Commandos Modern Setup Guide 2025 (No Sound and Low FPS Fix)

This guide will allow you to run Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines on a modern system with higher resolutions and addresses several common issues that affect the game.

Introduction

When researching how to configure this game for my first playthrough, I came across Kruulos's guide for it. It was very helpful but after following it, I was still left with two major problems; no sound during missions and a very low frame rate. Fortunately, after doing some research and testing, I found solutions to these problems that worked for me and will hopefully work for you. In addition to Kruulos's guide I also used information from the PCGamingWiki page[www.pcgamingwiki.com] for Commandos 1 and soulyaris's guide (Note: This guide is in Russian so use Google translate if you don't understand Russian). I recommend you read these resources if you want additional information.

I was able to complete every mission of the game with no crashes or game-breaking bugs so it should be stable. Finally, this guide is for the single player campaign of Commandos and I have not tested these fixes on the multiplayer version so you may need to look elsewhere for assistance on that. But some of the fixes in the guide might also work with multiplayer. You should also know that I used Windows 10 for testing all of these fixes.

Ultimate Fix and High Resolution Patch Installation

Before we begin, you need to know that we will primarily be modifying the files in the LEGACY directory of Commandos. This is because if you replace the .exe file in the base game folder and patch it with the resolution hack and run it, you will have NO SOUND during missions. This means that we will be playing the legacy version of the game rather than the regular version so you will press “Play Legacy Version” whenever you launch the game. And as I mentioned before, I was able to finish the game with no major issues so the legacy version should be perfectly playable. Throughout this guide, I will tell you the exact directory to modify for every step, so you don’t need to worry if you forget about needing to modify the legacy version as long as you follow the directory I tell you to modify. Also we will do some modifications to the base game folder but let me reiterate once again that you WILL NOT play this version. I’ll explain more when we get there.

1. First download and extract this folder with some of the fixes from Kruulos’s guide
   http://kruulos.org/gaming/Commandos_BEL_BCD_Ultimate_Fixes.rar (Copy and paste link into your web browser to download) to anywhere on your computer.
   
2. Find “comandos.exe” in that folder and rename it to “commandos.exe”.
   
3. Go to the directory for the legacy version of Commandos. This should be called something like “C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Commandos Behind Enemy Lines\Legacy”.
   If you don’t know the path on your computer, right-click on Commandos: BEL in your Steam library, go to manage, and click on browse local files to find this directory and the legacy folder we want inside. Now copy “commandos.exe” and “WARGAME.DIR” from the fixes folder over into the legacy game folder. DO NOT do anything to the existing “comandos.exe” in the game folder. If it tells you to overwrite “comandos.exe”, you didn’t correctly change the name of the fixed .exe. But you should overwrite “WARGAME.DIR” if it asks.
   
4. Go back to the fixes folder and execute “CommandosResolutionHack.exe”. Navigate to the legacy folder and select your copied over “commandos.exe”.
   
5. You will be prompted to extract “WARGAME.DR”. Go ahead and click yes.
   
6. Don’t click “Apply and Run” just yet as there are some things that need to be done first.
   
7. Go to this website[sites.google.com], and scroll down until you you see a bunch of .WAD files. Download the one that matches your monitor’s resolution then navigate to
   “Commandos Behind Enemy Lines\Legacy\DATOS\RECURSOS\BMPS\SYSTEM\GLOBAL”
   and copy over your .WAD file into this directory. (Note: I have a 1920x1200 resolution monitor which is not listed on here but I reached out to Herbert3000, the creator of these files and he was kind enough to send me a 1920x1200.WAD file. If you want to use it, you can download it here[drive.google.com].)
   
8. Go back to Herbert's website and download the .BMP file that matches your resolution and copy over the file into
   “Commandos Behind Enemy Lines\Legacy\DATOS\RECURSOS\BMPS\SYSTEM\MISC”
   
9. Go to “Commandos Behind Enemy Lines\Legacy\OUTPUT\Comando.cfg” and edit this file by adding these lines at the end:
   .SIZE []
   .PROFILE []
   .DEVELOP 1
   
10. Back to the resolution hack, select your resolution from the drop down menu on the top right and then click apply and run. The game will run automatically and should run at your desired resolution. Now exit the game.

Now we've added our fixed .exe to be played and patched it to run at higher resolutions. The purpose of the .BMP and .WAD files are to scale the main menu and in-game GUI to your desired resolution. The purpose of modifying the .cfg file is to fix save issues. Also in some missions such as the first one, you may notice glitched graphics to the side of your GUI, this is normal and is because the maps were not designed for higher resolutions back in 1998. This can be easily fixed by adjusting the screen size using the + and - buttons on your keyboard until it matches the map width.

Configuring Steam to Run Legacy .exe (Optional)

These next few steps are going to seem a bit strange so please bear with me.

1. Repeat EVERY single step we just did, but for ALL the files in the base game directory for the normal, non-legacy version of Commandos. This directory is the parent directory of the legacy folder we've been modifying and should be called something like “C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Commandos Behind Enemy Lines” (Note: Legacy should not be in this path).
   
2. Go to Steam, right click Commandos: BEL, and select properties. Go to the General tab and under launch options, type in the path in quotations leading to your “commandos.exe” in the directory for the normal version of the game followed by %Command% with a space right after. My full command looks like this:
   "C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Commandos Behind Enemy Lines\commandos.exe" %Command%
   
3. Close out of properties, launch the game from Steam and press “Play Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines”. As soon as the game enters the main menu, exit.
   
4. Go back to the launch options and now type in the path to "commandos.exe" for the legacy version of your game followed by %Command%. Mine looks like this:
   "C:\Steam\steamapps\common\Commandos Behind Enemy Lines\Legacy\commandos.exe" %Command%
   
5. Launch the game once more but now click “Play Legacy Version”. This is very important. If you click “Play Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines” from the previous step here, it might reset all the progress we’ve made and you'll have to do everything all over again.
   
6. (Optional) When launching the game, check “Always use this option” when you have the legacy version selected. This allows you run the legacy version automatically every time you run the game without having to go through the launcher.

You’re probably wondering, what the hell was the point of all that? You may have noticed that before, we had not actually launched the game directly from Steam yet. What we just did was force Steam to directly run the fixed .exe every time the game launches so now we can launch our fixed Commandos game from Steam which lets us log Steam hours and use Steam overlay in-game which I often used to access a list of all the hotkeys I needed to know to play the game.

So why did we need to modify the base game version and run it? The answer is that I have no clue. After doing some testing, I discovered that pointing directly to the legacy .exe without first modifying and running the base version would give me errors. It requires this specific order of steps and I have no idea why this method works but it gave me the result I wanted so we’ll run with it.

Low FPS Fix

1. Go to this website[github.com] and download the latest release of DDrawCompat under the assets drop down menu. The file you want will be called something like “DDrawCompat-v0.5.4.zip” but the last few digits of the filename will probably be different if you’re reading this guide in the future as there will be newer releases.
   
2. Unzip this file wherever you want and copy “ddraw.dll” into your legacy game folder.

Conclusion

That’s everything. In this guide, we’ve patched Commandos 1 to run on a modern system with support for higher resolutions and fixed the dreaded no sound and low FPS problems. And as an added bonus, we were also able to get our fixed version running directly through Steam rather than by manually running the .exe every time.

A few more things to note. You may notice that at the beginning of every mission, a song plays for a few seconds and stops completely for the rest of the mission. I was confused by this too but don't worry, that's just how the game is, music during missions wasn't added until the Beyond the Call of Duty expansion. Also this game is very challenging so make sure you you learn the important hotkeys for the characters and you should save as much as you need to. Thank you for reading my guide and I hope you have fun with this game.

Files Used in this Guide

Garga's Ultimate Fix and Stevenh's High Resolution Patch[kruulos.org]
Herbert3000's Main Menu and GUI files[sites.google.com]
1920x1200 WAD[drive.google.com] (If this file gets deleted, let me know)
Narzoul's DDrawCompat[github.com]

[Eaglescream]

@blackpig No problem. Have you tried pressing the - and + keys on your keyboard? This will allow you to zoom in and out to adjust the map to your screen and shouldn't obscure the map if you do it right. If that doesn't work, I might be able to help you if you could send me a screenshot of the problem.

[blackpig]

The resolution fix didn't work for me (1920x1080 screen), as it made some part of the game's map unable to be seen when I applied this resolution. But that doesn't really matter, as what I really need was just fixing the low fps issue, and the website you provided worked well. I was dying to replay this game, but couldn't do anything about the fps until I found this post. Thank you so much bro