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Return to Castle Wolfenstein > Guides > Mike Stu's Guides
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Return to ๐•ฎ๐–†๐–˜๐–™๐–‘๐–Š ๐–‚๐–”๐–‘๐–‹๐–Š๐–“๐–˜๐–™๐–Š๐–Ž๐–“ in 2025
By Mike Stu
Best way to play vanilla RtCW with several quality of life improvements. No mods, no nonsense.
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Created by
Mike Stu
Offline
Category: Modding or Configuration
Languages: English
Posted
Updated
13 Nov, 2023 @ 6:07am
24 Jan @ 4:09pm
3,279 Unique Visitors
95 Current Favorites
Guide Index
Overview
INTRO 
WHAT YOU WILL NEED 
HOW TO DO IT 
EXTRA STUFFโ„ข 
FINAL REMARKS 
Comments
INTRO

Return to Castle Wolfenstein is a great game. ...It was also made in 2001, meaning it runs pretty weird in current hardware and lacks several modern niceties we've come to expect. Oh and it also likes to crash. A lot.

Because of this, there's a ton of older guides here on Steam telling you to "fix" the game using convoluted methods or mods that - while great in their own right -, completely alter the original experience.

If you just want vanilla RtCW to look and play the best it possibly can with modern resolutions, unlocked FPS and custom FOVs, this guide is for you.

WHAT YOU WILL NEED

  • A clean installation of the base game.
  • The iortcw sourceport.

Iortcw a very accurate sourceport of the original game with several quality of life improvements and bug fixes. You can get its latest release on GitHub[github.com].
HOW TO DO IT

  1. Download "iortcw-1.51c-win-x64.zip" and "patch-data-141.zip" from the GitHub page[github.com].

  2. Extract both files using WinRar or 7-Zip to your preferred folder.

  3. Go into your original RtCW Steam install folder and look for the "Main" subfolder. By default, this can be found on "D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Return to Castle Wolfenstein".

  4. In the "Main" subfolder, copy the following files: "pak0.pk3", "sp_pak1.pk3", "sp_pak2.pk3" and "sp_pak3.pk3".

  5. Now go into your iortcw folder and look for its own "Main" subfolder. Paste all the files referred above into it.

  6. Once that's done, copy the contents of "patch-data-141" into your iortcw folder. You will be prompted to overwrite certain files - just click accept.

  7. Iortcw should be setup now: click "ioWolfSP.x64" in the sourceport's folder to make sure the game is running properly. This will be your go-to executable from now on.

  8. By default, iortcw will look exactly like standard RtCW. Now is the time to increase the resolution, FOV and FPS to your preferred values - and add anisotropic filtering and MSAA while we're at it.

    To do so, go to your iortcw "Main" subfolder and look for "autoexec.cfg". Edit it with the notepad and add the following lines (if the file doesn't exist yet, you can just create one with notepad):

    set devdll 1 set sv_cheats 1 seta r_customwidth "2560" seta r_customheight "1440" seta r_mode "-1" seta cg_fixedAspect "2" seta cg_fixedAspectFOV "0" seta cg_fov "110" seta r_primitives 2 seta r_ext_texture_filter_anisotropic "1" seta r_ext_max_anisotropy "16" seta r_ext_multisample "16" seta r_ext_framebuffer_multisample "16" seta com_maxfps "125" seta com_maxfpsUnfocused "125" seta com_maxfpsMinimized "125"

    Note that you can tweak all the values between " " to your preference: "seta r_customwidth" and "seta r_customheight" control resolution; "seta cg_fov" handles FOV; "seta com_maxfps" controls frame rate.

    I would only advise against setting FPS above 125: player movement, recoil and weapon overheating are all linked to frame rate. As the game's default is 91, using too high of a value can mess up game logic.

  9. That's it! Don't forget to max-out all the options in-game in the "Graphics" and "Performance" tabs for the best visual experience.
EXTRA STUFFโ„ข

These are optional things which may well improve your RtCW experience, but are not essential to gameplay in any way. Think of them more like general PSA's:

  • Run iortcw through Steam :

    You can launch the sourceport directly through Steam with full Overlay functionality. To do this, either (A) change the game's executable from RtCW's standard "WolfSP" to iortcw's "ioWolfSP.x64" using SteamEdit[steamedit.tg-software.com] or (B) place your iortcw folder inside your RtCW Steam install folder and add the following launch option on Steam:

    "D:\SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\Return to Castle Wolfenstein\iortcw-1.51c-win-x64\ioWolfSP.x64.exe" %Command%

    Note that the text between " " should be the complete path to your own "ioWolfSP.x64". The example above is just how it looks on my end.

    Method 1 works better, but may have to be re-applied every now and then (Steam updates sometimes reset changes made through SteamEdit). Method 2 is easier and permanent, but has the downside (?) of skipping the game's intro cinematic.

    I won't be covering how to use SteamEdit or alter Steam launch parameters, since this guide is long enough as is. It's easy enough to figure out, but if you're unsure of how to do it, just check my DOOM (1993) guide - I go into great detail on how both of those methods work in there. The logic is exactly the same with RtCW.

  • Use 3D spatial audio :

    Iortcw supports OpenAL Soft[openal-soft.org] by default, which allows you to play with Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF) binaural mixing. Basically, stuff that's behind you ingame will sound like it's actually behind you, even on standard stereo headphones - see an example in this video (if you can't tell the effect is there, this is likely not worth your time).

    To do so, you will need to (1) install OpenAL's latest binaries ("openal-soft-1.23.1-bin.zip" as of writing), (2) download HRTF tables and (3) tell OpenAL to use HRTF by both selecting your preferred table in "alsoft-config" and editing "alsoft.ini". Iortcw should then automatically detect OpenAL's commands, as it already comes packed with an "OpenAL64.dll" inside its folder.

    Again, I won't be giving you a step-by-step on how to setup OpenAL Soft in this guide. If you're curious about this stuff but it sounds a bit confusing, I suggest checking out the basic installation instructions on PCGamingWiki[www.pcgamingwiki.com], this video to find and download your preferred HRTF table and this timeless UT3 guide to get an idea on how to put things together - everything up to the "Enable HRTFs in OpenAL Soft" section applies to RtCW.

    After you've done all that, you should be good to go. I recommend using the "irc_1037_44100" HRTF table with the following settings in "allsoft.ini" - these are actually the same ones utilized in the video I linked you above:

    [General] stereo-mode=headphones default-hrtf=irc_1037_44100 [decoder] hq-mode=true channels=stereo frequency=44100 stereo-mode=headphones cf_level=0 sample-type=float32 periods=3 period_size=1024 default-hrtf=irc_1037_44100 hrtf=true

  • Toggle crouch :

    Bit of a random one to close things up, but you can enable crouch toggle via console commands - it's a hold by default. To do this, simply go to iorctw's autoexec.cfg and add the following lines:

    set duck "+movedown; set crouchToggle vstr stand; echo ^3Crouching...^7" set stand "-movedown; set crouchToggle vstr duck; echo ^2Standing...^7" set crouchToggle "vstr duck" bind c "vstr crouchToggle"
FINAL REMARKS

Hope this has been useful to y'all. Major thanks to the contributors from the PCGamingWiki[www.pcgamingwiki.com], Joe Grant for his post[www.classicgaming.biz] on the game and WildCat for his HRTF tutorial - this guide mostly compiles information from those sources with my own research and troubleshooting.

If you have any questions, feel free to post them below - and happy nazi hunting!



20 Comments
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hilljezint 16 May @ 5:33am 
@Mike Stu: Thanks for pointing this out!
Mike Stu  [author] 9 May @ 4:05pm 
@hilljezint: Sorry for the late reply. No controller support in vanilla RtCW I'm afraid, since this is a PC game that was later ported to consoles. You can try your luck with community made layouts in SteamEdit, but that likely won't work well (again, no controller support at all in this, so you'd essentially be emulating a mouse). Perhaps the mod RealRtCW (which is available right here on Steam) adds it, though that's not really vanilla RtCW anymore

@deuce - I'm pretty sure that you just replaced your standard RtcW files with iortcw. No biggie - the method above is meant to keep original files intact, but it shouldn't give you issues.
deuce 8 May @ 3:50pm 
uhh i just copied and pasted everything in my iortcw folder to my steam rtcw folder and then renamed the x64 executable to the default one without seeing launch iortcw through steam section. it works fine but i hope i didnt f anything up.
hilljezint 18 Mar @ 5:55am 
As someone coming from console gaming and being completely new to pc gaming & steam, this sounds like what I need, thanks!!
Does your setup include being able to play the game with a controller? If not, maybe you could point me where to find an easy solution to that, please?
Brazil 21 Dec, 2024 @ 5:40am 
I found out iortcw does something similar with openal option, Game doesn't have higher quality audiofiles than 22khz so id like to call it magic.
Mike Stu  [author] 21 Dec, 2024 @ 4:56am 
Not bad at all - pretty great actually, and simpler to set up. I personally just lean towards iortcw since I find it more comprehensive in terms of fixes and customization. Not sure about the 48khz though - if i had to guess, the OG files are probably being upsampled internally. Thanks for the comment! :tchecosmile:
Brazil 19 Dec, 2024 @ 7:09am 
Do you think knightmare patch is bad? Asking this cause i'd like to know your opinion. And if you know could you tell how its 48khz audio support works without having higher quality audio files?
Mike Stu  [author] 8 Nov, 2024 @ 3:02pm 
Glad it was useful to you! Appreciate the comment. :summercrab2023:
Malevolentia 5 Nov, 2024 @ 8:35am 
I'm so glad this guide exists. I didn't wanna change how the game played, just the sourceport with vanilla content and this works wonders. Thank you!
Mike Stu  [author] 6 Oct, 2024 @ 4:53am 
np! :cousin_ichigo: