Postal III

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Postal III Postal III (alternatively Postal 3) follows the Postal Dude's failed 1-day career in video game development and the ensuing "accidental" nuclear destruction of Paradise, AZ (Apocalypse Weekend). We rejoin the Postal Dude and his psychotic pitbull, Champ, as they emigrate to the ironically named town of Catharsis. Unfortunately, due to the Global Economic Meltdown, psychotic left-wing "Green" extremism, and hypocritical right-wing Government corruption, life in Catharsis isn't much better.

A supposed sequel to legendary POSTAL 2 (not to be confused with Portal 2), a game known for it's controversial content, it received mixed to negative reviews from critics and overwhelmingly positive reviews from fans due to it's dark humor and offensive themes. Postal III was originally a sequel to POSTAL 2, which would be later retconned by series developer "Running With Scissors" after release. The game was infamous for being outsourced to Akella's subsidiary company, Trashmasters, along with it's development trouble due to the Global Recession, and when the game was released, it ended up with negative reviews from both critics and fans of the series. Criticism aside, it is also one of the few Source engine games to feature proper third-person camera support (and without using cheats to enable it), alongside Double Action: Boogaloo and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines.

In November 2022, this game was been delisted on Steam Steam, by Valve, due to unknown reasons but, according to series developer Running with Scissors and POSTAL fans, this is possibly related to the DRM issues which was broken by issues with the DRM website (ActControl), the poor quality of the game, as well as the publisher, Akella, going bankrupt and being reduced to a skeleton crew. The game could still be obtained from several other websites like ZOOM Platform and via retail (or resellers) during this time it was unavailable on Steam Steam.

In September 26, 2023, the ZOOM Platform version of the game has been updated by Zoom Platform team which fixes many bugs including crashing caused by the built-in NoDRM patch[1]. Later between Sep 29, 2023 to Oct 1, 2023, the Steam cover for the game was updated after what remains of Akella gave RWS limited access to the game's store page. Since Oct 14, 2023, the game was made available on Steam again, including the Throwables Crash and Human Shield Crash fixes from the Zoom Platform version, which also makes the Steam version completely DRM-free, however it does not include the Fart Gun DLC or the config fixes (despite being mentioned in the changelog). The Steam version also removed 2 broken achievements (Champ Whisperer and Mega-Sadist, the latter refers to an mechanic which you would be able to dismembering NPCs without getting them killed, a feature that does not exist in the game, since NPCs always die when dismembered) and 1 achievement that wouldn't always unlock properly (Bipolar)[2][3]. The game was also more positively received after the October 14th patch. Reviews on Steam after the game was put back on sale changed the Overall Reviews from Mostly Negative to Mixed.

Development

Development of Postal III Postal III was started back in 2006 when RWS (Running With Scissors), the developer of Postal series, made a deal with Akella (known for publishing the Russian version of Left 4 Dead Left 4 Dead and Left 4 Dead 2 Left 4 Dead 2 as well as the Russian version of Postal 2, and unofficially called as EA of the Russia because of their reputation for publishing games (mainly made in US) for Russian market) to develop Postal III. Development would begin in 2007, which was initially built on the beta version of Source 2007 Source 2007 engine after licensing it from Valve Valve. The development initially went well until the next year. In 2008, the Great Recession had just occurred in most countries, which includes Russia (where Akella was founded) which was especially hit hard. This led to Akella making several bad decisions such as firing the initial Postal III team at Trashmasters (known as A-Team). Trashmaster's B-Team later upgraded the game engine to Source 2009 Source 2009, implementing Nvidia PhysX and scrapping elements of the game such as multiplayer and the open world. Later, the B-Team was fired with the development of the game being frozen until mid-2010 where the C-Team picked it up and continued development before being fired as well. In the last 6 months, the development was picked up again for the last time by D-Team, getting the game as presentable as possible before release in November of 2011. D-Team was also responsible for the three patches released afterwards (1.10, 1.11, and 1.12). A fourth patch was meant to be released, however economic constraints forced Akella to shut down Trashmasters in February 2012 before it could be completed.

Due to the reasons above, Postal III had shifted both in style and design from what was originally envisioned by RWS in their design documents. The free roaming element of missions were still in development around late 2008, before the decision was made to make the game linear (as the Source Engine didn't support level streaming despite Valve at the time claiming it would, according to Akella) and issues that arose when updating the engine to Source 2009 Source 2009.

The game was also planned to be released for the Xbox 360 Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 PlayStation 3 consoles[4], as well having macOS macOS and Linux Linux ports[4]. This would have made POSTAL III the first Source engine game to support Linux systems before SteamPipe and the Source 2013 update in all Valve games with the exception of those still on previous versions of the engine, aswell as making it the 3rd third-party Source engine game (after Dark Messiah of Might and Magic and Zeno Clash) to be released on consoles. They were cancelled due to the issues faced during development. Akella, faced with bankruptcy and lawsuits at the time, sought to ship the game in a desperate attempt to make money, including multiple exclusive editions and a DLC restricted to physical releases and the Russian website Gama-Gama, which ultimately failed (See Below).

Release

In November 2011, Postal III was first released in Russia in retail stores with several physical editions. Later in December 2011, it was released worldwide on Steam with Running With Scissors selling a physical edition through their website, for Windows Windows systems only. Other physical releases included two versions(one with a map and one without) in the region of Austria and Switzerland by Deep Silver as well as two editions released by Cyberfront in Japan. Other ports such as the Xbox 360 port were cancelled due to development problems.

Postal III is critically slammed with a score of 24 on Metacritic, and with Mostly Negative reviews at launch (now Mixed as of October 19th, 2023) on Steam by many of the POSTAL fans, making it the worst ever game in the POSTAL franchise and currently, the worst commercially released Source engine game ever made. The game and it's engine are also riddled with bugs, glitches, broken achievements and crashes with bad and unfitting gameplay mechanics like the Karma System as well as a lackluster story that wasn't like previous Postal games. The D-Team at Trashmasters tried their best to patch the game after release by fixing several critical bugs and adding an incomplete "Free Roam Mode" for completing the game, as well as removing the remix of the song "Goodbye Almond Eyes" that Akella hadn't licensed. In the end, it wasn't enough to rescue the game and Trashmasters was shut down as Akella braced for bankruptcy.

Running With Scissors (RWS) retconned the game several months later by removing the game on their store and then the Postal III page on RWS's website added a notice to apologize to the POSTAL fans and explaining what happened during the development of Postal III. Later, Postal 2: Paradise Lost would release which featured an easter eggs that mocked Postal 3.

For a time, RWS also begged people to not buy and play the game due to many reasons above. However in recent time, Vince Desi commented that "PIII is part of P history. The people at Akella were good folks. Shit happened and it suffered unfairly." in response to Postal III being put back on sale on Steam.

Around late 2022, the servers which could activate the DRM (ActControl) partially broke due to the website which was used to activate the keys being shutdown, resulting the Steam version being previously delisted in December 2022, so users have these options:

Play the ZOOM Platform version of the game or Update Postal III on Steam
This is the easiest method and more stable than the unpatched NoDRM version that was previously available, and thus recommended for most users as it's already DRM-Free, plus it's fixed most of the bugs and includes the Fart Gun DLC (only in Zoom Platform) by default, without requiring users to install the patch and bug fixes manually. This version was built upon the previously existing noDRM patch with fixes injected into it through the 🖿p3.dll included in the update.
Using alternative DRM servers (via StarForce ProActive activation servers and only for older versions)
This will also result in better stability of the game, and resolve some of the down-sides of the unpatched NoDRM previously available. This is also the only way to play the final 1.12 patch of Postal III, as the noDRM patch is using a debug build that is slightly before the 1.12 build. Unfortunately, CD-Keys were wiped from user's Steam accounts on the 9th of October, 2023 which leaves anyone without a backed up key unable to play any DRM versions. Pcgw icon.png See this PCGW page of Postal III for how to activate the game with new DRM servers. However, some crashes like throwing grenades will still happen sometimes. The game can be also crashed by simply injecting certain programs (such as debugger like WinDbg) into the game executable, which triggered the DRM's anti-tamper.

Visit StarForce ProActive website here to generate the key.

Game Description from Steam store page

Good or Insane? The choice is yours. Following the Apocalyptic end to the Postal Dude’s week in Paradise, we follow him and his insane pitbull Champ as they emigrate to its appropriately named sister city, Catharsis. Unfortunately, due to the Global Economic Meltdown, psychotic left-wing “Green” extremism and hypocritical Government corruption, it turns out Catharsis isn’t a much better place to live. What path will you choose when faced with the antics of a hypocritical scheming Mayor? A berserk cartoon mascot with Al Qaeda ties? A former Vice-President’s cadre of Eco-Zealots? How about Gay Segway “biker” gangs, and a sociopathic cult leader Uncle with nuclear ambitions? Will you give in to your base instincts and fight fire with gasoline? Or will you rise above it to become something more, to serve and protect your fellow citizens from the rampant insanity of our modern society?

Key features
  • Edgy, satirical Running With Scissors sense of humor
  • A world of twisted parody inspired by real people, events and philosophies
  • Large, detailed, interactive environments
  • Crazy POSTAL style Vehicle gameplay
  • NPC’s react to your behavior in a variety of surprising ways
  • Multiple story paths determined by your behavior
  • Celebrity characters: Super porn star Ron Jeremy, Village People Cowboy Randy Jones, Internationally hated film director Uwe Boll and Playboy Playmate Jennifer Walcott
  • Appearances by other popular Running With Scissors character franchises: Krotchy, Champ and the Postal Babes, who will fight along side you (or sometimes against you!)
  • Insane new gameplay including the Helper Monkey, Grenade Cats and the BadgerSaw
  • Kill Uwe Boll! (or save him!)

Content

  • Main Files (.exe, dlls and bin folder)
  • Postal III Content (p3)
  • Postal III English (p3_english)
  • Postal III Russian (p3_russian)
  • Fart Gun DLC (only available on ZOOM Platform as well as US, Austrian/Switzerland, and Japanese physical releases. Russian store Gama-Gama offered it as a standalone installer as well as being included if you pre-ordered the Postal III Гама-edition). Can be installed manually in Steam and other versions of the game except for Russian Retail version 1.0.
    • Since Oct 14, 2023 update on Steam, the Fart Gun DLC was not included for the updated Steam version, despite being mentioned in the changelogs.
  • Modified version of Source 2009 Source 2009 engine branch with NVIDIA PhysX

Technical Info

Template:ModernWarning

Todo: Document a lot of the unique features and tech in Postal III. This includes but is not limited to:
  • The Tree system: Works similarly to Detail_props, however instead of details being placed on map compile they're placed on map load it seems which allows for ease of adjustment.
  • Navmeshes and Nextbots: Postal III uses both.
  • Unique MDL format: Postal III's models have a unique mdl format so Crowbar Crowbar doesn't properly decompile them. It's also unknown how Trashmaster's compiled the Postal Dude's model as it contains too many sequences for StudioMDL_(Source) to compile. Several QC properties were found by dumping the strings from Postal III's StudioMDL although the syntax is unknown:
    • In $collisionmodel: $rollingDrag
    • $insertbone
    • $plates
    • $sortplates
    • $plateorigin
    • $hboxxform
    • $bolton (Seems to be related to accessories found in model_template.txt)
    • $prefab (Most likely how the game chooses submodels and skins for NPC's when they're spawned in. Seems related to why materials on some models don't decompile properly. For example, decompiling Dude's model in Crowbar turns the material of his coat to a "template" material instead of the coat material.)
    • $cloth (Was possibly used for further physx use as implied by models and scripts in the "cloth" model folder)
    • $sortedmesh
    • $helperbone
  • Bink video support: Cutscenes in Postal III play using Bik files which make up most of the game's install size. Its been theorized that these could be replaced with actual in-game cutscenes or at least with a better alternative.
  • Better document "whats hardcoded and what isn't": Trashmasters hardcoded several things in the game not normally hardcoded in source. Things like certain parts of weapon scripts aren't adjustable as they're hardcoded. The modding community for Postal III has adopted the phrase, "Assume everything is hardcoded but try it and see what happens."

Trivia

System Requirements

Windows Windows
Minimum Recommended
Operating system (OS) XP, Vista, 7, or newer*
Processor (CPU) 3.0 GHz Pentium 4
Dual Core 2.0GHz (or higher) or AMD64X2 (or higher)
System memory (RAM) 1GB (XP)
2GB (Vista)		 4GB
Hard disk drive (HDD/SSD) 13.5 GB 15+ GB
Video card (GPU) Direct3D 9 compatible - with Pixel Shaders support
128MB of VRAM 		Full DirectX 9 compatible

External Links

See Also

References

  1. Zoom Platform - Postal III, I'm filled with glee! - last accessed on 2023-09-26
  2. According to SteamDB: Change U:41903083 - Changed Stats schema:
    • Removed achievements/ACH_BIPOLAR/description: Swap paths 5 times in one playthrough.
    • Removed achievements/ACH_BIPOLAR/displayName: BIPOLAR
    • Removed achievements/ACH_CHAMP_WISPERER/description: 50 kills using dog.
    • Removed achievements/ACH_CHAMP_WISPERER/displayName: CHAMP WHISPERER
    • Removed achievements/ACH_MEGA_SADIST/description: 200 injured or death-crawling victims NOT finished off.
    • Removed achievements/ACH_MEGA_SADIST/displayName: MEGA-SADIST
  3. Verified by kr0tchet (talk) on 11:47, 14 Oct 2023:
    Those 3 achievements are actually removed server-side on Steam. It will likely remains existed on the game.
  4. From Akella official website of Postal 3:
    Postal III is an edgy third-person action/adventure comedy for Xbox 360/PS3/PC/Mac/Linux
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