Career Mode

I have never really investigated how Swat 3 handles the career mode.   As far as I can recall this is a "renamed" single player mode from when the game was first released (before multiplayer was added).  Can't recall if they always called it career mode.

1) How does it decide the order of missions?  Is it random or is there a .DAT file somewhere controlling it?

2) Why does the detailed info regarding the mission only show in career mode?  Why don't the details show when you run the map in MISSION mode?

3) Is it worth the effort to make high definition versions of the career menus?  (See Reaperman's HD version mock-up of Martin Brenner's licence attached below) 

Follow up idea. I have the original version 1.0 of Swat 3 on CD that I am going to install. I want a copy of the original files too because of old obsolete art work that was removed in later versions.

The only problem is the CD copy protection doesn't work in Windows 10.   Anyone know any safe places to get a cracked 1.0 executable?   I think the infamous Game Copy World became a hive of malware long ago.

No worries. I think I may have found it but thanks though. Will know in a few minutes.

Update: Nope.  The .exe didn't work

The original 1.0 main menu just had the following buttons:

• MISSION
• NEW CAREER
• RESTORE CAREER
• OVER AND OUT

Looks like Career mission order is controlled in Menu.dat file.   The order appears to be:

                MissionA
                MissionB
                MissionL
                MissionD
                MissionN
                MissionG
                MissionC
                MissionI
                MissionM
                MissionX
                MissionP
                MissionF
                MissionO
                MissionS
                MissionR
                MissionY
                MissionW

Does that mean the following Sierra downloadable missions are not part of Career mode?

Mission E - Hollywood Hills
Mission H - Chang's Chinese Theater
Mission J - LA Metro
Mission K - Steiner Center Parking Garage
Mission Q (GOTY) - Whitman Airport
Mission T - City Of Angels Hospital
Mission U (GOTY) - Los Angeles University
Mission V - Heather's Euro-Asian Imports (aka Auto Shop)
Mission Z (GOTY) - American Eagle Express

If this is true then that is a crime that needs to be solved!

Didn't they add a 10-man campaign when that update hit? does that not include the missions? I think its a separate option to Career? even back when playing SWAT I don't think I ever touched anything outside of the Multiplayer Menus so clueless on most of it.

I wondered about the 10 player career too but I suspect it just added the extra AI as a feature?

I would expect to see it reflected in the MENU.DAT?

Since those missions were downloadable how would the game know you had them installed? There is a special note in the MENU.DAT that the order of the missions is important due to a quirk in the code. It has to follow the order that the career mode follows.

// Due to a quirk of the menu system, these must be in the same order as they are played in career else the wrong button will start out selected after playing a mission
// Also, do NOT insert any buttons before these, unless you change the code to match (the index of these buttons is hard-coded)

My hunch is they cheaped out and didn't bother with the CAREER mode with the downloadable missions. Just told us that we can run them in MISSION mode.

I suspect the only way (without the source code) to add them to CAREER mode is to combine all the downloadable files into a new .RES file and then add them to MENU.DAT file.   Treat them as if the game was shipped with those missions.   Not only is that a lot of work adjusting all the appropriate .DAT files but all of the pre-assault information would be missing ie voice recordings, security camera photos, map layout images, etc.

A lot of work!

Update:   of course the only way to know for sure is to play through the 10 player career mode.  The only mission names I see hardcoded into the game executable are the ones that trigger a movie upon failure.

Update 2: Actually I do see what looks like the career mode missions hardcoded into the game.  None of the downloadable missions listed.   Probably can't do anything about it