Call of Duty: Black Ops III

Call of Duty: Black Ops III

Developers
	Treyarch
macOS (OS X)	Aspyr Media
Publishers
	Activision
Engines
	IW engine
Release dates
Windows	November 6, 2015
macOS (OS X)	April 4, 2019
Reception
Metacritic	73
OpenCritic	79
IGDB	77
Taxonomy
Monetization	One-time game purchase, DLC
Modes	Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing	Real-time
Perspectives	First-person
Controls	Direct control
Genres	Action, FPS, Shooter
Vehicles	Flight
Art styles	Realistic
Themes	Sci-fi
Series	Call of Duty: Black Ops, Call of Duty

Call of Duty: Black Ops
Subseries of Call of Duty
Call of Duty: World at War	2008
Call of Duty: Black Ops	2010
Call of Duty: Black Ops II	2012
Call of Duty: Black Ops III	2015
Call of Duty: Black Ops IIII	2018
Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War	2020
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6	2024
Call of Duty: Black Ops 7	2025

Call of Duty: Black Ops III is a singleplayer and multiplayer first-person action, FPS and shooter game in the Call of Duty: Black Ops and Call of Duty series.

By default, some settings are restricted depending on graphics card, but a fix is available here. There may be some performance issues with the game, but a fix is available here.

General information

Official modding tools and unranked dedicated servers available.

CallofDutyMaps - A detailed Website for all included multiplayer maps.

GeForce Graphics Guide

Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail		Contains 6 DVDs.
Amazon.com		Digital Deluxe Edition.
Microsoft Store
Steam

All versions except Microsoft Store require Arxan Anti-Tamper DRM.

Version differences

Multiplayer Starter Pack: Starter edition, contains Multiplayer, no campaign and Zombies. Can be upgraded to Zombies Chronicles Edition or Zombies Deluxe.

Zombies Chronicles Edition: Basic edition, contains the base game and Zombies Chronicles.

Zombies Deluxe: Deluxe edition, contains the base game, the Season Pass, Zombies Chronicles and 3 personalization packs. Unavailable for the Microsoft Store version.

DLC and expansion packs

Name	Notes
Season Pass
Awakening	Included in the Season Pass.
Descent	Included in the Season Pass.
Eclipse	Included in the Season Pass.
The Giant Zombies Map	Included in the Season Pass.
NUK3TOWN Bonus Map	Originally a pre-order bonus, later made free.
Salvation	Included in the Season Pass.
Zombies Chronicles

PlayStation 4 version had a exclusive DLC "Back in Black" map pack, released on June 11, 2018, which included four remastered multiplayer maps from previous Black Ops games: Firing Range, Jungle, Summit, and Slums.

Essential improvements

All of the following tweaks are applicable also for Black Ops 4, and they may have similar names. This is due to the fact that in both games, a relatively identical engine is used and it has been modified further for this game.

Skip intro videos

Delete/rename/move video files
On Windows, delete/rename/move <path-to-game>\video\BO3_Global_Logo_LogoSequence.mkv. On Mac, delete/rename/move BO3_Global_Logo_LogoSequence.mkv and AspyrLogo.stock.mov in the game's contents (left-click on the game's icon app and then going to /Contents/Assets/video/)

Other videos can also be deleted to reduce the waiting time between level changes.

Increased loading speed levels

Edit config.ini[citation needed]
Go to the configuration file location. Open config.ini. Find the line MaxFPS and set the value to 0. Save the changes. Notes Changing this option disables FPS limiting altogether, which increases the loading speed of the levels and also allows the game to get a little more FPS than it was even at 1000.

Make all settings available

Many graphics cards are able to handle high graphical settings, but by default the game hides/restricts some settings.

Edit config.ini
Go to the configuration file location. Open config.ini. Find the line RestrictGraphicsOptions and edit the value from 1 to 0. Save the changes. Notes If the game is installed in the default folder, the chosen file editor might need to be run as administrator.

Enable offline multiplayer with bots

By default it's not possible to start multiplayer matches with bots in offline mode.

Start the game in mod mode

Add +set fs_game offlinemp to the game's start parameters on windows. On mac, add an empty folder to /Contents/Assets/mods/ (create the mods folder if it's not already there) in the game's contents (left-click on the game's icon app) and then load the empty folder you created by clicking on 'mods' in the game's main menu and then clicking the name of the empty folder. The point of this is just to make the game run in modded mode, which allows it the user to play with offline bots. Any mod would work for this but, the empty folder would keep the game as vanilla as possible. "offlinemp" here is just chosen as an example, any name will work. The game thereby creates a new mod directory under \players\mods\ with separate configuration files.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\players\
macOS (OS X)	$HOME/Library/Application Support/Call of Duty Black Ops III/players/
Steam Play (Linux)	<SteamLibrary-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/311210/pfx/

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	<path-to-game>\players\
macOS (OS X)
Steam Play (Linux)	<SteamLibrary-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/311210/pfx/

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
Steam Cloud		Some settings only.

Video

Video settings.

Advanced video settings.

Gameplay video settings.

Graphics feature	State	WSGF	Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor			HUD and menu is stretched.
Ultra-widescreen			HUD and menu is stretched. Attempting to change resolutions during gameplay will result in stretching/compression. Hub sections are stretched, but missions work fine.
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)		65-120° with 80º as default value.
Windowed
Borderless fullscreen windowed
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		Named as Texture Filtering in the options (Low = 2x, Medium = Per Material, and High = 16x).
Anti-aliasing (AA)		FXAA, SMAA (1x and Temporal 2x), Filmic SMAA (1x and Temporal 2x), and SSAA through Render Resolution option. SMAA T2X and Filmic SMAA options are disabled for SLI/Crossfire systems.
High-fidelity upscaling		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)		Double buffering. See here for triple buffering.
60 FPS and 120+ FPS		Multiplayer is capped at 60 FPS because VSync is enabled by default. Disabling VSync allows the FPS cap to go up to 240 FPS in Multiplayer using in-game menu. Cap can be unlimited by changing com_maxfps value to 0 in the config file or with in-game console while using any mod. Unlimited in Zombies and Single Player.
High dynamic range display (HDR)		See the glossary page for potential alternatives.
Ray tracing (RT)
Color blind mode		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.

Triple buffering

Edit config.ini[citation needed]
Go to the configuration file location. Open config.ini. Find the line BackbufferCount and edit the value from 2 to 3. Save the changes.

Input

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Keyboard and mouse prompts
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support
Full controller support
Controller remapping		Only presets.
Controller sensitivity
Controller Y-axis inversion

Additional information
Button prompts		Natively supports both the Xbox One and the DualShock 4 (V1 only) controller without any 3rd party tools required.
Controller hotplugging
Input prompt override
Haptic feedback
Simultaneous controller+KB/M		Aiming down sights using both causes camera to zoom in and out.

• 

  Look Controls settings.

• 

  Move Controls settings.

• 

  Combat Controls settings.

• 

  Interact Controls settings.

• 

  Gamepad Controls settings.

Audio

In-game audio settings.

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls		Master, Voice, Music, SFX Volume.
Surround sound		5.1
Subtitles		Subtitles option is available only when using English audio.
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English
Simplified Chinese
Traditional Chinese
French
German
Italian
Japanese				Users can't change the language to others.
Polish
Brazilian Portuguese
Russian
Spanish
Latin American Spanish				See Latin American Spanish audio mods.

Latin American Spanish audio mods

Full Game: File replacement
Replace the Castilian Spanish audio files with the Latin American Spanish audio files of the PlayStation 4 version following this guide. Notes All game modes available. Has some minor sound bugs.

Zombies Maps: Workshop mods
Download the collection of audio mods in Latin American Spanish of all Zombies maps here. Notes It also includes subtitles in Latin American Spanish.

Network

Network settings.

Voice Chat settings.

Text Chat settings.

Multiplayer types

Type	Native	Players	Notes
Local play		2	Co-op, Versus
LAN play		Must have an active internet connection regardless for DRM purposes.
Online play		18	Co-op, Versus Co-op is limited to 4 players.

Connection types

Type	Native	Notes
Matchmaking
Peer-to-peer
Dedicated		For Ranked matches.
Self-hosting		Unranked only.
Direct IP

Ports

Protocol	Port(s) and/or port range(s)
TCP	27014-27050
UDP	3478, 4379-4380, 27000-27031, 27036

This game supports Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) for automatic port configuration.

VR support

3D modes	State	Notes
vorpX		Z3D Officially supported game, see official vorpx game list.

Issues unresolved

Crash to desktop in the Microsoft Store version

The issues seems to happen due to the game's friendslist being unable to show more than 48 profiles, to the point of the game crashing.

Workarounds
Lower the amount of friends on the Xbox account used. Launch the game offline and reconnect: Turn off all Internet connections like Ethernet or WiFi. Launch the game and proceed until the Play Online prompt can be seen. Reconnect the Internet connections and use the said prompt.

Issues fixed

Stuttering

Delete d3dcompiler_46.dll[citation needed]
Go to <path-to-game>. Remove d3dcompiler_46.dll. Notes Deleting this file does not affect the stability of the launch of the game. However, it is clearly outdated and does not allow the game to gain access to a newer version of the library from the Windows system, and blocks access to it, since it is located next to the game execution file.

Some languages can also cause stuttering, especially Chinese.

Change language[citation needed]

Game does not take advantage of the entire VRAM amount available

Edit config.ini[citation needed]

Go to the configuration file location. Open config.ini. Find the line VideoMemory and edit the value from 0.75 or 0.90 to 1. Also check the parameter StreamMinResident and change its value if required from 1 to 0. Save the changes. Notes This setting helps to reduce the frequency of accessing the main RAM and allows the game to use all the video memory. It also reduces the frame time and increases the smoothness of the gameplay with a decrease in control response time. On some configurations, these options can have a negative effect on performance, and in this case it's worthwhile to specify these values in the reverse order. This is due to the fact that these parameters also affect the drawing distance.

Frame rate isn't smooth

Edit config.ini[citation needed]
Go to the configuration file location. Open config.ini. Find the line SmoothFramerate and set the value to 0 from 1. Save the changes. Notes This setting helps to prevent a strong drop in frame rates at certain points and also increases the smoothness of the gameplay. May increase input lag and possibly performance degradation.

Game isn't responsive enough

Edit config.ini[citation needed]

Go to the configuration file location. Open config.ini. Find the line MaxFrameLatency and set the value to 4 or 0. Save the changes. Also use D3DOverrider to force triple buffering on. Notes This greatly increases the smoothness and also greatly prevents a drop in the frame rate. Usually the use of triple buffering only works with vertical sync enabled. But instead of using vertical synchronization, FastSync can be used in the settings of the Nvidia video card driver, as well as turning off vertical synchronization in the settings of the game itself. A similar option for AMD owners is called Enhanced Sync. This mode will not limit the FPS, but also allows the user to activate triple buffering. The use of a larger number of prepared frames and the use of a triple buffer may increase input lags.

CPU usage sometimes goes too high on some configurations

Edit config.ini[citation needed]
Go to the configuration file location. Open config.ini. Find the line SerializeRender and edit the value from 0 to 2. Save the changes. Notes This might cause a slight decrease in FPS, but will make it stable and reduce the frametime, as well as improving the responsiveness in general.

FPS drops

This is for copies on the Steam version of the game.

Launching the game in offline mode
Open Steam and select the Steam menu in the top left. Select "Go Offline...". Select "ENTER OFFLINE MODE". Launch the game. Notes As the title suggests, online services will be unavailable such as multiplayer.

Use Serious' T7 Patch

Download T7 Patch Windows ZIP archive (e.g. T7Patch.2.03.Windows.Only.zip) from GitHub releases page Extract archive to preferred location Open the folder where you extracted files and run t7patch_version.exe Run the game (in the main menu you should see "Patch version - by serious") Notes You need to always run the patch before you start the game Patch is not compatible with mod menus, cheats and ZBR

Game changes microphone gain at launch

Modify microphone gain ingame
Start up the game and open the menu, select OPTIONS and after select CHAT that has a headset icon. Change Voice Chat Record Level to the preferred microphone gain.

Game crashes on startup

Antivrus software like AVG or Avast! are known to cause the game to crash.

Add anti-virus exclusion
Add the entire installation folder to the exclusion list on either antivirus. For better results, uninstall the antivirus and disable the built-in Windows Defender.

If either Actual Window Minimizer or Actual Window Manager are installed, they will cause the game to crash.

Add exception for Actual Window Minimizer or Actual Window Manager
Add the main executable file to the exclusion list on either of the programs to fix.

The game causes the entire system to hang and the computer itself completely before rebooting

Move the paging file[citation needed]

Right click Computer → Choose Properties. Click Advanced System Settings. Click Performance Tab → Click Settings. Click "Advanced Settings Tab → Virtual Memory". Click "Change". Uncheck "Automaticaly manage page file". Clicking on disk will allow the paging file to be set on any disk, except system. Set "System managed size". Save the changes and reboot Windows. Notes In fact, this problem is mainly related to the use of a cheap and low-quality SSD disk based on the type of TLC memory or hard disk with errors.

Scoreboard and Pause Menu not working using controller

Reset controls to default
Click on the on-screen Ⲷ Menu button. Select OPTIONS Tab and after it, select CONTROLS. Select Reset to Default.

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
Direct3D	11
Metal support

Executable	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows
macOS (OS X)

System requirements

Windows

macOS (OS X)

Windows
	Minimum		Recommended
Operating system (OS)	7		8, 8.1
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core i3-530 2.93 GHz AMD Phenom II X4 810 2.60 GHz
System memory (RAM)	6 GB
Storage drive (HDD/SSD)	100 GB
Video card (GPU)	Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 AMD Radeon HD 6970 1 GB of VRAM DirectX 11 compatible
Sound (audio device)	DirectX Compatible

A 64-bit operating system is required.

macOS (OS X)
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	10.13.6
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core i5 2.3 GHz Quad-Core
System memory (RAM)	8 GB
Storage drive (HDD/SSD)	150 GB
Video card (GPU)	AMD Radeon R9 M295X 2 GB of VRAM

A 64-bit operating system is required.