GTA4 problems

I read that you can get better results in GTA4 with quadcore. Seems like games are finally starting to support it. It was the same with farcry2.

Interview with the devs concerning the bugs and a patch.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/936/936304p1.html

The usual marketing BS.

Windows Live account? Rockstar social club? Ha ha, no thanks. I quite enjoyed the previous GTAs as sandbox games, but not enough to install a crap port with a ton of associated DRM thanks very much. This one's a lost sale for R*.

Originally Posted by skavenhorde
Anyone get this game?

I got hooked to GTA when I decided to actually try San Andreas, it was a lot more fun than I thought.

I bought GTA 4 for the PC

They got you there, sorry to hear that

Anway:

Latest official drivers from nvidia (180.something) seems to be working fine. At least they didn't give me any problems so far - xp64, gtx8800, E8500@4.3 ghz, 1680x1050, maxed almost everything with commandline overrides - sure it's not 60+ fps, but 20-30 and for a game like gta4 enough. With reasonably tuned down settings, I suppoed it should work somehow with 7600GT, but really - no idea - they say GTA4 is mainly limited by cpu though.

On top of all that you have to jump through a million hoops when installing the game. You need to have a windows live account, a "social club" account and you have to be online to play (or you can't save your game), even though I have no intention of playing multiplayer. I guess people like me are going to buy it anyways and Rockstar wanted to see how much DRM they could put into their game without causing a major revolution in the public. It sorta sucks because I was rooting for them when EA was trying to take them over, but it turns out that what they did is a lot worse than anything I've seen EA do. Spore wasn't even this bad.

Since the 2nd or 3rd day there's small crack working perfectly fine with this piece of mess. If you only plan to play single player, by all means - get it. It will save you potential hassles with all the activations and securom. GFWL crap is able to create offline account for saving games (putting aside the retardness of the concept itself).

Installed the game today. Took almost an hour to dealt with several unessential softwares and offers including registration and activation. The whole thing is pretty much marketing tactic.

Once installed, the game runs well so far - except the stupid hardware requirement thingy. The "max or very high settings are for future PCs" reason is just unacceptable to me. My nVidia 8800GTS runs Crysis quite well but not GTA IV. WTF, Rockstar?

Originally Posted by Remus
My nVidia 8800GTS runs Crysis quite well but not GTA IV. WTF, Rockstar?

I agree, that is just ridiculous.

Bugger, I was really looking forward to this one. But not so much I'd upgrade my PC (or get an XBox). Oh well…

By the way, I for one have no problem with graphics settings that scale up to PC's that don't even exist yet… *as long as* the "target" PC is one that does. Deus Ex, for example, is playable at resolutions that didn't exist when it came out. If it looks good and has a fast frame rate, what possible problem is it if it'll look even better and have an even faster frame rate five years from now?

All it would take to satisfy Remus is to disable the ultra-high settings from the menus -- and then issue a patch that triumphantly re-enables them, once the hardware catches up. So why is it worse to have them enabled from the get-go?

I definitely don't have a problem with the concept but I do have a problem with R*'s implementation. A whole slew of things (like shadows) scale automatically with the resolution, so I can't* use my native res because the game enables a bunch of other stuff that kill my modest system. With the sort of control most PC gamers are used to, I could run my native res with shadows switched off (or whatever combination I like best).

*This hack saved the game for me:

http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=384473

It allows you to fool the game into thinking you are running a lower res (thus scaling shadows etc down, without losing the resolution you actually want).

Originally Posted by zakhal
I wouldnt call that serious - it more like average ~ 2,4Ghz quadcore. They even announced the closing down of the production of Q6600. 4870 is highend budget card - the crown prince like gtx260. The high end aka kings are gtx280 and 4870x2.

It is not a budget card it is what is called a mainstream card in the graphics industry, and even though it is being pitched as this doesn't mean the average user will have one or another card with a similar performance level. It takes about 2 years till the current mainstream cards filter through the market and replace all the cards like all the 7x00 and 8x00 and other cards people have mentioned that they have in this thread.

Any game that targets the current generation of graphics cards is going to create a hell of a lot of problems for most users who buy it ala Crysis and GTA4. Crysis is just starting to become playable for a good chunk of people and I imagine the same will apply to GTA4 in another year.

Originally Posted by Prime Junta
All it would take to satisfy Remus is to disable the ultra-high settings from the menus -- and then issue a patch that triumphantly re-enables them, once the hardware catches up. So why is it worse to have them enabled from the get-go?

It is one of the hardware requirements implementation that developer can choose and maybe that's what Rockstar intended to. But how practical and ideal is for currently available and affordable gaming hardwares?; It's bad for the game sales which mostly depend on early sales. If people waiting for better hardware coming along or when they become affordable, how many people still remember the game? There could be other games with even more hype.

Anyway, in the case of GTA IV it's more like a case of bad optimization or something fundamental in the game engine (on PC) that hurting the performance.

That's a different matter; if a game doesn't run well on mainstream hardware, that's obviously not good. But it's not at all the same as having a game that scales up to make use of top-shelf hardware, or even hardware that doesn't exist yet.

Well i don't like that kind implementation that's all i'm saying.

Currently settings:

texture detail- medium
Render - quality

view distance - 5
Detail distance - 5
Vehicle Density - 5
Shawdow Density - 1

While the game using new enginge - the graphics quality looks quite to previous game at these settings. No AA available or maybe i haven't found the option. The gameplay parts feel very good though.

Just put commandline.txt in its install directory with contents such as:

-nomemrestrict -norestrictions

Then you will be able to set any settings at will.

I had:

-nomemrestrict -norestrictions -novblank -percentvidmem 100 -DX9

txt file works both with official and anti-securom adjusted versions.