blotunga: GTA IV, 5 days - Good luck!
Great giveaway. This game is excellent, and really fun to play. But although great, the PC version is not without issues. Here are some tips and tweaks for the most common problems, for the winner (and others interested in this game). After some adjustments and fixes, the experience is worth it:
• The game requires only two DRMs: SecuROM and GFWL.
- SecuROM is required, so the first time you launch the game (the first time is recommened to do it from Steam), remember to disable your firewall temporarily so the game can be activated without issues. Once you have completed the game and want to uninstall, do it as normal from Steam, then run the revocation tool found in this page:
https://support.securom.com/rockstarunlock/GTA_IV/index.php?c=revoke to recover one activation for later. If you want to clear any SecuROM remnants from your system after that, you can use this tool later:
https://support.securom.com/removaltool.html - If you're not interested in multiplayer/online, GFWL can be replaced with XLiveLess (highly recommended). This file is a replacement for (the annoying) GFWL and let you play and save easily. During the first launch on Steam, cancel the GFWL installation that will pop up, to continue with the rest of the required files (or just uninstall it later). Then download XLiveLess from here:
http://gtaforums.com/topic/388658-relgtaiv-xliveless/ and extract the file "xlive.dll" in the folder where the GTAIV EXEs are ("..\Steam\SteamApps\common\Grand Theft Auto IV\GTAIV").
- If instead, you want to play online, don't install the GFWL client and skip it (or uninstall it), and instead, download and install the latest version from the Microsoft website for it. The client supplied with the game is so old that doesn't work at all and won't connect or allow you to play the game.
- Steam is not necessary to run the game. You can even launch the game directly from "LaunchGTAIV.exe" with the Steam client closed.
• RGSC (Rockstar Games Social Club).
- Is not necessary to install the latest RGSC client because this game (and GTA:EFLC) use their own RGSC launcher compatible only with these two games. Although after a while it gets annoying to see it before playing the games because it's useless, if you want, you can disable it by doing something really simple: In the folder where the EXEs are, find the file "paul.dll" and rename it to "paul.disable.dll". No more RGSC after that. Rename it again to its original name if you want it back.
• "Drunk camera" while playing.
- This happens on Steam sometimes when somehow, the screen capture function on the Steam client is triggered automatically without user intervention and multiple captures are taken in a short time (even if the In-Game Overlay is disabled!). You can avoid this if you change the shortcut keys for it in the Steam In-Game Settings to: [SHIFT]+[CTRL]+[ALT]+[SCROLL LOCK]
- Alternatively, avoid launching the game from Steam and instead, with that client closed, launch the game from "LaunchGTAIV.exe".
- The game already has some stuttering here and there, that's normal for everybody and unfortunately, it can't be avoided. The "drunk camera" is different than that and exactly as the name implies, it's very similar to the movements of the camera when the protagonist is drunk in the game.
• In-Game water on ATI/AMD cards.
- If you have an AMD card and notice that the water in the game looks like jelly without any features or details, you're affected by a glitch that was never (officially) fixed. This glitch is also found in GTA:EFLC.
- To fix this, you need to replace a texture in the game. First, you need to download the file found here:
http://www.mediafire.com/?aj5546c1gqb8473 and extract and replace the file "waterTex.fxc" in these two folders: "..\SteamApps\common\<GTA IV or GTA:EFLC>\common\shaders\win32_30_atidx10" and "..\SteamApps\common\<GTA IV or GTA:EFLC>\common\shaders\win32_30_low_ati".
• Anti-Aliasing.
- The game doesn't have any type of AA, but you can use the tool "InjectSMAA" to add it. Also, the reshades "SweetFX" and "ReShade" allow you to apply it with some degree of customization with more options. Personally, I prefer SweetFX.
• In-Game Clip Capture.
- It's known that this feature found in the game that saves the latest 30 seconds of gameplay all-the-time causes a high impact in the performance of the game. If you want to improve it, try disabling this first before changing anything else, because it's most likely the culprit. The Clip Capture option is found in the "Game" options.
• Loading times.
- If you find that the loading times take too long, you may want to try the ASI plugin "ColAccel" which literally improves the loading and drastically reduces the waiting times. To use it, you will require an ASI loader, but lucky for you, XLiveLess is also an ASI loader and will load it perfectly.
- Download ColAccel from here
https://github.com/ThirteenAG/IV.EFLC.ColAccel and extract it where all the EXEs and DLLs are (for GTA IV: "..\Steam\SteamApps\common\Grand Theft Auto IV\GTAIV").
• Colors.
- If you don't like the color effects displayed in the game, I recommend any of these mods:
- Fixed Colors
https://www.gtagaming.com/fixed-colors-f31475.html (for GTA IV only). Game will look much more vivid.
- Skyline Timecyc
http://www.gtainside.com/en/gta4/mods/107599-skyline-timecyc-1-2/ (for GTA IV & EFLC). Games will look more neutral and realistic.
• Game versions.
- On December 2016, both games (GTA IV and GTA:EFLC) received official updates. The patches fix some missions, V-Sync, performance, and compatibility with modern systems on current O.S. up to Windows 10. Current versions are v1.0.8.0 (GTA IV) and v1.1.3.0 (GTA:EFLC). Steam will install these versions, and although, these are the better versions overall, there are some limitations for some:
- Pros & Cons for latest versions: +Better performance, +improved V-Sync, +less glitches, +compatible with XLiveLess, ColAccel, reshaders and retexture mods / -Not compatible with script hooks, which won't allow to load scripts mods.
- Users can "downgrade" the current version to previous versions, although not recommended, there are detailed guides that explain how. There are 2 notorious versions depending of what you want to do in your game, but again, there're some limitations for the most used versions:
- Pros & Cons for versions 1.0.7.0 (GTA IV) and 1.1.2.0 (GTA:EFLC): +Compatible with above modifications, plus script hooks and script mods / -More glitchy, -funky V-Sync that limits FPS up to 55, -worse performance, -problemtic to run on Windows 8 and above.
- Pros & Cons for versions 1.0.4.0 (GTA IV) and 1.1.1.0 (GTA:EFLC): +Same as above, plus cars mods and other mods that add new content to the games, +some users report better performance than 1.0.7.0 / -Much more glitchy, -funky V-Sync that limits FPS up to 55, -uglier visuals and effects, -not compatible with Windows 8 and above.
• More useful information can be found here:
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http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto_IV - [url=http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto:_Episodes_from_Liberty_City]http://pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/Grand_Theft_Auto:_Episodes_from_Liberty_City[/url] (Note: This link looks broken because the GOG.com forum won't accept the ":" in the link, which is actually correct.)