“Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit” is the first 3D game of my life. When I've seen the game first time, I was extremely amazed because I'd never seen 3D games before. It was in 2000. I can't count hours which I've spent in the Split Screen mode with my cousin. And the music... it's so awesome, so I'd recorded it on an audio cassette, and listened it hundreds of times.
And now, years later, I had tried to play this game. But the game refused to run on modern hardware. So, I had tried to investigate how to fix it. I had a little carried away by this. As the result I've created an impressive patch. 25000+ lines of assembly code, 150+ days of reverse-engineering and coding, 40 sheets of A4 paper were covered with writing during development, a huge list of changes...
Hometown in widescreen resolution
Key Features
- Full widescreen and HD resolutions support. You can easily use resolutions like 1920×1200. Now the game supports all aspect ratios from the 5:4 to 16:9, inclusive 4:3 and 16:10. HUD will be adopted automatically for every aspect ratio.
- Improved graphics. No more cars with non-rotating wheels, better textures and models for other's cars (original game reduces size of textures even on maximum graphics settings), better graphics in the rear view, etc.
- New graphics settings: Rear View Detail (High/Medium/Low), Rear View Camera From (In Car Camera/Active Camera, it decreases the blind spot), Fog (On/Off, like in the NFS4), Wide View Angle setting (useful for the widescreen resolutions).
- Fog effect and light beams support in DirectX 6/7 (they were exclusive effects for the 3dfx Voodoo).
- Portability. All system settings are loaded from the ini file. No more registry!
- Compatibility. Most problems with modern Windows were fixed. Full support of multi-core processors. Original game can work properly only on one core. This change dramatically improves performance of the nGlide and the dgVoodoo.
- Alt+Tab support. You can safely minimize the game when nGlide or dgVoodoo driver is used.
- Built-in screenshoter. Just press Print Screen key, and a screenshot will be saved into the screenshots subdirectory in the JPG/PNG/BMP format.
- Improved keyboard support in the menu. Now it is much more consistent. You can also use the Tab and Shift+Tab to switch between elements.
- Better modding abilities. The game doesn't crash when high-poly cars are used. Also it possible to use huge textures up to 2048×2048 (original limit was 256×256).
- Optimizations. 10 times faster gameplay loading on modern systems. To skip loading animation just press any key.
- Bugfixes. More than 200 changes at all!
Screenshots
Before and after: cars have better textures, side mirrors don't disappear
How to install
- Copy FEDATA and GAMEDATA directories from the NFS3 CD to a new empty directory.
- Extract contents of the nfs3_modern_patch.7z (1.6MB) into that directory with replacement of files.
- Done!
Join our Telegram group chat!
Join this Telegram group chat. You also can find other NFS3 fans for network multiplayer games.
If you are a server, ports 1030 and 9803 have to be accessible from the network, so you have to add the appropriate permit rule in your firewall for the nfs3.exe and configure a port forwarding properly. If you're a client, port forwarding isn't required.
Plans
Donated: $270.
Status: suspended.
Planned features:
- [Done]
Sharp fonts and other elements in menus on D3D renderers, just like when Glide renderers are used. - [Done]
The problem with visible black polygons (e.g. near the Old Church) on the DX7 renderer will be solved. - [Done]
Movies support for the DX8 renderer. - [Done]
32bpp rendering for movies. Menu will also work in 32bpp video mode and it will look better. Now it works in 16bpp. - Simple windowed mode for the DX6/DX7/DX8 renderers. It will be possible to enable it using ini file.
- Investigation about how to add an ability to restore minimized game when it works in fullscreen mode.
- Separate “Frame Size” and “Frame Cropping” graphics settings instead of the current combined one.
- Rewriting of the code which uses the mouse cursor in the exclusive mode. The game will use the default system behavior of the mouse cursor. It will solve many small problems with the mouse cursor in this game. For example, your cursor will be able to leave the window of the game (when it works in a window) without pressing any keys. Also it will solve problems with mouse lagging on some computers.
- Solving of the problems with loading of ghost and replay files from other players (when the other player has a little bit different set of cars in his game).
- An optional ability to change structure of the game directories using the ini file. It may be useful for modding. It will be more flexible than the install.win from the original versions. For example, you will be able to move all save files to some separate directory (e.g. "savedata").
- An optional ability to load a thrash driver from the root directory, as it was in the original version of the game.
These features are planned for the v1.6.1, v1.6.2 and v1.6.3. A beta version is here.
21:9 is too wide for this game.
Just wanted to say thank you for this and also thank you for being so active here and helping people out :) Good karma!
Does this work on Windows 11 23H2? I can get to the main menu just fine but the game crashes when I start a race. Game works fine before applying this modern patch but then I'm missing out on all the goodness this modern patch does.
So I copied the game files over to my laptop with Windows 11 23H2 on it and the games starts a race just fine. Not sure why it won't start a race on my desktop. Just shows a black box on my desktop. I created a memory dump and used WinDbg to analyze it. It's reporting the information below. Any ideas? Anything else I could try?
SYMBOL_NAME: wow64cpu!CpupSyscallStub+13
MODULE_NAME: wow64cpu
IMAGE_NAME: wow64cpu.dll
STACK_COMMAND: dt ntdll!LdrpLastDllInitializer BaseDllName ; dt ntdll!LdrpFailureData ; ~0s; .ecxr ; kb
FAILURE_BUCKET_ID: BREAKPOINT_80000003_wow64cpu.dll!CpupSyscallStub
OS_VERSION: 10.0.22621.1
BUILDLAB_STR: ni_release
OSPLATFORM_TYPE: x64
OSNAME: Windows 10
IMAGE_VERSION: 10.0.22621.2506
FAILURE_ID_HASH: {289a12fb-10fd-bb5b-3edc-4567046643a5}
The issue on my desktop PC seems to be related to nGlide. The game works with DX8 and Softtri. Not sure how to get nGlide working though.
Found this note on PCGamingWiki...
When running nfs3.exe as administrator on my desktop PC, nglide works. Strange that I don't need to do this on my laptop.
Hi, VEG. Really appreciate your work. I want to run this game on authentic hardware and keep the original look, plus my graphics card doesn't support nGlide, what files do I need to copy only to add the DX7 mode and nothing else?
Just install the patch normally and change nglide to dx7 in the nfs3.ini.
不行，根本就打不开，一直提示找不到所需文件或已损坏（完全按照这里的步骤来的）
whtian, what editions of the game are you trying to patch? The patch supports EU and US editions of the game only. I am aware that there was a Japanese edition of the game that is not compatible with the patch. Was there a Chinese edition of the game too? If it's the case, it might be not compatible with the patch the same way as the Japanese edition.
Also, please use English. I can't read Chinese without Google Translate.
Thanks for your work. If I have the Modern Bundle 1.5.3, can I just drop in the latest version? Or has more content been added that isn't included with this patch?
Michael, you can just extract the latest patch version on top of the Modern Bundle.
NFS3 supports ATi Rage Pro 3dcif with nfs3.exe -ragepro command and asks ragea.dll, just this file does not come with my nfs3 cd.
Someone has more Rage 3rash Modules (ragea.dll) files? Thank you
ragea.dll 1998.08.13.1400 from NHL 99 / NFS3 (works) bugs in menu
ragea.dll 1998.09.15.1730 from FIFA 99 / NFS3 (works) bugs in menu
ragea.dll 1998.09.30.1645 from NBA 99 / NFS4 (works) unreadable menu
It wasn't officially supported ever. The argument is just a leftover from development and it was never documented by EA.
I thought that you could just use DX5 with ATI Rage GPUs, or they didn't support DirectX?
Thank you Veg for you reply.
DX works better and faster with Rage3 and ATi, with CIF it looks bit different than D3D. Rage Pro / Rage XL is the last to support its own API, i just tested it out and it works somehow. Is there any way to get FOG working with NFS3/NFS4 with Rage Pro or Rage128 Pro cards?
I did not know that there was 3rash/Thrash OpenGL
3rash/Thrash API OpenGL renderers for classic EA games
https://web.archive.org/web/20190801135046/https://github.com/Verokster/3rash-module/tree/master/builds
https://archive.org/download/verokster/other/nfs3%20verokster%20ogl%20drivers%2027082022.zip
marxveix,
If they support DirectX 6, you could use Modern Patch with DX6 renderer, it should support fog. DX5 doesn't.
Hey guys. Great patch, however I am having an issue while racing at night time. The screen flickers with headlights turned on, mostly at the bottom only while moving regardless of whether I am using nGlide, DX7 or DGvoodoo.
Hi
Thank you very much for your contribution, great work!!
I wanted to ask you a question about the controls. I am testing on Linux - Xubuntu and the game works correctly with the patch but it does not detect any type of device, it fails due to wireless or cable. Would you know how to solve this problem?
Thank you so much!
Wadsy, this issue with Z-fighting when Projected Headlights are used still doesn't have a good solution. You can try to switch Headlights in the Graphics Settings from Projected to Vertex.
Rafa, unfortunately, I don't use Linux for games.
Thank you very much for your response, I will see if the solution you mention works and I will inform you if I have been successful.
I love it