World War II Combat: Road to Berlin

World War II Combat: Road to Berlin

Developers
	Direct Action Games
Publishers
	Groove Games
Poland	City Interactive
Russia	1C Company
Engines
	Unreal Engine 2
Release dates
Windows	January 24, 2006
Taxonomy
Monetization	One-time game purchase
Modes	Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing	Real-time
Perspectives	First-person
Controls	Direct control
Genres	Action, FPS, Shooter
Art styles	Realistic
Themes	Europe, Historical, World War II
Series	World War II (Groove Games series), Battlestrike

World War II (Groove Games series)
World War II: Sniper - Call to Victory	2004
World War II Combat: Road to Berlin	2006
World War II Combat: Iwo Jima	2006

Warnings

GameSpy online services have been shut down (see Network for solutions).

Key points

Suffers from poor performance on Windows 8/8.1/10/11, due to their bad DirectDraw emulation. See Issues fixed.

Retrofitted by City Interactive as Battlestrike: Secret Weapons (in Europe) and Rajd na Berlin: Tajna Broń III Rzeszy (in Poland).

World War II Combat: Road to Berlin is a singleplayer and multiplayer first-person action, FPS and shooter game in the World War II (Groove Games series) and Battlestrike series.

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail		Simple disc check.

This game is not available digitally.

Essential improvements

Skip intro videos

Instructions
Go to <path-to-game>/Movies. Delete or rename attract.wmv, direct_action_games.wmv, ESRB_online.wmv, groove.wmv and Title.wmv.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	%APPDATA%\Groove Games\Berlin\*.ini %APPDATA%\Groove Games\Berlin\Profiles\<user-id>.ini

Berlin.ini contains general settings.

User.ini contains camera FOV, mouse, keyboard/controller bindings and other settings.

<user-id>.ini contains profile settings.

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	%APPDATA%\Groove Games\Berlin\Profiles\<user-id>.ini

Video

Video Settings.

Graphics feature	State	WSGF	Notes
Widescreen resolution			See Widescreen resolution.
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen			See Widescreen resolution.
4K Ultra HD			See Widescreen resolution.
Field of view (FOV)		85° by default. See Field of view (FOV).
Windowed		Toggle with Alt+↵ Enter. See Windowed.
Borderless fullscreen windowed		Use dgVoodoo2.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		See Anisotropic filtering (AF).
Anti-aliasing (AA)		Use dgVoodoo2.
Vertical sync (Vsync)		See Vertical sync (Vsync).
60 FPS and 120+ FPS		See Run the game at screen refresh rate.
High dynamic range display (HDR)
Color blind mode		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.

Widescreen resolution

Edit ini file
Launch the game at least once then close it. Open Berlin.ini. Go to the [WinDrv.WindowsClient] section. Set FullscreenViewportX and FullscreenViewportY to the desired resolution. Notes Some menu elements become cropped. Lower vertical FOV at wider aspect ratios (Vert-). Increase FOV to compensate, see Field of view (FOV).

Field of view (FOV)

Edit ini files

Launch the game at least once then close it. Open User.ini and <user-id>.ini (Username is inside Profiles folder). Define FoV in following lines: DesiredFOV=85.000000 DefaultFOV=85.000000 Notes To maintain identical vertical FOV to the 4:3 FOV at 16:9 resolutions, use 106. At 21:9 resolutions, use 121. Game could start to randomly reset those values. If so, edit those values in <path-to-game>\System\DefUser.ini too. Weapon FOV stays the same.

Windowed

Edit ini file
Launch the game at least once then close it. Open Berlin.ini. Find the section [WinDrv.WindowsClient]. In that section, find an entry WindowedViewportX= and set its value to your desired window width. In that section, find an entry WindowedViewportY= and set its value to your desired window height. Set StartupFullscreen= to False to start the game in windowed mode.

Anisotropic filtering (AF)

Edit ini file
Launch the game at least once then close it. Open Berlin.ini. Change the line LevelOfAnisotropy=1 to any value desired (between 1 and 16).

Use dgVoodoo2.

Vertical sync (Vsync)

Edit ini file
Launch the game at least once then close it. Open Berlin.ini. Change the line UseVSync=False to UseVSync=True.

Use dgVoodoo2.

Input

Control Settings (1)

Control Settings (2)

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration		Enabled by default, see Mouse acceleration to disable it.
Mouse sensitivity		Max of 10. For higher, see Mouse sensitivity.
Mouse input in menus
Keyboard and mouse prompts
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support		Set UseJoystick=True in Berlin.ini under [WinDrv.WindowsClient].
Full controller support
Controller remapping		Edit in User.ini.
Controller sensitivity		Edit in User.ini.
Controller Y-axis inversion		Edit in User.ini.

Additional information
Controller hotplugging
Input prompt override
Haptic feedback
Simultaneous controller+KB/M

Mouse acceleration

Edit ini files
Launch the game at least once then close it. Open User.ini and <user-id>.ini (Username is inside Profiles folder). Change the line MouseAccelThreshold= to 0. Notes [Engine.PlayerInput] entries are created upon inverting mouse y-axis or adjusting sensitivity.

Mouse sensitivity

Edit ini files
Calculate your sensitivity for UT2004 on mouse-sensitivity.com. Open User.ini and <user-id>.ini (Username is inside Profiles folder). Change the line MouseSensitivity= to the desired value. Notes [Engine.PlayerInput] entries are created upon inverting mouse y-axis or adjusting sensitivity.

Jerky/Uneven mouse movement

Edit ini files

Launch the game at least once then close it. Open User.ini and <user-id>.ini (Username is inside Profiles folder). Go to the following lines and change 6 to 0.1: MouseX=Count bXAxis | Axis aMouseX Speed=6 MouseY=Count bYAxis | Axis aMouseY Speed=6 Change the line MouseSmoothingMode= to 1 and MouseSamplingTime= to: 0.008 for 125Hz polling rate 0.002 for 500Hz polling rate 0.001 for 1000Hz polling rate Change the line MouseSensitivity= to 50 in User.ini (more or less, if needed to adjust). Open Berlin.ini. Go to the [D3DDrv.D3DRenderDevice] section and change ReduceMouseLag= to False. Notes Opening the control settings in-game to adjust mouse sensitivity will reset the value to 10 or below, making aiming way too slow.

Audio

Audio Settings.

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls		Music, Effects.
Surround sound		Up to 7.0 output with DirectSound3D restoration software or OpenAL. See Surround sound.
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
EAX support		EAX 3.
Royalty free audio

Surround sound

By default the game ouput to stereo on modern versions of Windows. This will force the game to use the system OpenAL device as ouput and restore surround sound.

Forcing the game to use system OpenAL device may lead to audio dropouts, missing and substituted audio samples.

Restore surround sound
Launch the game at least once then close it. Open Berlin.ini. Set Use3DSound=True and UseDefaultDriver=False, and save.

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English

Network

Multiplayer types

Type	Native	Players	Notes
Local play
LAN play		16
Online play		16	GameSpy services have been shut down; see GameSpy for workarounds.

Connection types

Type	Native	Notes
Dedicated
Self-hosting
Direct IP

Issues fixed

Poor performance on Windows 8/8.1/10/11

Install dgVoodoo2.

Run the game at screen refresh rate

Maximum selectable refresh rate is 60 Hz. This does not limit FPS, but may set your monitor's refresh rate to 100 Hz, which may result in screen tearing on a 120 Hz or 144 Hz monitor.

Edit ini file
Launch the game at least once then close it. Open Berlin.ini. Find the line DesiredRefreshRate=60. Change the value to set your monitor's refresh rate. For example, 120 or 144. Notes Modifying any video options will undo the custom refresh rate.

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
Direct3D	8

Executable	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows

Middleware

	Middleware	Notes
Audio	OpenAL
Multiplayer	GameSpy
Anti-cheat	PunkBuster

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum
Operating system (OS)	98, ME, 2000, XP
Processor (CPU)	Intel Pentium III 1 GHz
System memory (RAM)	256 MB
Storage drive (HDD/SSD)	1 GB
Video card (GPU)	Nvidia GeForce 2 ATI Radeon 7200 64 MB of VRAM
Sound (audio device)	16-bit DirectX 9.0 compatible