Need For Speed 4 Modern Patch - Donations?

[Rider66]

Good to know further development is still in progress.
Well, I've got a question here. VEG, do you have any plans for limits adjustments for 1.0.0 or later? Especially playable cars limit?

[FranknFurter]

Welcome back, too ... speaking of improvements, is there any way to finally allow reflections on wheels and/or driver/driver's head parts in-game (:OD, :OH and :H..W) in future releases of the patch?

[Zpectre]

I understand people who want to improve the game's capabilities, but right now I feel that VEG probably wants to focus on the basic things first. We still don't have native widescreen resolution in NFS4, how can we be speaking of reflections on wheels and car limit? It doesn't make any sense. The primary goal of the project has always been to make the game compatible with modern OSes and modern features, not to create an enhanced version of it. We're lucky that VEG took the time to increase the game's memory buffer, and I think we should be grateful for it rather than take it for granted, especially because he did it for both games, NFS3 and 4.

Let the milestones be reached first, then we speak of other things, I'd say.

[MADMAN_nfs]

Gotta agree with Zpectre here. I think it's too early to ask for new features. Furthermore these questions have been answered before. 

Everything is possible, theoretically. But this task will require extremely enormous amount of time for reverse engineering and rewriting needed parts of the game. I can't even imagine how much time it needs. Possibly, it will be easier just to rewrite this game from scratch

The only real task for reasonable time is expanding the limit of installed custom cars. Adding new tracks (even in the format of the proper version of the game) is maybe 100 times more complicated task because there is too much hardcode for each track inside the executable. Yes, not all information is stored in external files! Many things like "disable horizon here and here on this track" and "play these sounds here and here on these tracks" are hardcoded in the game code. So, proper implementation of simple adding of new tracks require reworking of the track format (to store in it all hardcoded things), rewriting all hardcode to use the new information from the track files, etc. At the moment I'm not brave enough to start such project.
[...]
Unfortunately, expanding limit of cars quantity isn't included in current list of mandatory features. It is not a trivial task, it is not a "just fix this number" task. There are several static arrays with size for 50 cars, so I have to allocate new arrays and change all places where these arrays are used for using new bigger arrays. Every pointer have to be fixed. I would like to do it for the NFS3 and NFS4 sometimes. So, the feature is in the long-term todo list.

Hello Evgeny,
[...]
Now for programming dummies, does this mean the non-reflective effects on some parts only need to be enabled on th hardcode or that enabling these effects (reflections) on these parts would be a completely new task?
[...]

It means that if there is no such code in the game, it will be a completely new task and it will be extremely hard to implement. Actually, I'm not sure what exactly are you talking about (I've never even tried to create a new car), but it seems that you're talking about some new thing like I had described before.

[Zpectre]

In fact, I think the reason why NFS4 doesn't have reflective wheels is that EA never intended for anyone to make 3D wheels for the game... The reflexive effect was simulated with texture shading in most cases.

I have very little experience with pointers, but anybody who has done even a little hex editing to game files knows that increasing the size of tables is an absolute nightmare, because almost always the table is "just" large enough to fit in a section of the executable. If you make a new table in a different area, you have to edit all the pointers to it everywhere they point to the table in the first place. MW has remained rigid in structure for years because of that, everything is in the damn central database and what isn't, is in the EXE, and also because there are file size checks to prevent people from using modded files (for various reasons, most importantly to prevent online cheating).

It's probably harder to do in a ROM file because the ROM has limited space available, but I don't think it's much easier to do in an executable either.

[VEG]

Increasing cars limit is on my todo list, but it is not in the mandatory list. So, I'm planning to try to do it some day. But it is really a little bit tricky code in the game. I've tried to find the code which blocks Ferrari and Mercedes cars in the NFS4, I've spend several hours without proper result. I know that it is possible just to change attributes in the car files. I just thought to remove this limitation like it had been done in the NFS3. In the NFS3 I've fixed this problem in a minute, just because this code in the NFS3 was much simpler and there were two hardcoded strings "Ferrari" and "Mercedes", so it was easy to find it
I'm just trying to say that the code which works with cars is tricky and increasing the limit can't be done easily. I don't know how much time it will require, but I will try when other planned things will be done

[Zpectre]

Increasing cars limit is on my todo list, but it is not in the mandatory list. So, I'm planning to try to do it some day. But it is really a little bit tricky code in the game. I've tried to find the code which blocks Ferrari and Mercedes cars in the NFS4, I've spend several hours without proper result. I know that it is possible just to change attributes in the car files. I just thought to remove this limitation like it had been done in the NFS3. In the NFS3 I've fixed this problem in a minute, just because this code in the NFS3 was much simpler and there were two hardcoded strings "Ferrari" and "Mercedes", so it was easy to find it
I'm just trying to say that the code which works with cars is tricky and increasing the limit can't be done easily. I don't know how much time it will require, but I will try when other planned things will be done

Yeah I agree.

The amount of tracks I think it's a lost cause, because there are some things that are highly dependant on the slot. Some tracks are more sensitive to crash with detailed cars for example, but if you take a problem track and put it in a different slot, the problem disappears... This is an example of something which isn't obvious at first sight, unlike the cars that the police uses.

[VEG]

Hello VEG, I've made a donation of $50 to the project, but it was a while ago, hope you got it.

Yeah, it was 2017/02/14 as far as I can see. Thank you for your support.

BTW, have anyone seen some beta stuff of the NFS4? I mean maybe some screenshots were published before the release of the NFS4, or maybe even early beta versions, etc.

[Keiiko]

BTW, have anyone seen some beta stuff of the NFS4?

only demo and some documets for nfs3

EDIT#4:
Electronic Arts in Development of Need for Speed: High Stakes for the PC
Electronic Arts Announces the Highly Anticipated Release of Need for Speed: High Stakes for the PC

and original webpage as was in Aug 2000

interesting web with interesting stuff on it

[WiLL]

Looks good, guys he got the $ an had a good lunch. So have a good day nice links too yawn. .

[VEG]

It was published in the Next Generation Magazine 44 (Aug 1998), a month before the release of the NFS3. So, it seems that it is an original looking of development of tracks of the NFS3/NFS4

[WiLL]

Hi VeG um,.I haven't used Studio Max, program ever is it a Freeware at all? Just wanted ask a few Questions, is all. When you say it exports them.out to Nfs'4 game engine, what does that all mean?

Can Atlantic's,track be used on any other track, a lot for different, sounds an better, Cop call sounds,like Snowy, or Coastal track? Do you know if off the bat now? I'm still trying to make my project look better so far..I fixed, the texture prob. So good for me. Again,hope you can crack.more on the Track slots, pal good day.

[VEG]

I've just posted an interesting screenshot from an article about the NFS3. EA hadn't published that utility which converts tracks from the 3D Studio Max to in-game format. Just a small piece of interesting information.



Another interesting screenshot. It seems that it's from a beta version of the game

Sorry for offtopic. Maybe it is better to move my last 2 posts to a separate topic.

[BoxCarRacer]

VEG,

You're right that screenshot is from a beta version of the game, can confirm because of the color of the porsches' name plate, you can also see these yellow nameplates on the demo in NFS 4.

Have any of you guys tried to use SweetFX+Reshade with NFS 4? I was wondering since I saw a NFS4 video on youtube titled "Need for Speed High Stakes Reshade" and the ambient graphics look marvelous.

I mention this since it works with directx, and the modern patch has the flexibility of handling direct x.

[ExoticLover]

Now, only if we can get a hold of that Studio Max tool to replace T3ED as it's compatible with both NFS3 and NFS4. I don't know how's NFS4 Modern Patch is going to do, but it's 2017 and we still haven't gotten a decent newer version of NFS4. I can wait for as long as needed, there's no need to rush though. Gonna try NFS3 NextGen. I only checked again at Rejzor site just to see NextGen, and came back here because of that.

Wow, NFS3 NextGen is beautiful.