Grand Theft Auto IV

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.

The PC version of the game uses Games For Windows Live.

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

If you do not see the intro when booting the game, install this.

Mods

Mods can be found on a few sites, including GTA4-mods.com and the GTA Garage.

iCEnhancer

iCEnhancer is a graphical enhancement mod based on the ENB format that provides a more realistic atmosphere than the original game supplied. After a few years in development, iCEnhancer 2.1 (the final version) was released for download, on July 17th, 2012. A trailer and instructions on how to use the mod are included in the faq. The mod is compatible with the latest GTA IV version, 1.0.7.0 (default on Steam installations), for ease of use; however, it is recommended to downgrade the game to the 1.0.4.0 version, which provides higher frame rates. For unknown reasons, the mod will benefit frame rate on some systems but not on others, so be sure to backup the files the mod replaces. An alternative faq provides details on issues with ATI cards, while another thread contains instructions about laptops that use the Nvidia Optimus technology. For further reference, visit the Facebook page, the Twitter page, and the official forums.

Maps

Maps are total or partial recreations of the map present in the game. These usually involve the addition of a structure, likely a stunt jump or an island, such as DesertIV and GosTown Paradise. Other times, these are complete recreations of the map, like GTA III RAGE and GTA IV SA, recreations of Liberty City (GTA III version) and San Andreas, respectively.

While re-texturing parts of the map may not count as a new map, they do serve the same purpose. Many large scale projects are unknown or abandoned, making Lord Neophyte's re-texturing of Algonquin (Manhattan) the largest project to date.

Other

Gun textures, gun sounds, cars, pedestrians, scripts, the works. GTA IV is a highly modifiable sandbox. Some small mods are required for the bigger ones to work. XLiveLess needs to be installed for (Simple) trainers to work, while Extra Parts Movement is required for some advanced cars to work properly. Some mods try to improve performance by cleaning up the code, like EDGE and Project RAGE, a collection of optimizations for the game.

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!

Algonquin Bridge lag issue

If you're experiencing significant FPS drops only on the Algonquin Bridge with an Intel i7 processor, try installing Process Lasso, open it, launch GTA 4, alt-tab out, right click then set the affinity of gtaiv.exe to "Avoid Non-Physical Cores", as well as setting the "Priority Class" to High.

Game Fails to start

There is an issue in which the Steam Version of the game (And possibly non-steam) will fail to start. The Rockstar Social club login pops up, but after you sign in, or go offline, the game fails to start. This is caused by an out of date Games for Windows Live Client. You can download the client here. You may have to start run this program each time you want to play.

Unfortunately, however, updating the client may not be the only issue preventing you from logging in to Games for Windows Live. It could also be a problem with your MTU size. To determine what your MTU size is, open a cmd window (click Start, type cmd, press enter). Once in the cmd window, enter the following command:

C:\>netsh interface ipv4 show interfaces

This will show you the MTU size currently set for all of your network interfaces. For your account to be able to log in, the MTU size must be set to 1500. If it is not, a quick fix is to just force the change in with:

C:\>netsh interface ipv4 set subinterface "Local Area Connection" mtu=1500 store=persistent

Assuming, of course, that "Local Area Connection" is the name of your network interface. Note that even though we set "store=persistent", this change will not be permanent and will be lost on reboot.

ATI Radeon Water Fix

There is a problem where the water loses it's features and details after a while.

To fix this issue do this:

• Download the fixed shader: http://www.mediafire.com/?e0d69i8af8gz5l9
• Open your GTA folder (Usually C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Grand Theft Auto IV\GTA IV)
• Navigate to common\shaders\win32_30_atidx10\ and rename waterTex.fxc to waterTex.fxc.org
• Place your downloaded waterTex.fxc in the same folder.
• Navigate to common\shaders\win32_30_low_ati\ and rename waterTex.fxc to waterTex.fxc.org
• Place your downloaded waterTex.fxc in the same folder.
• 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. You are advised to run the latest update of the game (1.0.7.0 as of 12 May 12).

XLiveLess

NB: Xliveless will disable multiplayer mode

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

Invisible fonts glitch
When using Xliveless some users have reported that the game menu text disappears. To fix this follow these steps:

1. Backup fonts.dat and fonts_r.dat, located at
2. Download the GTA IV font pack: http://www.mediafire.com/?futz7h44s425gz6
3. Copy the two files found in the downloaded font pack to

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.
  • To prevent this, try installing the razor1911 GTA IV 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.

Frame rate capping

The game stutters on some ATI/AMD cards. Cap the frame rate with dxtory at a frame rate you never drop under to prevent this.

See Also

• Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City