your PC, and what happens the first time you play.
You bring the game, we bring the client
SWG Enhanced is a new client for a game you already own. Every building, creature, texture and animation you see is read from your own copy of the original Star Wars Galaxies files. We do not distribute the original artwork, and we do not need to.
That means two things sit on your PC: your existing Star Wars Galaxies installation, around 2.8 GB, and our client, a few hundred megabytes. The download from us is small because we ship the engine, not the art.
The first time you play
Before you can walk around, the client has to read the game's art into a form a modern engine can draw. It does that on your machine, from the files you already have. Nothing extra is downloaded for it.
Today that preparation happens once, takes a few minutes, and uses several gigabytes of disk space alongside the client. We are steadily moving it to happen as you play instead, so that less of it is kept on disk at all. Either way, the first visit to a new area is the slow one, and every visit after that is quick.
Your existing installation is left alone
The client only reads your game files. It does not move, modify or replace anything in them, and the original game still works exactly as it did. If you remove our client, your installation is untouched.
Common questions
Will it change my game files?
No. It opens them for reading and never writes to them.
Why is my first visit to a city slower?
The client is preparing that area's art. Once prepared, it loads straight away.
Can I delete the prepared files?
Yes. They are rebuilt from your game files whenever they are needed again.
Why not just include the artwork in the download?
It would be a far larger download, and the artwork is not ours to hand out. Reading from the copy you already own is what keeps the project independent.