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Syndicate Wars

From PCGamingWiki, the wiki about fixing PC games
Syndicate Wars
Syndicate Wars cover
Developers
Bullfrog Productions
Publishers
Electronic Arts
Engines
Magic Carpet
Release dates
DOS October 31, 1996
Windows (DOSBox) March 21, 2013[1]
macOS (OS X) (DOSBox) May 9, 2013[2]
Taxonomy
Monetization One-time game purchase
Modes Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing Real-time
Perspectives Bird's-eye view
Genres Action, Strategy
Themes Cyberpunk
Series Syndicate
Syndicate Wars on HowLongToBeat
Syndicate Wars on IGDB
Syndicate Wars on MobyGames
Syndicate Wars on Wikipedia
Syndicate
Syndicate 1993
Syndicate Wars 1996
Syndicate (2012) 2012

Syndicate Wars is a singleplayer and multiplayer bird's-eye view action and strategy game in the Syndicate series.

General information

Syndicate Wiki - a wiki dedicated to the syndicate game series
GOG.com Community Discussions for game series
GOG.com Support Page

Availability

Source DRM Notes Keys OS
Retail
DRM details are not known
Use DOSBox.
DOS
GOG.com
DRM-free
Pre-packaged with DOSBox.[3]
Windows
macOS (OS X)
A free demo version is available from Archive.org.

Essential improvements

Syndicate Wars PC Port

A fan-created source port allows the game to run natively on modern operating systems.
The project was forked in 2015, the latest release can be found on their Github page
Lacks networking support.
Installation insctructions
  1. Extract the port's files to <path-to-game>\SWARS folder.
  2. Start the game with swars.exe.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System Location
DOS
Windows <path-to-game>\SWARS[Note 1]<path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 2]
macOS (OS X) <path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 2]

Save game data location

System Location
DOS
Windows <path-to-game>\SWARS\QDATA\SAVEGAME[Note 1]
<path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 2]
macOS (OS X) <path-to-game> (mounted in DOSBox)[Note 2]

Save game cloud syncing

System Native Notes
GOG Galaxy

Video

In-game video settings.
In-game video settings.

Graphics feature State Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor
Ultra-widescreen
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)
Windowed
For DOSBox toggle with Alt+ Enter (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
Borderless fullscreen windowed
See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)
Anti-aliasing (AA)
Vertical sync (Vsync)
For DOSBox use an unofficial build (see the glossary page for other workarounds).
60 FPS and 120+ FPS

Input

In-game control settings.
In-game control settings.

Audio

In-game audio settings.
In-game audio settings.

Audio feature State Notes
Separate volume controls
CD Music, Tension Music, and Sound
Surround sound
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
For DOSBox change the priority background value in the DOSBox configuration file.
Royalty free audio
Red Book CD audio

Localizations

Language UI Audio Sub Notes
English
French
German
Italian
Spanish
Swedish

Network

Multiplayer types

Type Native Players Notes
LAN play
8
Online play
For DOSBox use DOSBox IPX/modem emulation.

Connection types

Other information

API

Technical specs Supported Notes
DOS video modes SVGA

Middleware

Middleware Notes
Audio Miles Sound System MSS sound, CDA music
Cutscenes Smacker

System requirements

DOS
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) 6.0
Processor (CPU) Intel 486 DX2 66 MHz
System memory (RAM) 8 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 55 MB
Video card (GPU) SVGA
Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) XP, Vista, 7, 8
Processor (CPU) 1.8 GHz
System memory (RAM) 512 MB
Hard disk drive (HDD) 2 GB
Video card (GPU) DirectX 9.0c compatible
macOS (OS X)
Minimum
Operating system (OS) 10.6.8
Processor (CPU) Intel Core Duo 2 GHz
System memory (RAM) 1 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)
Video card (GPU) 64 MB of VRAM


Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 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).
  2. 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 File/folder structure within the installation folder reflects the path(s) listed for DOS game data. For the GOG.com release, file changes in DOSBox are redirected to <path-to-game>/cloud_saves/ even if GOG Galaxy is not used (this folder contains all redirected files, so some files in the cloud_saves folder might be temporary files or other files that do not contain saves or settings).

References