Masked Marauder

I am thinking that you would have been better off to post your request in the modding section for the game version that you are requesting for. Just saying.

Perhaps make another installation of the game, say in a different partition of your hard drive if need be, and use one for MP and one for single? Either that or just flat out make a copy of the program folder (or the folders that you mod) and add mods to one but not the other, then just switch back and forth manually for your purposes. I make all kinds of copies of IMG, DAT, IDE, IFP, etc files. Some are for back ups, but others I use just for "cheating". Then I switch back to the default copies when I actually play the storyline so that I do not risk screwing anything up. Maybe there is a more practical solution instead of making copies, but I would not know what it could be.

III, VC, SA, and IV for PC, some individual copies and the 3 game box with included posters and guides. Used to have the III walk through guide and the big SA walk through book but the III book I tore to shreds and the SA book got all soggy from a flood. I think that the Loli-Pop Girl poster got mangled as well. Had PS2 versions of III, VC, and SA but they are long gone now. No exceptional collectibles I guess, just a stack of money spent (no wonder I'm broke).

I had forgotten to check up on this thread. Credible suggestions and feedback have certainly been offered and they seem to be gladly received by Gerard, Chris, and whoever else they may be directed to. Some ideas have been implemented (or partially so) already so cheers to the staff for that. My mindset now is to patiently wait for further incorporation of these ideas into the site while keeping the perspective that there is much more involved than just flicking a switch or making a few mouse clicks to make things happen. Plus the Chris time allotment factor. So far so good TGTAP.

Yup, happened to my last machine. Popped capacitors. And the techs made it sound like the only place for my machine was the scrapyard. I chalked it up to "sh*t happens I guess" and another quality machine from the good folks at Cyber Dorks. And yup, still have the guts of it (what I could not stick into my current machine). I can not bring myself to throw things like that away easily. *L*

I have had experience around nuclear power. I won't divulge details, but I have seen the inside of an actual reactor up close, which is more than most folks. From that experience I can say that nuclear power in the U.S. is something that should be utilized, not feared. Most people who cringe and start spouting at the head hole about the evils of nuclear energy from the mere mention of the word "nuclear" have no clue whatsoever regarding the design features and security implemented at U.S. nuclear facilities. I will even provide an example to vouch for my credibility. Security personal would insist on looking inside my coffee cup EVERY morning as part of regular procedure; and this was well before 9-11. I know of folks who were banned from ever setting foot inside a facility again; not because they did something wrong, but because plant personel had the impression that they SHOULD have done something about somebody ELSE who supposedly did something wrong - even though those who were banned were completely ignorant of the situation by no fault of their own! Does the media ever inform the public about non-dramatic everyday events such as this? Of course not. But mention the words "Three Mile Island" in a gathering of people and they will probably look at you like you just trouser coughed and lit a cigarette. Why? Because the media had no problem bringing that bit of drama to our attention. There are major differences between 3 Mile and Chernobyl. At 3 Mile there were no casualties, the core PARTIALLY melted down, the facility is/was designed and built much more securely, the emergency systems functioned properly, and there was a MINIMAL release into the atmosphere. In short: what happened there was what was SUPPOSED to happen during an emergency situation. I don't remember what CAUSED the emergency in the first place, perhaps human error or a malfunction. Chernobyl was a catastrophe waiting to happen. The facility was not designed or built adequately in case of a crisis or disaster, the backup/emergency systems were faulty and insufficient, and I can not speak about security procedures and such. However, from what I remember, the BIGGEST cause of the whole disaster was mostly human error. The backup systems were intentionally shutdown and the primary system that supplied coolant to the reactor was lowered for testing purposes. But when they tried to turn the systems back on to restore coolant to the proper levels in the reactor core they failed to come back online in time (if at all) and the core completely melted down. The building that housed the reactor was not designed as well as say U.S. facilities are which is why the containment building did little to limit the blast and subsequent release of radiation into the atmosphere. Which is why the remains of the facility are basically entombed in a concrete shell that will need to be continuously monitored and maintained as it erodes and decays. And what more need a person say about Japan's current nuclear crises when they let workers mix uranium with their hands in stainless steel buckets? Except that they underestimated the potential fury of Mother Nature, much like the citizens of New Orleans did with the grossly inadequate levees before Katrina. If the folks at TEPCO had set the diesel back up generators only 10 or 20 feet higher above sea level there would most likely be no nuclear crisis in Japan right now. What happens next will depend on two things. If they can get the cores and spent fuel pools cooled down in time then the worst is most likely over. If they can not, and there is a full meltdown, the aftermath will only be known by how well the containment buildings (what is left of them) sustain the blast. Time will tell. Where are those buckets? Does this give the U.S. the right to be complacent regarding nuclear energy? Certainly not. But the public should not live in fear of it either. The intent of this mini-editorial, for those who actual read the whole thing, is just to share what I learned and maybe shed some light on events from the past and the current situation. Now if you will excuse me for a while I am going to get into my beer can thin metal box on wheels and zoom down the highway at 70 miles an hour alongside a bunch of other people doing the same thing who are probably talking on their cell phones or putting on make up at the same time, or both. BOOM!

Oh! How could I forget?! The most fun EVER was to jetpack on to a trolley in San Fierro. Roam all over town and let the game do the driving for you. A two car trolley is probably the best. Stand closer to the back so that vehicles that it collides with can not explode and harm you. Try to keep facing FORWARD so that you have a chance to pick off the "pop up cops" on the sidewalks before they bravely shoot you to pieces from behind. Police copters will have trouble keeping up with you, especially on one of the faster moving trolleys. I usually preferred going clockwise around San Fierro, seemed the best. If you have a minigun you should be ready to rock. The trolley will stop after one circuit not far from the police station, across from Cluckin' Bell. Try not to get knocked off by an explosion! If you try this BEFORE you are supposed to have access to San Fierro the trolley never stops, which means nonstop criminal fun. Of course, you would need the jetpack cheat to make it work then.

The titles represent how active you have been since you joined TGTAP, mostly based how many posts you have made in the forums. Your title will change after a set number of posts.

With cheats: get to a safe spot and enter the code that blows everything up again and again. If I remember right, SA was like VC and destroying aircraft was the best for boosting your criminal status. Without cheats: I used to have many favorite "kill spots", but it has been quite a while and I do not have SA installed at the moment. They will come back, in time. One was at the top of that really tall building in Los Santos. Pick off police copters easily and relatively safely, even with one shot from a sniper rifle (aim for the sweet spot right below the rotors but above the cabin - looks like a gearbox sort of thing). If this gets boring parachute or jetpack down to that ledge that is level with the highway. Stand close to the edge (but not too close) and look north towards Mulholland intersection. Take your minigun and shred vehicles as they come up over the hill towards you. Because it is a highway the vehicle count will be really high. Try not to look south too much so that they can't pop up behind you from the north. MOST of the time police copters will have trouble finding you. Another favorite was that scaffolding in San Fierro just north of the garage. Jetpack up to the third level and toss molotovs and grenades through the open ends on the cops below or blast them with your weapon, but be careful near the edge because you will be vulnerable. I do not remember if a flamethrower could reach or not. Police copters can only shoot at you through the same open ends so pick them off at your discretion or move away for cover temporarily. Much of the time the copters will not even be able to find you.

In the theater: the remake of "Clash of the Titans". I appreciated the fact that they did not deviate much from the original storyline in order to attempt at making it more "contemporary". The visual effects were also great without being over-the-top or excessive. Some humorous dialogue here and there but no typical "comic relief" added. Was definitely worth seeing in the theater. On TV: National Lampoon's X-mas vacation. "Hallelujah! Holy Shit! Where's the Tylenol?!"

I just discovered why my safe house save markers were disappearing, rendering a few of them pretty much useless. At first I thought that it was a built-in punishment for using cheats and/or a trainer but that it not the case. Maybe this is common knowledge by now, but I have been playing VC off and on for years and just observed this glitch over the last couple of months or so and did not find it discussed anywhere else. So what happened is that I loaded a gave, picked a fight, got tired of it, went to save at a purchased safe house and the save marker was nowhere to be found. So I went to maybe two others and the same deal, even at the Ocean Beach Hotel. I chalked it up to cheats and just backed up to a previous save with all of the markers still in tact. Then today I did the same thing: picked a fight, went to save, no marker - this time at the Malibu Club. However, I had not wandered anywhere or saved anywhere else. So I reloaded the same file, the blankity blanking phone started ringing as usual (I never answer it because I just don't care), and the marker was there. Picked a fight while the phone was ringing and when it finally stopped I was looking at the spot where the marker should be and it never reappeared. I am playing a store bought, non-patched copy of Vice City on PC. So if you do not want this to happen to you, ANSWER THE D##N PHONE! MM

Oh okay, good to know. Are they retroactive or start over from square one if a person disappears/reappears?

I just noticed from poking around that all other awards given are in single digits, except for 2, and one of those is for former staff. Kind of surprised really because it does not seem like much activity for a site that has been around for so long with membership approaching 40K. Members must consist of a lot of short-timers and/or non-posters.

I used to utilize CSS/dhtml to hide advertising banners from a "free" website hosting service that I used to use. I just put them on a separate div layer and kept it hidden at all times. *L* I think that server-side scripting killed that plan though.

Glad that I happened across this. I had no idea that Rockstar had already put the clamps on modding with San Andreas. Glad that I have a downgrade patch stashed... somewhere. Maybe I should stow a few more copies here and there, just in case.

... 8.Fifa 10 ... one of my all time favorites. Just reinstalled/restarted/re-tricking Oblivion.

Glad to know that GTA Place will continue on. As for the others, you don't know till you try. Things played out, a little reality set in, now you do what you feel you need to do. Good luck with your future plans, I hope that they work out for you.

Yikes! Almost forgot. Good work Chris for implementing the idea; in what I would think was respectable amount of time. I will leave it up to you Admins to expand upon the idea however you see fit.

Well look at that! Something to fill up some of that empty white space in my member info! LOL Thanks Gerard, for the pleasant surprise. Here's proof to all that the site feedback/suggestion thread does not go unnoticed. Big thumbs up to the GTA Place and staff! I was taking a break for a while, but now I feel obligated to cook up some more stuff. *L*

Since my problem has been diagnosed, I do not know how long this topic will remain available. But in case there some members or visitors reading this who are trying to solve a similar problem: If your machine abruptly shuts down and restarts. If your game (downright old or somewhat newer) crashes frequently - sometimes with a minute or two, yet sometimes not at all, and you often end up with no signal to your monitor and end up having to do a hard system restart. If you game copy is legal and legitimately purchased (you are not missing anything and no files are corrupt or incompatible). If you have scanned for system errors, defragmented your drive(s), have all drivers up to date with the correct versions, and meet or exceed the necessary system requirements. If you have no mods installed that could be corrupt or contain errors of some kind. - - There is a very good chance that your video/graphics card has puked or is puking out. - - The card that recently expired was an nVidia GT220. The only other possible cause given to me when I talked to a computer tech/salesperson was overheating, but this problem could happen shortly after system start up, so I did not give that option much credibility. Since I have had more than 2 USB controllers crap out on me practically instantly, I leaned more towards the burned out video card, even though I had never heard of it happening to things like that before. I have been doing a lot of work on 3D models in a C++ Visual environment and playing a lot of 3D immersed games, so perhaps the card just "wore out". Hopefully this information helps others who MAY be having the same issue. It's better than coughing up $50.00 or more to have a computer service tech figure out in 60 seconds what is wrong, then another $100.00+ for a new video card. Good luck.

Well I am impressed and no mistake. The site itself seems very ship-shape (I noticed that "Garage" has been down all day... again) so cheers to Chris for that. I wish that he could dedicate more time to the site, or take on some help, but I know that topic has been spoken about elsewhere so I will end with that. The new award looks kick-ass though.

I have not officially introduced myself yet, so I will now. I go by "Masked Marauder" and joined around, mid last November I think. I always seem to be looking for some new computer related challenge to learn. Used to edit/publish my own website (html, dhtml, javascript, css, etc). Dabbled with imaging and animations. Started modding with "Oblivion" but felt overwhelmed by the gross exaggeration and everything turning to "Hentai" (just not my thing). Abandoned Oblivion for quite a while and moved on to modding GTA series; mostly Vice City. Started by changing textures then went to adding/moving objects by editing the main file. Then figured out Blender, found some scripts, and went kind of nuts making the sexiest women that I could. Then I started getting requests to make conversions and figured out rigging and the guesswork that it takes to change models from one format to another. Recently moved on to editing 3D animations - how far I go with that remains to be seen. Just replaced my video card (I think I wore the old one out) and restarted Oblivion; just for playing, not modding. But I am taking what I have learned from modding GTA to see what I can do with Oblivion now after all this time, especially now that I know more about Blender, texture mapping, and all of that. Yeah, I have bounced around a lot. There is much discussion here about the lull in member activity, but to me it is better than feeling lost in a big crowd. But, wait until GTA V comes around, then the GTA Place will be jumping again. So "Hello" all, MM.

Pardon my ignorance but does Chris do all of the server scripting for this site himself? Would seem to me like somewhat of a daunting task, even for someone who DID have the time to spend at it. Or is that handled by a 3rd party or something like that?

Thank you for your input Spider Vice. The salesman said either the video card or overheating. I could not imagine overheating all of the sudden, especially since I keep my machine fairly clean and I had no signal to the monitor even if I let it sit for a while. After my controller had puked so instantly I thought that maybe the same thing had happened to the card. Turned out to be true. Thanks again!