Need for Speed 4 High Stakes

What works

• Installer (from ISO and CD)
• Game, single and split-screen mode (without glitches)
• Sound and music
• Movies
• Glide render (3D acceleration)
• Add-on cars and tracks
• GamePad
• Loading screens
• Mouse pointer

What does not

• Original 3D setup (shows "Could not get 'HardWareKey' value" error), but solved with patch
• Higher resolutions than 1024x768x16 (glide)
• D3D mode.
  
• I have to press alt+tab once in main menu screen so that keyboard respond (may be my Xorg version)

Workarounds

What was not tested

• Online multiplayer mode

1. Open up winecfg and change "Windows Version:" from "Windows 2000" to "Windows 98".
2. Mount your Game CD (if you mount ISO image, D: driver should be directory where you mounted iso. Fe: "mount -t iso9660 -o loop NFS.iso ~/NFS" , D: drive should be /home/'user'/NFS. Otherwise receive a message that the installation should be done from CD)
3. Run wine Setup.exe
4. Select Full Installation
5. If complete change back to "Windows 2000"

Hardware tested

Graphics:

• GPU:
• Driver:

Additional Comments

1.0 Installation
1.1 Open up winecfg and change "Windows Version:" from "Windows 2000" to "Windows 98".
1.2 Mount your Game CD
1.3 Run wine Setup.exe
1.4 Select Full Installation
1.5 If complete change back to "Windows 2000"

2.0 Downloads needed

2.1 Choose the NFS: HS SP (2.1A) Download
Note: You can choose the EP package too. it includes some new tracks and cars. (There are better ones on the net, so I don't really advertise this)
2.1.1 Run the Patch and choose everything under "NFS HS Updates" except "Vista Fixes" which are untested
Note: You can safely ignore any errors. The 3dsetup won't run in wine, so don't waste your time!

3.0 Choosing the 3D Renderer

You can now choose if you want d3d as your renderer or glide (through OpenGL.)
I have to say that I like the OpenGL approach more then the d3d one. It looks a bit nicer and is more stable for me.
On the other hand many people had problems with it and it needs additional steps to set up. 
 

4.0 D3D Approach
4.1 Save the following lines to a file, i.e. nfs_d3d.reg
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\Electronic Arts\Need for Speed High Stakes]
"3D Card"="NVidia TNT2"
"3D Device Description"="NVIDIA RIVA TNT2"
"D3D Device"=dword:00000001
"Group"="D3D"
"Hardware Acceleration"=dword:00000001
"InstallPath"="c:\\Program Files\\Electronic Arts\\Need for Speed High Stakes"
"Thrash Driver"="d3d"
"Thrash Resolution"="1024x768"
"Triple Buffer"=dword:00000000
"Version"="4.00"

4.2 Check if the installpath is right.
4.3 Run wine regedit nfs.reg
4.4 Go to your NFS: HS directory and overwrite the d3da.dll with the one from the folder 3dSetup.bak. (You must not use the DirectX 8 d3da.dll shipped with the downloaded Patch, it will look horrible!)
4.5 Run the Game!

5.0 Glide Wrapper Approach (Optional)

5.1 You can experiment with the settings, but I present you here mine:
Resolution 
"try HighRes"
experimental - leave default if problems
Refresh rate
"by app" 







Mipmapping
"force trilinear" or "generate mipmaps"
experimental - leave default if problems
vertical sync 
"always on"







Limit feature set
"most fancy"
experimental - leave default if problems
Thread policy
"One thread for both"

Important! - change to something else if the game doesn't work

Additionally, please be sure to not set "Triple Buffer" on when using Glide!

5.2 Go to 3dSetup directory in your NFS directory an run Spot3DSetup.exe. If everything is right, the selected rendering device ought to be "Glide Device". In this case just hit OK and you're done.
5.3 Run the Game!

6.0 Troubleshooting

6.1 Error Msg: "Your Diskdrive has less than 1MB free"
Solution: Set the Compatibility for nfshs.exe in Winecfg to "Windows 98"
Note: This shouldnt be happen anymore with the StockPatch 2.1A and "Mercurys 1Mbyte error patch" selected.
6.2 In console: GLX BadMatch(bla)
Solution: Change your Nvidia drivers! 9742 has a bug. Use 9629 or 9755
6.3 You have just a black screen.
Solution #1: If it happens to you, that there is no sound after launching the game and starting a course will make your screen turn dark, please use this workaround:

1. After starting the game, press Alt + Tab (with GNOME or KDE, other Desktop Environments or Window Managers might have other ways to do this) multiple times to change to another program. Your resolution will be horrible wrong, but this is OK.
2. Change back to your Need For Speed High Stakes window.
3. You should hear music now and your game will not crash anymore when starting a course.
   

Solution #2: The wrapper does not like the videos very well. Go to Data/Movies folder and rename, or remove these 2 files:

• EATUMBLE.MAD
• NFSTITLE.MAD

Solution #3: Configure the Glidewrapper to use another threading model.

6.4 Problems with Sound

Solution: First try the workaround described above ("Solution #1"). Additionally, check if you selected ALSA as your sound output engine and disabled all emulation options.

6.5 I have no Mouse!

Solution: Mouse does only work in the "One Thread for both" mode (Glide), if this doesn't work for you, you could try the d3d mode.

6.6 I'm getting a crash if I use the d3d approach!

Check in your NFS: HS directory that you have a d3da.dll file which is exactly 92KByte big. If not, follow step 4.4.

6.7 My game crashes with the message "AMF=5 screen.c(563)"!

Solution: Obviously the graphics settings are wrong and your GlideWrapper might also have crashed due to these wrongs settings! While the GlideWrapper settings might be the reason for this as well, most likely this is a problem with your Need For Speed graphics settings. Use the following steps to make Need For Speed High Stakes working again:

1. Download my Config file fixer: http://www.ionic.de/GlideFix.bz2 (This program is free software, you can also download the source here: http://www.ionic.de/GlideFix-Source.tar.bz2 - note that you will need Lazarus for compiling the source yourself.)
2. Unpack it using bunzip2 GlideFix.bz2
3. Run the programm. You can do this from your current directory, of course. You must not use Wine due to the fact, that this program is a Linux binary.
4. Chose the file "config.dat" which has to be fixed in the program. Be sure to have full write permissions in all necessarry directories. Mostly, you will find your config.dat in your Need For Speed directory -> SaveData -> config.dat.
5. Click the patch button.

If a message appears which says, that the patching was done successfully, your problem should now be solved. If you have problems, please drop me a mail.

7. Changes

25.02.2009

• Cosmetic changes only (removed faulty chars)

22.10.2008

• Highlighted important parts
• Multiple typo fixes
• Added some new troubleshooting section
• Cosmetic changes

11.02.2008

• things got more easier with the new Stock Patch (build 1.34)
• fixed a typo in the reg file for the d3d approach, which caused the "game data corruption bug"

01.09.2007

• moved to NFS: HS Stock Patch 1.24 (things should be hopefully easier now)
• added the d3d approach
• added some new things to the Troubleshooting section
• added some tips for the Glidewrapper configuration
• guide almost completely rewritten

24.03.2007

• cosmetic changes
• changed Thread policy to "Use one for both", due to memory access faults with the old setting ("Use system thread")

24.11.2006

• added a note about "DynamicTwinView" which I stumbled upon.
• more format changes
• updated Troubleshooting Section, removed one typo and added a possible solution for those "magical hangs"

19.11.2006

• Some format changes for better readability
• Updated Troubleshooting Section, for people who had problem with the "black screen"
• Added note about nvidia-drivers
• Updated Glide wrapper settings