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Colin McRae Rally 3

SilentPatch

Last update: July 27, 2023
Remastered edition of the game at home.

Developed right for the 20th anniversary of Colin McRae Rally 3, SilentPatch delivers more than just a set of fixes – with full widescreen support, numerous compatibility fixes, new technical features, Quality of Life improvements, and a scratch-made high definition UI optimized for 4K displays, it brings an experience comparable to an unofficial remaster of this classic 2002 rally game.

Fixes marked with can be configured/toggled via the INI file. The other new options have been added to in-game menus instead.

Essential fixes:

  • The game now lists all available display resolutions, lifting the limit of 128 resolutions and the 4:3 aspect ratio constraint.
  • The game will now try to pick the closest matching resolution instead of crashing on startup if launched with an invalid resolution specified in the config.
  • The game now defaults to desktop resolution on the first boot.
  • Several issues related to the sun rendering have been fixed – sun flickering with anti-aliasing enabled has been fixed, and a consistent hitch when the sun was about to appear on screen was resolved.
  • Fixed multiple distinct issues causing water reflections to appear either too dark or completely black.
  • Fixed car shadows appearing overly sharp, or not appearing at all when anti-aliasing is enabled.
  • Fixed a crash when switching between display adapters with different numbers of resolutions, and made the resolutions list automatically refresh when switching adapters, eliminating a possible crash.
  • The game now handles arbitrary aspect ratios correctly – with all 3D elements and the entire UI fixed for widescreen and positioning dynamically.
  • Fixed a possible out of bounds read when the supplied translation file did not contain all the strings the game needs (for example, when using the PL executable with EN data).
  • Improved the overall precision of in-game timers.
  • Fixed an issue where split-screen would not work correctly on modern PCs with fast enough CPUs unless the game was forced to use a single CPU core.

Miscellaneous fixes:

  • Environment maps on cars now always reflect the sky, like on the PS2; making reflections look more natural and correcting an issue where the big TV screens displayed a grey sky.
  • Line rendering now respects the display resolution, making line thickness proportional to resolution and improving their visibility.
  • Half pixel issues have been corrected across the UI, improving the overall clarity of the interface, and fixing numerous issues where fullscreen backgrounds would leave a single pixel-wide line (or a seam in the middle) with multisampling enabled.
  • Improved the visual consistency of numerous race UI elements.
  • Improved the visual consistency of the digital tachometer by using a scissor feature for rendering, improving its accuracy and resolving a possible flicker.
  • Support for texture replacements and new fonts has been improved – the game can now handle higher resolution assets without glitching.
  • UI elements and fonts with sharp pixels now use nearest neighbor filtering instead of linear filtering for improved clarity.
  • Improved the presentation of line boxes used e.g. in the onscreen keyboard and Car Setup, fixing gaps, overlapping lines, and misplaced fill.
  • Legend lines on the Telemetry screen now fade out together with the rest of the menu.
  • Fixed numerous spacing inconsistencies in menu texts.
  • Fixed a broken split-screen Time Trial results screen (Czech executable only).
  • Fixed “Player X has retired” texts going off the screen at resolutions above 640x480.
  • Fixed an issue where the resolution change countdown went into negatives when fading out.
  • Fixed an issue on wider aspect ratios where repeated menu entries would not fade correctly.
  • Fixed an issue only showing in the Polish release where leaving the ‘Co-driver’s voice’ screen would flicker the menu animations.
  • Alt + F4 now works.
  • Removed a debug feature where invalid codepoints flickered randomly.
  • The error message displayed when the game fails to load specific game files now doesn’t freeze the game and can be closed with Alt + F4.

Enhancements:

  • The game is now fully portable, as the settings have been redirected from the registry to the INI file.
  • Car shadows are now slightly sharper, matching the way they are rendered in Colin McRae Rally 2005.
  • Menu navigation on the gamepad has been remapped from the analog stick to the directional pad like it is in the console releases.
  • New Graphics options added: Field of View (separate for external and internal cameras), Digital Tachometer, Vertical Split-screen.
  • New Advanced Graphics options added: Windowed/borderless mode (fully resizable), Vertical Sync, Refresh Rate, Anisotropic Filtering.
  • Changed the Bonus Codes URL to point towards a cheat generator hosted by myself since the original URLs are not active anymore.
  • Added an option to toggle the HUD by pressing F5.

Language Pack:

  • Added support for all official text translations used together – English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Polish, and Czech.
  • Added support for all official co-drivers together – English, French, German, Spanish, Polish (Janusz Kulig), Polish (Janusz Wituch), and Czech.
  • Re-added support for Nicky Grist’s pace notes in the Polish re-release.
  • Revised some capitalization inconsistencies in all languages.
  • Revised Italian translation.
  • Included translation lines for all new menu options added by SilentPatch.

HD UI - by Bekoha:

  • Made with 4K resolution in mind.
  • Font atlases remade using original fonts.
  • Support for EFIGS, Polish and Czech languages.
  • Banners redrawn for every stage.
  • Majority of in-game UI elements replaced.

Credits

  • Bekoha for the entirety of the HD UI work and general support
  • LoStraniero91 for improving the entire Italian translation
  • AuToMaNiAk005 for his past efforts in fixing CMR3 for widescreen resolutions
  • Pierre Terdiman for a Textured Lines In D3D code snippet
  • Various people contributing new translation lines in German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Czech
  • abbydiode and Cpone for additional testing
  • Several ex-CMR3 developers who are aware of this project and were able to share their feedback 🙂

Setting up the game & SilentPatch

Please follow the following instructions in order:

  1. Prepare your game executable for compatibility with SilentPatch:
    1. Make sure that you have an official 1.1 patch installed beforehand. If needed, you can download it from PCGamingWiki. You need to re-apply this patch to your game if you’ve used an unofficial no-CD executable. DRM-free releases are already pre-patched.
    2. Download the DRM-free Patcher, extract it to the game directory and run setup.bat to patch your game executable to DRM-free. Follow the on-screen instructions.
  2. Download SilentPatch and extract it to the game directory. Overwrite files if prompted.
  3. (Optional) Download the Language Pack and extract it to the game directory. Overwrite files if prompted.
  4. (Optional, Polish 2 CD release only) Download the Nicky Grist Pack and extract it to the game directory. This is needed ONLY for the Polish 2 CD release, all the other versions include those files already!
  5. (Optional, but strongly recommended) Download HD UI (by Bekoha) and extract it to the game directory. Overwrite files if prompted.

Setup instructions

Mandatory components:

Download SilentPatch Download DRM-free Patcher

Addons:

Download HD UI (by Bekoha) Download Language Pack Download Nicky Grist Pack

See source on GitHub

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