A patch for the Need For Speed 4: High Stakes. This is a side project of the Need For Speed III Modern Patch. Currently, it has a small amount of fixes. The key features of this patch are portability (no more registry!) and high poly cars support (it is useful for modding). There is still no widescreen resolutions support.
How to install
- Copy DATA and SAVEDATA directories from the NFS4 CD to a new empty directory.
- Extract contents of the nfs4_modern_patch.7z (1.2MB) into that directory with replacement of files.
- Done!
Find other NFS4 fans for the network games in our Telegram group chat!
If you wish to find someone who wants to play NFS4 with you, join this Telegram group chat.
Plans: Milestone 1 (Full Widescreen Support)
Goal: $500.
Collected: $864 (the surplus will be moved to the next milestone).
Status: suspended.
Mandatory set of features:
- Refactoring of the thrash init and get resolutions list code. It have to solve some compatibility problems with D3D renderers.
- Widescreen resolutions support for the gameplay. It will be possible to choose it from the graphics settings in a general way.
- Proper handling of all aspect ratios (from 5:4 to 16:9, inclusive 4:3 and 16:10). HUD will be adopted automatically for every supported resolution.
- Better modding abilities. AllowHugeTextures setting support, which will allow to use textures up to 2048×2048.
- Patching of the voodoo2a.dll to add an ability to use widescreen resolutions (a Glide API extension, by default only d3da.dll can use widescreen resolutions).
- 32bpp support in the voodoo2a.dll (another Glide API extension).
- Huge textures support in the voodoo2a.dll (and again, it's also a Glide API extension).
It is planned to release v1.0.0 when these features will be done and they will be stable. I'm planning to include some other nice features into the first release, but the list is not predefined. For example, I'll try to remove effect limitations in the menu for the D3D renderers.
No matter what I do, I keep getting "Thrash driver not found". Do I need to go to Thrash driver university for 4 years to understand how to get this to work? Goddamn, write some instructions or do a dir *.* /s>howtoconfigurethrash.txt so we can see where all the files go! >:(
@ Mr.#150: There are 3 simple instructions at veg's download page:
1) Copy DATA and SAVEDATA directories from the NFS4 CD to a new empty directory.
2) Extract contents of the nfs4_modern_patch.7z (1.2MB) into that directory with replacement of files.
3) Done!
If you follow these, you should be fine!
Use nfs4.exe to start the game (do not rename the file). And keep in mind: this patch is for modern systems (Win7+), glide-mode is emulated and requires somewhat powerful hardware! The EA installer from original disc must not be used, only the two folders mentioned at instructions.
Get the game running this way, even if its choppy and pixelated.
Afterwards you can start tweaking and experimenting with files and ini settings.
It's not hard at all! Beyond that: For information on bugs and side-effects please read the pack insert and put your Q here.
Veg, I've spent my entire night searching for a way to play this game again after I learned that my physical CD had some kind of bizarre DRM called 'SafeDisc' that prevented modern windows from using it properly, and then I find this page and it worked like a charm on the first try.
So I just wanted to say "thank you".
Thanks VEG, it is thanks to good programmers like you we can still play these awesome games.
VEG, when do you plan finish the NFS4 project? Do you want start project with further part of NFS?
VEG, Estas bien? con esto del virus ninguno esta tranquilo, hoy jugue en red este juego con hamachi desde america hasta europa, espectacular, solo falta la compatiblidad en alta resolucion! la esperanza es lo ultimo que se pierde, gracias. xD
VEG, are you okay? With this virus none is calm, today I played this game online with hamachi from America to Europe, spectacular, only high-resolution compatibility is missing! hope is the last thing you lose, thanks. xD
Everything installed OK and I set up all my options then ran a race. All went good until I exited the race then it went back to my system with the Abort message and now the program starts but when it loads it exits and gives me the abort message. I tried extracting the files again but no luck. Any suggestions?
Disregard last comment. Reinstalled everything and now works fine.
Hello there NFS HP3 1998 and NFS High Stakes fans. I need a discord so I can contact you guys if I need any support directly. I have been a fan of NFS HP3 1998 since I was about 8 or 9 years old and I am very stoked to be part of this little forum community around it.
I just bought NFS High Stakes from Ebay, which your Patch allows me to play perfectly on Windows 10. I've also been using your Modern patch for NFS3, I've been able to enjoy that game with much improved graphics. Thank you very much for making these patches so we can continue enjoying these great games.
For me the there is only one game mode to play, which is Hot Pursuit. I find racing games to be boring, but Hot Pursuit makes racing fun (and often times hilarious). no offense to those who love pure racing games, it's just not for me. When I host the High Stakes game Hot Pursuit is not available to my great disappointment.
So far I've only been able to play High Stakes in split screen if I want to play 2 player, but I want to play 2 or more players on separate computers. Is there any way to host NFS High Stakes connected games with Hot Pursuit mode? Hopefully this doesn't take some major modification of software to enable.
I hope you are able to find another way to get donations, I would be happy to give back to you for all you've done. Thanks Again!
ZaticZ, as far as I remember, there are different network play modes (like sending positions of cars or sending keypresses), and one of them allows to use Hot Pursuit. Or am I wrong?
Hi, VEG and others,
I've been tinkering with options and I still don't understand one thing which I thought is simple.
I have 5 screen resolutions to choose from in graphics settings, and only 16-bit color settings. How to choose 32-bit colors? Is it up to this modern patch or does it depend on something else?
For example, it would be perfect if I could get 1400 x 1050 x 32 to work, like in this settings screenshot, but I don't have this offered. Can I get this in any way?
I'm using a fine laptop, I suppose, i5-7200U, GeForce GTX 950M 4 GB VRAM, etc. so I hope I can enjoy High Stakes in 32-bit colors and the desired resolution.
Thanks for any help and advice!
amstel, it depends on a renderer, just try different ones (ThrashDriver ini setting). Also you can try renderers from the NFS3 Modern Patch. All the renderers are patched in the NFS3 Modern Patch, and I barely touched them in the NFS4 Modern Patch.
1400x1050 seems non-standard. If none of the renderers list it, I guess, you need to add such resolution as supported somewhere in driver settings, so the GPU driver will list this resolution as allowed to the renderer.
What you did with NFSIII (I downloaded the full pack via myabandonware dot com) is divine. THANK YOU. You made a perfect game PERFECT for TODAY. Please, do the same with this one. PLEASE achieve that level of fix and polish you did with NFSIII.
Hi VEG,
first of all thank you so much for your work on NFS3 & 4 - you're such a MVP! Please continue patching NFS4 to the point you have the third installment.
After playing around with the graphics settings, I somehow messed up my game and it won't enter the game menu (error message: 'AMF=5 screen.c(563)'). It crashes right after the intro video.
Please tell me which file I have to recover to undo my changes. Don't want to lose my savegame :).
Thanks in advance!
Ivan, I think that it is related to the graphics settings. As far as I heard, it might be caused by enabling triple buffering. So, you need to disable it. Any HEX editor will help, but I don't have the details, so I'm afraid that you'll need to figure it out on your own.
It will look like this. Make a fresh installation of the game into a separate directory, make a copy of the standard configuration file, then start the game, change the setting, then compare original configuration file with the modified one to figure out which byte is used to store value of the setting. And then change this byte in your current config file.
VEG, I'm responding to post #161, there are different network play modes but the Hot Pursuit mode is not available during network play. The game only lets you play Hot Pursuit locally on one computer with one or two players (split screen, which is not very good). It would be great if there were a trick to enable it.
Have you found any way we can make donations to you? I'd be happy to pay something to you for the great work you've done. Thanks!
i don't have the original cd to copy the 'DATA' and 'SAVEDATA' directories. can anyone give it to me by drive or something? here's my email - khanwasif002@gmail.com
Please finish this project and have it running like the NFSIII one! I can see a lot of people is still waiting...
The beta patch available nowadays is already perfect and the active playerbase is enjoing it everyday! Some of them already posted before so thank you for reviving it. Though since we're talking about HS, a game waaaaay more modded than HP which is perfect by itself, once you can resume the job on this I suggest you might fix the serial number problems related to cars that use # between 51 and 255 (FF on the corresponding byte at fedata files) which theoretically is the limit. The polycount limit removal was the main feature the modding community got pleased to have so this will be a comparable revolution.
Last but not least, hope you're fine in every aspect.
I really do hope that at some point this becomes as polished as the NFS 3 patch. Maybe even with 21:9 support, eh?
first: thanks veg for the nfs 3 and 4 patches.
i only have one issue with high stakes. i have terrible network lag when playing with a friend over openvpn. NFS 3 works really great. what could that be?
DON'T enable tripple buffering.
It'll give you a "boing" sound and exit with an error next time you boot the game.
Delete the SAVEDATA/config.dat file and restart.
This patch is awesome.
I have a problem, I get an error that says STREAM - unable to open file 'Data\Audio\Music\menu1.asf'
Jeiku, you should copy the DATA and SAVEDATA directories from the CD. Probably, you used NFS4 installer, but the installer doesn't copy all the required files from the CD.
Hi VEG, when do you finish this patch? Or can you at least release the source code of your project so that maybe other programmers in the community can continue your work?
It would be nice, but as with many other cases, it can be legally shut down. This small patch will likely be not, but full blown reverse engineered source port likely will be, at least by the time it matures enough.
Speaking of which, there is some nice project that uses completely new engine, bullet physics etc. So far, one can only drive some cars on tracks and it's in its complete infancy, but has a lot of potential - OpenNFS. It aims to support NFS1 - 6, with NFS3 being the best supported right now. Some veteran NFS modders seem to be involved in some way too.
There is no C/C++ code in this project. All the changes were done in pure assembly. The project is still suspended, but I didn't forget about it, and still want to return to it one day.
Hi VEG, hope you are well. I have a couple of questions, regarding both NFS 3 Hot Pursuit and High Stakes. I know this project is suspended, but they are just things I noticed and I'm wondering about. So, here goes:
NEED FOR SPEED III HOT PURSUIT
1) How come the cops in the PlayStation version are much faster and aggresive, and would it be possible to make the PC cops like the PSX ones?
2) Could you change the cops to resemble the PSX version cops? Like in the PSX version you have a cool Diablo Interceptor cop following you.
NEED FOR SPEED HIGH STAKES
1) How come when traffic is on in pursuit mode or racing there are only 2 traffic cars? In NFS 3 there's much more traffic when it's on.
2) Same as above, if you ever continu the patch, can you make the cops more like in the PSX version? Much more aggresive and quick :-).
Let me know and I wish you the best of luck!
Sorry, I didn't investigate this part of the games, so don't know what to reply. I would like to add an additional option which would enable Lamborghini Diablo SV for cops. It's an old idea for far future =)
Hi VEG, thank you so much for all you have done!
Is it possible to save replays of online races? It´s possible in the NFS3 version I play...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2TiQinNm5M
Thanks again and greetings from Germany,
Ronny
Sorry, I don't know. Never tried to do it.
So its been a while since I have played this game and I'm noticing a very low amount of traffic on Hot Pursuit game play in NFS4. Anyone know if there is a setting in one of the menus that can fix this. It seems like I used to be able to tweak traffic volume within the track settings.
You know what? Nevermind. My memory was the problem. I'm expecting single race mode traffic numbers while in Hot Pursuit mode. I forgot that the cop cars take up traffic spawns.
Is it normal for the music not to be working?
Music and speech aren't working...
It should work.
As much as I've been playing it the past week... no. I even tried things such as reinstalling and some other experiments.
Maybe it's because I downloaded the game from the internet and installed it from the setup I downloaded...
Hi Veg, I have a strange question about this patch.
I can get it set up working perfectly, but the problem is that I want to use the software renderer, because I prefer the way it looks. Do you know how I could do that?
You can change renderer in the nfs4.ini. Set ThrashDriver=softtri, as far as I remember.
I did try that earlier but the game failed to open when I ran it - thanks for the reply, though! I'll try looking around online if you don't know what the issue could be.
Alright so, I found out that the audio files were somewhat edited a few days after the original files that were on the disc, (Had an old burned disc) so I took those and replace them and now I can have music. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Ok, I figured out what my problem was.
To run the game with the software renderer, I just had to run with Windows 8 compatibility! (After setting ThrashDriver=softtri in nfs4.ini, of course)
On the small chance that someone else wants to run this with the software renderer, that's how it worked for me.
Hi Veg,
thank you for the great patch. I am now able to play this awesome game on Linux (via wine). Performance is great, bluetooth controller is even working with force feedback :-)
Good job!
Greetings from Germany
Sebastian
Are these steps correct?
Mount image.
Copy DATA and SAVEDATA from CD into new folder .
Copy modern patch content into that folder.
Launch NFS.
Doesnt work on most recent WIn10.
Error Message: Memory Access Violation.
Makes no sense: when Installing from cd and Installable Patch from Abandonware (https://www.myabandonware.com/game/need-for-speed-high-stakes-bgf#download) then it works - but is VERY ugly. NFS3 looks much better. WHat can I do to launch and enjoy hires?
Yeah, it should work. Try to change renderer (the ThrashDriver setting) to another one in the nfs4.ini. Look into drivers directory for list of possible values (you can use any subdirectory name as a value for the ThrashDriver setting).
Hi VEG, your NFS III patch is brilliant. When will you be able to go back to developing the full NFS4 widescreen patch?
Hi VEG. I've wanted to leave you a comment for a very long time, but didn't know how to put what I was thinking. I was checking out your blog when there was a commotion over the progress of the Need For Speed III (or maybe IV?) and you decided to close or return donations. I recall reading the comments sections and seeing that there was just one person who was acting all angry and annoying everybody else. I didn't post then, but I wish that I had, to tell that person to shut-up and to ask you to ban them because they were ruining a great thing for everybody. I wish that I had told them to go away at the time.
I don't think there was any need for you to stop taking donations or to return them. You weren't obliged to do anything for anybody, and people who were donating were doing exactly that: donating by their own will. It seemed to me that all the noise was being caused by one jerk who, in my opinion, could've just been banned and had their posts deleted (or not) and everybody else would've had no problem.
Maybe this seems like a weird post, but I've thought about it from time to time since then, wanting to put my thoughts into a post but not being able to do a good job of it. This probably still isn't a good job of it, lol.
So, that aside, thanks for the work you put into these titles. It'd really fantastic that you've done this. I hope to see you tackle the whole original (and the only good part of the) series, eventually: NFS 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. But, regardless, I'm really glad for what you've given us. Thanks!
The poster appropriately named "Egotistical" should have all their comments deleted, and their email and IP should've just been blocked. Please delete their comments, VEG. They are a colossal idiot and don't deserve to have anybody see their comments. And nobody in this thread agreed with their awful comments or behaviour.