Play Red Alert 3, C&C 3: Tiberium Wars and Kane's Wrath at 60, 120, 165 or whatever fps you want. Free and open source.

These games are locked to 30 fps and if you just unlock them the whole game speeds up. This keeps the game speed normal and only makes it smoother. No effect flicker either.

Two ways, pick whichever you like. Either way there's no launch option to set, you just play the game like normal (Steam, EA app, disc, whatever).

With the setup: grab CnC-FPS-Unlocker-Setup.exe from Releases and run it. It finds your games, pick a frame rate and hit Next. If it doesn't find a game (EA app, Origin, disc in a weird spot) use Add game folder... and pick the game's install folder.

By hand, no exe at all: grab CnC-FPS-Unlocker.zip from Releases and copy the three files for your game next to the game's actual exe:

To change the fps run the setup again or edit RA3HighFps.ini (the zip has ready-made ones for each fps in FPS presets). To uninstall delete d3d9.dll / dinput8.dll.

Coming from v1.6 or older? You don't need the Steam launch option anymore, clear it (right-click the game > Properties > Launch Options). The setup swaps the old RA3HighFps.exe for one that just starts the game, so leaving it is fine. If you install by hand, clear it or delete the old RA3HighFps.exe, otherwise the old version patches first and the new fixes don't run.

Linux (Steam Proton / Wine): the dll can't start .NET under Proton, but Proton runs RA3HighFps.exe fine, so that does the patching there. Copy CnCFpsUnlocker.dll and RA3HighFps.ini where the table says, put RA3HighFps.exe in the main game folder (next to runme.exe / RA3EP1.exe / CNC3.exe / CNC3EP1.exe), and set a launch option that swaps the game's launcher for it (thanks tomikaka22 for figuring this out):

No dotnet48 or protontricks needed. The setup exe is Windows only.

Tested on the Steam versions (RA3 1.13, Tiberium Wars 1.10, Kane's Wrath 1.3). If it doesn't work on your copy (or the game crashes), open an issue with your RA3HighFps.log. It's next to the game's exe (same folder as the dlls), or in %TEMP% if the game folder is read-only. It says which fixes loaded and, if the game crashed, where, which helps me a lot.

Has to be a multiple of 15 (60, 75, 90, 120, 135, 165, 240...). The game ticks 15 times a second so every tick needs a whole number of frames or the speed drifts. 144hz monitor? Use 135. It won't go above your monitor's refresh rate anyway since the game can't draw faster than your screen.

Game speed stays right even if your PC can't keep up. Game logic runs off the clock now instead of counting frames, so if you set 120 and only get 80 the game still runs at normal speed, it just looks a bit less smooth.

Before v1.6 that wasn't true. RA3 ran about 33% fast at 120 and way faster at 240 (the engine was only made to go up to 90), TW and KW went slow-mo whenever your fps dropped below the target, and every setting was a few % fast because of a rounding thing in the frame limiter.

• 240 fps is experimental until it's been tested more, some people have had problems with it. If you're on a 240hz monitor and something's weird try 165 or 120
• Some effects still play too fast (like the RA3 power plant fog) and the TW/KW Ion Cannon hit looks off (#4, #5)

Stuff that isn't about frame rate. Off unless you turn it on in the setup (or the ini).

• Camera zoom-out (RA3): lets you zoom out further (1.25x or 1.5x). Only in skirmish and campaign, online and LAN always use normal zoom so nobody gets an advantage. Further out, the game stops drawing the ground (and water) at the top of the screen on maps with big height differences, so 1.5x is the max.

• It doesn't touch any game files. The game loads the dll from its own folder like any other dll mod, the dll changes a few timing values in the game's memory while it's starting, and that's it. No network code, nothing runs outside the game
• The setup is optional and only copies files. If you don't want to run an exe, install by hand
• Everything's built from the source here: src/Unlocker.cs (the fixes, C#), installer/setup.iss (the setup, made with Inno Setup) and dll/proxy.c (the small d3d9.dll / dinput8.dll, about 150 lines). Run build-from-source.bat to build the dll yourself with the C# compiler that comes with Windows, and dll/build.bat for the dlls (needs MinGW)

These games use the number 30 for two different things: how often they draw a frame, and as a clock for effects (particles count time in 30ths of a second). Old unlock methods change both, so particles get birth times from the "future" and you get huge white or colored flashes whenever something shoots, especially near water. This only changes the first one.

It finds what to patch by what the code does instead of hardcoded addresses, which is why the same dll works for all three games.

The full story, including how I tracked down the flicker with a frame by frame graphics capture, is in docs/TECHNICAL.md.

• Generals / Zero Hour: logic and rendering use the same clock so this trick doesn't work. Check out TheSuperHackers/GeneralsGameCode, they work from EA's released source
• Red Alert 2 / Tiberian Sun: totally different engine, same problem
• RA3 Uprising: the setup finds it and it should work (same engine) but I haven't been able to test it. Let me know!

Since the game loads the dll itself, mods and older versions just work the normal way: -ui (the RA3 launcher window), -runver 1.12, -modConfig "...\mod.skudef" and mod launchers like GenEvo's all still get the fps fix. RA3 1.12 and 1.13 both live in Data\, so one install covers both.

• red-alert-3-60fps-mod by isma3iloiso, their patch notes pointed me at the render fps value in the first place
• CNCStuff/cnc3_fps_patch, which found many of the C&C3 fixes (frame limiter, scroll, numpad camera, effects, anim timing)
• apitrace, couldn't have found the flicker without it
• Not affiliated with EA. Command & Conquer, Red Alert and Tiberium are trademarks of Electronic Arts

GPL v3 (see LICENSE). Use it, share it, change it, but anything built from this code has to stay open source under the same license and keep the credit. Versions up to v1.5 were MIT.

• TheeHorse