Now that the newest release of the Last Resort mod is released I have decided to concentrate my efforts on improving Mission S - the LA City Hall map next.

I have discovered two mistakes or quirks in the map already.

Office number 2502 doesn't exist in the map even though there is a texture for the plate on the door for it.   There is also a name plate texture for "Irv Metcalf" that doesn't get used.   I assume that at some point poor old Irv Metcalf had his office deleted by the developers to simplify the map layout.

Of bigger interest is a wall decal in the mayor's office that is bugged and doesn't display properly in the game.   If the center point of a decal entity is set too far into a wall the game won't display it at all.      I used Noisy's version of the SCN editor to manually move the decal out far enough for the game engine to display it (see image below).   You can see that it greatly improves the room but still needs to have it's position tweaked higher.

I like the way it looks and is obviously the original intention of the Sierra artists.   This fix will be included with the next release of the mod.

I released a new version of the Last Resort mod yesterday.   Even though the mod is dated November 7th I just got around to packaging and testing it (sorry!).

version 0.8.6 - Nov 07, 2024:
- Launcher no longer auto shuts down if Swat 3 detected running
- Moved LastResort.ini back into Swat 3 folder from AppData
- Fixed bottom of the steps Mission G so player/AI don't get stuck
- Added new high resolution textures for mission G
- Fixed description of Mission G location to "Playa Del Rey"
- Fixed reversed dumpster textures in mission G
- Fixed reversed bulldozer textures in mission G
- Fixed reversed electrical panel textures in mission G
- Fixed broken decal placement in mission G
- Fixed missing fence shadows mission A
- Fixed window box texture on side of house mission A
- Added new high resolution textures for mission M
- Added new mission M Phoenix Club skybox
- Changed Last Resort Launcher icon

I focused mainly on Mission G (the construction yard) and got it to an almost 100% state in terms of texture upgrading.   In the future I think it is best that I focus on upgrading a single map per release instead of jumping around from map to map.

Also included in this release are two fixes to map bugs that have been in the game since release.   The biggest one being the stairs in Mission G that would trap the player or the AI if you went down them.   Much thanks to my kid Noisy who worked hard to modify the SCN Editor to allow these fixes.

This website is changing domain names in about 10-12 days to swat3lastresort.org from the current swat3lastresort.info

The domain renewal is up soon and they wanted an insane $36 CAD to renew for one more year.    Since I pay out of my own pocket for this and don't look for donations I decided to take the cheapest route and move to a different domain name instead.

For $28 CAD I got the .org domain for 2 years.

Expect some potential down time and for a period after security certificate warnings.  There will probably also be some dead links until I can chase them all down and fix them.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

UPDATE: Due to this domain change I will be delaying the release of the next version of the mod.   The Last Resort launcher contains links to help pages on this website so I need the domain update to happen first.

It has been a while since I released a new version of the mod and I am finally close to doing that.  Real life work for the next 2 weeks will probably slow me down though until then.

Mission G (the construction yard) is now about 95% done and Mission M (the Phoenix Club) is about 75% done in terms of replacing the old textures with higher resolution versions.   Even though I am using AI software to upgrade the textures most of the original textures are too low of resolution to get a good result.  A lot of times I am manually generating a whole new texture in photoshop using Bing and Google Images as a reference source.

Below is the changelog but I suspect I forgot to write down some items.  May update as I remember them while packaging up the mod.

version 0.8.6:
- Moved LastResort.ini back into Swat 3 folder from AppData
- Fixed bottom of the steps so player and AI doesn't get stuck
- Added many new high resolution textures for mission G
- Fixed description of Mission G setting in "Playa Del Rey"
- Fixed reversed dumpster textures in mission G
- Fixed reversed bulldozer textures in mission G
- Fixed reversed electrical panel textures in mission G
- Fixed broken decal placement in mission G
- Fixed missing fence shadows mission A
- Fixed window box texture on side of house mission A
- Added new high resolution textures for mission M
- Added new mission M Phoenix Club skybox

I am currently working on new high resolution textures for Mission G (the construction yard).   The texture I have been specifically working on the last few days is a decal of the construction blueprint that is sitting on a table in one of the buildings.   The original texture is so low resolution that it is a blurry mess and you can't even read the text on it.   Very hard to re-create the texture when you can't even see it well.

I started to do research into blueprints and such so that what I add to the new texture is midly realistic.

While reading the game's mission description and listening to the load screen dialog I noticed that the developers made a mistake with the location of the construction yard.  They mention in the text Corona Del Mar as the location but that is far on the east side and is completely off the Swat 3 map of LA.   They also mention the "hyperion water treatment plant" and when you Google that the neighbourhood most famous for that is Playa Del Ray.    This location actually matches with where they placed the mission dot on the LA map.

Sure this is a very minor thing that doesn't affect much.   I will simply correct this in the mission description.  I find this sort of mistake interesting...almost like Swat 3 trivia.