Messages

Good grief! That looks pretty challanging. Good luck with that.
     

I would love to see a Muscle for High Stakes!
Btw, the MCO Offline mod for NFS4 was really great, but unfortunately focused on career only. Detroit Muscle mod (DM) aimed to present that time period, making use of all NFS gameplay elements (career, knockout, pursuit races...etc).

Generally i would expect from a compilated mod that everything works and looks seamless. Tracks, cars, artwork, menu-texts (generally menu style), difficulty... should fit together. Everybody can throw a bunch of cars together and call it a day.
Imo it is important that the quality of used mods does not differ too much (specifically with cars... eg. polycount, damage, sounds).
You should not use MCO conversion together with highly detailed mods if you ask me.
Another problem using cars from other authors is, the performance has to be adapted so everything works well together (handling, maximum speed...). Balance out the gameplay aspects first. Of course there should be no serial number conflicts or missing fedatas etc.
Details like a menu/HUD overhaul, showcases, new music etc are neat, but shouldnt be high priority.

Ask if you need advice/help for more specific things. I think Remko also can answer you every ambiguitys about DM mod and ideas behind it

As far as i know, there is no way to edit the .ffn file (open, edit and resave).
But a lot of EA games from that time used this font-format. So its possible to copy fonts over from other games, that also make use of this .ffn type.
Examples that work with NFS4 are fonts from: NFS3, NFS5, NBA99, FIFA97.
Not sure from which game the Muscle mod font originates, though.

The .ffn file is simply a texture map with characters (similar to this Link). Guess it works like NFS3/4 HUD textures, where speedometer, rpm, symbols, etc are saved in one graphics file.

But again, to my knowledge there is no way to open/edit the file directly. Fontfiles from other games have to have same resolution and character order - otherwise you simply get rubbish, instead of text. 

Greetings

Hm, you already narrowed it down...
seems to be either a RAM or mainboard issue.
Two short beeps indicate a RAM issue - if you havent done this already, try different modules (one at a time) in different dimm-slots.
One long and 1 short beep indicate a mainboard issue. Guess in that case you will need a replacement for your board.
As desperate measure, you could try applying heat to the mainboard using a heat gun or hairdryer... ive heard this somtimes fixes loose connection in the wirering

GL

A very interesting topic i think. NURBS have a lot of advantages in modelling, you can display and scale surfaces with infinite detail. Basically they are the 3D equivalent of vector graphics in image processing.

But afaik NURBS are not used in games. At all. Not even modern games make use of them (or similar techniques), also wont in the nearby future. Graphic accelerators (GPU's) and graphic renderers (DirectX, OpenGL...) need polygones (triangles).
So any mods for games, need to consist of polygones in the end. NURBS have to be converted to (polygonal) subdivided surfaces using algorithms or by hand.
The efficiency, however, will be higher when using polygons from scratch. At least thats true if you look at low-poly modelling for older games - but also modern games have their limits, at some point (you cannot say polycount does not matter anymore).

But maybe this conversion process works better than i think? ExoticLover, you already made experience with your ElNino project for example - you already know to what polycount this car would convert ingame?

Most important  point is, having a playable model in a computer game always is a tradeoff between visuals (details) and playability (frames per second).
Of course an object with 100.000 polies will have a smoother surface than modelling it with 5000 polies...

[...]
Smooth lines in your reflection implies that it is uber-smooth. Jaggy lines means that either your model needs more smoothness or there's a bump that can be inferred. This is even helpful for lowpoly modeling as you can find bumps where there isn't supposed to be any, and manipulate normals as you go.
[...]

With the knowledge above, i find your surface comparison a bit pointless (at least the example you showed here). The difference in final polycount is not considered.
It also looks like you just changed the texture file to flowcheck-texture. I think you would need to remap the mesh completely (e.g. from top view?) to really get the info you described? Otherwise the texture is distorted.
Btw is this F50 by Martin Leps, from NFS6 or ...?

Greetings

Hey there,
i can help you with point 1. and 2. of your request. Guess these cars are indeed not available at any active website.
The Ferrari 360 2.0 by Jhonnyspeed i put here https://drive.google.com/open?id=11SmvbEaJSmWri4p5NByuKdRsAhcqgFe7
The GT90 is part of a Ryuji Kainoh archive, that was created/linked in this thread by AndrewL before (https://www.nfsaddons.com/forums/index.php/topic,1813.msg36097.html#msg36097).
I uploaded the zip here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1UVqSail_JAa7cbjdbq3SNlvlEd6Vs-2L
The Aston Martin DB7 by Marc Schmeling is not in my backups unfortunately. Maybe someone else can help.

You might also check different, active sites that are listed in the Online-Resources thread.
Do you have any backups of High Stakes files yourself?

Okay, so your settings seem to be alright... and you said it works fine on your other system. Also the issue is not driver related, since software renderer is giving the same results.

So, i guess its a problem with Zmodeler itself. Maybe the installation got corrupted (missing file/registry)? You already tried wiping everything and reinstall the program (with admin rights enabled or UAC disabled, respectively)?
Maybe an AntiVirus-program deleted/blocked an essential file?

Just some ideas to try... never had such an issue :/

edit:
Does the texture shows up in the UV Mapper when you remap with "Assign UV"?

Check that car00.tga is selected as "Primary Texture" in the Material Editor.
Basic stuff, i know... but gotta try to rule out possible errors.

Does the texture not show at all or is it displayed wrong?
First check that in 3D-view-window the option "Settings>Textures>Use Textures" is selected. Probably displaying of textures is unchecked there...
Else, did you change other hardware components or installed new drivers with the upgrade?
Try to switch rendering calculation to CPU (Force Software Rendering at "Options>3D View"). Maybe select a different "device" at the "Options" menu (see picture).

Thats a very resigning view of things.
I think there is a lot more about these games than AI and physics - and that made the series so successful.

Hm, maybe there is no official package or installer? NFS Porsche had an ingame update function, which probably loaded files on the fly from some EA source.

Seperate packages you can find now seem to be user-made, probably by comparing disc and hard-drive files after an update, then packing and uploading changed files.

Gotta say, at that time (2000...2001) i had modem connection and never used any online functions of NFS5. Guess later on i always used patched, user-edited files from the various NFS sites around.
So if there were official patch packages they seem to be wiped from the web...
Magazine cds seem a good idea, although they often are a compilation of stuff from the internet. Anyways, I dont have a cd from that time with a Porsche update.
But i can confirm that later cd-batches of NFS Porsche had the 3.4 patch integrated.
Keiiko collected isos of EU v3.0 and v3.4 ... maybe ask him for a link. By comparing  differences on these cds its should be possible to get (trusted/unchanged) files of the 3.4 update.

Greetings

Might be... fixed now either way
Thanks Remko!

And what about the Ben Trapp cars? nfscars has all of them, why not nfsaddons? 

The Ford Rod issue (Reply #5) has been solved, thanks again to pete9516 and Mike!

The incorrection on the BMW description/pics still remains...

Got another report on my own file: The link to the showcase of General Lee is dead.
https://www.nfsaddons.com/files/nfs4/cars/General_Lee_Showcase.zip
Would be great if you guys relink the file, i can also upload the file again, if it was lost. 

Hm,
in the "expected" place, at patches folder, you will only find the DLC-cars.
https://web.archive.org/web/*/ftp://ftp.ea.com/pub/ea/patches/nfs-porsche/*
The misc folder only has the game soundtrack as mp3's...
https://web.archive.org/web/*/ftp://ftp.ea.com/pub/ea/misc/nfs5/*

Looks like they aren't there... so either we looking in the wrong place, the files have not been archived or they were never on this FTP (instead at other EA server).
To be sure we would need an old link to an official source, or at least the exact original filename respectively.
According to mobygames, the 3.5 patch was released on Jan 13, 2002 (?).

Well, also cant come up with a trusted file from an unofficial source... e.g. the patch at nfsplanet.de seems untouched: https://www.nfsplanet.com/patch.php
Have you checked that, does it already contain a crack?
Additionally the file dates display August 2000... when the patch actually has been released...? So i understand your dilemma - which file/info can be trusted? 

Greetings

Update.

- changed layout of the list, additional tweaks for the new site-design.
- "NFS Bolide" added to Webarchive section (files linked to external ftp, which has been partly archived)

- JimDiabolos cloud folders expired again (www.tsabrowski.de/NFS-HS) - i contacted him via PM

Thanks for your continued feedback!!

Ha, thanks for continuously working on the site and keeping it alive!
That was a very quick reply, too

For 1.
Ah okay, so probably lot of pursuit cars are quite hidden...

And indeed, when selecting a car-brand i find it logical to display car results only

For 2. & 4.
Cool stuff. Not sure different themes are necessary, but optional features are always nice

For 3.
Thanks for fixing that.

Greetings... oh and Happy Halloween