Gerard

I think I understand where you get your name from

Is your img file read only, if so make it writeable.

you have to voluntarily download a patch to stop you voluntarily downloading a patch... WHY??!?!?!?!?!? Legal implications, they're seen doing something about it, old Thomspon's happy. Here's Jack's Story. The judge overruled the defendant using video games as a defence, Jack's not gonna like that (he's a law man...). Death threats? They're illegal, aren't they?

There are some open buildings, for example in VC, the house on the east of Prawn Island. When entering special buildings its alright for there to be a loading screen. Would be better if there was a cutscene over any long loading screens. I just really hated cutscenes you couldn't end. In VC if you failed a mission and had to do it again, you had to sit and wait for the cutscenes to finish before you could continue, even if you'd seen it six times and knew it off by heart. The TripSkip in SA is a good idea, but isn't availible frequently enough. More TripSkips and loading scenes for missions only = good.

I think the next GTA should have a central city, a 'hub' for the state/county/country. This would contain all the public buildings (libraries, banks, cinemas, gov buildings, law courts). Outside of this city there could be other cities, a considerable distance apart (like LS>SF), but with very good transport links to the central city (like LS>LV). There should be non-urban functions in the rural areas, like theme parks, airports and power stations, and lots of villages and farms dotted around. Peds should act differently according to who and where they are. In the city, crime (muggers) and tramps (bums) should be everywhere. In the countryside, everybody stops to talk to each other and people give each other lifts and things. Hey, howabout hitch-hikers. I mean thats effectively what we do to get anywhere anyway, but our char should have the ability to get into the back of a car (shift-enter or something). Tramps, chavs, normal peds, toffee-nosed peds and important peds should act differently to each other. Everybody should walk all over tramps, and interest should be drawn to political figures. Interest in streets should be directed to events moreso than everyone running over towards blown up cars and dead peds. Heads should turn at loud noises, and different people do different things, such as try to help, apprehend the asaylant, or run away with their tail between their legs. Also, on Ragdoll effects. If someone falls on the edge of a building or cliff, and have one limb over the edge, it should dangle down. If you give them a little push they should twist as the fall (if dead) or scream and struggle if alive.

One thing that has bugged me about VC and SA, is the lack of quality and care that has gone into some of the vehicles. The Sunbeam, for example, just isn't worth driving. I spoke to the guys from Rocktar last week, and asked them about this, they (unofficially) said it was due to the GTA community getting all hyped up about the game, and the team having to rush to meet the production deadline (it has to be compiled, tested, published and distributed before the release date). There was no chance of Rockstar being able to hurl back the release date of SA another couple of weeks, without Houser being lynched. They have to produce it as per the predicted deadline. If we, as a community, allowed Rockstar a couple of weeks leeway on the next game, for significant improvements and bugfixing, we could end up having a much better game. We wouldn't have to wait ten minutes to pass a car worth nicking. We wouldnt break down and cry if we had to do a mission in a hatchback. These guys do need a bit of support. Take 2 is a massive company, and Rockstar North are just a tiny division. They're outnumbered by their bosses and by us.

I'm going to make an anonymous quote. This came from somebody connected, as regards to the Hot Coffe saga and the probable following lawsuits. Not an official statement from Take 2. says it all

*moved to SA Mods*

If your backup game is 'contaminated' with this cheat, then start again. If you've already completed the game then its alright to download a 100% savegame from this site.

The only way to deactivate the cheat is to start a savegame that hasnt got it on. If you saved after the cheat was on, and you dont have a spare or backup savegame, then you'll have to either start again, borrow someone elses savegame, or download a 100% savegame. What I tend to do is just make a copy of a savegame every couple of weeks. If you didnt save the game after you typed the cheat, restarting the game should take it off.

Here is the definitive guide to installing a vehicle into Vice City. A few things to remember: 1) ALWAYS BACKUP FIRST 2) You are replacing an existing car, not adding a new one. So choose which car you want to get rid of. Bear in mind that your car will appear wherever the car you replace appears. 3) If your mod is set up to replace one particular car (eg the files are called infernus.txd etc) then you can change it to replace a different mod. The VCMM will allow you to do this when you install, but if you do it manually you will have to rename the .txd and .dff to the exact filename you want to replace (eg blistac) and then when you edit the handling.cfg files etc, change the name and/or ID of the car. This is a dangerous process 4) Sirens (flashing blue lights on emergency vehicles) cannot be switched from car to car, so you can't have more than already exist (police car, ambulance, fire truck, fbi washington, fbi rancher). Replacing these cars will give you a siren. 5) Car's files have the cars internal name in them. Inside all the configuration files and the archives, the Blista Compact is called 'blistac', the Police squad car is called 'police', the FBI washington is called 'fbicar' and so on. Most of the names are understandable. DO NOT rename any of these files to more befitting names, the game will look for the 'blistac' car not the 'dodge' car. This will only muck up your game. If you want to rename a car so it shows a different name ingame, i'll show you how to do that later on. 6) Vice City mods will NOT work with San Andreas. SA mods are made differently, and often require different installation techniques. 7) Only the PC version of Vice City is moddable, it is too long and expensive a process to attempt to install a mod on the XBox or PS2 versions. It basically involves you replacing the files on the disk with the new ones, and burning them to a new disk, then modifying your PS2 to be able to play recordable disks. For the same amount of time, money and effort you could upgrade your PC and buy the PC version and mod that easily. Just get the PC version. 8) ALWAYS BACKUP FIRST VCM Installation The Vice City Mod Manager (vcmm) is an application that can help you to install specially prepared mods into Vice City. Its basically a lot of extra work by the modder to make it easier for you to install. To install a VCM mod you firstly need to download and install the Vice City Mod manager (from thegtaplace's downloads section), and you need to download the VCM version of the mod/vehicle you wish to install - the normal dff/txd version will not work. Follow the steps below to install a vcm mod. Place the .vcm file in the [C:\Program Files\vcmm\mods\vcm] folder Run the Vice City Mod Manager Select the mod you wish to install (it will automatically detect it) Choose the car you wish to replace with your mod It will replace the shape, size, colours, handling and name of the vehicle Before you install any VCM vehicle mods you MUST install "DMagic1's wheel mod". Without this installed, your game will crash after you've installed the mod. When you download DM1's mod, you follow the above process, the same as you would to install a vehicle, except you dont choose a vehicle to replace. If it comes up with an error when you try to install it, notably ones that say 'IMG' or 'dir' on them, there is an extra thing you have to do before you can install it. Note this is for Microsoft Windows: 1) Browse into your Vice City directory [C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\Grand Theft Auto Vice City] then go into the \models\ folder. 2) Right click on gta3.img and click properties 3) Untick 'read only' if it is ticked, and click ok 4) Right click on gta3.dir and click properties 5) Untick 'read only' if it is ticked, and click ok Manual Installation To install a mod manually takes a bit more effort, and a few more things can go wrong. Most mods are available in this format. Please note it is NOT just a case of putting the DFF and TXD file into the Vice City folder, you need to put the files into a special archive. You need to download IMG Tool to install all vehicle mods, and download the normal version of the mod. VCM installations won't work like this. 1) As described above in the VCM section, you need to make sure gta3.img and gta3.dir are not read-only, or you wont be able to do anything to them 2) if you can, copy gta3.img and gta3.dir into a backup folder, just in case you make a mistake 3) With IMG tool, open up gta3.img in the \models\ folder in your Vice City directory. 4) Find the DFF and TXD files in the IMG tool with the same names that you see in the mod you downloaded. Do not look for any COL files or any other files, DFF and TXD only - there will be one of each with the cars internal name (eg blistac, admiral, police, fbicar) 5) Make a backup of those files. Export them to a backup folder somewhere. 6) Replace the selected files in the IMG with the ones in the mod you downloaded (if replace doesnt work, delete them and import the new ones) Be warned that you cannot replace them if you delete the wrong ones, so make a backup first. Editing the associated handling.cfg, carcols.cfg and default.dat files will be explained later. Collision File Editing If you find that when you install a mod, it only changes what the car looks like, but its still left with the invisible shape, size and shadow of the old car, it means that you have replaced a big car with a small car, or vice versa, and not changed the collision file for it. This can happen, for example, if you replace the coach with a small car through manual installation. This will give you what looks like a small car, but it will be slow and sluggish and appear to bash into things that are quite a distance away from it. This can also happen if the author put the wrong collision file into the .vcm file. The best thing to do is to look for a replacement collision file, either by looking on the modder's website for the latest version, or checking if theres one in the download. If you find a replacement mod, install it. If you find a replacement collision file, follow the steps below but replace the collision for the car with the one you downloaded, instead of extracting a similar one from a similar car: Download, install and run colmanager (collison manager) downloadable from codenameGTA HERE With that, open up the vehicles.col file in your vice city directory in \models\coll\ - but make sure the vehicles.col file is not read only first (right click on it, properties, untick it, ok) If you click on the vehicle you replaced with the downloaded car (eg blistac) you will see the big coach. Thats the physical layout of the vehicle you're driving. You ideally want one that fits it better, so have a look at the others and choose one thats a similar size/shape. For example it may look a similar size to the Admiral, and the pony might be too big. Export the chosen model, (eg admiral) to your desktop. Then go to the original one with the coach model (eg blistac) and replace that model with the one you exported to your desktop. Either replace or delete it then import the new one and rename it to the model name (eg blistac). That will replace the bad model with the model that should fit your car better. Try it out, and if it doesnt quite fit, you could always try to do it with another replacement model. Just don't get confused about the model named 'coach', that is the model for the 'coach' vehicle. Also don't rename it to something like 'bmw', that isn't how it works - the game looks for the model called blistac to put where the Blista Compact car is. These collision files are not the visible model, but the physical model, so it won't affect the look of the car, just the invisible shape and its shadow.

The problem is the collision file. When making VCM versions of the mod its easy to choose the wrong collision file. To fix it yourself, download, install and run colmanager (collison manager) downloadable from codenameGTA HERE With that, open up the vehicles.col file in your vice city directory in \models\coll\ - but make sure the vehicles.col file is not read only first (right click on it, properties, untick it, ok) If you click on the vehicle you replaced the Dodge with (eg blistac) you will see the big coach. Thats the physical layout of the vehicle you're driving. You ideally want one that fits it better, so have a look at the others and choose one thats a similar size/shape. It looks a similar size to the Admiral, the bobcat might be too long. Export the chosen model, (eg admiral) to your desktop. Then go to the original one with the coach model (eg blistac) and replace that model with the one you exported to your desktop. Either replace or delete it then import the new one and rename it to the model name (eg blistac). That will replace the coach model with the admiral model that should fit your Dodge better. Try it out, and if it doesnt quite fit, you could always try to do it with another replacement model. Just don't get confused about the model named 'coach', that is the model for the 'coach' vehicle. Also don't rename it to something like 'dodge', that isn't how it works - the game looks for the model called blistac to put where the Blista Compact car is. These collision files are not the visible model, but the physical model, so it won't affect the look of the car, just the invisible shape and its shadow.

Are you sure you set your folder as \GTARockstar\ instead of the default \Rockstar Games\? That might be your problem

Do the same as for the manual way right click on gta3.img in the /models/ folder in your GTAVC directory, and set that not be be read only. do the same for gta3.dir in the same folder.

You need to right click|properties on gta3.img in the /models/ folder and set that not to be read only, and do the same with gta3.dir. That will allow the IMG file to be edited

Yea if they made a real sized city, including suburbs, CBD, inner city, spring line villages and whatnot, a city could fill SA easily. Those of you familiar with british countryside villages, those could easily fill up a massive map: A big city, suburbs, villages and a 2nd town. Thats what we're trying to do for GTA London, and thats what R* should do with GTA4

GTAIII, VC and SA were all connected because they were all part of the same trilogy. They held similar interconnected storylines, of an underdog working his way to the top, killing everyone on the way, and they all used modified versions of the same GTAIII game engine. Notice how each of the games looked the same? Notice how all the missions were the same (street racing for example), just improved in the later games? That trilogy has finished. GTA 4 will be a completely different game, with different objects and aspects. It will be made for entirely different hardware, hopefully both the PS3 and future PC hardware. This does open the door for presumably much larger cities, and the massive disk space availablity shows that they must be planning to do something spectacular. Its likely that the game will be only a couple of times the size of San Andreas. This time we're not looking at game engine improvements, we're looking at a new engine, a completely different game made by the same people with loosely the same theme. The North American locations are no longer tied.

The Source by Circuit City (formerly known as RadioShack Canada) is a Canadian electronics retailer with 950 locations across the country. It is operated by a company known as InterTAN which was acquired by U.S. electronics retailer Circuit City in May 2004. The NexxTech label has been gradually replacing RadioShack labeled products for a long time, before Circuit City's purchase. Identical to their RadioShack counterparts, only the label and packaging has changed.

Modding the PS2 version is expensive and unneccesary - you have to get mods and chips for the box, and various PC software to edit the ISO and burn it to DVD again, so you may have to buy a DVDRW drive, then you need a chipped PS2 to play the DVDR. Spending couple of hundred dollars for modding the lesser-quality version of the game isn't really that clever. Just buy the PC version and mod that. Have a browse round our downloads database for some funky mods.

Put the savegame in: My Documents\GTA San Andreas User Files If you call it "GTASAsf1.b" it will be in the first savegame slot. To change it to another one call it "GTASAsf2.b" or whatever - there are 8 slots.

Dog-walking Missions Paper rounds Sport / Athletics (tennis, track racing, baseball etc) Dating Loading screens Adverts

I'd actually written the post, then was corrected by mvi who persuaded to me the existence of an Ocean Beach PS2 demo for VC. I only joined the GTA community after the PC launch of Vice City, so I took his word for it. Would take hours to find one in Google.

Way to bump an old topic That wallpaper looks convincingly like the end of a pencil... Anyway here's my Windows Vista desktop: DESKTOP

There are stop and refresh buttons. They're both integrated into the 'go' button. When a web page has loaded, it is the refresh button When a web page is loading, it is the stop button When you type into the address bar, it is the go button Takes a minute or two to figure out, but it all works. I've converted back to Firefox. It is a blatent copy, and it still second-guesses some HTML, ignoring the compliancies it should obey. Overall it is a much better browser than ie6, no doubt about that, so if everybody who uses ie6 gets ie7, the web will be a much better place. It just so happens that Firefox is better.

Windows Vista start menu with IE7 Oh and if you want to download the browser, PM or IM me Legitimately, Windows Vista beta 1 and Internet Explorer 7 beta 1 are only availible (together or separately) to people who have subscribed to MSDN (it means you have to pay). TTPN is a RMBP (registered M$ biz partner) so we get to use the backdoor occasionally You Can download them from Bit Torrents and Newsgroups, but it isnt recommended. For one you are only downloading early beta software that isnt universally compatible with hardware or software, it doesnt include all final features, and it isnt neccesarily stable. For another, it is illegal. For another, you don't quite know what you're downloading, it may be the real thing, it may be a fucked up version, it may be an old version that someone says is Vista but its really Longhorn 4074 or something. Download at your own risk - Chris is...