The thread that started it all

[Knaxia]

I would really prefer a color normal radar :\ I know we are searching for perfect convertion but I find the GTA3 radar ugly, and without any good details.... what I suggest it in the install, you could choose the original ugly radar or the beautiful color one.

[Craig Kostelecky]

I agree with Knux. But it would not bother me at all if the official release had the old radar. I'm capable of changing things I do not like for my personal version.

[Mark Pagliaro]

Due to the nature of the conversion methods many textures will have slight inaccuracies. I included the FBI as final as it is truley an amazing job. I personally wanted to finish a full list of betas so I can have a ped pack and then make finals. I can not do anything until all the peds in this list are done. I am just ever so greatful that MM has joined me in this process if not led me in this process.

 

Examples of inaccuracies are further down the page: I chose to model differently as adding faces/ join vertices to the original ped comes out much like my first swat charater. These are just zmod patching I will attempt to add bones later.

I find the patches look close enough to the LC Counterparts.

 

Edited April 9, 2004 by MarkPagliaro

[Demarest]

And that's the way it should be. I'd like to state (yet again) that the whole point of making a direct port is to give people OPTIONS. The official release will have the GTA3 radar. Those who don't want it, can install the one Hammer has already kindly put together. And he's already offered to convert the GPS for maximum options. OPTIONS is key. But please let's stick to the project at hand. It is pointless to come this far just to give up now. We're all exploring side projects, and that's great as it will give people plenty to do with our mod

 

So anybody have any luck with the radar blocks?

[Hammer83]

killer.ip, the reason I tried to modify the map is precisely to check the lagging. Unfortunately, the RAM usage still increases as time goes on. But well, since I'm going to have to reinstall everything from scratch I'll check what update causes the problem. BTW, what LOD problem you are refferring to?

Indeed, I twigged this was the reason you'd brought both zones back. Even if it doesn't reduce the lagging it'll still be a good idea to keep the new coord data in place, I remember a couple of people mentioning they still enjoy seeing loading screens between islands.

 

This is the ultra LOD effect I was talking about earlier. First shot is with a single zone, second with two:

 

 

My comp is so slow, it does 2nd version in both cases, so I don't notice

[Mark Pagliaro]

I do not know why your having the problems with complete black sqaures. When using the original files from gtaIII (there are a few all black sqaures) they show up completely fine. why not take one of them and rename it to the ones you need.

 

[JasonB]

Now here's something useful!

 

Open up your gta-vc.exe with a hex editor, and search for "user". Look at the first result. Note the \GTA Vice City User Files. Edit that to whatever, I'd go with GTA Liberty City Data, making sure to pad the rest of the space with periods (00).

 

Now, whenever you start the game, it will make a new folder in My Documents with that name. This means you can have a completely seperate and functioning set of saved games and settings for GTA:LC!

 

Very useful.

That's precisely what my program does, but only for the time of execution and so it works independently of what exe you use. I'm also thinking of changing the title of the window in the task bar to GTA Liberty City instead of Vice City. This does not even need to be EXE modification. Just use SetWindowText API...

as does mine, now as soon as i figure out why VB does not weant to run Vice properly i could release the damn thing, but no whenever i click play it decides to make Vice city invisible and totally unaccesable. bah ill figure it out eventually

[Ryan_]

I hope this topic was not supposed to die or something....

 

I installed the most recent Dodo on this page from Mark and all went smoothly. The only two issues I noticed that were not mentioned are the shadow and a problem flying over the area of an insane stunt. When I flew over (way over) the stun I lost my camera view and it stuck in stunt view.

Other than that, I think it works good!

[Luke]

thats exactly the same problem that i had with my little save game thing... that never got released because of this.

 

The only way I can think of, is to run a MS-DOS batch file to run the program or something absurd like that .

 

I tried every VB command to get it to work.

[Mark Pagliaro]

It will not die just on the backburner for now. Working on peds now. Thank you for your interest.

[killer.ip]

Just uploaded a very quick test for the new Dodo's shadow, link. Opinion's are of course welcome.

[ModelingMan]

 

Done and done. Good work MM! Funny that your pics are in VC

I am testing them in a copy of VC were I test my mods.

 

 

Just tested your "almost final" one, except some LITTLE bad textures aligments/minor faces probs , it looks awesome!

 

just tell me if you want to see all the little details I found, I will post shots of them.

Yes please state what problems you've found. This is probably the best I could make, as it is quite tough to get the perfect bone weight.

[killer.ip]

Just got round to testing the new radar and I have to say I'm happy with the way it looks, especially for the official release. I've actually got a thing for the radar we've been using the last few months so I'll probably be converting that the -350X just for personal use. As Dem says, we still have the option of using whatever we're comfortable with, so I've no doubt several unofficial options will start presenting themselves soon.

[Demarest]

I just wish we had a tool to simplify it. The radar has to have one of the highest investment to benefit ratio

 

Nobody's commented on the solid orange blcoks

[kipo]

you guys are right, the regular methods to launch programs don't work in vice city, you can try calling the Run dialog and calling vc from there.

 

 

Private Sub Command1_Click()Dim objShell, c As String       Set objShell = CreateObject("Shell.Application")objShell.FileRunSet objShell = Nothingc = ("C:\Rockstar Games\Grand Theft Auto Vice City\gta-vc.exe")AppActivate ("Run")SendKeys c & "{ENTER}"End Sub

 

 

btw, this line: AppActivate ("Run"), depends on the name of your Run dialog, which might be different if you are running windows in another country.

Edited April 8, 2004 by kipo

[JamesSHF]

 

I just wish we had a tool to simplify it. The radar has to have one of the highest investment to benefit ratio

 

Nobody's commented on the solid orange blcoks

I just looked into it, partly.

radar63.txd (and I assume the rest are the same) has a white alpha, so the orange shows through.

GTAIII's radar63.txd has a black alpha.

I'm about to try GTAIII's files over the LC ones for all the orange square txd's.

These are radar00, 31, 39, 47, 55-57, and 61-63.

 

edit: Yeah, works a treat. Works in TXDWorkshop [aplha-mix view]too.

 

Just to make things easier, here's the fixed textures

Edited April 8, 2004 by JamesSHF

[JamesSHF]

I don't know a lot about VB, or Vice City's unwillingness to actually work properly with it, but can't you use VB to launch a shortcut to Vice City?

[Hammer83]

as does mine, now as soon as i figure out why VB does not weant to run Vice properly i could release the damn thing, but no whenever i click play it decides to make Vice city invisible and totally unaccesable. bah ill figure it out eventually

I suggest using CreateProcess() Windows API. That's what I used, but mine is in Delphi.

[MajorOutage]

Har. I keep getting the Unique Jump camera when I fly over one. No points or anything, just the camera.

[JamesSHF]

Most of us do, Dem said he's gunna fix it.

I don't get any problems with lag when running the game for a while, i can even run it at [email protected] without problems, and I'm only running a 1Ghz P3.

I'm using manual installs though, that I installed back in January and have just updated as new files have been released.

[GT-1]

Outback' date='Apr 8 2004, 21:28'] Har. I keep getting the Unique Jump camera when I fly over one. No points or anything, just the camera.

This is a known problem I reported it further up the page I think, Demarest is fixing this or has fixed it for the next release.

[MajorOutage]

***UPDATED***

This is as good as it's gonna get without flooding any tunnels.

 

Same link as before

[skinmaster]

guess what. The cop txd does'nt work, theres only a white model without texture, the FBI and swat textures are all flipped. Can u explain that to me.

[GT-1]

guess what. The cop txd does'nt work, theres only a white model without texture, the FBI and swat textures are all flipped. Can u explain that to me.

It works for me fine, well needs work but its there try deleting them from the .img and adding them then re-building should do tha trick.

[Knaxia]

here are the things I found (smalls bugs) on the FBI agent:

 

Mouth:

 

you know where

 

mouth again

 

 

I know, he's dead but it was the best way to get it not to move

 

still, great work on this one! So great to have it ingame

 

 

mhhh. forgot to update my radar....

Edited April 9, 2004 by Knux

[ModelingMan]

The deformed mouth you see is due to bone weight, as I said it's tough getting the perfect bone weight.

The thing "between his legs" happened when I was patching him in zmodeler, I don't know if it was the texture or the normals.

 

Still it's good enough to release as a final. And thanks for checking for bugs

[kipo]

 

as does mine, now as soon as i figure out why VB does not weant to run Vice properly i could release the damn thing, but no whenever i click play it decides to make Vice city invisible and totally unaccesable. bah ill figure it out eventually

I suggest using CreateProcess() Windows API. That's what I used, but mine is in Delphi.

the CreateProcess API causes the same bug described by jasonb, must be a problem with vice city and vbasic only, it's weird.

Edited April 9, 2004 by kipo

[Mark Pagliaro]

Since I have yet to be able to add bones I have decided to try and patch up peds readying them for the bone process. I am partial to max because Its more like zmod (the program I use to make peds) I can also use different sorce modles as a skeleton from what I read in the tutorial. Because of this rather than a direct import of the model I chose to reskin (dff editing of skin not photo editing) and modify existing VC pedestrians to look like a Liberty City pedestrian. I chose to do it this way so when bones are added most of the body's functions / movements will be most accurate. No Image editing will be done so orginal GTAIII txd's can be used. The head of each model is that of gta3 the body is what ever base I can find as a close match. This not only saves time but make sures sure the body is in the correct vc position with the exception of the new head.

 

Here are examples of the 4 I have done:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 13, 2004 by MarkPagliaro

[JasonB]

indeed it is, i tried everything to get Vice to run, but nothing apart from an external call could ever get it to run. Now there is another oddity, my program changes vice so it uses a different save game folder, it used to work but now when i run the game it has the same settings as before but no save games and there is no savegame folder anywhere, and if i remove every .set file and save game on the computer it still has the same settings? What THe? the games defaults are very different to my settings, this is getting more annoying by the minute

[ModelingMan]

Mark is doing some nice patching in zmodeler.

 

Well currently I am patching the medic, here is my progress:

 

As you can see I had to re-texture around his abdomin, I will need to re-texture some of his back, and his sleeves.

 

I have finished my work for tonight and heading for my bed, I will be continuing tomorrow.