Desperados 3 FAQ

Hey everyone! Since we expect a lot of common questions to come in once the game is released, we thought we might try to anticipate those and answer them in one thread. We will keep this FAQ updated if other questions pop up frequently.

Desperados 3 FAQ

General Info & Misc

The basics: Number of Levels & Playtime.

There are 16 unique missions.
The estimated playtime for your first play-through, which also depends on your familiarity with the genre and your skills, is about 25 hours.

25 hours? Sweet. BUT WHAT ABOUT REPLAY VALUE??

The game has an immense amount of replay value. This comes from four different aspects.

1) Most missions feature multiple solutions. This means you can skip large areas of the maps and on your next playthrough get a completely fresh experience.

2) There are 8 badges that can be earned in 14 of the 16 missions each. Some of these will challenge you to completely re-think how you approach a mission. This creates new exciting challenges. Yay!

3) Gameplay itself. You can approach each enemy set up in different ways. While it worked one-way LAST time, you can still try a completely new one THIS time!

Okay, so what about DLCs? Will you expand the game with any additional free or to-pay-for content after release?

Three additional levels will be released as part of a DLC/Season Pass that you can purchase. These missions will tell a new, small, continuous story episode that takes place after the events of the main game. For the release date, please make sure to regularly watch out for updates and news in this community forum.

Okay, I’m in! What different versions of the game are there? When can I buy them?

The game is available for PC, Xbox One, and Playstation 4 on June 16th, 2020.
You can pre-order the Digital Deluxe Edition on digital storefronts or you can pre-order a limited Collector’s Edition box set from various retailers.

The digital version is available on Steam and GOG – plus many additional stores.
It has not yet been decided if a Mac and/or Linux version will be developed.

I have played through the demo. Can I continue playing from where I left off at the end of the demo?

Almost. You can skip the first two levels by typing this cheat code into the game. This will unlock the first three levels of the game so you can choose – if you want to – to start playing from the third level.

Here is how you do this: Start the game, go to the options menu and type: lone rider
Or you can use your controller D-Pad by issuing the following commands in the options menu: RIGHT RIGHT RIGHT UP DOWN

Once you have done this simply go back to the main menu screen and from there go to “Mission Select”.

Where can I change the language settings?

You can change the language in both the game and the Steam client.

Steam client: You can change the language by right-clicking on Desperados III in your Steam library, choosing “Properties” and going to the tab “LANGUAGE” in the appearing window.

In-game: You can change the language in the audio menu which can be found in the options menu.

Technical Questions & Issues

Where are the savegames located on my computer?

You can find your savegames here:
Windows 7/8/10: C:\Users\*USERNAME*\AppData\Local\Desperados III\user\gameState_00 (\manualSave or \quickSave)

Where do I find the error log if I need to report a bug?

You can find the log file here:
Windows 7/8/10: C:\Users\*USERNAME*\AppData\LocalLow\Mimimi\Desperados III
File Name is: output_log.txt

Where can I report bugs?

Please follow this link: https://steamcommunity.com/app/610370/discussions/0/2451595501488368129/

I can’t install any updates.

If the installation path contains special characters (e.g. „§“, „????????“, „é“, etc.) the game is not able to create a log file or to install any updates. Therefore, please ensure that your installation path doesn’t contain any special characters.

I can’t load my savegames after an update. What should I do?

After updating Desperados III, it might happen that previous savegames are incompatible with the latest version of the game, depending on what kind of changes we had to make. Because of technical reasons, we can’t guarantee that previous savegames and the level progression will be maintained for every update. However, unlocked game progress/levels, badges and settings are preserved.
Your options are to choose to continue your level progress from a certain checkpoint that will be offered to you in-game, or you can choose to replay the level from the beginning.

Game & Content Questions

Can I choose from different difficulty settings?

Yes, you can. The difficulty settings can be chosen when you start a new game and you can adjust them by clicking on the difficulty option on the mission selection screen every time before you start the next mission. You can also create your own custom settings for the difficulty by clicking on the DIFFICULTY button and then on SHOW DETAILS. There are different options available for: Enemy Setups, Player Health, Player Ammo, Detection Speed, Amount of Saves, and Pause during Showdown Mode.

Is there an option to deactivate the pause during Showdown Mode? I want to continue playing in real-time during Showdown Mode!

By default, Showdown Mode pauses the game to give you time in order to plan a certain strategy and execute the actions of your companions simultaneously. You can however choose for Showdown Mode to NOT pause the game. This can be configured by clicking on the DIFFICULTY button and then on SHOW DETAILS on the mission selection screen before you start the next mission and choosing a custom setting for Showdown Mode there.

Is there an autosave option?

No. The quicksave option is part of the tactical gameplay and has to be executed by the player himself/herself.

How can I deactivate the quicksave timer?

Go to the “Options” menu and there look for the “Gameplay” options. In here you can set the Save Reminder to “off”.

How can I share my saved replays?

Once you have saved a level replay you can view it again by going to the “Mission Select” menu and there clicking on the “Replay Browser”. This will show you all of your saved level replays. Simply click on the desired one to open it.

Now, you can also share your level of replays with other people. To do this you need to open your user folder on your hard drive. The folder is located on your Windows hard drive under C:\Users\[USERNAME]\AppData\Local\Desperados III\[USER]\saved_replays.
Simply send the level replay file (*.rply_save) that you want to share with the person you want to share it with. That person then needs to paste the file into their own “saved_replays” user folder for Desperados III. Once that is done he or she can start the game and navigate to the “Replay Browser” and the level replay file should be there.

The guards keep spotting me! What should I do?

There could be different reasons for this. It’s very important to keep an eye on the view cones of your enemies, so you are always aware of which area they are observing at the moment. We also recommend to hide the bodies of knocked out or eliminated NPCs, so you don’t attract any unwanted attention. Also, be careful when moving along a sand- or mud-covered area since your footprints can be your biggest traitors as they will reveal your position.

Why is there no Multiplayer/Co-op option available for the game?

Adding multiplayer has many challenges. Mainly you can split them in two areas: Tech and Gamedesign.

Tech: The core tech of our game doesn’t support co-op or online play, it would have required a huge rework to implement it. This was just not possible as part of this production. You can’t just “add multiplayer”, it needs to be embedded everywhere in the tech to work properly. If we would do this, it would be a major part of the production.
Gamedesign: A major issue here is how to handle quicksave/loading. If you play “together” on the same part of the map, it works. You fail and you load, no problem. But if your friend plays on one side of the map and you on the other side and they fail and quick load, it quickly gets really frustrating. While this might work out ok if you play with your family or friend next to each other, it really becomes unfun and problematic when playing with friends or strangers online.

We looked into how we would make a co-op game in the Real-time tactics genre. And it would have to revolve around removing the quicksave and quick load, which is a very big change to the core of it. For Desperados III this simply wasn’t our focus. Our main goal for Desperados III was to make it feel like Desperados 1 but in a modern way, to bring back such a beloved franchise to it’s fans.

If you would like to know even more details about our thoughts and reasons regarding multiplayer/co-op then check out this answer from Moritz aka “coru”, our Head of Design: https://steamcommunity.com/app/610370/discussions/0/2254559285378407134/?tscn=1589476187[TK1]

Modding & Customization

What about Modding? Is a Level Editor available?
We would love nothing more than seeing the awesome maps and designs you guys and gals would come up with. But sadly we cannot build a Level Editor for Desperados III.

There are many reasons for this, but the major two are these:

1) The game’s core tech isn’t set up in a way that makes it moddable. It would require us to redo a lot of the core-technology, pipelines, and so on in order to make it moddable or give the option to create your own maps. This is a HUGE amount of work and trusts me, if it wasn’t, we would find a way. Because as I said we’d LOVE to have that option.

2) Editor Usability: If we want an editor that many people can use, it requires LOTS of work to build the workflows, documentation, etc. to make it intuitive and well usable. We could ignore that but then it becomes very risky since it can break a lot of stuff in the game and people would never know where the problem lies. It would be a very-hard-to-use editor. Combine these two and it basically means we would have to build the whole game again which of course we cannot do. And there are a lot different issues/smaller reasons that come on top of that.

The game is not available in my language. Can I translate it by myself? Can I implement my translation into the game by myself?

Yes, you can. However, it is not an easy thing to do. First of all the game contains roughly 90,000 words so this is quite a lot. Secondly, you will have a hard time to understand which text line appears wherein the game because there is no context info available.
But if you would still like to give it a shot you need to do the following:

1. Navigate to the installation folder of the game on you hard drive

2. Inside the install folder, go to :\Desperados III_Data\StreamingAssets\loca

3. Create a new text file with the name of the language you are translating into (observe the file naming conventions inside the folder)

4. You can choose from any of the existing local languages as a starting point to translate into your desired target language. Simply open one of the existing text files to find all the lines of text we have in the game.

5. Start translating – make sure that the ID number of each line matches the one from the existing text files so the game will trigger them at the right place inside the game.

6. To check your translation in-game simply go to the “Options” menu and from there to the “Audio” sub-menu and select your language in the “Text Language” option

7. If your language doesn’t appear by name but is labeled as “Missing” in the text language option instead, you need to add the translation name for your language inside the text document.

To do this open your text document and look at the header. This should look something like this (in our example we are using the Spanish language file):

• English Inglés
• German Alemán
• Chinese Chino
• French Francés
• Italian Italiano
• Spanish Español
• Russian Ruso
• Korean Coreano
• Polish Polaco
• Japanese Japonés

Notice that the language name in English (left) is separated from the localized language name (right).

So in the case of Spanish, the game would display “Missing” if the line “Spanish[TAB]Español” would be missing. Important: Make sure to use the “TAB” key here. A simple “SPACE” is not enough!

What about controls? Can I rebind everything?

Yes, you can. We have two default control schemes, one that caters more towards “Commandos” and” Shadow Tactics” veterans and one that feels more like current RTS or MOBA games. BUT you can rebind anything you want and create your own layouts as well. Both for keyboard/mouse and gamepad.

That’s it for now, I hope this helps with some of the first questions you might have 🙂

Additional stuff for later, to be added at THQ’s discretion

Will there be a Mac and Linux version?
Yes, we are planning to add Mac and Linux support for the game at some point in the future so watch out for any news and updates.