Grand Theft Auto IV

I'm on a P5B Deluxe, which I think is PCI Express 1.0 too... Hmmmm! May have to upgrade soon


PSN/Xbox 360 ID - Ianwoollam



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/05/2008 01:01PM by Ianwoollam.

Karan schreef:
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> Alright console just got back last night, after I
> got the RROD. Looks like they replaced it with a
> 'Microsoft Certified Replacement Console' whatever
> that is. Anyway I'm back in business and back to
> GTA4 finally

Look at the the back of your 360, cause I got the same letter and my 360 was a new one, made a month ago

I have spent the last two hours trying to get the game run on PC... Always when I get one error fixed, then another one appears... :| Even the install program wouldn't start at first.


My photo gallery: [viltzu86.deviantart.com]

This game on a PC is a joke. It is so buggy it's unbelievable.

I fiddled with it about 4 hours and finally got it running, only to discover that I have to use the lowest graphich settings to make it playable. And even then I have to restart the game after about one hour of playing, because at that point it starts to stutter pretty bad again.

I though that on E6600 and GeForce 7900, albeit not being that high end anymore, you would be able to run the game at least on about medium settings, but I have to run it all set to minimum and with 800x600 resolution...


My photo gallery: [viltzu86.deviantart.com]

[www.gtaforums.com]

That should help you out

villej Wrote:
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> This game on a PC is a joke. It is so buggy it's
> unbelievable.
>
> I fiddled with it about 4 hours and finally got it
> running, only to discover that I have to use the
> lowest graphich settings to make it playable. And
> even then I have to restart the game after about
> one hour of playing, because at that point it
> starts to stutter pretty bad again.
>
> I though that on E6600 and GeForce 7900, albeit
> not being that high end anymore, you would be able
> to run the game at least on about medium settings,
> but I have to run it all set to minimum and with
> 800x600 resolution...


E6600 part is okay (Using that atm for my PC) but the 7900 is really holding it back, the min spec (of which it says 7900) is just bollocks unfortunatly, need at least an 8800 to play... Try that driver which Nick has just posted though, people are saying they've seen a 10fps increase with it, just wish they'd hurry up with the ATi driver already!


PSN/Xbox 360 ID - Ianwoollam

Thanks, I have already though installed that driver, the game wouldn't even start without it. I just hope that the upcoming patch would solve some performance issues.


My photo gallery: [viltzu86.deviantart.com]

Rockstar Talks GTA IV Technical Problems

[pc.ign.com]

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

This happens *every* time Rockstar port a game though. Rockstar North build the game, and it is pretty flawless on the consoles. It is handed to Rockstar Vancouver, who port it to the PC, and it is completely broken.

We're on the forums ourselves monitoring the issues people are having. A lot of these issues obviously we haven't seen in our testing and we're working to reproduce them and find workarounds for those issues. Many of the issues that we've found so far haven't been a direct result of the game itself but rather configurations of driver installations or power management software causing issues, various things of that sort.

If the game was not tested on a varied range of machines, then it has not been tested correctly. This is a major part of PC testing and somewhat worrying that it once again was largely ignored.

They go on to say a lot of the performance and texture issues are from out of date drivers and unsupported hardware. Have people read the hardware requirements, for what is quite an ugly game by todays standards? They are astronomical. Far Cry 2 for example, runs in a higher detailed, higher resolution, larger, free roaming world, and looks countless times better. GTA4 is running low poly models, with simplified collision models, and low res textures, and it still runs awful. I have seen people saying this runs far far worse than the original Far Cry, which ran hilariously badly for its time.

They can say they are working on a patch n' all, but history has shown that Rockstars patching of the Grand Theft Auto series has hardly been great either. San Andreas is still broken to this day, and Grand Theft Auto 3 took forever just to get a patch for the menus to work!

I truly hope they fix this, but so far, this port is going down as one of the worst in the history of gaming. Amazing how one of the best games ever released can become one of the worst simply by porting it to the PC badly.

The requirements outside of hardware just to play the game are also bordering on insulting. First you put up with SecuROM, the most useless DRM system ever made since it only penalises legal users, not warez users. Then you have to install Rockstar Social Club (for a reason not explained), then you have to install Games For Windows Live, just to be able to save the game. Then you have to sign up to Windows Live, and then sign up up to Windows Games (why are they seperate?). And once you have infected your PC with all of that, you find you can't play it anyway.



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Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2008 06:45AM by DaveEllis.

San Andreas came to the point where it worked pretty well. GTA III was terrible and still is. Regarding testing, there might be other considerations behind the shoddy QA. There might have been some people in management, that realized that if they took one more development cycle, they would miss the X-mas sales. Traditionally, this is the time when games turn the largest profit.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

Morbid Wrote:
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> San Andreas came to the point where it worked
> pretty well.

Yeah I remember San Andreas been bad, but the performance issues were no where near this bad! In fact San Andreas did pretty well performance wise, just everything else was broken

Well technically you don't need to sign upto a Windows Live account, as I just skipped that part and created an offline user, did the job, but don't think I can play online with it. Whats the bloody point in that Rockstar Social Club app though? its just taking up more memory that GTA4 bloody needs! Have they seen Steam and thought "yeah thats a good idea! lets do that" but managed to completly bollocks it up!


PSN/Xbox 360 ID - Ianwoollam



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2008 10:47AM by Ianwoollam.

Ianwoollam Wrote:
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> Yeah I remember San Andreas been bad, but the
> performance issues were no where near this bad! In
> fact San Andreas did pretty well performance wise,
> just everything else was broken

I spent a lot of time playing SA... With the last patch, I didn't really find broken stuff. I find it hard to see what you are referring to.

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

Morbid Wrote:
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> I spent a lot of time playing SA... With the last
> patch, I didn't really find broken stuff. I find
> it hard to see what you are referring to.

I ment back in the day, when San Andreas was initially released Nowadays I only have one problem, the game go wacky when my wheel's plugged in... other than that its peachy now


PSN/Xbox 360 ID - Ianwoollam



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/09/2008 11:16AM by Ianwoollam.

Okay. Then we are in agreement

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

Finally after shoehorning a Quad Core in and alot of Graphic tweaks, got GTA4 running at a playable state... I just can't understand how they've managed to make such a bad port, hope morbid's right and they fix it pronto To be honest if you ask me it hasn't been optimized properly, Dave mentioned Far Cry 2 for instance, to install that it takes up 6 Gig, and thats a BIG map with better graphics, this one though takes up 13GB, I'm really not sure if patches can help.


PSN/Xbox 360 ID - Ianwoollam

I bought the GTA package off of Steam and felt like I was cheated out of..well, all of it. None of them work properly. It re-introduces bugs which were once sorted, it has introduced CTDs that I didn't have before. GTA3 seems to work slightly better (amazing really, how many years to get a playable copy of that on the PC?), but San Andreas is worse.

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I've been trying to play but have just given up now, for the 10th time I've got stuck on the stupid "forever load" screen and frankly just can't be arsed any more... Hopefully when Saints Row 2 is released in January that'll be a better port and give more enjoyment, the PC version of that was supposed to come out at the same time as the 360\PS3 version but got delayed, so either they have serious problems or they actually recognise it'll be buggy and want to do it properly (I hope the latter ) maybe sometime down the line if GTA4 is fixed I'll try again, but for now just screw it, I'm bemused at how Rockstar Toronto thought this game was releaseworthy.

Oh and btw a patch was released the other day, and apparantly it broke it even more for most people

@Dave - I've got the Steam version of San Andreas, never really had a problem with it myself :\ however the Steam version of Vice City just dosn't work at all for some reason.


PSN/Xbox 360 ID - Ianwoollam



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 12/14/2008 03:45PM by Ianwoollam.

That is really weird because Vice City worked excellently on the PC. I wonder what Valve does to these games? Is it the way they encrypt them that @#$%& them up?

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It's only after we've lost everything, that we are free to do anything.

Morbid Wrote:
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> That is really weird because Vice City worked
> excellently on the PC. I wonder what Valve does to
> these games? Is it the way they encrypt them that
> @#$%& them up?


Could be! it maybe Vista 64bit doing it too or something random in my hardware, I did buy it when it came out in the first place so I could try that out, but tbh I'm not that fussed as Vice City was my least favourite GTA anyway


PSN/Xbox 360 ID - Ianwoollam

Morbid Wrote:
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> That is really weird because Vice City worked
> excellently on the PC. I wonder what Valve does to
> these games? Is it the way they encrypt them that
> @#$%& them up?


I haven't tried them recently, however the first releases of all of the GTAs on Steam was the unpatched versions. (!!) Rockstar did not submit the patched versions, thus it brought back all of the original bugs. Vice City never worked for me on Vista (but thats more likely to do with the 64bit), but 3 and SA have been fine. GTA2 also didn't work when I tried it. GTA original ran beautifully, lol. Might have been fixed by now, don't know.

Rockstars patch for GTA4 on the PC makes it worse btw. Performance is slower, and people who could run the game before are now reporting that it doesn't work at all. The new patch also breaks integration with Windows Live Gaming for PCs Live Gaming, or whatever the f**k its called for a few people, meaning you can't sign in, can't save games, and therefore, can't lay it, even if you get the thing to run. Going well so far Rockstar. I'm expecting the next patch to burn down your house and rape your cat.

Hitlers reaction to GTA4 on the PC.



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