NuWon Flurry of Activity - September 13, 2021
Suddenly there is a flurry of activity over at the NuWon network (also known as NeuWon)!
As you may recall NuWon are the replacement servers that will once again allow us to play Swat 3 online (as well as many other old Sierra games). For the longest time the website for NuWon wasn't functioning properly as the owner Ben was busy with real life and didn't have time to fix it. Just when I was losing faith I noticed that the website has been redesigned and fixed. You can now once again log in properly and post on their forums.
Ben has also been emailing me in the last few days details about a new method to register the CD keys to play on the Swat 3 server. The original method of using the Sierra account manager will be replaced with something that functions better. This will need to be added to the Last Resort installer once the NuWon registration app is finished.
The last piece of the puzzle that I have been waiting on is the admin app so we can properly control troublemakers on the Swat 3 server. Once all those things are accomplished we can finally release the updated Last Resort mod and start up the Swat 3 servers!
Write comment (1 Comment)Police Simulator: Patrol Officers - June 13, 2021
There is a new early access police game that has promise on Steam called Police Simulator: Patrol Officers. I have followed the progress of several police simulator games and so far this one appears to be the best of the bunch. While they aren't an action packed Swat style game they still will give the feel of being an everyday patrol officer.
Coop multiplayer is planned for Q3 of 2021.
Link to visit the official website.
Below are two videos of a Twitch streamer playing an early release version.
Important Note: Click on "watch on Youtube" box at the bottom left to view the video properly
The game will be released June 17th if you think this might be your cup of tea.
Write comment (3 Comments)Zero Hour Coop Map Unlock (Updated) - May 19, 2021
The Swat style game Zero Hour has released a big update that includes 2 new maps. I have updated the tutorial I made about how to unlock all of Zero Hour's coop maps.
One controversial feature with the game is that you have to unlock the maps one at a time with earned points. For casual gamers this can be a frustrating feature. You can thankfully modify your game file to unlock all the maps with a simple Hex Editor. I have also made the file available to download at the bottom of that tutorial.
Thanks again to Dark Synopsis for suggesting buying the game and for helping test the original hack.
Write comment (2 Comments)Forging ahead - March 24, 2021
I finished my side project of cataloging the list of shared textures in the official Sierra maps. This will ensure that we have the largest version available of each texture since some maps used smaller versions of the same texture. I hope that explanation wasn't confusing.
Today I finished the code changes to the Last Resort launcher and prepared all the files necessary to make an installer build. As I type this I am updating one of my laptops for testing of this build. I have also decided to include MPEG-4 versions of the Swat 3 movies in the installer to help with the Swat 3 startup crash. Originally the replacement movies were encoded in the XVID format but after some research I have settled on MPEG-4 instead since Windows 7, 8, and 10 are supposed to natively support this codec. Lets hope my internet research is correct, lol.
Soon I also want to get the Swat 3 game server back up and running. I haven't forgotten about this important step in the process.
Write comment (4 Comments)Ready Or Not Game Rescued - March 22,2021
Finally some good news.
It appears that the developers of "Ready or Not" will have an influx of money. Perhaps the game won't be vapourware after all.
Team17 have entered into a partnership with the developers announced in the video below.
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Side Distraction - March 8, 2021
Using my super power of procrastination I have been working this last week on an app to sort through all of Swat 3's textures and create a list of duplicate textures.
Why is it taking all week? 1) I am shitty coder. 2) I am only working very part time. 3) Other games need playing.
I have been wanting to do this for years since I first noticed that Swat 3 used many of the same textures but just renamed them from mission to mission. For an example "a_door2.bmp" is probably identical to "b_door2.bmp" and so on.
Why you may ask? This list of duplicate textures will help during the texture upgrade process in the Last Resort mod.
A secondary future goal may be to hack all of the .scn files of the Sierrra made maps so that they share a single texture. This will help keep file sizes smaller and also allow easier updating of textures as they get improved. Not sure I will ever get to this step though but that is partially why I am making this app.
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