All You Need to Fix and Modernize all Commandos Games in One Thread (Save/Resolution)

I figure that many people have been drawn to these games and this forum may soon receive more traffic since Steam has placed these games on their featured daily deals. Sadly, most of these paying customers will find that many games are severely broken in terms of features like saving or being too fast or being very outdated in terms of tiny resolutions.

It's nice that people are still working on getting these games to play properly on modern systems or fix outright problems like games running to fast or completely broken features like not even being able to save your game! All credit given for each mod/fix. Thanks to those people who have worked hard to figure these things out so we can actually play these games.

All these solutions have been tested to work under Windows XP. Sadly, I don't know what steps need to be taken to get these to work in Windows 7 but feel free to post in this thread if you have a succinct summary of the things that need to be done to get Vista/7 suppport.

* Commandos Behind Enemy Lines Speed Fix (Also fixes the saving/loading game problem so you don't need to edit Commando.cfg) by Doc. Garga:
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=1236369

Originally Posted by Doc. Garga

Greetings Commandos Fans!

Some days ago I uploaded a file that made the game run without the extra-speed and without the the save/load bug.
But, the file made some game messages appear in spanish and it also bugged almost all of the briefings.

After some hard work, now i think all of the reported bugs (thank you mates!) were been fixed.

The file has ~30mb and is free of viruses.
Again, i ask you to test it and report bugs! (or please just reply with one 'tested and working').
Also, there's a readme file inside the zip that you'll can read and find some answers!

So, i think thats all for now!
Have fun!

Doc. Garga
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=KC3I94XA

* How to Save/Load (use quick save and quick load) properly in Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines and Commandos: Beyond the Call of Duty by StrikeQ
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=1128516

Originally Posted by StrikeQ

For BEL add the following to Commando.cfg

.SIZE [ .INITSIZE 3 ]
.PROFILE [ .USER 0 ]
.DEVELOP 1

For BtCoD just add:

.DEVELOP 1

The file will be located in Steam\steamapps\common\commandos behind enemy lines\output

This will allow you to create a profile and save games.

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* Commandos 2 Widescreen & High Resolution Support by BooTx
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com...p?f=32&t=16028

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* Commandos 3 Widescreen & High Resolution Support by BooTx
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com...ic.php?t=16019

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* How to fix video (black screen only sound) or crashing problems in Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines + Commandos: Beyond the Call of Duty by Subere
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...33#post7941033

Originally Posted by Subere

For those people who have the K-Lite series of codec packs (may work on others) do the following to get the videos to play:

1. Start -> All Programs -> K-Lite Codec Pack -> Configuration -> FFDShow video decoder.

2. Scroll down to the row that says Cinepak libavcodec Cinepak(CVID)

3. Change libavcodec to disabled.

This works for me with XP SP3. Athlon64 3200+ w/ x1600 Pro.

I actually didn't need to do this because when I started the game, it asked me whether or not I wanted to use FFDShow or not with the program and I selected no and don't ask me again. You can change these properties in FFDShow directly to control what applications can launch and use FFDShow.

What is important is that you have to know the directory your FFDShow is installed to, or the Program Menu folder that it is under. These old codecs do not play nicely with modern Directshow decoder suites.

For the latest version of FFDShow and the default program menu installation: START -> FFDShow -> FFDSHOW VIDEO DECODER CONFIGURATION and under DirectShow Control, add or remove the appropriate Commandos .exe files from the list.

* How to get Commandos 2 FMV Sequences to Play by outlaw4020
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=1292463

Originally Posted by outlaw4020

I found a fix for this problem.
Commandos 2 needs a older video codec from intel that alot of the new OS dont come with.

If you are having the same problem you can fix it by installing the indeo 5 video codec. Just search it on google.

[Chris Fifty-Two]

Very nice thread. Deserves to be sticked to helped those who got the game and encountered all the problems that comes with them.

[Doc. Garga]

Nice!!
You can add an extra info on my fix: it also fixes the save/load, so it'll useless editing the configs!!!!

[nukkus]

This is great!

[Drakeer Melkhor]

Please, specify here that solve the black screen only sound bug:

* How to fix video (black screen only sound) or crashing problems in Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines + Commandos: Beyond the Call of Duty by Subere

Thank you! +rep

Originally Posted by Doc. Garga

Nice!!
You can add an extra info on my fix: it also fixes the save/load, so it'll useless editing the configs!!!!

Originally Posted by Drakeer Melkhor

Please, specify here that solve the black screen only sound bug:

* How to fix video (black screen only sound) or crashing problems in Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines + Commandos: Beyond the Call of Duty by Subere

Thank you! +rep

Done Thanks to you guys for your hard work.

[AJV111]

Thanks guys work's ok on windows 7 32bit
Did the Doc Garga fix then K-Lite FFDShow (disable) libavcodec Cinepak(CVID)
Then set compatibilty win98/me set run as Admin Works 4 Me

[Schmier]

awesome that commandos 2 "widescreen" fkd up my .exe and i have to re-download the game all the way again ._."

Originally Posted by Schmier

awesome that commandos 2 "widescreen" fkd up my .exe and i have to re-download the game all the way again ._."

You can't use the Steam executable. You need a different one. I have tested it with the Steam version of all the other files and it works just fine. I recommend using the Hex Editor versus the automatic system.

In order for this to work, you will need a No-CD patch.

To add widescreen support to this game manually you'll need a hex editor such as Be.HexEditor. Open your comm2.exe file with it and search for the string 20 03 00 00 b9 58 02 00 00. You should find five instances of it. For each of them, replace 20 03 and 58 02 with the resolution of your choice.

1024x600 - Replace 20 03 with 00 04 and replace 58 02 with 58 02
1280x720 - Replace 20 03 with 00 05 and replace 58 02 with D0 02
1280x800 - Replace 20 03 with 00 05 and replace 58 02 with 20 03
1366x768 - Replace 20 03 with 56 05 and replace 58 02 with 00 03
1440x900 - Replace 20 03 with A0 05 and replace 58 02 with 84 03
1680x1050 - Replace 20 03 with 90 06 and replace 58 02 with 1A 04
1920x1080 - Replace 20 03 with 80 07 and replace 58 02 with 38 04
1920x1200 - Replace 20 03 with 80 07 and replace 58 02 with B0 04

After that's done (making sure you're searching from the beginning of the file) search for each of these individual strings:

c2 04 00 b8 20 03 (000eb860)
00 00 c3 b8 20 03 (000eb900)
00 eb 13 ba 20 03 (000eb9a0)
c2 04 00 b8 58 02 (000eb8b0)
00 00 c3 b8 58 02 (000eb940)
44 24 04 b9 58 02 (000eb9e0)

And replace the 20 03's and the 58 02's with the corresponding resolution codes above. Keep in mind that the 58 02's are mixed with the 20 03's in the file, so start your searches from the beginning of the file.

Boy I hope I got all that right.

After you're done, save the file and change your in-game resolution to 800x600. The menu will stay at its default low resolution, as will the cutscene at the beginning of the level, but the game itself should use your custom resolution.

[TygerTyger]

Thank you for saving my £3! The save/load and intro crash fixes worked well in Vista 64.

The only problem I have left is that my profile name and resolution - or possibly my settings in general - do not save, I have to set them every time I start the game. It's mentioned here but I can't find a solution.

[soiled]

I'm having a bit of an issue running BEL. After the videos, the game always crashes. I've tried editing the .cfg and the K-Lite thing, but no joy. Any ideas? I really want to play this game again.

[Fistynuts]

Thank you so much everyone who contributed to this! I'm flabbergasted that Valve would put Commandos up on Steam in this state. Shame on them.

[xane]

I get two issues:

* if I either disable "comandos.exe" in FFDShow or change the Cinepak to "disabled" it crashes after the intro.
* if I leave FFD as is, I get a blank screen.

I haven't tried the modified fix.

Windows XP SP3, Athlon XP 3200+, 2Gb RAM, ATI HD4600

[Dridje]

How come StrikeQ gets the credit for the solution I figured out?
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=1137064
02-05-2010

And when StrikeQ pasted my solution into my first thread a while later.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...php?p=14442825 (Post #12)
04-14-2010

[Doc. Garga]

Originally Posted by Dridje

How come StrikeQ gets the credit for the solution I figured out?
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum....php?t=1137064
02-05-2010

And when StrikeQ pasted my solution into my first thread a while later.
http://forums.steampowered.com/forum...php?p=14442825 (Post #12)
04-14-2010

Weird!

But why do all this if it's not needed anymore with my .exe?