SWAT: Elite Force mod

SWAT: Elite Force

SWAT 4: The Stetchkov Syndicate mod | Released 2016

Introduction

SWAT 4: The Stetchkov Syndicate is a fantastic, albeit flawed game. I have played this game for many years in co-op and have always been irritated at all of the bugs and glitches present. Originally, my project was going to be focused on making the game into a simple mod to make the game more realistic and maybe become used by police officers for training. Instead, this became one of the largest, if not the largest, and most expansive mod for SWAT 4.

Features

The following is a non-exhaustive list of features. There are plenty more, but you can take a look at the README file for a full list.

Over 40 new pieces of equipment, including equipment cut from the original game, suppressed versions of the original weapons, grenade and wedge 3-packs, and new equipment entirely. There's more than twice as many types of ammo from the original game. Weapons are categorized by family (Assault Rifles, Submachine Guns, etc) in the interface, so as to be easy to select.
...and it's more realistic equipment, too. Less lethal equipment is truly less lethal, not non-lethal. Tasers can kill the elderly and drug users, or those in poor health. Beanbags can break bones and fatally injure at close range. Bullets can realistically ricochet off of surfaces. Ceramic-plate armor breaks and degrades as more bullet holes punch into it. Lightsticks can be tossed across the room, or simply dropped at your feet, much like SWAT 3. Everything you pack contributes to Weight and Bulk. Weight, how heavy your equipment is, reduces your movement speed. Bulk, how large your equipment is, reduces your interaction, weapon changing, and reload speeds. Too much stuff, and you won't be able to play.
The original SWAT 4 and Stetchkov Syndicate campaigns, combined into one. There is a refined unlocks system, designed to make the campaign more enjoyable to play.
A second campaign. The new Extra Missions campaign will be adding cut missions, newly created missions, and curated custom levels with scripted encounters, new blueprints, and custom voice acting.
All Missions Campaign. In an All Missions campaign, you can load all of the missions from your hard drive (including custom missions) and play them through in singleplayer, with the AI.
Permadeath Modes. When creating a campaign, you can turn on Permadeath for either yourself or your squad members. With AI Permadeath, when your squad members become incapacitated, they are out of the fight for good. With Player Permadeath, if you die, your campaign is over.
Campaign CO-OP. Help your friends complete their campaign. As you complete missions together, more equipment becomes unlocked, just like in singleplayer.
Ironsights. Hitting the Zoom key will switch to fully 3D ironsights for improved accuracy. This feature can be disabled however, for the original game's zoom function. (Weapons with a scope will use that instead of ironsights)
Overhauled AI. The officer AI is much more deadly and efficient now. There are a number of new commands that can be issued to them, including Leader Throw and Clear, which allows you to be the one to throw the grenade of your choice. Or Search and Secure, which orders the officers to restrain civilians and collect evidence in an area around the player. Civilians restrained by officers are reported to TOC. Suspects have been altered too and given distinct personalities. Insane suspects for example will shoot at hostages without hesitation. Suspects may shoot at the player while fleeing from them. Lastly, hostages have been altered too, and may choose to give up easier when witnessing someone else become tased or pepper-sprayed.
Order your squad through your voice. A cut feature from the game, you can order your AI squad members using an attached microphone and the Microsoft Speech Recognition API. Instead of navigating an interface to find the breaching command you want, just say "Breach, Bang, and Clear."
Altered door mechanics. Doors can be breached with any shotgun, however the effectiveness depends upon which shotgun is taken (the M870 Breaching will always breach 100% of the time) and what ammo is taken. Broken doors can be closed, and wedged. Doors can be locked by the player by using the toolkit on the doorknob. Doors can be checked if they're locked using the melee key. Some doors may have traps on them, which may force you to take alternate routes.
Side Objectives. Some levels may have drug evidence on them, which may be collected for additional points. On some levels, incapacitated civilians may bleed out and die, which may penalize your score slightly.
Multiplayer Improvements. There is a totally overhauled and deep admin system, with more than just a simple administrator password. Chatting now displays the name of the room that the message was given in. Snipers work in multiplayer and can be controlled to shoot by the leader of a team. There is now a "Not Ready" button which makes you unready. There are new types of votes that can be held, and at the end of a round, the menu will display the next map name.
Quality of Life changes. You can now change your FOV with an FOV slider. Mission dispatches can be disabled. Most modern resolutions are supported without bugs. The crosshairs can be disabled. Whenever anything important occurs, like a penalty or an objective completion, the player is notified of it. Your stats in singleplayer are tracked and visible from the Campaign screen. Maps on the Host Game menu can be filtered. There are simply too many minor things to list here.
Bugs fixed. Over 100 lines of dialogue which never played in the original game due to bugs or missing content have been restored. And that's just the tip of the iceberg. Most of the bugs that were fixed were from the expansion, which was quickly rushed out the door.

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v7.1 Update

Mar 10 2021 News 22 comments

Current Status

Hello all. It has been a long time since I have last updated the page. As some of you may be aware, I have had some real life issues keeping me away from the keyboard. Most notably, my fourth child has been born, and I have been scrambling to get things ready for the new baby. That, and I was hospitalized fairly recently with a severe case of pneumonia. Thankfully, I've been lucky enough to avoid catching COVID-19. Both my wife and I are high risk groups that would be severely affected by the disease. I have been meaning to return to the mod, but I honestly have just been exhausted by everything going on.

That being said, the short bursts that I have been developing in have been very fruitful, since a large part of this next patch is going to be bugfixes. I've received a lot of reports about bugs in v7, and the next patch, v7.1, has been laser-focused on addressing them. The following are some of the more major problems that have been fixed:

Lots of crashes fixed.
Many cases of misaligned ironsights have been corrected.
Suspects now have a cooldown timer for penalties. Previously, if you shouted at a suspect who was firing a weapon at you, and they became compliant, it was possible to receive a penalty if your projectile hits them even one frame later. This isn't fair, especially when considering weapons such as the ARWEN which have projectiles that don't travel instantaneously. There's now some wiggle room added to accommodate for things such as slow projectiles, lag, hitches, etc.
Suspects can't be "juked" by running around all over the place any more. Previously, it was possible to run in circles around low skill suspects to avoid being shot. This isn't possible any more, because suspects now don't need to lock on to their target in order to start shooting. (SWAT AI still need to, because SWAT need to be accurate!) As a result, you might notice that the suspect AI is significantly more dangerous than before...
Lightsticks don't fall through the floor anymore, for real this time. Using the power of physics®, lightsticks have been engineered to not fall through solid surfaces. And even if they did, the old fix (having them respawn back in bounds) still exists.
MP5SD6 will now reset from lowready position properly and won't block the sights.
Nightvision goggles are now visible in third person.
Suspects now shoot at doors again when barricading.

Other changes

There have been a number of other changes and minor feature additions. For example, custom skins can now alter your first person hand textures. There is now a "round in the chamber" system for added realism.

Two of the new features that I want to talk about in depth are changes that I want to expand on in the future: target acquisition and weapon variations.

Target Acquisition

In SWAT 4, AI in the level are either suspects, civilians, or SWAT. There's no overlap between the roles of suspects and civilians. If you've memorized the way that suspects and civilians sound, you'll know instantly if someone is a suspect or a civilian. And if you aren't sure, the zipcuff prompt will always tell you. When diving into the code a bit further, there does appear to be some intent by Irrational Games to make the lines a bit fuzzy at times. Consider the bodyguards for Hyun-Jun Park for example. They actually won't fire upon you if you announce yourself as being police (go ahead and try it in the vanilla game if you don't believe me). Even if their morale is set to maximum, they always do this, because they follow a strict Guard archetype. Likewise, Carl Jennings on The Wolcott Projects will never actually attack you, even if you don't announce yourself first. Despite this, they're both dumped into the same category as suspects.

When you consider challenges in policing, probably one of the biggest is knowing whether a contact will act with intent to harm. It is why all targets on a level in SWAT 4 need to be handcuffed, regardless of whether they have a weapon. So with v7.1, I'm going to start blurring the lines a little bit with what is considered a suspect and what isn't considered a suspect.

Prior to v7.1, if SWAT saw a civilian, they would announce that the target is unarmed. If SWAT saw a suspect, they would announce that the target is a suspect. In v7.1 this is changed: if a target is armed, SWAT will announce that they've spotted a suspect, otherwise, they will announce that the target is unarmed. This applies to both mirror results and approaching targets. I will be making further changes to blur the lines at a later point in time.

Weapon Variations

There are a lot of weapons in SWAT: Elite Force. Some of them are just minor variations of one another. Consider the M4A1 - in v7.1 there are twelve different ways to pack this weapon. That's a lot of entries in dropdown boxes. Finding the exact weapon you want through all of the noise is going to be chaos.

I've already shown off screenshots of this feature, but the list of weapons will be reduced to just base weapons, and you'll be able to pick variations of that weapon. For example, Submachine Guns might include the MP5A4 and UMP45. From the MP5A4 choice, you'll be able to pick options such as No attachments, Holographic Sights, Suppressed, or Suppressed + Holographic Sights. Each of these options has different drawbacks, such as a change in weight or how the weapon handles.

This seems like a really minor change, but I'd like to open this up to modders. Inevitably, people are going to want their own custom weapon skins to be a feature, and that's where weapon variations can come in. One really interesting mod I've seen lately has the ladder sights opened up for the HK69, and that's just one example of what a user-created weapon variation can do.

Closing Statements

I know it has been a long time since I've posted anything, and I will certainly make good on releasing v7.1 in a timely fashion. In the meantime, you can keep track on our official Discord (see the link ingame, or in the mod description), and you can always view the most recent changelog on GitHub. The link I've provided will always be the most up-to-date version of the changelog.

SWAT: Elite Force v7 Released

Jun 7 2020 News 28 comments

At long last, version 7 has been released for the masses.

v7 Release Date

May 24 2020 News 15 comments

Announcing the release date and full features of v7.

Donations Needed

Nov 26 2019 News

Donations are needed again to maintain the NA Official Server.

Status Update

Jul 19 2019 News 15 comments

An update as to the status of the mod and where things are at.

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SWAT: Elite Force v7

Jun 7 2020 Full Version 28 comments

The latest base version of SWAT: Elite Force. Use this if you are installing the mod for the first time.

SWAT: Elite Force v6x -> v7 Upgrade

Jun 7 2020 Patch 8 comments

Use this to upgrade a v6 - v6.4 installation to the latest base version, v7.

SWAT: Elite Force v7 Source Code

Jun 7 2020 Source Code

A source code backup of v7, licensed under the GNU GPL license.

SWAT: Elite Force v7 -> v7.1 Upgrade

Sep 2 2021 Patch 26 comments

Use this to upgrade an existing v7 installation to a v7.1 installation.

SWAT 4: Positive Identification (PID)

Jan 14 2021 Full Version 8 comments

The mod attempts to immerse the player in making the best out of tough situations and identifying threats during firefights in an effective manner. Note...