Grand Theft Auto IV

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USES GFWL

Grand Theft Auto IV (GTA IV) is an open world action-adventure game published by Rockstar Games. Two DLC sets have been released so far: The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony.

The game was written primarily for consoles and the PC port is not of a high quality. However, for those who can get it running, there are many mods availible, some of which provide spectacular game and graphic improvements and alterations.

Patches

It is useful to know that, when patching, you only need to install the version you need, rather than all previous patches beforehand.

Non-Steam Version

• Latest: 1.0.7.0
• Best for modding: 1.0.0.4 or 1.0.4.0

Tweaks

Command Line

By creating a file called "commandline.txt" and saving it to your root game folder /GTAIV/ (where GTAIV.exe and LaunchGTAIV.exe are found), you can alter the way your game runs. If you are using Steam, go to the game's properties in the library view, select 'Set Launch Options' and enter the commands separated by spaces.

The table below describes the majority of commands usable in the game's command line file.

Command Line	What it does	Example Usage
width	sets the horizontal resolution	-width 1280
height	sets the vertical resolution	-height 720
texturequality	changes texture quality low/med/high (0-2)	-texturequality 1
shadowdensity	adjusts shadows thrown up by car lights (0-16)	-shadowdensity 3
renderquality	adjusts the render quality of the game (0- 4)	-renderquality 3
viewdistance	adjusts the view distance (0-99)	-viewdistance 25
detailquality	adjusts the detail distance (0-99)	-detailquality 30
norestrictions	removes memory restrictions on graphic settings	-norestrictions
novblank	removes good ole v-sync	-novblank
safemode	runs GTA 4 with everything set to as low as you can go	-safemode
fullscreen	runs GTA 4 fullscreen	-fullscreen
windowed	runs GTA 4 windowed	-windowed
availablevidmem	allocates some system ram as additional vram	-availablevidmem 1.5
percentvidmem	how much vram of your gpu GTA 4 can use, 1.0 will be all of it and 0.5 will be half	-percentvidmem 0.5
frameLimit	limits your framerate to the refresh rate	-frameLimit 1
refreshrate	adjusts the refresh rate (oddly enough) be careful do not set a refresh rate your monitor can't do	-refreshrate 60
fullspecaudio	enable high-end cpu audio	-fullspecaudio
minspecaudio	enable low-end cpu audio	-minspecaudio
noprecache	turns precache off	-noprecache
nomemrestrict	turns all memory restrictions off	-nomemrestrict
benchmark	starts the in game benchmark and then quits the game	-benchmark
help	lists the commands and usage but doesn't look as snazzy as this	-help

Fixing Memory Leaks

There exist a series of tweaks by Rockstar to resolve some memory leaks. If you encounter stutter and other performance issues after running the game for a while, consider trying one of these in your commandline.txt file, depending on the texture quality you have selected in the game settings:

• Low textures, -memrestrict 209715200
• Medium textures, -memrestrict 314572800
• High textures, -memrestrict 629145600

No Intro Fix

No Intro Fix

Issues and Fixes

ATI Rain Effects Glitch

There is a problem with ATI 69xx (6950, 6970, 6990) cards and drivers at the moment. (And there has been for some time.) The rain shader in GTA IV causes spontaneous red, green, sometimes white starbursts while it is raining. Don't worry! These aren't really artifacts, but a shader bug.

There is a quick workaround. It involves disabling the lighting shader on rain.

• Open your GTA folder (Usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Grand Theft Auto IV\GTA IV)
• Navigate to common\data\visualSettings.dat and open it with your favorite text editing software.
• Scroll down to line 20 or so under "#Values for rain GPU particle effect" and change "rain.UseLitShader 1.0" to "rain.UseLitShader 0"
• Play your game!

Mac/Linux

It is possible to run GTA IV on *nix systems via Wine. It is suggested that you run the game using Wineskin.

Ensure that you run LaunchGTAIV.exe rather than GTAIV.exe when starting the game, or you will encounter anti-piracy game effects

XLiveLess

Due to current limitations, GFWL will not work (Wine is not yet fully compatible with .NET 3.5), so an XLiveLess fix must be applied to the game for it to work.

1. Download the XLiveLess xlive.dll file: xlive.dll 0.999-beta7 29 May 2010
2. Place xlive.dll in the root game folder:

   For Steam users, this is /Program Files/Steam/steamapps/common/Grand Theft Auto IV/GTAIV

   Otherwise, it should be something like /Program Files/Grand Theft Auto IV/GTAIV

NB: Xliveless will disable multiplayer mode

Fixes

Anti-piracy mode If you still encounter game effects such as constant drunkness (dizzy camera), spontaneously combusting cars, the game most likely is running in anti-piracy mode:

• Install the [razor1911 razor1911 crack] (get the right one for your GTA IV patch version)

GTA4Browser You will probably find that gta4Browser crashes at launch. Therefore, rename the gta4Browser.exe file found in the root game folder to something else to prevent it from being run.

DirectX errors You may encounter multiple error windows at launch or during gameplay. Some users found that removing the d3dx9 winetrick solved many of these issues.

Video freezes Sometimes GTA freezes in video sequences. This happens only in videos. You can skip the videos with left mouse button.

Performance Optimisation

When running the game, use #command line modifiers to optimise performance:

• At the least, use -norestrictions -nomemrestrict
• If the game fails to work for some reason, try -windowed or -safemode

To experience performance, set DirectDrawRenderer to opengl and apply the lowest game graphic settings.

See Also

• Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City