~ Technical GTAIV Guide ~

[creat3d22]

OP: Thank you for this, it should definately be stickied with an all-uppercase, blinking title in red bold font...

 

I'm not a developer but a 3D artist, have been for about a decade now. This was not new to me, but I think you did a wonderful job at explaining it so people can have a better clue at why the game is so demanding.

 

Regarding the "if it's so advanced why does it work on my [insert console]??"... because the Xbox version was optimised for the Xbox.

The PS3 version was optimised for the PS3 (remember the delay because they had trouble with the PS architecture?).

The PC version was optimised for the PC... whether poorly or not is a matter of debate... I think you nailed it.

 

Still, the whining, misunderstanding and (admittedly justified) frustration will not cease... hopefully your guide will help reduce it a bit. If not, I'm still calling for a whining sub-forum

 

 

Thank you.

Take all the cookies you want!

[mYkSiNaToR]

Thank you, this was a nice read, I really learned something from it.

[WaveBossa]

 

Still, the whining, misunderstanding and (admittedly justified) frustration will not cease... hopefully your guide will help reduce it a bit. If not, I'm still calling for a whining sub-forum 

While it is, umm, "whining" as you say. It doesn't change the fact that the PC version is POORLY optimized.

 

I'm not trying to nitpick at your post, but the misunderstanding (and there is alot of it) would not even exist if R* spent more time optimizing the game

 

So yes, i agree, the frustration is most definitely justified

[Knyte]

no disrespect but this topic helps noone, only thing I need to know is that this game should be able to work on my computer... my computer stomps the minimal requirements with ease =-/

Come on guys, this is just a large fanboy post. Just because you can use pretty text formatting doesnt change the fact that your post could be sumed up with:

 

"ROCKSTAR IS THE BEST ANYONE WHO DISAGREES IS A STUPID WHINER."

Were you reading the same post as everyone else?

 

You're right, he's a completely blind and loyal Rockstar fan, who is trying to defend them. He is saying that he understands what they did. (Which most of you don't.) Not one time in his post did he commend them or say that he agreed with what they did. He is simply trying to help other people understand the technology behind the game, and why it is the way it is.

 

Just read it. If you learn something great. If it makes you want to learn something, even better. (Hell, I looked into more info regarding the Euphoria engine becasue of this topic, and learned much more about it.) If you just want to roll your eyes and flame it, then go to the next Topic.

 

And, honestly, when you get done reading a post that was written in proper english, proper grammer, and proper capitalization, replying in all upper or lower case, with no punctuation doesn't really help your cause.

[creat3d22]

 

Still, the whining, misunderstanding and (admittedly justified) frustration will not cease... hopefully your guide will help reduce it a bit. If not, I'm still calling for a whining sub-forum 

While it is, umm, "whining" as you say. It doesn't change the fact that the PC version is POORLY optimized.

 

I'm not trying to nitpick at your post, but the misunderstanding (and there is alot of it) would not even exist if R* spent more time optimizing the game

 

So yes, i agree, the frustration is most definitely justified

The port could definately have been better in many ways. I still consider IV to be the best game I've played for as long as I can remember and will definately play it for years (until V that is).

 

There's no excuse for "Please don't turn off your system" which says a lot on how much time was spent on the PC version... I think that explains why so many people are having problems. If something so obvious wasn't edited, then what else wasn't?

 

I still have experienced only ONE crash so far and I've completed the whole story. Sadly this isn't the case across the board...

 

There are many things that remain to be fixed in patches, if they ever will be. I can understand how frustrating that can be for those with issues... maybe nVidia will soon release some godsent monster-of-a-GPU at a ridiculously low price thanks to their asian slave workers... who knows?

[Sub12]

Good guide, but the shadows and lack of AA are a result of the Deferred Lighting model Rockstar use in preference to more popular ones such as HDR. Rockstar Toronto have said the only way to support AA is DX10. This will fix the over-sharp shadows as well.

 

And DX10 combine many advantages. But it is true, 95% of the visuals can be emulated on PS3.0. However, it brings forward many performance and coding efficiency benefits related to shadows, anti-aliasing, physics, etc. Sadly, apart from Far Cry 2, no game has been able to utilize DX10 properly.

[ceedj]

True, but if the un-informed people read this there will be less noob posts about nonsense.

Clearly, you're new around here.

 

Appreciate the posts and fixes and such, thanks.

[MonkeyMhz]

Wow, i just got a very violent threat PM. It was like paragraphs long (skipped over most) and the guy created a new account to post it too... Thats nice,

 

Really shows how un-professional and immature some of the people lurking on these forums are. Sad, the games a mess. So lets to to make the best out of it, unfortunately it seems people don't want things to get better all they wanna do is bitch and whine. R* fked up. Now when ever I post something to try to help people or understand something I get a violent threat. Oh cool. Pfft,

 

this is why game companies are moving to consoles, because too many little yappers who don't wanna learn anything or understand anything bitch and moan when anyone tries to help them. So instead the game companies say ok, lets give them a CD were they can't set the graphics way higher than their system and so they cant complain over how it runs cuz it runs the same for everyone with that console. And thats the death of PC gaming.

 

*and btw im not defending R*, they did a terrible job with GTAIV PC version.

 

 

 

 

[creat3d22]

 

Wow, i just got a very violent threat PM. It was like paragraphs long (skipped over most) and the guy created a new account to post it too... Thats nice,

 

Really shows how un-professional and immature some of the people lurking on these forums are. Sad, the games a mess. So lets to to make the best out of it, unfortunately it seems people don't want things to get better all they wanna do is bitch and whine. R* fked up. Now when ever I post something to try to help people or understand something I get a violent threat. Oh cool. Pfft,

 

this is why game companies are moving to consoles, because too many little yappers who don't wanna learn anything  or understand anything bitch and moan when anyone tries to help them. So instead the game companies say ok, lets give them a CD were they can't set the graphics way higher than their system and so they cant complain over how it runs cuz it runs the same for everyone with that console. And thats the death of PC gaming.

 

*and btw im not defending R*, they did a terrible job with GTAIV PC version.

Don't mind the threat PM, I just received the same...

It's some retarded kid who does nothing but send that around to a lot of users here. The last time (his nick was kv7600 or something like that) it was the EXACT same message.

 

Just ignore the troll... it's a matter of minutes before he's banned again.

[ceedj]

this is why game companies are moving to consoles, because too many little yappers who don't wanna learn anything or understand anything bitch and moan when anyone tries to help them. So instead the game companies say ok, lets give them a CD were they can't set the graphics way higher than their system and so they cant complain over how it runs cuz it runs the same for everyone with that console. And thats the death of PC gaming.

That seems a bit more cynical than factual there friend. Just sayin'.

[Chroniss]

Were you reading the same post as everyone else?

 

You're right, he's a completely blind and loyal Rockstar fan, who is trying to defend them. He is saying that he understands what they did. (Which most of you don't.) Not one time in his post did he commend them or say that he agreed with what they did. He is simply trying to help other people understand the technology behind the game, and why it is the way it is.

 

Just read it. If you learn something great. If it makes you want to learn something, even better. (Hell, I looked into more info regarding the Euphoria engine becasue of this topic, and learned much more about it.) If you just want to roll your eyes and flame it, then go to the next Topic.

 

And, honestly, when you get done reading a post that was written in proper english, proper grammer, and proper capitalization, replying in all upper or lower case, with no punctuation doesn't really help your cause.

I agree that what I said was too harsh of a summery for his entire post, but I stand by the sentiment. The reason for it was not the content of the post, it was the notion that we are whiners because the game has issues on our computers, and then a long post that does absolutely nothing to help solve those problems.

 

However there IS a fanboyish attitude throughout his post, and I cannot ignore that. There is too much of this attitude that Rock* can be forgiven for the games problems because its a good game. Thats the kind of attitude that leads to no future support for those of us who have major issues. There is a large number of us who are on the minimum side of the game, and it simply is unplayable. The game should run fine with the settings on low for these people, but it does not. To say that Rockstar can be forgiven for this because their Euphoria engine is so awesome or because the game world is so large is WRONG.

 

 

And, honestly, when you get done reading a post that was written in proper english, proper grammer, and proper capitalization, replying in all upper or lower case, with no punctuation doesn't really help your cause.

 

Please don't talk about proper language usage, thats not the point here and never was. Besides the caps I think you will see plenty of proper language usage in what I posted.

[MonkeyMhz]

Good guide, but the shadows and lack of AA are a result of the Deferred Lighting model Rockstar use in preference to more popular ones such as HDR. Rockstar Toronto have said the only way to support AA is DX10. This will fix the over-sharp shadows as well.

 

And DX10 combine many advantages. But it is true, 95% of the visuals can be emulated on PS3.0. However, it brings forward many performance and coding efficiency benefits related to shadows, anti-aliasing, physics, etc. Sadly, apart from Far Cry 2, no game has been able to utilize DX10 properly.

Yes, agreed.

 

However R* could have done a AA trick, they could have used weighted blurring or blending operations on the edges between vertices's. But this would be slow, but at least there would be AA. Or they could have also just did what every other game has been doing, support the DX10 feature of AA and included a DX10 mode, but I don't think they had enough time to do that. They should have done the game right instead of giving us this box of complaints labeled GTAIV.

[ceedj]

However there IS a fanboyish attitude throughout his post, and I cannot ignore that. There is too much of this attitude that Rock* can be forgiven for the games problems because its a good game. Thats the kind of attitude that leads to no future support for those of us who have major issues. There is a large number of us who are on the minimum side of the game, and it simply is unplayable. The game should run fine with the settings on low for these people, but it does not. To say that Rockstar can be forgiven for this because their Euphoria engine is so awesome or because the game world is so large is WRONG.

Here here, see Bully for much of the same.

 

Meh, I bet the devs at R* Toronto are Leafs fans. It would explain much.

[MonkeyMhz]

Were you reading the same post as everyone else?

 

You're right, he's a completely blind and loyal Rockstar fan, who is trying to defend them. He is saying that he understands what they did. (Which most of you don't.) Not one time in his post did he commend them or say that he agreed with what they did. He is simply trying to help other people understand the technology behind the game, and why it is the way it is.

 

Just read it. If you learn something great. If it makes you want to learn something, even better. (Hell, I looked into more info regarding the Euphoria engine becasue of this topic, and learned much more about it.) If you just want to roll your eyes and flame it, then go to the next Topic.

 

And, honestly, when you get done reading a post that was written in proper english, proper grammer, and proper capitalization, replying in all upper or lower case, with no punctuation doesn't really help your cause.

I agree that what I said was too harsh of a summery for his entire post, but I stand by the sentiment. The reason for it was not the content of the post, it was the notion that we are whiners because the game has issues on our computers, and then a long post that does absolutely nothing to help solve those problems.

 

However there IS a fanboyish attitude throughout his post, and I cannot ignore that. There is too much of this attitude that Rock* can be forgiven for the games problems because its a good game. Thats the kind of attitude that leads to no future support for those of us who have major issues. There is a large number of us who are on the minimum side of the game, and it simply is unplayable. The game should run fine with the settings on low for these people, but it does not. To say that Rockstar can be forgiven for this because their Euphoria engine is so awesome or because the game world is so large is WRONG.

 

 

And, honestly, when you get done reading a post that was written in proper english, proper grammer, and proper capitalization, replying in all upper or lower case, with no punctuation doesn't really help your cause.

 

Please don't talk about proper language usage, thats not the point here and never was. Besides the caps I think you will see plenty of proper language usage in what I posted.

Sorry about that then. If anything its that I'm the opposite of a fanboy, Ive been bashing R* constantly if you look at my posts. I just didn't want this thread to be considered "oh a whining thread go back to you console noob." Because then my info wouldn't get across. Since I didn't do that now its the other way around people are thinking I'm saying R*s game is perfect, really when its far from it.

 

And I am on the minimum side of playing this game

 

 

[MonkeyMhz]

However there IS a fanboyish attitude throughout his post, and I cannot ignore that. There is too much of this attitude that Rock* can be forgiven for the games problems because its a good game.  Thats the kind of attitude that leads to no future support for those of us who have major issues.  There is a large number of us who are on the minimum side of the game, and it simply is unplayable.  The game should run fine with the settings on low for these people, but it does not.  To say that Rockstar can be forgiven for this because their Euphoria engine is so awesome or because the game world is so large is WRONG.

Here here, see Bully for much of the same.

 

Meh, I bet the devs at R* Toronto are Leafs fans. It would explain much.

LOL!

[Sub12]

Good guide, but the shadows and lack of AA are a result of the Deferred Lighting model Rockstar use in preference to more popular ones such as HDR. Rockstar Toronto have said the only way to support AA is DX10. This will fix the over-sharp shadows as well.

 

And DX10 combine many advantages. But it is true, 95% of the visuals can be emulated on PS3.0. However, it brings forward many performance and coding efficiency benefits related to shadows, anti-aliasing, physics, etc. Sadly, apart from Far Cry 2, no game has been able to utilize DX10 properly.

Yes, agreed.

 

However R* could have done a AA trick, they could have used weighted blurring or blending operations on the edges between vertices's. But this would be slow, but at least there would be AA. Or they could have also just did what every other game has been doing, support the DX10 feature of AA and included a DX10 mode, but I don't think they had enough time to do that. They should have done the game right instead of giving us this box of complaints labeled GTAIV.

Blur is not AA!! Neither is Edge detect proper AA (they had Edge AA in Crysis too, and trust me, it was pretty shabby compared to FSAA). But I agree, they should have had a weighted blur on the P definition toggle. The one they have is quite heavy.

 

There's a theory that they released the game far too early. It might be right. I think we will see DX10 and AA support in the future, but the question is why did they not release it at launch date? Games for Windows approvals? Technical challenges? I don't know.

 

Beyond all this, I think we easily forget that this game looks, and runs much better than the Xbox 360/PS3 version on modern hardware. And the game itself is phenomenal, and personally, my favourite game of all time. The only issue here is it should run much better, considering how much more powerful PC hardware is, regardless of OS overheads.

[jonathan_phang]

I've actaully had to register just to respond to the opening post. Its a breath of fresh air for someone to write something constructive and technical - its nice to know that there are people on this forum who have a decen level of knowledge.

 

It just amazes me still that it has to be turned into negativity somehow. For example "It doesn't help our FPS so why bother writing it etc etc..". Its like with many things in life, in that the better you understand something, the more well prepared you will be deal with certain situations. If you can understand the workings of options, and the effect on the technical sub-structure of your PC, then you know whether or not you should even bother trying to turn up setting x or run at resolution y.

 

Another thing is that a large part of how GPUs perform is down largely to drivers - Remember that Nvidia have recomended beta drivers. By definition this means that they arent finished. Its not a wonder that there are still issues. I would bet money that in the pursuit of gaining extra performance, that stability bugs were introduced. I work as a developer and if you rush something, then there is no way that some other area isnt going to suffer. So I just think that people should realise that R* arent the only people responsible for how a game runs on your computer...

 

I agree that people have a right to speak up about issues that they may be having for a product that they have paid money for, however, ask yourself how many constructive posts have you seen in all the topics? In my browsing, not a lot. I may be slightly biased, because I seem to be one of the few that literally havent had any problems, from installation through to playing. It just feels that every thread turns hostile because of the anger towards Rockstar - and that really isnt going to help with anything, as no proper solutions are going to be found on this forum otherwise.

 

This situation is exactly why devs are turning towards consoles. They have a set hardware structure, so they develop it for that specification and thats it. For the PC, the sheer amount of scaling that they have to do is ridiculous - every different piece of hardware and software - and any possible combination of these - could introduce issues.

 

I am sure that I will get flamed for this post, but it doesnt matter. People are entitle to their opinion. It just so happens that mine is positive.

 

JP

[MonkeyMhz]

Thanks for your post jonathan_phang.

 

Its really not that hard to develop for PC. I think companies are just getting too lazy and are starting to only care about the $$$ which is sad.

[vend3r]

its sad the number of kids on a forum dedicated to an adult game, and thus you have many that are immature and ignorant but pretend like they know whats going on to keep from looking stupid, i think your post was great just ignore the people that have nothing constructive to say and you will be fine

[Zenzuke]

qwertz123, you don't know what you're talking about AT ALL, MonkeyMhz clearly does, case closed.

 

I know what I'm talking about too and MonkeyMhz is amost spot-on. And he did more for my enjoyment of the game than you, so shut up.

 

And as I understand it he doesn't defend nor attack rockstar, he states quite clearly what could have been done to have a better port and mentions some pretty stupid things like the weird way to tie resolution to other settings in-game.

 

BTW, Monkey... it's refreshing to see at least some posts on this forum that are logical reasoned and knowledgeable, hats off to you.

Edited December 16, 2008 by Zenzuke

[High]

Thank you for the post MonkeyMhz, very educational. ignore the retards, it's painful to see you reply to those kids.

 

can you please expand about the differences in the API between PhysX and Euphoria? i heard Take-Two Interactive is going to adopt physX and i'm curious about the implications.

[MonkeyMhz]

 

Thank you for the post MonkeyMhz, very educational. ignore the retards, it's painful to see you reply to those kids.

 

can you please expand about the differences in the API between PhysX and Euphoria? i heard Take-Two Interactive is going to adopt physX and i'm curious about the implications.

Well, ive played a bit with Physx, but I cant say too much about using Euphoria however I know its good.

 

Physx actually used to be Novadex, it was bought out i believe and now Nvidia took over Ageia/Physx, hehe Novadex is even still in their source code they didn't really change much. I have to say developing with Physx isn't the best thing, but its a pretty darn good solution. Especially for Geforce users who have the CUDA. Makes some nice performance boosts. Using physx (un-editied/use as is/has to be the only physics support in your game) for PS3 and PC is free (as long as its the only physics choice in your game), which is nice. But if you ever wanted to then put it on Xbox360 the license costs a whopping $50,000 per project. Which is why I reconsidered using it in my game engine for physics. Ive just coded a basic module for physics by myself, its not great but it will do the trick for now.

 

Now, Euphoria is a whole different level. It has a more non-linear approach to physics/animation, instead of a character being hit and acting like a little toy doll and flopping about with their little arms. Euphoria allows for your characters to react to were they've been hit or shot depending on the muscle structure in that area and more. Pretty much it takes our human anatomy and applys that to a character. The character has also a brief sense of reaction/AI which is what then animates the characters to hold their stomatch when theyve been shot in the gut or flop on to the ground and put their hands out to try to stop their fall. Little details like that.

 

Pretty much this is what it sums up to:

Physx: *Character gets shot in arm. -> Arm flops back he edges a bit to that direction, end of story.

 

Euphoria: *Character gets shot in arm. -> Arm and shoulder move back, arms muscle function fails instantly and it seems to go limp. The character holds or peers over to his shot arm and runs off in pain.

 

Euphoria is more demanding than Physx since theres a fair amount of AI going on with Euphoria. Euphoria is a good choice in sports games and games such as GTA but I don't really see it being used in first person shooters. It could, but I think ragdoll and some basic coding is sufficent for that. But other more free roaming games its nice, makes the world feel alive.

 

I wish I knew more but Im not as experianced with this physics stuff as other things.

 

Yea and as the poster says below me, Euphoria is procedural, you dont needa pre-make any animations. Another reason why its very nice for free roaming games because each civilian/pedestrian will have different reactions and movements rather than everyone working off the same or a couple pre-made bone animations.

Edited December 16, 2008 by MonkeyMhz

[creat3d22]

Euphoria is mainly procedural animation, as in smooth, realistic animation for characters... while PhysX is a physics enging (gravity, collisions, etc).

 

EDIT: Nevermind, already better explained above

[Zenzuke]

They're really two different beasts completely.

 

PhysX is a general purpose physics engine, like Havok, but with the added benefit of being easily hardware accelerated (via one of the new CUDA capable Nvidia video cards or dedicated PhysiX hardware). It beats havok in that thing... with PhysX you can have thousands of simulated objects without killing your processor because your processor is barely doing any work at all, so you can have more power for other things like AI and the like.

 

Euphoria is basically a physics based ANIMATION system, Dynamic Motion Synthesis they call it. It uses physics to generate animations on-the-fly (like ragdoll) but beats ragdoll in that it can mix physics AND hand made or motion captured animation, so you can, for example, shoot a character in an arm and have that arm go limp and simulate that while the rest of the body is animating. It has other nice features for animation, but the thing you're bound to notice the most is that. Euphoria is NOT hadware accelerated and i don't know if it would ever be, the complexity of the software is probably too high to meet the constraints of GPU processing.

 

Hope that helped.

 

Edit: Well, I now see that I'm pretty late with the answer, but well... hope it's of some use. Hell, monkey even had the same PhysX example as me...

Edited December 16, 2008 by Zenzuke

[MonkeyMhz]

They're really two different beasts completely.

 

PhysX is a general purpose physics engine, like Havok, but with the added benefit of being easily hardware accelerated (via one of the new CUDA capable Nvidia video cards or dedicated PhysiX hardware). It beats havok in that thing... with PhysX you can have thousands of simulated objects without killing your processor because your processor is barely doing any work at all, so you can have more power for other things like AI and the like.

 

Euphoria is basically a physics based ANIMATION system, Dynamic Motion Synthesis they call it. It uses physics to generate animations on-the-fly (like ragdoll) but beats ragdoll in that it can mix physics AND hand made or motion captured animation, so you can, for example, shoot a character in an arm and have that arm go limp and simulate that while the rest of the body is animating. It has other nice features for animation, but the thing you're bound to notice the most is that. Euphoria is NOT hadware accelerated and i don't know if it would ever be, the complexity of the software is probably too high to meet the constraints of GPU processing.

 

Hope that helped.

 

Edit: Well, I now see that I'm pretty late with the answer, but well... hope it's of some use.

Very well explained. Thanks.

[Zenzuke]

Thanks... I use both Euphoria and PhysX in off-line mode (3D rendered animation) and I must say I'm mightily impressed with both programs. You should see what PhysX can do when not bound by real-time constraints and you can bear seconds of processing per-frame, It'll blow your mind.

[creat3d22]

How does PhysX compare to Havok?

I use 3ds max's reactor which is based on Havok...

 

I toyed a bit with Endorphin, not much though, but it was quite impressive.

[Zenzuke]

If you use PhysX hardware accelerated in MAX it eats Reaktor (Havok) alive.

 

You can use it with Rayfire http://www.mirvadim.com/

Or with Thinking Particles.

 

Rayfire is awesome, BTW... and now back to on-topic.

[creat3d22]

Thanks I'll check that out, never heard of RayFire before

[qwertz123]

*Btw, its pathetic how magazines flaunt dx10 as the all mighty best thing that ever happened to gaming. Its mainly just to get you to buy DX10 based cards. DX10 is good though, but it just amazes me how so many game websites and magazines display all the wrong facts or just show amazing screen shots and no explanation of whats actually going on.

wut? dx10 is the only way to have proper AA in all new games, since the lighning algorithmus used nowaday isnt capable of doing it with a dx9 path, so please feel so kindly and SFTU tard,,,,and euphoria engine is just a blending/morphing method from md5 model to ragdoll and vice versa.

 

what a crock.

Am I reading this right, you call me a tard.

 

I didn't say that you have to have DX10 for AA, you are mentioning things I didn't even speak of in there, and you quote something that has nothing to do with your response.

 

But anyways to inform you, DX10's AA is more hardware accelerated, it will perform better than current AA operations. R* could have totally done AA in GTAIV, theres not only 1 way of doing it. It just would have been some work. They could have done the old blend-op routines to get rid of jaggies. And Euphoria has much more going on behind the scenes, its not your ordinary rag doll physics. Its a whole non-linear animation system. It allows you to incorporate muscles, bones, and even motor nervous systems into characters allowing for more realistic unbaked animations. Reactions are different every time.

 

If Euphoria was basic rag doll physics, why would developers who have way more knowledge than you about this pay thousands of dollars for Euphoria when they can code rag doll physics in a day or go with a cheaper package.

 

Clearly you are one of the people who should be reading this post, and your still not getting it. Sad...

wut again....physic calculation for ragdoll models? kool dx10 "water animations" in bioshock?

 

 

dude, what ever u smoke, it has to be good!

 

browsing through the last comment page is like reading my own comment: euphoria is capable of blending (calculating) your animation model, once it got a ragdoll model, BACK to a animation model. the only game i know so far is the doom3 beta (zombie resurrection) but it got nuked in the final game for what ever reason.

 

and to comment the dx10 story: even r* said that only a dx10 path is capable of doing proper AA.

 

thats what i said.

 

done.