The thread that started it all

[Demarest]

If it were up to me, I'd say that's a close enough match If we had our own forum, this could exist as a separate thread as it should

 

Where's MadeInThe80s? Or moblato? Weren't they doing extensive GTA3 -> VC ped work at some point?

[killer.ip]

I agree, that looks great madbitch, looking forward to seeing it in-game. We've yet to find out how Steve's model transfer method turns out, but by all accounts it looks like it's going to be for folk with some advanced 3ds skills. It waits to be seen how accessible it's going to be.

 

Okay, I'm going to put myself out on a limb here by saying I believe it's possible to cure the scenery pop-up/flicker bug we've been talking about recently. I've just been experimenting with a few files to see if I could disable a particular something I'm working on at the mo, so I went ahead and deleted all the data in occlu.ipl to just leave:

 

occlend

 

Turns out this is all that was needed for the problem to go away, but if someone could backup their occlu.ipl and verify this I'd be grateful. Deleting the data's had no negative impact as far as I can tell, and there's no longer any disappearing/reappearing land in any area where it was previously encountered.

Edited January 18, 2004 by killer.ip

[madbitch]

 

@trilobyte: The water splashes appearing above you is known. I've done what I can with the textures and I believe that without raising the city up, we're not going to be able to correct that.

I dont know if someone mentioned this before but

you could open particle.txd, and then replace the waterwake alpha with a black image.

This will delete the splashes above you when in a boat, or skimmer .

Remember it will not place the splashes behind your boat, but they will be completely removed!

 

For those that dont know how to do this manually;

you can download this particle.txd and replace with your original one. (in your gtavc/models folder)

Dont forget to backup.

 

@killer.ip: I can verify that. Its good! No more flickering gj

Edited January 19, 2004 by madbitch

[Mark Pagliaro]

Ped Issue:

I think we as a team should come up with an official replacement list so therefore when demarest is able to start or comeback to coding he will have a list to follow by and will not have to change the code later. The list would work with either method such as skinning vc 's ped to look as best as possible or waiting for stevem's tool and somebody willing to transfer peds. I already stated I'd try once the info is available.

 

 

 

Just a rant! (Police car issue)

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

I find it interesting that monitor57 wanted the original gta3 law enforcement vehicles in too. I favor this aswell but only by leaving it up to the individual to decide. I actually released the original cars (a few months after gtaIII came out) back under the name mpscarshop and bumped the topic just recently under nespc. [couln't get either names pw's back even under fogot password feature so if names can be deleted feel free] Also note the links are unavailable now.

 

The reason I like the blue versions better is the lcpd logo on the police department in staunton is still blue, the helicopter that chases is still blue aswell as the boat. Plus I prefer the look over the other. Infact in I have added them to my game already and they are carcol compatible so the blue area on the car is textured. I edited the Police Maverick's txd to be LCPD's instead of VCPD and am working on changing the VCN Maverick to a Love Media Maverick. However the vcn has an odd model in zmod. Also my lcpd maverick is done (replaces txd only not dff file) However I have yet to see it in the game as I cannot change main scm's. My builder always fails to copy it howver compiles but when in game all parked cars dissappear.

[PineCreek-Skidz]

killer.ip: Good job, deleting the lines in the Occlu worked great.

[killer.ip]

Thanks for the thumbs up guys, this issue was pretty much the only thing bumming me out with the whole deal... now that it's a thing of the past I say onwards to the next goal.

 

The freaky thing is I had a little mental jog a couple of hours after I posted. I remember writing last week that illspirit had included a custom occlu.ipl in the Myriad startup pack... so when I went to check it I found it was exactly the same solution as this, the fix did actually precede me, sniff. Not a prob though, the fact remains that we have once again, an engine that's mainly behaving itself.

 

I reckon a ped replacement list's a fine idea, it'll mean splitting up the workload between us should be fair. I'm waiting on Steve's tutorial, which judging by the thread should be arriving relatively soon.

 

On the subject of cop car's I'm personally going to go for a bit of a custom retro look with the city, a mainly 70s sort of theme, but it's important to remember the goal we're aiming for is that straight port. Individual modding's going to come later on.

[Mark Pagliaro]

edited: no need for this post

Edited February 4, 2004 by MarkPagliaro

[Bose]

Quick question! Would the ghost town from GTA3 be included and actually made solid?

 

Have been on holiday for the past few weeks!

[killer.ip]

Welcome back.

 

Ghost Town's already in the game, it's in it's usual place though... so it takes a little effort to get there. Adding a set of collision files shouldn't be any trouble as it's buildings and roads already have their associated places in landSW.col. Maybe Dem could code a teleporter to get to the obvious tourist attraction.

[Demarest]

I dont know if someone mentioned this before but

you could open particle.txd, and then replace the waterwake alpha with a black image.

This will delete the splashes above you when in a boat, or skimmer .

Remember it will not place the splashes behind your boat, but they will be completely removed!

Not. Try it your own LC or VC and you'll see. The way that texture is handled by the enigne, it appears regardless. Doing what you said just makes it black smears. I wish I had taken screens when I did it, but trust me.

 

As for the ghost town idea, I think that would be a great idea once the project is finished. The teleporter itself would be very easy. Being that mods like that already exist for GTA3, doing so for LC would be very easy. Just need to get author permission for conversion...

[madbitch]

hmmm... maybe you did something wrong because it does work. Try that downloadable particle.txd.

Btw I was wrong in describing the manual way. What you should do is make a 512x512 black image and paint one pixel dark grey. then import this image into the 256x256 waterwake alpha. I made some screens to show you it does work...

 

first here is a pic which shows the problem:

 

then i took this screen with the same view using my updated particle.txd:

As you can see it doesnt show black smears or anything, theyre really deleted.

Edited January 21, 2004 by madbitch

[Demarest]

That's fine for the boat. Now try the Skimmer.

[madbitch]

Jep, these are removed too . They use the same texture.

 

I also replaced the vice city water with the gta3 water texture,

which looks a lot better in my opinion + more like gta3.

Ill put it up for download in a minute...

 

[EDIT]

the particle.txd featuring no splashes and the gta3 water texture

available right here.

 

I think it needs a few more touch ups,

but heres the converted Yardie skin with the bmodk model. (hi res/lo res +txd´s)

up for download here.

 

[/EDIT]

Edited January 21, 2004 by madbitch

[Demarest]

Thank you. Would you mind also releasing your fixed water TXD so I can see where I went wrong?

[madbitch]

You mean the boat and skimmer splashes?

Sure.

 

Open the particle.txd, then look for waterwake.

then replace the texture file with this waterwake.bmp

and replace the alpha file with this waterwakeA.bmp

 

This should do the trick...

 

If you want to do the gta3 water manually too:

Open the particle.txd and replace waterclear256

with this waterclear256.bmp

 

Edited January 21, 2004 by madbitch

[Demarest]

I'll be damned. I had to resize wake to 256x256, but it worked just fine. That's what I had done too... or so I thought. Good deal. Thanks again

[killer.ip]

Good work with the new particle.txd madbitch, no issues with it whatsoever. Plus I'm quite taken with the new water texture.

[Opius]

Nice solving of that.

 

Off-hand, you should probably make that alpha for the water really dark, so the lack of a seabed isn't as obvious. I would suggest making one, but I know you want to get a direct port done first.

[killer.ip]

I think creating a new seabed would be the way to go, not only would it compliment the aesthetic of the new water texture but it would help hide the submerged tunnels as well.

 

I'm in the process of wrapping up the files I've been working on at the mo, so I'll be free until Steve's & Hollower's tutorials arrive... I wouldn't mind having a shot to see what I can come up with.

[Demarest]

Being that the inside of the tunnels are quite small, couldn't we instead just lower the view distance on all tunnel objects to something much shorter so that they would appear from inside, but not well above the water's surface? Tedious maybe, but thing of the bogdown from adding additional models/textures throughout the city to simulate a seabed...

[killer.ip]

I think we could get away with having a low poly seabed, a few hundred extra faces per island wouldn't have much of an impact on resources. We could apply a darkish texture to create the illusion of depth (judging from what I've seen it would have to fairly close to the surface), and also to camouflage it's lack of definition. Plus we'd be completely hiding the tunnels from view.

 

At the moment the inside of the tunnels are visible from the surface because of the single sided nature of their faces. Unless it would be possible to reduce the view distance to render them invisible those faces would have to be corrected, that means almost doubling the polycount of those tunnels... which could otherwise be spent on creating the bed.

 

 

[EDIT] Finished up with the latest files I've been working on, as per usual you can find them here, if anyone has any problems just let me know.

 

The 2D surfaces in Portland & Shoreside Vale are now about as close to final as I can see, plus there's a couple of new sets consisting of COL & IPL files. I've also uploaded an updated map.zon for anyone still having problems with flickering scenery.

 

There's a few other corrections, such as the centre sections of the Callahan bridge now matching up, and the strangely coloured barriers aren't so strangely coloured any more. Small stuff mainly, but it adds up in the end:

 

Edited January 22, 2004 by killer.ip

[MajorOutage]

I think a seabed would be the way to go, but we could also just add some untextured plates to cover up the tunnels.

[PineCreek-Skidz]

What if we added a black layer just under the water with no collision, then you wouldnt be able to see the tunnels, and we wouldnt have to make a seafloor. Just an idea of course.

[Mark Pagliaro]

I personally would like a sea bed but as an addon later. The transparency of the water is one of the advantages in the vice city engine so I think we should keep it just like we are with bikes and heli's. However this requires adding a sea bed which I believe we could do low poly with a minimal texture.

 

On the other hand I am having setbacks with 2d fixes in staunton, but am still working on them nearly all patched up but the game doesn't handle them to well. May have to redo all of them (100-120 dffs) Hopefully not.

[killer.ip]

 

What if we added a black layer just under the water with no collision, then you wouldnt be able to see the tunnels, and we wouldnt have to make a seafloor. Just an idea of course.

The bed could indeed just be a flat layer. Judging from the pic below it would need to be placed a metre or two below the surface everywhere bar the beach in Portland:

 

 

Because of this it could be as low poly as needs be, even a flat plane consisting of 2 faces would probably do the trick although that would probably make judging the texture size a little difficult.

Edited January 22, 2004 by killer.ip

[xhispage]

I have a suggestion , maybe a dumb one , but normall Vice City uses a green layer , right? why not re import that layer and you wont see that tunnel anymore

 

Xanni

[Chrystle]

Wow....really cool, and I wanted to try to download it today, but everytime I visit the Grand Theft Auto World Online page, each time I press the "I Agree" button, it just says "Sorry... This page doesn't exist."

 

Anyone knows if its ment to be this way or just a broken link?

[Mark Pagliaro]

I'll ask my sister on the weekend if she could host a file if she says yes then I'll make a GTA:LC download. Since we are a seperate mod from GTA:WO we shouldn't depend on GTA:WO link/file sources.

[xhispage]

There reason its down is because Rockstar asked to remove the .exe from the next release , anyways , I hope it works now , or visit www.thegamersalliance.com to download it

 

Xanni

[JernejL]

I had to resize wake to 256x256, but it worked just fine.

what for - txd workshop imports any image size that stick to the rules and vicecity adjusts the UV mappings..