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Grand Theft Auto IV

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Revision as of 21:58, 12 May 2012 by Masked Turk (talk | contribs)
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Template:Infobox

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

Tweaks

Graphical Memory Restrictions

The GTA IV graphics settings work on the concept of a "memory budget". As you turn up the settings, you near your memory budget. If you wish to remove the restrictions on your memory budget, follow these steps:

  1. Navigate to your GTA IV installation directory. (Usually located in "C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Grand Theft Auto IV\GTAIV" (for a 64 bit Steam installation) or "C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Grand Theft Auto IV\GTAIV" (for a 32 bit Steam installation).
  2. Create a file called "commandline.txt" and add: 
    -nomemrestrict

Windowed Mode

If you wish to run the game in windowed mode, follow these steps:

  1. Right click on the game in your Steam library and select "Properties" then click on the button that says: "SET LAUNCH OPTIONS..."
  2. Add: 
    -windowed
  3. Press: "OK"

No Intro Fix

No Intro Fix

Command Line

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

Save Game Data

Template:Save Game Locations

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!

System Requirements

Template:SysReq

Mac/Linux

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

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

See Also