Need for Speed Reinvented

It’s been a long time since I’ve announced a major leap in NFS3 evolution and here it is!

NFS3 NextGen is sort of a joint project between me (RejZoR) and Evgeny Vrublevsky. We were both working on our own versions of patches. Mine was sort of a collection of things that made NFS3 work on modern operating systems through easy to use installer/patch and Evgeny was actually reverse engineering the game. We met in spring 2015 and started testing together while I started working on NextGen patch. After our job was pretty much done and we part our ways, I was experiencing weird crashes and failures with the patch on Windows 10 using GeForce GTX 980 (I was testing with Radeon HD7950 initially), but with latest version of Evgeny’s patch, things are working great again. Tested the patch, updated some stuff and voila, here it is!

Highlights:

Proper full support for modern Windows operating systems, including latest Windows 10 in 32 and 64bit

Fully portable, no more ties to the registry

Full widescreen support with resolutions up to 4K (UHD) and beyond

Enhanced Direct3D 6 mode with advanced fogging and lighting effects

No Ferrari/Mercedes licensing restrictions in Hot Pursuit mode

New 3DSETUP_NXG for easy rendering mode selection

Ability to add and drive traffic cars (optional)

DirectSound3D/EAX support via audio wrapper

Easy to use patcher/installer

Many other small, but important and useful changes

Requirements:

Retail English version of Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit game (may work with others, but I can’t guarantee it)

Known compatibility issues:

IndirectSound Audio Wrapper will crash the game if you also have Creative ALchemy installed. Use ALchemy instead because it actually emulates proper EAX.

Game may crash when using Direct3D 6 mode on NVIDIA GeForce GTX 9xx series (Maxwell 2). Use nGlide instead.

Download:

Need for Speed 3: NextGen Patch

Changelog:

1.2.1 (2016-10-10)

Updated 3DSETUP_NXG to include Direct3D 7 mode and corrected broken ThrashDriver variables

1.2 (2016-09-25)

Updated patch core to version 1.6 (Evgeny’s Modern Edition Patch)

1.1 (2016-02-21)

Updated patch core to version 1.4 (Evgeny’s Modern Edition Patch)

1.0.1 (2016-01-30)

Re-arranged 3DSETUP_NXG 3D rendering modes, updated descriptions and made nGlide as default (best compatibility and performance)

1.0 Initial release (2016-01-27)

Includes Evgeny Vrublevsky’s patch v1.3.1 with enhanced Direct3D 6 mode

New installer/patcher with 3 install modes

New 3DSETUP_NXG for rendering mode selection

Removed Mercedes/Ferrari licensing limit

Optional drivable traffic cars (they are rubbish but fun! 🙂 )

DirectSound3D/EAX support through IndirectSound Audio Wrapper