No steam overlay / game time tracking

[Toriibird]

I've installed the Last Resort mod, and by launching the game through the mod's launcher, steam will never even recognize that I'm running the game.
Nevertheless, I like to launch all my games directly through steam, and it seems that launching it directly still enables the mod's features, although I need to add the console commands like skip intro and handsup through steam. This is fine, the game runs perfectly without the launcher.

This way, Steam recognizes the game is launched, so it comes to the top of my recent games and gets displayed on my profile, but after 3 seconds, Steam seems to stop tracking the game and I'm returned to "online" status. (Also, the game requires my permission to run despite not having compatibility or admin mode checked. Possible cause?)

While I'll never be able to see the hundreds of hours I've sunk into the disk copy of my game, I'd like to be able to see how many more hours I'll put into the steam version.

If anyone knows why this is happening, I'd appreciate the help. Cheers

[Slippery_Jim_]

The Last Resort mod uses modified game files. It isn't your grandpa's normal mod from 2001, lol. I would always recommend using the Last Resort launcher to start the game.

To be able to get higher resolutions and other features we had to edit the Swat.exe file. This is possibly why the game is asking permission to run.

The Last Resort launcher does a few important things. It modifies your "Swat.cfg" file and the "Swat.ini" file and also makes sure the proper game executable is run.

The "Swat.cfg" can be corrupted very easily in Swat 3 so the launcher is there to check it's integrity and to pull a backup if damaged. Without this your resolution choices could get forgotten.

The "Swat.ini" is important because it tells the game what "normal" mods you want to use and also makes sure the important Last Resort files are used.

When you click to start the game on the Last Resort launcher it looks at your resolution choices and makes sure the proper game executable has been renamed to "swat.exe". If you have the Last Resort mod toggled off it will reset everything back to vanilla Swat 3.

If anyone has any concerns about what modifications we have done to the game executable you can read about it in a sticky thread on the LR website. We are fully transparent.

[Slippery_Jim_]

As for your problem about Steam not tracking the game, I am not sure why that is happening.

Swat 3 doesn't use the normal steam .dll files as far as I know. Steam uses the exact same copy of the game as GOG.com with all the old disk copy protection removed. Both copies of the game use the same install CD key.

You can run "vanilla" Swat 3 perfectly fine without Steam starting up. It is a completely standalone game unlike most games on Steam.

I imagine this is why it isn't tracking it?

[Toriibird]

Yeah I've done some testing and mods don't matter. A full vanilla install behaves exactly the same. No in-game tracking. It's not your mod, but awesome that you're still active here. Thanks for some response but it seems I can't get steam to track my gametime anyhow.

My initial idea was creating an exe that points towards your launcher, installed in another folder, and leave the exe running for as long as the game is open, but your launcher won't start when an exe named "swat.exe" is already running. (And steam expects the game's executable to be called swat.exe). So as a batch file, this works perfectly fine, but as an exe that I can launch from steam, your launcher refuses to start. Anyway, that's all I could find.

As a side note,thanks for the work on the mod. It's really fun playing a game I still have on disk at high res and with weapon models

[Slippery_Jim_]

Ya even though the mod uses several modified game executables the launcher always renames the currently active one to "swat.exe".

The launcher refusing to start if it detects "swat.exe" already running is a fairly new feature. Due to the rename process it was safer for the launcher if it detected if the game was running.

I never anticipated someone trying to do what you are doing, lol.

PS: currently working on upgrading Mission G (construction yard).