The printable version is no longer supported and may have rendering errors. Please update your browser bookmarks and please use the default browser print function instead.
General information
- GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
- GOG.com Support Page
- Steam Community Discussions
Availability
- SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows Vista and later (see above for affected versions).
- A demo is available from SierraHelp and GameWatcher. The Japanese version is available from 4gamer.
Version differences
- The Elite Edition (v1.6) introduced new missions, multiplayer capabilities and a mission editor.
- The Tactical Game of the Year Edition (v2.0 and v2.1) introduced additional missions. The retail version also included an additional disc with training footage of real-life SWAT officers.
- Retail releases of any version can be upgraded for free up to TGOTY v2.1.
Monetization
Essential improvements
Patches
- Official patches are available from SierraHelp.
Skip intro videos
- SWAT 3 may crash immediately after launching on Windows 7 and newer because the codecs for the FMV videos are not supported on modern versions of Windows. Skipping the intro video is a good way of testing whether this issue is the cause of a crash on launch issue.
Performance improvement
Method 2: Use WineD3D
|
- Recommended for AMD graphics cards.
- Download WineD3D
- Extract all files into
<path-to-game> .
|
Method 3: Use DXWind
|
- May help if WineD3D doesn't work and DGvoodoo has texture errors with AMD, while the game mostly works fine, for the current version of DxWind as of writing, the game may have heavy visual errors effecting the entire screen in the following events: Player Death, pressing space to bring up the HUD that tallies all the player's equipment (That part works fine but the rest of the screen will have visual errors) and Helmet Cameras, these errors don't always happen but effect the entire screen aside from the added 2D elements for these events, it is advised to avoid this if the player is at risk of seizures.
- Download DxWnd.
- Follow the included instructions inside DxWind to set the game up.
|
Enhance AI
- The amount of time the AI has to determine its actions can be safely increased on modern computers beyond the normal 20ms maximum for much-improved AI.
Edit configuration file[citation needed]
|
- Open
<path-to-game>\Swat.cfg in a text editor.
- Find the following lines:
aiofficertime aisuspecttime
- Replace the numbers they contain (i.e.
aiofficertime=20 ) with 200 (i.e. aiofficertime=200 ).
- Save
Swat.cfg and set it as read only.
Notes
-
aiofficertime and aisuspecttime are independent of each other - aiofficertime can be set to 200 and aisuspecttime to 20 to decrease difficulty by way of making suspect AI dumber, or vice versa.
- Increasing the determination time further may not have noticeable improvement.
|
Game data
Configuration file(s) location
Save game data location
Video
Edit config file[5]
|
- Start a game and go to options screen.
- Set the resolution to 1024x768.
- It is recommended to set the other graphical options before editing config file as well.
- Save the settings and quit the game.
- Go to
<path-to-game> .
- Open
Swat.cfg with a text editor.
- Find a line:
res=1024 768 and replace the values with your own resolution.
- After that find a line:
display_mode=1024 768 2 1 and change the resolution values as well leaving 2 1 at the end (e.g. for 1920x1080, display_mode=1920 1080 2 1 .
- Save the changes and run the game.
Notes
- Menu is always rendered at 800x600 since the bitmap graphics are at that resolution.
- Resolutions higher than 1920 x 1080 may fail to load when using this solution. For higher resolutions, DgVoodoo2 may have to be used.
|
- Windowed mode requires 16-bit color mode.
- Available only in 800x600.
- DxWnd and Windowed Borderless Gaming can be used together to force borderless window mode.
Use DxWnd and Windowed Borderless Gaming for borderless window mode[citation needed]
|
- Point DxWnd to the SWAT 3 executable. Make sure to set the "DirectX Version to Hook" to "automatic".
- Run WBG. Right-click its system tray icon and select "Settings", "Global Settings".
- Under "Add Window", choose a keybind to use to "add" SWAT 3 to WBG. Then, enter the desired resolution. Finally, under "Force Key", pick another keybind to actually set the game to run in a borderless window. Go ahead and close the settings window.
- Execute
swat.exe through DxWnd.
- The game should start up in a tiny window in the top-left corner of the screen. In the main menu, press the "Add Window" keybind.
- Alt+Tab ↹ out of the game, and right-click on the WBG tray icon. Select "Settings", "Game Settings".
- Select SWAT from the drop-down menu. Enter the resolution one more time and make sure that "Manage Mouse" and "Lock to game window" are selected. Apply, and close the window. Close SWAT as well, just to make sure the WBG settings are applied.
Notes
- When running through DxWnd, the WBG borderless window keybind can be used to force SWAT 3 into a borderless window.
|
(Optional) Use Dxwnd for 16-bit color mode[citation needed]
|
- DxWnd can be used to simplify the transition between 16-bit and 32-bit color mode.
- Launch DxWnd. Click on "Edit" and "Add".
- In a name field type in: SWAT 3.
- In a path field click on a button
... and navigate to <path-to-game> . Choose Swat.exe and press "Open".
- Go to the "Color" tab and check the "Force 16BPP desktop" option.
- Click OK and minimize the DxWnd window.
- Launch the game with the
-window command line argument.
- After exiting the game, DxWnd. Upon closing, DxWnd is going to ask whatever to restore previous Desktop settings - answer yes, to switch back to 32-bit color mode.
|
Input
Audio
Audio feature |
State |
Notes |
Separate volume controls |
|
|
Surround sound |
|
|
Subtitles |
|
|
Closed captions |
|
|
Mute on focus lost |
|
|
Royalty free audio |
|
|
Localizations
Language |
UI |
Audio |
Sub |
Notes |
English |
|
|
|
|
Italian |
|
|
|
Retail only. |
French |
|
|
|
Retail only. |
German |
|
|
|
Retail only; download for digital versions. |
Japanese |
|
|
|
Retail only. |
Polish |
|
|
|
Retail only.[6] |
Russian |
|
|
|
Retail only. |
Network
Multiplayer types
Type |
Native |
Notes |
LAN play |
| Versus, Co-op
|
Online play |
| Versus, Co-op The official WON service has been shut down. |
Issues fixed
Game crashes immediately after launching
- On Windows 7 and newer, the game will crash if display scaling on high DPI settings is enabled.
- On Windows 7 and newer, the FMV movies will cause the game to crash due to the codec no longer being supported. This usually gives a "DDERR_Generic" error message but sometimes the game just shuts down without warning.
Low performance on Windows 8 and newer
- Low performance on Windows 8 and newer is commonly reported.
Other information
API
Technical specs |
Supported |
Notes |
Direct3D |
6 |
[9] |
Executable |
32-bit |
64-bit |
Notes |
Windows |
|
|
|
Middleware
System requirements
Windows |
|
Minimum |
Recommended |
Operating system (OS) |
95, 98, 2000, ME | |
Processor (CPU) |
Intel Pentium II 233 MHz (original, Elite Editions) Intel Pentium II 266 MHz (Tactical GOTY Edition) |
Intel Pentium II 300 MHz |
System memory (RAM) |
32 MB (original, Elite Editions) 64 MB (Tactical GOTY Edition) |
64 MB |
Hard disk drive (HDD) |
600 MB | |
Video card (GPU) |
800x600 SVGA high color (16 bit) 8 MB of VRAM DirectX 6.1 compatible
| DirectX 8.0a compatible |
Notes
- ↑ SafeDisc retail DRM does not work on Windows 10[1] or Windows 11 and is disabled by default on Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 8.1 when the KB3086255 update is installed.[2]
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 When running this game without elevated privileges (Run as administrator option), write operations against a location below
%PROGRAMFILES%
, %PROGRAMDATA%
, or %WINDIR%
might be redirected to %LOCALAPPDATA%\VirtualStore
on Windows Vista and later (more details).
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 File/folder structure within this directory reflects the path(s) listed for Windows and/or Steam game data (use Wine regedit to access Windows registry paths). Games with Steam Cloud support may store data in
~/.steam/steam/userdata/<user-id>/560370/
in addition to or instead of this directory. The app ID (560370) may differ in some cases. Treat backslashes as forward slashes. See the glossary page for details.
References