Athelas

Athelas

I'm Shagg and I created this project with the help of Claude (Anthropic). This is a free, unofficial launcher for three Lord of the Rings games, so you can play your own copies on a modern Windows PC from one place. Tolkien created an amazing world that deserves to be lived and experienced in every way possible. I used to play this with my siblings and friends for hours on end, day after day and it's an absolute shame they're not distributable today, so that's why I'm here. (Athelas is kingsfoil, the healing herb).
After the release of the War in the North "remaster" I decided to really take on this project. This is my first ever project of this magnitude so I expect there to be a few bugs.
I have a Windows PC that I tested this on, that's about it. It's supposed to run on Linux and Steam Deck(Mac and Android maybe in the future) but only time will tell. Mods and Texture packs are supported but I have not done any of those. I'll be open to accepting public contributions and pull requests as well.

• The Return of the King (PC, 2003), through ROTK Fix (This is the recommended way to play The Return of the King, at least in my opinion)
• The Return of the King (Xbox), through a native PC port
• The Two Towers (Xbox), through a native PC port

Download it from Releases: one zip with the launcher, ROTK Fix and both ports.

Not affiliated with or endorsed by Electronic Arts, New Line Cinema, Warner Bros. or the Tolkien Estate. No game files are included. You need your own copy of each game: the PC game installed, or your own Xbox disc as an .iso or extracted files (US releases). ROTK Fix doesn't change or bypass the PC game's copy protection. The Xbox ports skip the console's check for an original Xbox disc, which a PC can't answer as it has no Xbox drive; the games' own files are never decrypted or changed.

Screenshots

The background pictures in these screenshots are artwork from the games themselves. They aren't included in the download: Athelas reads them from your own copy of a game, so you'll only see them once the launcher has found one of your games. Until then, or if you choose "None" under About → Background pictures, the launcher shows its own drawn landscape instead. All game and film artwork belongs to its owners.

In this repository

Path	What it is
launcher/	Athelas, the launcher
src/, build.sh	ROTK Fix, for the PC game
ports/two-towers/	The Two Towers PC port (its README)
ports/rotk-xbox/	The Return of the King Xbox PC port (its README)
dist-files/README.txt	The README that comes in the download, with every setting
docs/	Release notes and engine notes
scripts/	Packaging the release zip
third_party/, licenses/	Bundled libraries and every licence

ROTK Fix: what it does

• Any screen: widescreen and ultrawide without stretching (menus and HUD stay at most 16:9), any resolution, borderless/fullscreen/windowed with ultrawide window sizes, Alt-Tab that works
• Smooth: 60 to 240 fps at normal game speed, even frame pacing, V-Sync aware
• Sharper: anti-aliasing, texture filtering, sharpening, working brightness in borderless
• Controllers: Xbox, PlayStation, Switch and most others; button remapping; the right button names in hints
• Co-op: two controllers on one PC, or online by streaming with Steam Remote Play Together or Parsec (see README.txt)
• Movies: cutscenes fill widescreen screens with correct proportions; optional logo skip; a sound delay setting for Bluetooth speakers
• Texture packs: dump the game's textures to PNG and load replacements from a folder (no game art included)
• Screenshots: \ or Print Screen saves a PNG
• Gameplay: damage taken, enemy damage, and every level and character unlocked (off by default)
• Achievements: in all three games, earned as you play (and from what your saves already hold), with a note on screen and the list in the launcher
• Launcher: every setting in one place, with presets (Original, Balanced, High, Ultra)

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit), or Linux / Steam Deck through Proton (tested in a Deck-like setup, not yet on a real Deck; see README.txt).
• Your own US copy of each game. No game files are included.
• The Return of the King (PC): a Vulkan 1.3 graphics driver is recommended. Without one, the game runs through Windows' Direct3D 8 with the DXVK-only options (sharpening, colour looks, texture filtering) turned off. The launcher's About tab shows which renderer you'll get.
• The Two Towers and The Return of the King (Xbox): a DirectX 12 graphics card.

The Two Towers (Xbox)

Played through its PC port, TwoTowers.exe, started from the launcher.

• Supported: the US Xbox release, as a disc image (.iso) or the extracted files. Other releases are recognised, with a warning before they start.
• Keyboard and mouse or a controller. F10 (or both stick clicks) opens an in-game settings menu; every setting is also on the launcher's page or in settings.toml.
• The game's own files are only read, never changed.
• Keys: F10 settings menu, \ screenshot, F1 hide the HUD, [ sharpening off/on, ] next colour look.
• Problem reports: the log (TT-Xbox\tt.log next to the launcher), plus the newest .dmp in TT-Xbox\CrashDumps after a crash.

The Return of the King (Xbox)

Played through its PC port, ROTKXbox.exe, started from the launcher with the same settings page as the PC game.

• Supported: the US Xbox release, as a disc image (.iso) or the extracted files.
• Frame rates up to 240, widescreen and ultrawide, fixes for slowdowns and vanishing enemies at high frame rates.
• Sharper text and menus: with the PC game installed too, its larger fonts and menu pictures are used; other menu pictures are scaled up sharply.
• Two-player co-op on one PC, or online by streaming (Parsec, or Steam Remote Play Together).
• Problem reports: ROTK-Xbox\rotkx.log, plus the newest .dmp in ROTK-Xbox\CrashDumps after a crash.

Reporting a problem

Open an issue and choose Bug report. Attach the game's log: ROTKFix.log in the PC game's folder, ROTK-Xbox\rotkx.log or TT-Xbox\tt.log beside the launcher. After an Xbox port crashes, add the newest .dmp from its CrashDumps folder, zipped first (GitHub doesn't take .dmp files as they are).

Antivirus and SmartScreen

ROTK Fix replaces d3d8.dll/dinput8.dll in the game folder and patches the game in memory, the usual way for game mods, and its files aren't code-signed. So SmartScreen may call the launcher "unrecognised" and some antivirus programs may flag it. Every zip has a .sha256 next to it (Get-FileHash in PowerShell to compare). ROTK Fix makes no network connections.

Install

1. Download the zip from Releases.
2. Unzip it into a folder of its own (not a game folder).
3. Run Athelas.exe (the launcher) and show it your games. For the PC game it puts ROTK Fix's files (the DLLs and a ROTKFix folder) next to rotk.exe; the Xbox games are only read.
4. Press Play.

To uninstall, use About → Remove ROTK Fix in the launcher, then delete the launcher's folder.

How it works

d3d8.dll and dinput8.dll are small loaders that hand the game's graphics and input calls to ROTKFix.dll:

• Graphics: drawn through DXVK (Vulkan), with ROTK Fix's own changes applied on the way.
• Controllers: read through SDL3 and shown to the game as standard pads (one per player), with button names or pictures in the game's hints.
• Sound: the game's 3D sound and EAX reverb restored through DSOAL and OpenAL Soft.
• Launcher: writes ROTKFix.ini and the game's own ROTK.ini.

Building (for developers)

Players don't need this: download the zip from Releases instead. This section is only for changing the code and building it yourself.

Builds cross-compile on Linux with MinGW-w64 (32-bit, because the game is 32-bit):

sudo apt install gcc-mingw-w64-i686 g++-mingw-w64-i686 zip
# unpack SDL3-devel-3.4.18-mingw.tar.gz and dxvk-3.1.1.tar.gz, then:
SDL_DIR=path/to/SDL3-3.4.18 DXVK_DIR=path/to/dxvk-3.1.1 DSOAL_DIR=third_party/dsoal sh scripts/package.sh 1.0

The 3D sound libraries (DSOAL and OpenAL Soft) are kept in third_party/dsoal with checksums, so every release ships the tested versions.

The GitHub Actions workflow (.github/workflows/build.yml) builds ROTK Fix and Athelas the same way on every push. It can't build the two Xbox ports: recompiling them needs the game's own default.xbe, which can never be in a repository. Each port builds on Windows with its build.bat (see the ports' READMEs), and the full Athelas download is packaged with TT_DIR and RX_DIR pointing at the ports' release folders.

Credits

Made by Shagg, with Claude (Anthropic).

Thank you to:

• The developers: Stormfront Studios, EA Redwood Shores and Hypnos Entertainment, for making these games. And to J.R.R. Tolkien and the films, for the world they're set in.
• XboxXBE-Recomp by TGP482, which made the Xbox ports possible.
• The open-source projects this is built on: DXVK, SDL, DSOAL, OpenAL Soft, Dear ImGui, toml++, stb, XbSymbolDatabase and Cxbx-Reloaded.
• Everyone who plays it and reports a problem.

Every licence is in the licenses folder.

Licences

Athelas, ROTK Fix and the ports are MIT licensed, © 2026 Shagg (see LICENSE). Bundled components keep their own licences, all in licenses/ and shipped in ROTKFix\licenses.:

• DXVK (zlib)
• SDL3 (zlib)
• Dear ImGui (MIT)
• stb (MIT / public domain)
• DSOAL and OpenAL Soft (LGPL; their source at the shipped commits is in the download's licenses\source)
• Uncial Antiqua, Cinzel and EB Garamond fonts (SIL OFL)
• Liberation Sans (SIL OFL), used to draw the letters in the button pictures
• XboxXBE-Recomp (MIT, © 2026 TGP482) and toml++ (MIT), inside the bundled Xbox ports