So I seem to be having a problem with the framerate. It looks like it's below 30 frames even in the menu. My PC specs:

Windows 8
GTX 560ti
i7
8gig RAM

I had this running on Windows 7 with no problems and the game does launch fine. I see no reason why I should be having any issues. Also when I attempt to install the Last resort mod here: http://swat3lastresort.info/. Forget it. It's like a slide show. It's horrible. In the vanilla game when I switch the renderer from Primary Display Driver to Software it runs smoother but it won't start up again. Any help would be appreciated.

So far we have narrowed this down to a Windows 8 problem. The same issue happens with vanilla Swat 3 as well as with mods.

I assume Windows 8 doesn't like old versions of DirectX (specifically games that use DirectDraw).

If anyone can get Swat 3 running on Windows 8 without framerate issues please post your method here.

Oh, hey. From Last Resort? Yeah, seems to be a Windows 8 problem. Shame. Hopefully a fix will come along at some point.

Ughh this is a major bummer.

Yes, I too insalled this old favorite today on Win8 64-bit and I get about 2 fps.

Yes it is a problem with Windows 8 64bit. Directx 8 games seems to be the issue. I was able to get barely passable fps by setting it to low, and forcing software use for directdraw and direct3d with the directx control panel from majorgeeks.com. I heard that some got it working by running in windowed mode, but I can't figure out how to do that.

yeah i bought this game yesterday and im running on 64bit Windows 8 too
i had problems with the "DDERR GENERIC" problem, but i fixed that after i changed codecs

then the game loaded up fine, but the framerate was really bad and it was even really choppy in menus. it worked alright for me after putting it in windowed mode:
go into your SWAT 3 shortcut's properties and add in "-window" (no quotes) after "C:\Program Files (x86)\GOG.com\SWAT 3\game\swat.exe", then go to the compatibility tab and check the reduced color mode box and choose "16-bit" in the dropdown menu.

unfortunately, the game runs at a forced 800x600 window, and i'm not sure how to enlarge it.

That is better than not being able to play at all, thanks.


You can lower your screen resolution outside the game to try and help make it bigger.

There's a (translated version of) D3DWindower available at http://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?f=33&t=10242 that will force the game to run in windowed mode. That bypasses the 800x600 resolution restriction and performance is fine.

It's not perfect and may require a little experimentation but I've played through the first few missions without issue.

I emailed support about this. Apparently this game worked fine in the release candidate of windows 8. The current release however has these issues. They are not supporting it for windows 8 anymore until they can figure it out. Good find for the window program. I'll give it a shot. In the current window though, the later levels the fps gets really choppy. Only the small levels are smoothish.

I think Slippery Jim is right. I had horrible frame rate problems in Jagged Alliance 2. I got around that by using Wine DLLs instead of Direct X ones (neat trick courtesy of Bear's Pit). That doesn't work here unfortunately. I'm holding off on buying any pre-Direct X 9 games (e.g. earlier than 2000) until I know for sure they'll work in Windows 8.

Oddly enough, I can't even get the damn movies to play without the DDERR_Generic thing. Both the originals and the DIVX replacements work find in Windows Media Player though. So I'm pretty sure I have the CODECs.

This sucks. But I suppose I'm only out $5 and a couple of hours. :(

- John

Note that GOG has just taken Windows 8 off the compatibility list. It was on there when I bought it during the sale last weekend. Grrrrr... I don't know if I should ask for my money back or wait patiently to see if they can fix it. :(

- John

The Problem with Windows 8 is, that it doesn't support DirectDraw, it only emulates it. So the graphics heavily rely on the CPU instead of the graphics card = low performance. There's nothing much you can do about it. First I thought it was a multicore problem and tried to run it on one core, which didn't help at all.

I've noticed that GOG uses the MS Compatibility Toolkit quite a bit on a lot of these titles. Although I don't own the GOG version, I do own the GOTY retail CD version. Since upgrading to Windows 8.1 I've become very familiar with MS Compatibility Toolkit. I've been installing my entire game library in this fresh install of Windows 8.1. SWAT 3 was the last game I installed and I stumbled across this thread while searching for a solution for the slowness. I've been able to fix it myself.

Do a Google search for "MS Compatibility Toolkit". Click on the first link that shows up from MS. You can download it from there. Once installed, create a new fix using the swat.exe and have it look exactly like what I have in the attached screenshot. The only compat flag that's needed is 8And16BitAggregateBits. Save the compat DB and install it. After that SWAT 3 performance will be greatly improved.

Thanks. I did that and it improved the menu speed a bit but the actual gameplay in-game is still way too slow. Oh, well. And this time I couldn't even get the Last Resort mod to launch.

I just now stumbled across this problem and I'm seriously bummed out about it.

I really want to play through SWAT 3 again, but the frame rate is definitely too low on my Windows 8.1 machine for it to be practical.

I really hope that one day it will be fixed...

Well...

I have Windows 8 also, and I'm having the same trouble with DirectX and Poor Framerates, but, I wanna ask, if, the solution of creating a ".reg" extension, which, allow play in "decent" configurations without any lag could work?

If the answer is yes, how is it? 'Cause I tried that before, but, it didn't make nothing, the same low framerates after select one "option".

Thanks u.u