Need For Speed III Modern Patch (HD + Widescreen + Portable)

[VEG]

The new patch for Need For Speed III is released. Page of the project: http://veg.by/en/projects/nfs3/

— Widescreen and big resolutions support. You can use 1920×1200 and other resolutions and all objects will have right proportions.
— Better car graphics (according to all cars except 1st player). In “High” car detail the game uses twice better textures. There is no non-rotating wheels and disappearing side-view mirrors anymore!
— Better view distance option. Now it affects also Rear View Mirror.
— Better support of Voodoo2/Glide. This mode supports special effects like fog during gameplay. nGlide 1.04.1 is used for Glide API support.
— Portability. The game uses ini file for initialization. No more registry keys! Ini file have to have same name as executable file, but with *.ini extension (e.g. for nfs3.exe it have to be nfs3.ini).
— Several optimizations. For example, original game makes a copy of music file when loading gameplay, maybe to solve problem with slow CD-ROMs in 90's. Now game plays gameplay music directly from source file. It saves a little time and 10 MiB of resource of your SSD on every gameplay start.
— Many errors and other things were fixed. See readme.txt for details.

How To Install:

1. Copy FEDATA and GAMEDATA directories from original CD to new empty directory.
2. Extract contents of nfs3-widescreen-patch.7z (1.1Mb) into that directory with replacement of files.
3. Done!

Screenshot (1280×720):

[Zeus]

- 6000+ lines of assembly code were written for this patch.
- 42 days were spent on the development.
- 14 sheets of A4 paper were covered with writing during development.

*clap* *clap* *clap*

[Manticore]

This is awesome! You should upload the file to PCGamingWiki

[VEG]

A small update. I've added DirectX 8 thrash video driver. Also I've added ability to choose any thrash driver via specifying filename in VideoDriver setting.

[rkk]

Wow! This is just amazing! Nice work!
I'm trying to achieve something similar with Ultim@te Race Pro. (Far to make it work though)

BTW: Are there any incompatibilities with i7 processors, Nvidia Optimus or Windows 8.1?

Whenever I successfully start the game (More about that later), everything seems to be working as the original game, but at a random amount of time (From ~0:30 to ~3 minutes) the game freezes and with it the whole OS. I have a secondary monitor running some monitor software, and whenever the game freezes everything freezes too, looks like the whole system is stuck. CTRL+ALT+DEL doesn't responds, just completely stuck.

I tried with some other patch (https://rejzor.wordpress.com/nfs3-patch/) (Clean new install) and the same is happening. It just seems to happen in NFS3, no other app nor game was able to lock my system up like this.

On the other hand (About running successfully the game) I can just run the game on the Integrated Graphics Card (Which may be causing system the lock? It's drawing the System UI so I guess that if it get's locked, the UI will be locked too).

Anyway, I have Nvidia Optimus on my Notebook, and whenever I try to use the Dedicated Nvidia GPU the game just crashes to desktop (Can't even see the intro movie) {in Voodoo2 mode}. When I have the game in D3D mode it doesn't crashes, but it somehow switches back to the integrated Intel GPU even if I set the game to run on the Dedicated GPU.

Luckily I can run DX5,DX8 and Voodoo2 modes using the Integrated GPU, but then the game freezes the whole OS after a short period of time.

I really don't know what could be causing this, I'm running the latest drivers of both Intel and Nvidia. Don't really care about using the Dedicated GPU as the Integrated one is enough, but the freezing OS just makes the game unusable.

Hope there is some way to fix this. Any ideas?
Greetings.

[Manticore]

I also have a laptop with i7 + Optimus. When I switch the game to Voodoo2 mode, it crashes when loading the race, however in D3D mode it works fine. I haven't encountered any issues yet.

[VEG]

Are there any incompatibilities with i7 processors, Nvidia Optimus or Windows 8.1?

Some users reported that DX5 thrash driver doesn't works on Windows 8.1. This is why I've added DX8 version, which have to work fine (except intro video). I have no idea why NFS3 freezes your system completely

I also have a laptop with i7 + Optimus. When I switch the game to Voodoo2 mode, it crashes when loading the race, however in D3D mode it works fine. I haven't encountered any issues yet.

When I'm using Voodoo2+nGlide, the game might close silently during loading sometimes (20% of cases), but sometimes it works fine (80%) on my system. I've tried voodoo2a.dll from nglide's compatibility page, but the problem is still here. DX5 and DX8 versions work without any problems, but there is no fog effect

When Voodoo2+nGlide is used and game is crashed, have you seen any error reporting, or game was closed silently?

[Zeus]

I also have a laptop with i7 + Optimus. When I switch the game to Voodoo2 mode, it crashes when loading the race, however in D3D mode it works fine. I haven't encountered any issues yet.

Does original game also crash in V2 mode with nGlide?

[Manticore]

Does original game also crash in V2 mode with nGlide?

No, the original game works fine in both D3D and V2 modes.

[VEG]

No, the original game works fine in both D3D and V2 modes.

I think that this problem may be (and have to be) fixed. Please do these things.
1. Copy glide3x.dll from widescreen patch to original NFS3 directory (without copying other files from the widescreen patch).
2. Download http://veg.by/files/nfs3/voodoo2_std.dll and save it as voodoo2a.dll to the root directory of the original game (replace original voodoo2a.dll).
3. Check if the game works correctly in voodoo2 mode (run it with -voodoo2 argument). Please test resolutions different from 640×480, it is very important!
4. Download http://veg.by/files/nfs3/voodoo2_xtd.dll and save it as voodoo2a.dll to the root directory of the original game (replace original voodoo2a.dll).
5. Check if the game works correctly in voodoo2 mode (run it with -voodoo2 argument). Please test resolutions different from 640×480, it is very important!
6. Unpack widescreen patch's archive to any new directory, get voodoo2.dll from this archive, save it as voodoo2a.dll to the root directory of the original game (replace original voodoo2a.dll).
8. Check if the game works correctly in voodoo2 mode (run it with -voodoo2 argument). Please test resolutions different from 640×480, it is very important!
Please write here the results.