The thread that started it all

[Craig Kostelecky]

Lol, no, I made that .

... ? It's in Beta2 v6Test3, I've just checked. You got me a little confused here.

I made it and showed Craig, he put it in his game to test and forgot to remove it when he uploaded the new SCM

I didn't forget anything Although I did forget to add the text entries to my gxt file, so it's not complete in the "official" copy.

[Ben]

Yes, you can create self-extracting winrar files.

 

There are two ways, depending on whether or not you have registered winrar:

1. When you select to Add files to the archive, make sure the Create SFX Archive box is ticked (option only available if you have registered winrar)

 

 

or

2. Add your files, and then go Tools -> Convert Archive To SFX. This is the way to go - there are so many options to choose from. For example, go to the SFX tab - I just left it as Add a new SFX module, and left it as Default.SFX. Click on Advanced SFX options. I didn't do anything in the General or Advanced tabs because I didn't understand any of it, but I left mode as Ask Before Overwrite (temp stuff all unticked, silent mode as display all). The text and icon tab is where you add the text for the window - GTA: Liberty City, and Installation instructions, and I added the app.ico from my LC folder as the icon (it's the default LC icon). The License tab is for anything about LC being freeware, blah blah blah - all that legal stuff which we've never worried about before ! And the Module tab stays unaltered - Default.SFX.

 

I'm not sure about the size of the installer, as compared to if it was done with 7-zip, but the manual/custom install is a built in option - right click and select Open With Winrar.

 

And the bars all flow in-sync.

 

And... it'd be a lot easier to create than an installer - it'll be way more reliable too, and it's neat (pretty basic, but it's fine by me). I think that most people don't care if it looks flashy or not - they only want it to work.

 

So that's how I made a sfx-rar.exe file - CTM, you might like to have a play around with it and see what else you can do.

 

About the only things it doesn't cover are adding a shortcut of LC (you might be able to do that, but I don't know how), or installing GTA3 audio - that'll have to be done manually I think, but that's not too much trouble (the instructions for that can be added to the installer window, such as:

If you have GTA3, you can install the cutscene audio and radio stations from your CD, or even a hard-drive location. If you choose to install from your CD, open up your audio folder and select and copy everything, and paste it in your audioLC folder. For installation from a hard-drive location, find your GTA3\audio folder and do the same thing blah blah blah...)

 

EDIT - I dunno. At least it's a guaranteed working solution for all. What does everyone else think?

Edited February 14, 2006 by benisablink182fan

[GTAThomas]

I will likely add a torrent to the new package when it's ready. It's defintely my preferred way to download big files.

the only reason i was against the torrent is because those can be pesky and filled with viruses. i remember a few months ago my friend wanted to send me something so i had to use a bittorent. idk which one i used but the thing only downloaded at 4kbs and in the end the file got curropted for some reason. not to mention all the smut that came with it. i just have a bad past and am quite pissed off with my computer recently. ok i did the dumbest thing a few days ago. it was late and i was tired and cranky. i started the defragger and ran it for a few minutes. i was so annoyed by the noise the cpu was making that i shut off the power switch on the back while the defregmentation was still going. then my computer would not start windows, it would come up with and critical error saying it could not load windows. there where a few options to choose from. safemode. last recent settings that worked and normal. i tried all three and nothing, it went to the XP loading screen and loaded a few times then restarted the computer back to the error screen, so after not even being able to do restore i had to reinstall windows telling my cpu to read from the cd for files first, so windows did not have to start up. in the end im stuck with a brand new computer, unregistered version of windows and no gta games installed accept for san andreas. i had to reistall my gfx card, my sound card and all that other crap: quicktime, java, firefox, msn, etc. v6 is big news to me so ill just wait for that release before i get back into LC. phew long story anyways my pc was f*cked and now im pissed off at everybody. good luck with v6 my work is done here

[Ben]

You can always choose not to use the torrent - there will be http and maybe even ftp links for v6.

 

Sorry to hear about your PC - hope you can get it fixed and working properly again .

 

Cya round ...

[GTAThomas]

well i have gta3, lcs, and lc so i will comment.

LC Is COMPLETELY different to LCS

if rockstar is smart they will remove the vc helis from the img or whatever it is on psp so hackers cant use them in lcs. lc is better than lcs im affraid to say. idky but i just think so. and rockstar said absolutely nothing about lcs on pc so i dont see the point of this, infact they havent said anything about lcs on ps2 since the fiscal review. maybe they misunderstood and its not lcs on ps2 but something else idk or if rockstart scrapped the idea

also, idk what the price dif is in the down under but in america the computer games are around 50-55 dollers but still lc is free, vc is not, thats the clue. end of disc.

[Ben]

I don't know - the exchange rate was around $1AU for $0.75US a while back, but it could be different now. So it works out roughly the same.

 

However, the ultimate comparison between LC and LCS can be made once this project is complete .

[Konstantinos]

I think having the torrent is a good idea. BT is a great tool for distributing your files in a perfectly legal manner, wink wink. Even though it's no use to me because of my crappy internet connection. It's considerably fast (and wireless), but the provider downlimits all P2P systems to the point of uselessness. I remember it once took me a freaking 8 hours to download a 350 MB file with 4000+ seeders! Fair User Policy my a**, they are trying to combat piracy. What a load of crap! So, I'll stick to direct download. v5 only took me about 25 minutes.

BTW, it's great to see the forum up and running again! I was beginning to worry.

[Konstantinos]

Just a comment on the "free" thing... Yes, you gotta buy VC. But as a bonus, you can get the equivalent of a "more platinum than platinum" edition of GTA3 with a ton of cool new features and only some minor drawbacks (like missing cs audio). Isn't that one hell of a bargain ?!

Another thing - I don't understand why they made Toni C. the hero of LCS. I mean, that guy is a joke! A fat wimp in his late 40's / early 50's who is afraid of his mother... I really can't imagine playing as him.

 

EDIT (before someone else does it): This is the 7th consecutive post that has nothing to do with unofficial mods. Let's get back on topic

Edited February 14, 2006 by Konstantinos

[Konstantinos]

BUMP! Either the testers got lazy, or LC is nearing perfection.

 

The only previously unreported thing I found is this tiny texture glitch. It's present in all versions of v6, and possibly v5 too, I can't tell.

Looks like a "Don't enter this door or you'll be sliced in half" sign Can be seen in various places, like the pagoda-style fish factory in Chinatown.

 

Also, as with the rest of the map, the sea cave had been fixed in v6 test3. Well done Choof !

Say hello to Spanky the Spanked-up madman. SPANK! SPANK SPANK! SPANK!

Edited February 14, 2006 by Konstantinos

[_-playero-_]

for the official GTA:LC website.. should it be somewhat based on this ?

A well made flash site could be really cool!

[_-playero-_]

I'm having problems with CamHack V3.0c

 

I used to play with it, but now it randomly crashes. The worst thing is that it completely locks my PC to the point where I have to manually restart it. It's pretty annoying since I like to play with the 1st person cam.

[Konstantinos]

Enough fun, let's have something scenic. These are day and night shots of eastern Portland from the lighthouse observing deck. Getting up there required bailing out of a helicopter

 

[Y_Less]

Those are some seriously nice shots, just a shame about the alignment on the left ones.

[Y_Less]

I'm having problems with CamHack V3.0c

 

I used to play with it, but now it randomly crashes. The worst thing is that it completely locks my PC to the point where I have to manually restart it. It's pretty annoying since I like to play with the 1st person cam.

Which version are you using? If it is v6x then we can't help you as it is not in support yet, and ALOT has been changed under the hood in v6 so the chances are if it doesn't work now it won't work.

[Konstantinos]

Thanks. In fact, I didn't plan to make them look continuous, just made sure to cover the whole area.

[Y_Less]

Thanks. In fact, I didn't plan to make them look continuous, just made sure to cover the whole area.

Oh, well then fair enough.

[scalliano]

A little widescreen pic for yez:

 

http://img103.imageshack.us/my.php?image=lcpsp9ka.jpg

 

I've optimised it for use as a PSP wallpaper. Enjoy

Edited February 14, 2006 by scalliano

[spaceeinstein]

 

The only previously unreported thing I found is this tiny texture glitch. It's present in all versions of v6, and possibly v5 too, I can't tell.

Looks like a "Don't enter this door or you'll be sliced in half" sign  Can be seen in various places, like the pagoda-style fish factory in Chinatown.

...Check GTA3. It's already like that....

[_-playero-_]

I'm having problems with CamHack V3.0c

 

I used to play with it, but now it randomly crashes. The worst thing is that it completely locks my PC to the point where I have to manually restart it. It's pretty annoying since I like to play with the 1st person cam.

Which version are you using? If it is v6x then we can't help you as it is not in support yet, and ALOT has been changed under the hood in v6 so the chances are if it doesn't work now it won't work.

I think its v5, since I downloaded it a while ago.

[Ben]

Can I just have something clarified please? I was reading some older posts a week or two ago, in which Craig stated that we might as well fix GTA3 bugs rather than leave them in LC. However, recently, it seems that no-one wants to even consider fixing GTA3 related bugs - the see-through-back-of-the-police-car as posted somewhere in the Unofficial Mods topic (meant to be here, but there by mistake) is a prime example of something that we have been told doesn't need to be fixed.

 

I know it's extra work, and I personally won't be contributing to it (because I don't have the skills), but I really think it should be done. Obviously, the final decision is Craig's, but that's just my opinion - if you've found it, and it can be fixed, then fix it.

[Ben]

 

Yes, you can create self-extracting winrar files.

 

There are two ways, depending on whether or not you have registered winrar:

1. When you select to Add files to the archive, make sure the Create SFX Archive box is ticked (option only available if you have registered winrar)

 

 

or

2. Add your files, and then go Tools -> Convert Archive To SFX.  This is the way to go - there are so many options to choose from.  For example, go to the SFX tab - I just left it as Add a new SFX module, and left it as Default.SFX.  Click on Advanced SFX options.  I didn't do anything in the General or Advanced tabs because I didn't understand any of it, but I left mode as Ask Before Overwrite (temp stuff all unticked, silent mode as display all).  The text and icon tab is where you add the text for the window - GTA: Liberty City, and Installation instructions, and I added the app.ico from my LC folder as the icon (it's the default LC icon).  The License tab is for anything about LC being freeware, blah blah blah - all that legal stuff which we've never worried about before !  And the Module tab stays unaltered - Default.SFX.

 

I'm not sure about the size of the installer, as compared to if it was done with 7-zip, but the manual/custom install is a built in option - right click and select Open With Winrar.

 

And the bars all flow in-sync.

 

And... it'd be a lot easier to create than an installer - it'll be way more reliable too, and it's neat (pretty basic, but it's fine by me).  I think that most people don't care if it looks flashy or not - they only want it to work.

 

So that's how I made a sfx-rar.exe file - CTM, you might like to have a play around with it and see what else you can do.

 

About the only things it doesn't cover are adding a shortcut of LC (you might be able to do that, but I don't know how), or installing GTA3 audio - that'll have to be done manually I think, but that's not too much trouble (the instructions for that can be added to the installer window, such as:

If you have GTA3, you can install the cutscene audio and radio stations from your CD, or even a hard-drive location.  If you choose to install from your CD, open up your audio folder and select and copy everything, and paste it in your audioLC folder.  For installation from a hard-drive location, find your GTA3\audio folder and do the same thing blah blah blah...)

 

I dunno.  At least it's a guaranteed working solution for all.  What does everyone else think?

Any feedback on this?

 

Like I said, it's a fairly simplistic form of an installer, but it works quickly, easily, and no doubt more effective than v5b.

 

However, I don't know what sort of compression we can get with this (you can change winrar's settings from normal to best compression) as compared to the v5b installer. And, another downside I thought of - installing the GTA3 sound effects into the sfx archive won't be possible - it'll have to be a direct copy of the sfx.raw file (which might increase the size).

 

The best solution I think might be to release an official installer (as CTM is planning) and a sfx-rar file as well. People can then choose to download whichever they want - try the installer first, and then if it doesn't work, use the sfx-rar. Hosting should no longer be a problem - we have four hosters for v5b now, and MegaVovaN says he has more than enough space/bandwidth - and there will be a v6 torrent download(s) as Craig said, and Alex might even offer FTP again.

 

What do you guys think?

[GTAThomas]

 

You can always choose not to use the torrent - there will be http and maybe even ftp links for v6.

 

Sorry to hear about your PC - hope you can get it fixed and working properly again .

 

Cya round ...

that is a completey true story too. im bored out of my mind now.

haha thats the second time my pc messed up. but the bad new is of course. dont read this if you hate bad new ben - i lost the bugs update

[Ben]

i lost the bugs update

Hahaha ! I don't really care. When I get broadband next month I'll be able to go through and do it myself (the pages won't take 2mins to load like they do now) . Don't worry about it. The good news is that there have been hardly any bugs updates for ages, so that'll make it a bit easier

[Konstantinos]

True - what reason could you possibly have for keeping GTA3 bugs ingame? Nostalgia, perhaps ?

Especially when it's as easy to fix as this...

@ben: You mean this post? Actually, that does belong to the Unofficial mods thread, since it's from GTA3 Beta Police Vehicle. The regular police car doesn't have it. So this really doesn't need to be fixed, unless Monitor57 wants to do it. But all the bugs in the official release should be fixed.

[CTM]

Wow, this thread exploded since I last read it Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

 

Ben: I've just PMed my email address to you, cheers.

 

There is another option. I could write a GTA:LC installer script for NSIS. The advantages to this include:

 

• The installer overhead is much smaller - with my Perl/Win32::GUI-based installer the overhead is about 5MB; with NSIS, it's 34KB.
• The groundwork is already there. It'll be really easy for me to maintain, unlike the current installer (which has a few thousand lines of code).
• It looks a lot like other installers, so it'll be a familiar interface for newcomers. In case you couldn't tell, the Perl installer was designed to look like Firefox's installer, but it didn't really work out too well.
• It'd be much easier to incorporate languages other than English (I know that we have a lot of users that don't speak English, so this would cater to them really well). We could ask for help with translating phrases used in the installer.
• It'll work reliably on any version of Windows. I think this is the most important point, since the Perl installer currently has a couple of version-specific hiccups.
• The possibility of web installation - so it could be possible to host the archive on an array of sites, and give the user the option of downloading the archive from any of them. This has a number of benefits of its own:
  • It would reduce the installer's size to under 1MB, making it much more efficient to host.
  • I have a really crap upload speed, so it wouldn't take as long to propagate an updated version of the installer to the mirrors.
  • Since it would be <1MB in size, more people might be able to host the installer.

Actually, I'm already sold on the idea of using NSIS. The only problem is that I'd need to learn the scripting language from scratch, but to be honest it doesn't look overly complicated. The support community and Wiki are really well-maintained, and there's a ton of documentation available to flick through if I ever have problems.

 

What does everyone else think?

[Andre 3000]

Is that an addon for this mod? Or GTAIII?

[Konstantinos]

I think this is a great idea. I've seen someone having problems with the perl runtime and this would solve it nicely.

Also, I could do a Czech translation of the installer messages. GTAF doesn't have a lot of Czech members (well precisely, I know about one other - guitarrocker, and he's living in the US ), but LC is well known here. I remember that the prominent gaming magazine 'Level' did quite a large feature on LC while it was v4 or something. I'll contact them as soon as v6 is out if they'd be interested in writing an update and putting v6 on their cover disc.

[nsane]

@CTM - heard of Inno Setup? very easy to script, includes LZMA support (aka. the 7-zip algorithm) and any advanced funtionality not included in the default routines can be scripted with pascal (deplhi type language) via a [ CODE ] section. next best thing to NSIS, but alost easier to script and setup;)

 

ISTool is a handy tool for setting the basic stuff, so you really dont need to learn anything accept the pascal scripting (and that's only if you need it)

 

here's a pascal example, which adds a gtaforums hyperlink the installers footer...

 

 

[Code]procedure URL1(Sender: TObject);varErrorCode: Integer;beginShellExec('open', 'http://www.gtaforums.com', '', '', SW_SHOWNORMAL, ewNoWait, ErrorCode);end;procedure InitializeWizard();varURLLabel1: TNewStaticText;beginURLLabel1 := TNewStaticText.Create(WizardForm);URLLabel1.Caption := 'GTAForums.com';URLLabel1.Cursor := crHand;URLLabel1.OnClick := @URL1;URLLabel1.Parent := WizardForm;URLLabel1.Font.Style := URLLabel1.Font.Style + [fsUnderline];URLLabel1.Font.Color := clBlue;URLLabel1.Top := ScaleY(320);URLLabel1.Left := ScaleX(40);end;

 

...you may need to change the ScaleX & ScaleY values to adjust its position...if you use it that is (didn't really test it, tho i know it works...c/p'ed it from an installer i wrote)

 

it doesn't use 7zip, it internally uses the LZMA algos for packing, so there shouldn't be any probs like there would be using an external 7z archive

 

here's an installer i compiled in inno using the LZMA algos, so you can see what's it's like...

 

http://www.nsaneproductions.com/index.php?request=325314

 

...download the 'nsane install' which shows off a few things i coded that the offical devs didn't use

 

 

and i doubt webroot would be using it for the spy sweeper installer if it had compatibility issues

 

 

@nsane - Thanks for the info. Personally, I'd like to just use NSIS and see how it goes, and then have Inno Setup as a backup alternative. I've never actually heard of Inno Setup, and I've never had NSIS fail on me - just peace of mind, that's all . Good work though .

oh, don't get me wrong, NSIS is a great installer....if you have the time to learn the language. i just find it overly complicated, like having to code literally every little thing your installer will do. but with inno you can simply use the [file] and [registry] sections with the File:, Location:, Key: directives etc. and you're done. but like i said, you can use ISTool to setup the simple stuff like that

 

and i'm sure you've used it hundreds of times and just dont realize it. alot of companies and programmers use it for their applications, just go through a few installs you have, right click > properties > version tab, and i'm sure a few of them with have "Made with Inno" in the company/comment field.

 

here's a few apps i have that use it...

 

webroot uses it for spy sweeper, GrabIt, Outpost Firewall, and UltraISO

 

...just to name a few. so it's a very stable installation system and isn't some generic POS, i doubt those well known companies would be using it if it was

Edited April 16, 2006 by benisablink182fan

[GTAThomas]

this mod, looks like a good idea too. there are alot of people doing this mod and searching the mod forum is a good way to find out who.

[Ben]

Hahahaha ! I think we owe it to ourselves to make LC as good as possible - we aren't making an exact port of GTA3, so there is no reason why we can't correct Rockstar's mistakes !

 

Yeah, that's what I was talking about. This post from GT-1 (17 below the link Kon gave) is exactly what I was talking about with bugs not being fixed. But, seeing as it's from the Beta Police Vehicle (which I only noticed when you pointed it out), that's a case where it doesn't need to be fixed, since it's unofficial. Judging from the original report from scalliano though, I'm assuming he didn't notice either .