The LVS Team have released the first public DevShot of their intuitive idea to bring Liberty City and Vice City into San Andreas.

The download is comparatively tiny compared to some other total conversions, with this one at under 5mb, even users on dialup can download it relatively quickly.

Download GTA LVS and post in our forums and let everyone know how it plays. Bearing in mind it is as of yet only 10% complete.

The Internet Movie Database has updated their page recently for Liberty City Stories. So far it only lists 1 one of the actors doing a voice. That is of course Frank Vincent who is the voice of Salvatore Leone. Also on the page is a little plot summary for the game:

The year is 1998 and Toni Cipriani has been laying low for a while now. Salvatore Leone requires his services and takes him under his wings, Toni must work his way to the top to become Capo. However, gangsters and other Families stand in his path to the top.

Also, Take-Two released a press release yesterday saying that the 3rd quarter results will now be discussed on September 7, 2005. Not only do they discuss their financial results, but also current and upcoming games by the company. There is a good chance that they will be talking about Liberty City Stories (maybe a release date) and I will keep you informed if anything "interesting" comes from that.

A huge thanks to saintdave for the heads up

Popular Vice City modder JVT has given us permission to host all the mods he has made. At the moment he has made a huge amount of mods, currently standing at 177 for Vice City.

As he is moving on to San Andreas now, we'll also be adding those, obviously it's going to take me a while to add nearly 200 mods to the database, so over the coming weeks you'll see them all appearing.

After all JVT's mods are added we'll be adding hundreds more San Andreas mods to satisfy you all. Please be patient in the meantime. Browse our downloads database and see what takes your fancy.

The team over at SA-MP have release an updated version of their multiplayer mod for Vice City, version 0.1b contains bug fixes and a few more features.

You can read about all the new features and bug fixes in their DevLog.

Or if you want to get straight into the action head on over to our download database and Download VC-MP 0.1b.

Have fun!

Adriaan got in contact with Rockstar a couple of days ago and they've provided us with an unwatermarked, uncompressed version of the Liberty City Stories box art.

It measures 1149x1988 and was over 1.2mb, I've compressed it a little bit with a barely any loss in quality which has lowered the filesize down to just over 500kb.

Click here to see the full box art.

News on the GTA front is rather scarce at the moment, so I've been looking around seeing if I could find anything interesting to post.

First of all news from the MTA team from their dev blog. The suprise that was promised for MTA blue has been revealed. Now when playing MTA you'll be able to speak to the people your playing with, using the new "robust in-game voice communication system." Bringing more interactivity to the online experience.

Second update is for the downloads database, I haven't been adding many files over the last couple of weeks as I've been busy doing other more important things, I'll try and get a lot more files uploaded in the coming weeks.

One of the useful tools we've uploaded recently is Steve M's map viewer, which allows you to pan over the maps of the 3 games in the GTA3 trilogy. Very useful for taking screenshots of the landscapes or if you're working on a mod and need to see where to place it and how it looks.

Download Map Viewer

UK general gaming magazine Games Master has a nice preview of Liberty City Stories. A few facts are now confirmed and several other pieces of information are nicely rounded up.

Maria is also confirmed as the blonde lady on the boxart.

The new targetting system is not apparent at first, as it's more of a tweak. You hold R1 to target an enemy and use the D-Pad to cycle through nearby threats, aiming at the highest threat first. So essentially it's the same as San Andreas, except Games Master say "it's just better at differentiating from bodies that offer a threat or none at all."

The ability to change clothes will function similar to how it did in Vice City- There will be an icon Toni can walk into and choose complete outfits as opposed to individual garments... you can see now how this game is turning out like a hybrid of GTA3, VC and SA.

As I mentioned in the opening paragraph, they have a nice round-up of information we've found out from many different places before, all nicely collated below:

Toni Can: Use boats, ride bikes, change clothes, enter some buildings and move while shooting.

However, he can't swim, climb, ride push bikes, eat, fly aircraft, work out, upgrade skills.

Finally, they also have an overhead map of Portland, obviously very similar to that of GTA3's.

Thanks to gta portable for the heads up.

The boxart which earlier appeared on WalMart.com but was later removed has now been added to the Take 2 website. Therefore this boxart is definitely official so it's what you should look out for in the shops.

Thanks to GTAPSP for the heads up.

The missions page for our Liberty City Stories section has been updated with 5 brand new exciting missions taken from the latest PSM!

Interestingly the missions that they got to play revealed some interesting bits. Such as that the game does infact contain boats and that you have a closet in your apartment to change clothes in.

In Vice City the save icon was a casset tape (80's), in San Andreas it was a floppy disk (early 90's) and this time round you will have to walk through a CD icon to save your game onto the PSP's memory stick.

Also the Callahan bridge that connects Portland to Staunton Island is being worked on.

People have also been asking how can it be that the targeting system in LCS is better than that of San Andreas. Well, acording to the magazine it is now much easier to lock-on, free aim, and cycle through enemies.

The magazine also mentions that several buildings now have interiors and there is no loading when going in and out.

More details are set out in point form:

• There are dozens of new vehicles never before seen in another GTA game.

• If you were killed during a mission a taxi will spawn next to the hospital to take you back to the location where you recieved that mission.

• Several shops such as "Zip" and even new ones will be seen in the game. Although it is not confirmed if you will be able to enter them.

• Including the story mode and all the side missions it will take you approxametly 80-100 hours to achieve 100%

• Controls are similar to that of the shift key on a QWERTY keyboard. For instance the triangle button can be used for 2 things. If you hold one of the shoulder buttons in and press it again, it can be used for another feature.

• Acording to the magazine the storyline takes place in 1997, rather than 1998 like other magazines said.

Thanks to GTAPortable for the heads up.

Looks like WalMart have made a bit of a mistake here, probably unknowingly it has to be said. But they've unveiled what looks to be the official boxart for Liberty City Stories.

Click for full size

As you can see the boxart pictures Salvatore Leone and Ray Machowski. Along with the yet unnamed girl and another character, there's also a bike (possibly the Freeway?) and what looks to be the police helicopter (the ones we saw in GTA3).

Anyway we've updated the artwork page for the game, hopefully Rockstar will send us the high resolution boxart soon, as they did for San Andreas.

Thanks to TheDude500 for finding this.

Source: Wal*Mart

After three arduous months of stunting and editing, our official stunter, Ghostchild has finally released his latest video entitled "Wichita". The video marks a new age in stunting. As people got tired of seeing stunters jump from ground to roof by hitting some bike hooked up to a poll, Ghostchild took upon the task of finding a new way to stunt. After months of trying in Vice City he had no luck, but then San Andreas were released. And many of you may remember those air acrobatics stunts, that were in many of the stunt videos recorded on Play Station 2? Well, Ghostchild took it one step further. He has now completed the video showing you what he came up with. The video contains the best air acrobatics stunts to date and one great editing job.

Ghostchild says:

"It's my best video to date. I've never used that much time on editing a video, but the result made it worth it. I'm very pleased with the fact that I managed to find some what of a new way to stunt, although I wasn't the first one to do air acrobatics stunts, I think I took it one step further introducing some new techniques and such. I hope air acrobatics stunts will get more populare by time and new tecniques will be discovered. I've allready got one or two more so I know there is a wide area to explore. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it."

Watch the Video

Also, if you would like to check out Ghostchild's previous stunt videos be sure to download Draw Dead and Gasoline. We've recently made a forum specially for stunting in GTA. Remember that registration is free and only takes a short time, so join now and get posting!

Rockstar's latest Broadcast mailing list where a trailer for The Warriors was announced, plus the judging panel for Rockstar Upload was sent out this morning. But more pertinent to this news post was the announcement that the launch of the official LCS site is "coming soon."

So in the coming weeks we'll hopefully see some new media, stay tuned for more updates next week.

On a sidenote it seems Amazon.com have reduced the price of the Sony PSP value pack to 9.99. Presumably this is to make way for more expensive new consoles such as the PS3 and Xbox 360. But it's certainly a good time to buy a PSP in time for Liberty City Stories.

Not only did PSM confirm snow that we posted about earlier, but also a whole lot more!

A new method of travelling between islands in the game is introduced - Ferries. Presumably this will be similar to the airport in San Andreas, where you purchase a ticket before appearing at your destination.

Police helicopters will return, in the style we saw in GTA3, unfortunately not flyable though. Having said that the article does mention there are "dozens of new vehicles", one of them being a sports car "new to the GTA world". We also learn that holding down the PSP's shoulder buttons will enable you to use the other buttons to do other things, a great way to overcome the lack of controls in my opinion.

The game apparently starts with Vinnie (the character from GTA Advance) bringing you to the exact same safehouse used by Claude in GTA3. The islands are the same as in GTA3, though you may be getting to Staunton Island quite rapidly, judging by some of the mission descriptions written in the mag.

The GTA LCS scans page has been updated with some low quality scans, we'll hopefully have better ones soon!

Thanks to GTAPortable for the news.

Scoop.co.nz have reported that The Office of Film and Literature Classification have not changed the rating of the modified version of San Andreas (without Hot Coffee) and it is still rated R18.

Now what you see here is a rating system working well, like the European rating system.

“Although the modified game has also received an R18 classification, it was important that we examined the game in light of the new content” said Mr Hastings. “When we classify a game or any other publication we need to examine all its elements before making a decision. We could only be sure that the classification was appropriate once we had done that” he said. The new classification applies only to copies of the game with the ‘Hot Coffee’ modification activated.

“Because the game was already restricted to adults, the new content has not created the need for a higher classification as it has in some other countries. The sex scenes, while not explicit, have reinforced the adult nature of the game” said Mr Hastings.

Having said that the modified game is unlikely to be offered for sale as it violates certain copyrights.

Unofficial U.S Playstation Magazine PSM are saying that Liberty City Stories will indeed have snow as a weather effect, this was rumoured months ago after it was noticed in the background of a screenshot, however due to the poor quality it was debatable whether it was snow or not.

"This weather effect is actually new to the GTA universe, not just Liberty City. The one thing to keep in mind is that it will actually affect the driving physics, as the roads become more slippery."

PSM also claim to have actually played the played the game which could mean that many other magazines are also getting similar previews. Finally, they say that the only loading times are starting up (obviously) and travelling between islands.

PSM Issue 102 goes on sale early Sepetember

Thanks to GTAPSP for the heads up.

With the lack of any exciting news as of late I've been digging around for any news on Liberty City Stories I could find.

You'll remember on Saturday I found the possible teaser sites. Well a few hours ago I used WTF and uploaded the LCS logo to see if it would know the font. And, to my pleasant suprise it did. The font used to write Liberty City Stories is called Aachen Bold.

We're the first GTA fansite to have the font available for download- and here's a little image showing you for proof (real logo is on top):

Click this link to Download the LCS font.

On a sidenote some sites with countdowns to LCS claim it to be available on September 1st to coincide with the European release of Sony's PSP console. This is untrue and an October release is much more expectable, an exact date it not yet known.

Hopefully with this freely available we will start seeing a bit more fan art to hype up the game!

One would assume that the legend that is Lazlow will return in Liberty City Stories. I certainly hope he does anyway. You should remember him from GTA3's Chatterbox radio station, plus his contributions on V-Rock in Vice City and once again lending his vocal talents for a short stint on WCTR on San Andreas.

Adriaan emailed Lazlow out of curiosity to see what he would say, he replied with this statement:

thanks for the email bro. i wish i could answer your question, but i've been given some free tshirts to keep quiet.

So Rockstar want him to keep quiet, not sure about you but I'm taking that answer as "Yes I will be in LCS but I can't tell you about it."

We'll keep you posted when we get an official word from someone.

Source: GTAPortable

According to this Gamespot article a clean M rated version will be in stores on August 22nd. The clean version will be rated M (again) but will be minus the Hot Coffee clothed pixel porn.

At the moment this version seems to be only available for Xbox, as there are no PS2 or PC versions apparent, such is their policy to not sell AO rated games. There is no official word from Rockstar on this yet. Gamespot officials apparently only state release dates when they are confident that's when it's going to sell- where they've obtained the info from is unknown, seems strange when they admit to not having an official statement from Rockstar.

We'll keep you posted with updates on this.

Since there's no GTA news as of late I thought I'd play about with some code in our downloads database.

The result of improving the code is the new Submit A Mod form. It is now completely integrated with our downloads database, meaning you don't have to rely on me manually copying and pasting what you email me. Now all that happens is you submit a mod and after admin approval it appears in the database.

I would like to ask the many people who have submitted mods during the past couple of weeks to resubmit them. As long as they aren't useless I can approve them and you'll see them appear.

Also over the next few days I plan to recode the site to make it load faster, no visual enhancements (though there should be soon).

Links: Submit A Mod, Downloads Database

We have some possibly exciting news for you! At least NO other GTA sites have posted about this yet so it's exclusive here.

Whilst I was bored the other day I thought I'd check a few WHOIS records on some of Rockstar's domains to see if they'd registered anymore that we don't yet know about. To my suprise I found some domains registered during the month of June that could be teaser sites for Liberty City Stories.

Now it may not mean anything at all, Rockstar have quite a few domains that they never used for anything (gloryholethemepark.com and dariusfontaine.com are two examples), so these may never be used.

The domains I managed to find were:

BathtubGinStill.com

CitizensUnitedNegatingTechnology.com (and .org)

It was the final domain there that made me laugh, let me spell it out for you. Citizens United Negating Technology (C.U.N.T). Made it clearer for you?

At the moment we don't know if/when these domains will be used, or what they're for. I haven't been able to get in contact with Rockstar about them yet as our email server seems to be playing up. Hopefully we'll have some official info soon.

It's been a while since we posted some Vice City news, but this one is sure worth it! Just a few minutes ago the team at SA-MP , who are actually working on a multiplayer mod for San Andreas, released the Vice City version "VC-MP". For those of you who enjoyed MTA will be amazed at how amazing and very smooth VC MP actualy is. It brings in new features such as riding boats and you are now able to actualy shoot other vehicles with the hunter.

Oh and do you remember when you rode as a passenger in MTA VC? Players would know that the lag wasn't very pleasant. However in VC MP the players around you are like single player pedestrians! Well enough talking. So go and download this multiplayer mod now and roam the streets of Vice City.. online!

Instructions:

• Download VCMP
  
• Open the .exe file and install into your Vice City directory
  
• Run "vc-mp.exe" (in your Vice City directory)
  
• Enter nickname, IP and port and click Launch Game
  
• Play!
  

Read more.... for some server IP's. Feel free to post yours! Just run your server and go to IPchicken.com if you don't know your IP.

The team at Multi Theft Auto has released another video for their upcoming multiplayer mod for San Andreas. Basically the video introduces a great new feature into their racing mode and I don't want to spoil the fun by telling you what it is. Check out their site to see it.

Also be sure to bookmark their devlog at MTAVC.com/blog/ where regular updates are posted. Enjoy the video!!

If you can't download the video then Read more... to find out what the new feature is.

For those of you that haven't heard about a mod called "LVS" (Liberty City, Vice City, San Andreas) yet, then I want to inform you about this amazing upcoming total conversion for San Andreas. The folks at GTA LVS are going to bring GTA3's Liberty City and the entire map of Vice City into the San Andreas engine. You will have the best of all the current 3D GTA's packed inside one game.

The current progress of the mod is at around 10 % and they are currently busy implementing Vice City. Most recent screenshots are shown below:

What this mod is going to hold for the future is just amazing (ooh multiplayer...) and it definitely deserves a thumbsup!

*****

Update: This patch actually causes loads of problems with various tools for San Andreas. I installed the patch to see what had been fixed and was alerted by the "gta_sa.exe has encountered an error" box, turns out all programs that somehow use the .exe no longer work, this includes the directx hook, coordinates display and even SAAC for those of you who use a joypad to play the game, probably many others no longer work but I haven't tested much else. I now have to re-install the game and suffer with numerous bugs still. Just thought I'd give everyone else who couldn't care less about the Hot Coffee a heads up on this.

*****

Rockstar Games have released a patch updating San Andreas to version 1.01.

The patch contains many much needed bug fixes and at the same time renders Hot Coffee mod obsolete.

Let's face it it, the Hot Coffee mod was rather over-rated. It was childish and unrealistic, so unless you're a pervert then I would urge you to get this patch solely for the bug fixes. Then again if your game doesn't suffer from any bugs you don't really need to get it. If your problem is that you can't see the dry humping anymore then you need more than a patch to sort out your problems anyway.

Check out Rockstar's official No More Hot Coffee patch website for more information and links to the downloads. We've added the patch to our downloads database, There's a seperate file for North American, European/Australian and German versions.

The readme for the patch says the following bugs are fixed:

- Issue fixed on machines where the OS has been updated (one OS installed over top of another) and has 2 registry keys that point to the users "My Documents" folder (we incorrectly used to assume the Win2000 folder, now correctly uses the last installed OS folder) - users know this as "user account period bug".

- Crash when entering advanced display options with only 32 meg of video ram (32 meg of video ram is not supported and will only allow use of 640*480 in 16 and 32 bit. At this resolution it is likely you will see the "Black Roads" LOD problem). We do NOT however disallow machines with 32 meg of video ram from running GRAND THEFT AUTO: San Andreas.

- Crash when entering advanced display options on a dual monitor machine after :- starting game on primary monitor in maximum resolution, exiting, starting again in maximum resolution on secondary monitor. Secondary monitor maximum resolution had to be greater than maximum resolution of primary monitor.

- Destroyed cars now are correct colour.

- Dirty cars now able to get clean.

- Numpad 5 key is now mappable when re-defining controls.

- Issue on all machines where certain collisions caused parts of the audio system to crash (sound effects, cutscene audio - only radio keeps going) - users know this as "Rain / Thunderstorm bug".

- Improvements to DVD streaming.

- Audio problems in interior / exterior transitions and getting in / out of cars fixed.

- Some fixes to ensure reverb is not present at certain save points.

- Improvements to dance game timings.

- Crash occuring when using "user radio files" while the frame limiter is disabled.

The patch has in fact been around for a few days but Rockstar have only posted the news on their website, so not many people know about it yet.

Links: Rockstar Games, No More Hot Coffee

Thanks to Chris from GTAProjects for bringing this to my attention.

<img src="http://thegtaplace.com/images/news/opm2dutchseptember.gif" align="left" border="1" height="213" width="150">The latest issue of the Official Playstation 2 Magazine (Dutch) has a long article with no new screenshots unfortunately. (seen below). A very long article, but no new info unfortunately. They mention that they saw the game at this year's E3 in Los Angeles inside one of the busses at the Take 2 booth, and that the PSP was connected to a Computer. They claim that the size of Liberty City is still the same as GTA3, which means that the <a href="http://www.thegtaplace.com/news.php?tid=2669"target="_blank">claims</a> from OPS2 Australia could be false about the map increase. Further on in the article they talk about the missions, with the longest mission taking just 2 and a half minutes.

As we know, Toni will be working for the Leone family, but they're saying it wouldn't be a suprise if he occasionaly helps other gangs for money. Speaking of gang members, South Side Hoods, the Yardies, and the Cartel will all be back in Liberty City. Every gang has its own territory in Liberty City Stories and owns its own vehicles and clothes. For example, as in GTA3, The Yakuza drive around in expensive cars and dress impeccably.

Again, another article claiming the release date will be between October-November. One would assume an end-of-October release as is the tradition.

Great news for Rockstar and other publishers of games containing violence, sex and whatnot. Devin Moore, who shot and killed three police officers a few years ago, had blamed being abused as a child and also being a video game obsessive and playing Grand Theft Auto for his actions.

NBC13 have posted about the court case.

A judge in the capital murder trial of Devin Moore has ruled that his attorneys cannot use a violent video game as part of his defense.

Moore is on trial for gunning down two Fayette police officers and a 911 dispatcher.

A psychologist for the defense said Moore played the game "Grand Theft Auto" so much it was scripted in his brain.

The judge decided because there is no written evidence documenting such a case in the past, no video game testimony will be permitted in Moore's trial.

It was not Devin Moore himself who blamed GTA, rather his psychologist who happened to find the game. This is great news for the video game industry, or at least publishers of violent games, and it's a major blow to the disillusioned Jack Thompson.

See also a previous news post by NBC13 with more information on Moore's case.

There has been a few Liberty City Stories previews in recent magazines and here are some of the new info from it:

• One magazine confirmed an October release date

• No accessible interiors during gameplay

• 80-100 hours of gameplay

• Several sets of clothes

• Shoreside Vale expanded

• Can't swim, just drown like in GTA III

• The targeting system is based on an improved version of the San Andreas scheme. "The best we've had so far," says Todd Zuniga from Rockstar.

• New vehicles and weapons are planned (maybe just new in Liberty City and not entirely new vehicles)

• Motorcycles, dirt bikes and scooters are included

• Stats like muscle, fat etc. won't be in the game (this could mean no eating feature or even gyms)

Interestingly, in the latest issue of PSM they had a bit to say about downloadable content:

"To sweeten the deal even more, GTA Liberty City Stories will support downloadable content."

We'll follow this matter and update you as soon as we receive more info on it.

GTAPortable.com has posted some new scans from the latest magazine publications. We are hoping to get proper ones soon from Rockstar and a official site update could come anytime during this month of August....

A talented bunch of programmers over at GTAGarage and GTATools have created an incredible program, a bit like the Vice City Mod Manager, except this one is for GTA3, Vice City AND San Andreas. The current release state doesn't have a working browser, however it does let you view all the vehicle models. You can easily install any vehicle modification, and also create packaged mods for easy distribution.

The program creates CAR packages for your custom made cars complete with all data needed for installing the car and checks for the need of Dmagic1 wheel mod so that almost nothing can go wrong during installation, the program also contains many useful features which are dedicated to car modders such as manual car data installer and San Andreas col into dff merging which will be extremely helpful in the future. The program works with all 3D gta games, that are GTA3, Vice city and San andreas.

We'll be adding both the traditional install mods and CAR packaged mods for future uploads. We'll probably also add a mirror for the mod manager too.

Download GGMM - GTA Garage Mod Manager.

Source: GTAGarage