Installation

Installation

1. Download the patch archive: n4patch Alpha.
2. Make sure you have game version 4.5 with the veg patch installed.
3. Back up your player profiles and career files.
4. Extract the archive and copy ddraw.dll into the game directory, next to nfs4.exe.
5. Create a patches folder in the game directory and place the .n4p files from the archive inside it.
6. Launch the game.

The patch loader automatically applies the available patches at startup. The results are written to n4patch.log.

To disable an individual patch, simply remove its .n4p file from the patches directory.

Warning! This is an alpha release. The patches are still under development and may contain bugs, including issues that could corrupt career progress. Backing up your player profiles and career files before using these patches is strongly recommended.

Video

Included Patches

best_lap.n4p: Best Lap Time Display

Adds a second row to the "TIME" widget, displaying the best lap time of the current race.

race_again.n4p: Restart Career Races

Allows you to restart races in Career mode, even after crossing the finish line!

tournament16.n4p: 16-Car Career Races

Increases the maximum number of participants in Career races to 16 cars (the player and 15 AI opponents).

Additional features include:

• Customizable points awarded for finishing positions in tournament races.
• Customizable number of cars eliminated after each knockout race.
• Prize money for finishing positions 9 through 16.
• Configurable traffic car count (up to 8 cars per race).

Limitation: The game supports a maximum of 16 cars simultaneously, including the player, AI opponents, police, and traffic. All vehicles share the same pool of slots.

Therefore, the actual number of traffic cars depends on the number of other participants. For example, if a race includes the player and 12 AI opponents, only 3 slots remain available for police and traffic. In a full 16-car race, no slots remain for either traffic or police.

The patch uses an extended career file format that takes advantage of unused space in the original files.

For more information about configuring these parameters, see the Career Editor article:

https://nfs4.com/articles/t16-editor

career_selection.n4p: Multiple Career Selection

Adds a dialog that allows players to select a career from a list.

Each career is stored in a separate directory under DATA\TEXT\CAREERS\<ID>\.

Each directory must contain:

• TIERDEF.CDB: career tier definitions.
• CIRCDEF.CDB: career event definitions.
• name.txt: the career name displayed in the selection list.

Example directory structure:

DATA\TEXT
      └─CAREERS
            ├─1
            │   CIRCDEF.CDB
            │   name.txt
            │   TIERDEF.CDB
            ├─2
            │   CIRCDEF.CDB
            │   name.txt
            │   TIERDEF.CDB
            ├─3
            │   CIRCDEF.CDB
            │   name.txt
            │   TIERDEF.CDB
            ├─4
            │   CIRCDEF.CDB
            │   name.txt
            │   TIERDEF.CDB
            ├─5
            │   CIRCDEF.CDB
            │   name.txt
            │   TIERDEF.CDB
            └─6
                CIRCDEF.CDB
                name.txt
                TIERDEF.CDB

custom_career.n4p: Custom Career Restrictions

Adds support for configurable career restrictions and additional career parameters.

Global Career Parameters

Career repair policy

• Unrestricted: no restrictions.
• Prohibited for this career: repairs are prohibited throughout the entire career (Need For Repair?).
• Prohibited during an active event: repairs are prohibited while participating in an event.

Career sell-car policy

• Unrestricted: no restrictions.
• Selling prohibited: selling cars is prohibited.

Initial Balance

Sets the amount of money given to the player at the beginning of a career.

Player purchase restriction

Restricts which cars the player can purchase.

For example, if you want to create a Ferrari vs Porsche career, you can restrict the available cars to prevent players from purchasing vehicles that are not allowed in that career.

This feature is still under development. Its functionality has not yet been verified.

AI purchase restriction

Restricts which cars AI opponents can use.

For example, if an event is set to Open and "AI purchase restriction" is set to "Class AA", AI opponents will use Class AA cars regardless of the player's car class.

If no eligible cars remain after applying both the event restrictions and the "AI purchase restriction", the game will fall back to using only the event restrictions.

This feature is still under development. Its functionality has not yet been verified.

Features currently under development:

• Restrictions on cars available for player purchase.
• Restrictions on cars available to AI opponents.

Additional parameters can also be configured separately for each event.

You can also define a custom points table to control how many points are awarded for each finishing position in tournament races.

uphill_fix.n4p: Uphill Physics Fix

Fixes a physics calculation issue that occurs when driving up steep slopes.

For more details, see:

https://nfs4.com/articles/uphill-problem

The patch currently also includes a fix for a game crash that can occur when the rear-view mirror is enabled on certain custom tracks.

Included Files

Name	Description	SHA-256
ddraw.dll	Patch loader	f1263f0a97556cdea759076aa9958f31fcf71238a3caa1dede6be6da92216a8d
best_lap.n4p	v1.3.0	fd991e28611af4143e8ba68adab26822b6d0a41791e4786ba83f1dfc376b45cd
race_again.n4p	v1.5.0	70ce5c7ca67376aa8139ac01aaf0582e47c1e6938b7c31249b7e9b541635908c
tournament16.n4p	v1.0.1	a6802fe073f20d9a3971ed31c27a1ecbb36ab5fd1c759f2d21dbf70a62c22296
career_selection.n4p	v1.3.0	a98270812915d1b0ed690bc2382e60f02a2b62eb3a1c21ef0f44684d7a686dab
custom_career.n4p	v1.1.0	dacf9776363852490d05e72049a8862ee94ce1d838462e2526a2afaafdad66f9
uphill_fix.n4p	v1.2.0	0b5079d9b2e650f7b63d17b7ac649c87b7fdd6529b3fdf1e6f4788655374a972

During startup, the patch loader writes the status of each patch to n4patch.log.

Example of a successful startup:

[16:34:12] === N4L init: exe base=0x00400000 image=0x63B000 patches=patches ===
[16:34:12] loaded 6 patch module(s) from 'patches'
[16:34:12] patch 'tournament16': applied 78 pool reloc(s)
[16:34:12] patch 'tournament16' pool: 2032 bytes at 0x02850000 (org 0x0)
[16:34:12] patch 'tournament16' v1.0.1 APPLIED (5 regions, 72 defs)
[16:34:12] patch 'best-lap-row' v1.3.0 APPLIED (0 regions, 7 defs)
[16:34:12] patch 'career-selection.packages' v1.3.0 APPLIED (0 regions, 15 defs)
[16:34:12] patch 'custom-career.parameters' v1.1.0 APPLIED (0 regions, 12 defs)
[16:34:12] patch 'race-again.career' v1.5.0 APPLIED (0 regions, 7 defs)
[16:34:12] patch 'uphill-fix' v1.2.0 APPLIED (0 regions, 4 defs)
[16:34:12] === N4L done: applied=6 disabled/failed=0 ===

Known Issues and Limitations

1. Localization

   Currently, newly added in-game messages are displayed in English.

   Some of these messages may be localized by adding the corresponding strings to the appropriate game language file. However, this has not yet been tested.

   2367: "Select career";
   2368: "No valid careers found in Data\\Text\\CAREERS.";
   2369: "This career's data is invalid or has an ID conflict.";
   2370: "Failed to apply the selected career; the active set was not changed.";
   

2. Windows 98 / Me Compatibility

   Full testing on Windows 98 has not been performed.

   In a Windows Me virtual machine, five out of six patches loaded successfully (all except best_lap.n4p).

   The career selection dialog appeared, and a 16-car race started successfully. However, no comprehensive functionality or stability testing has been performed.

3. Compatibility with Other Patches

   Compatibility with other patches has not been tested.

   This patch collection is intended for game version 4.5 with the veg patch.

   SHA-256 of the supported nfs4.exe executable:

   17a0f96c3bcfb94fc72d31a429ef56e14ec028e4a6ed1f692cdd8efc0b762980

The patches should theoretically also work with the original version 4.5 without the veg patch, but this has not yet been tested.