GTA IV PC I'm just stumped at the arrogance at Rockstar?

[Thingriz]

First off I have an OK computer not big enough to run NASA but a decent Game Rig:

win Vista64 SP1

Intel Core2Duo 6850 3.0MHz

780i EVGA MoBo

4 Gigs XMS2-8500 Dominator Ram

Raptor H/D's

280GTX SSC EVGA Graphic main card 1024MB

8800GTS 320MB Phys-X card

X-Fi Fatality Sound

1200 Watt Toughpower

Thermaltake Armor 6000LCS Full Tower/H2O Cooled

22" Gateway 1680 X 1024

Logitech G-25/G-15/G-5/G (RS Tech support tol me to unhook all these and uninstall drivers and software)

Belkin Nostromo N-52 Te (same thing here)

I know it's not the biggest and baddest. But It's my first real Game Rig. I built it myself and it's the first computer that exceeds all requirements to play any game to date. And therein lies my quandry. Since the advent of the X-Box 360 almost every game is a ported scaled down version of a box game. I have nothing against consoles. I intend to buy a PS3 for the BlueRay, and Metal Gear Solid looks real good to me.

But now back to PC and in particular this GTA IV game that I want to play so badly. And the disrespect and hostility of Rockstar and seemingly alot of other PC Gamers who claim to not be having any problems with the game. And further are not put off by the requirements and expectations of Rockstar to play the game.

I bought the game without hesitation as people were saying GOTY before it was ever released. At first I was a little put off by all the hoops I encountered upon install. I did not want to join the Mickey Mouse Club or participate in Windows Live. But in order to install it's neccessary. After a couple of hours of failed to connect and trying to do something called a link. The game is running. So I begin to play using my N-52Te as the controller as in every FPS I play. And the gameplay is good. Real good. And fun. I like this game. Instantly addicted. I even got over the fact that I could'nt use my G-25 for in car segments. The speedpad was better.

And then it began. About 20minutes into the game it crashed with the infamous resc10 error. Lack of video memory. What? 1024MB is not enough! But wait how can you get more. The game doesn't support SLI. Iplayed up to about 33% of the way through the game with it crashing at random times of anywhere from 1min or immediately to once almost an hour. And then came the patch. Oh boy a fix! The patch installed and I fired up the game. Surely they fixed the memory leak, optimized a little and helped some others with different problems. And I saw in the patch fix notes..............controllers. Yhea man, maybe I can use my wheel.

So all full of expectations I statrt to play. What? Nikko is in the apartment with the phone out and I can't get him to put it away. So I go to GTA.net and see posts all over the place that whole bunches of guys that were running the game no longer can. Not only did they not fix anything. They removed controller support for everything but a MicroBrain X-360 controller. By now I have E-mailed BotchStar and I guess got myself barred from GTA4.net. Guess they own it because when I went to register it said I was not wanted or something to that effect. Mind you I did not use any vulgar languge or tell any lies. 2K Games do not like the truth. And if you call them for support without a bluebird on your shoulder, you may not get served. I have had trouble with them in the past refusing me Tech Support for games.

So "No Soup for You." I kept calling though. And at different times got to talk to someone. I was very polite. I need their help. So after acouple day's of trying. This what they say to do. Uninstall all the drivers for your controllers. Except the game thinks everything that's not a 360 controller is a controller. My keyboard, the N-52TE. I uninstalled them all- drivers, software, profiles and even some registry. As soon as I plug anything in Nikko pulls out his phone and it flickers between multiplayer and that Video Editor.

That won't do. How can any game company expect to be the only considered install? I've been watching the polls very closely and as close as I can figure the game is running on about 30% of PC's apparently without problems. But I bet they use console controls or their keyboard has no macros. I think it very poor game writing that releases a game for PC that can't support a mouse and keyboard. Or a N-52 speedpad for that matter. I have about 70 games installed and I use a speedpad for all of them. And why no wheel? They have never had that support is no excuse, this almost 2009. And was called by Michael Hoare next gen plus. I'm beginning to think that the game thinks my mouse is a controller because I unplugged everything but that.........and I tried three different ones. Could it be MicroBrain strongarming RockStar after that 50mil deal? Or did someone at RockStar pocket a bunch of kickback to sell some MicroBrain 360 controllers for the PC? This decision to not support anything but a 360 controller did not come out of a void.

I guess the thing that got me to write this long winded recitation is the statements from Michael Hoare from Botchstar. That only 1% of PC Gamers were having problems. And his reasoning is almost laughable............."the game is next gen and is futureproofed."

How can a game today for PC be "futureproofed"...............it can't. But if it were you would have to start with some basic realities of the state of the art today.

1. It could not be a port, it would have to be wriiten for the PC.

2.It would be using the latest DX

3. It would definitely take advantage of the latest Video Cards. (the 280GTX apparently isn't a new enough card)(further that we have new drivers for this game was a bunch of crap- there were 10 games listed for the new beta 84's- GTAIV was not one of them.

4. It would definitely not use a 360 controller. I have 70 games on my hard drive and this is the only one that requires a 360 controller.

5. It would use the very latest textures and shaders. Is this game using 4.0. No it uses some kind of weird emulation that produces terrible effects. And frankly the graphics arn't that great. No texture hardly at all. Some of it looks 1D. Like a watercolor.

And yet with all these things I would have wished different. I was having fun playing. At this point I don't know whether I like or don't like I do know this for sure. I hate MicroBrain and BotchStar!

Bottom line is I have a new game I can't play and I don't see a bright future for me, because BotchStar thinks I'm in the 1 percentile. And yet every time I fire up my computer I get a splashscreen from the Mickey Mouse Club. Usually an error telling me it failed to start............like it's the only software on the machine.

If anyone happens to have a fix or comes across something that might help me...............E-mail me ............Thanx....Thingriz

P.S. I'm aware that there will be another Patch someday. I'm also aware that MicroBrain is going to let them get away with murder. I didn't get the feeling from Rockstar that they were the least bit concerned with the facts I presented to them. In fact they all got mad, and I talked to three or four of them. But only the ones that didn't read the notes, when they did they refused me support. How utterly British of them. In the long run I have decided to completely uninstall the game and shelve it. I hate to, but the last straw came tonight, when I loaded Far Cry 2 to play and the Rockstar splash screen loaded on top of my application. That blew me away.

Edited December 16, 2008 by Thingriz

[Mehhh]

K, first "..I did not want to join the Mickey Mouse Club or participate in Windows Live. But in order to install it's neccessary. After a couple of hours of failed to connect and trying to do something called a link...." Its NOT a req to sign up for R* social club, you just have to exit out/skip those windows, that is annoying specially on every instance of running the game.. Windows live, well I can't say its not necessary to sign up, because I had already installed my game & signed up for windows live BEFORE I learned that you DONT have to be to connected or signed in to save and load your game..

Well I decided once to just disable my net connection, upon starting up the game, it prompted me to sign in, I attempted to, it then realized there was no connection and notified me, I click ok, the game continues and my saved game loads.. I can go to my safehouse and save/load w/ out error... I havent tried bypassing signing up at all..

So you have 2 graphics cards ? I see the 320MB but what does the main one have ? And for that matter which are you using, are these the unsupported SLI or you just switch display adapters manually ... Also in the spec list I dont see your cpu listed ..

The issue w/ his glitchy phone, seems to have something to do w/ those "controller" files/drivers, I dlded some to try w/ my Ps3 controller and had the same problem it dint even work either but soon as I got rid of the files, everything was fine.

I was also getting that error about RGSClauncher I'm guessing ? ..

The social club exe may be in your startup folder.. You could either try to delete it there to make it stop tryin to autoload or if its not there then run RGSC, & once its in the tray, right click and deselect "start w/ windows" or whatever it says..

The way I ran RGSC was to go into your R* games folder, then into the social club folder, then, in my case, there is a folder like 1_1_3_0, go in it and copy the RGSC.exe file from there, stick it in your startup folder or simply create a shortcut to paste to your desktop so you can start it manaully...

[Sabin]

Yes I did not want to join Socialclub or Windows live but felt like I forced into it, and it had to connect to the internet to validate the product key (But there is offline one hidden in the program folder?). I felt like I let Big brother into my computer to get this game running.

Edited February 21, 2009 by Sabin