GTA IV

[Art Blade]

Two mean MoFos..  >:D ;)

[smg id=3548 type=link align=center width=500 caption="GTA IV MP 001"]

[fragger]

 ^+-+ :-X

[Art Blade]

I learned that GTA IV uses "inspiration" when it comes to spawning vehicles. Best example: The car Infernus does not spawn in the SP game. It is a gift by one guy and a job for another guy called Stevie (which means it disappears -- on top, I can't even get it due to a "Stevie glitch"), that's it. So I got that gift, one orange Infernus (see previous posts) sitting in my parking space which keeps it from disappearing ("de-spawning" hehe). Now I decided to drive around with it, carefully, didn't want to crash and destroy the unique car. Now the magic: The game picks up what comes driving in when entering an area, along with random and scripted spawning vehicles. When I drove around with my Infernus, I saw another and another and another.. The trick now is to keep both cars alive. If you leave one too far behind it will "despawn." So I did "dual driving" which means drive ahead like 30 yards in Infernus 1, run back to Infernus 2 and drive with it past #1 and like 30 yards ahead, run back to #1 and rinse and repeat until I had both cars next to my saving parking space. Parked both (only two vehicles can be saved in it) and went upstairs my safehouse to take a virtual nap (initiates a savegame dialogue). Meanwhile I have two red, one black and one silver Infernus next to my original orange one (several safehouses). By the way, never try to pay-n-spray them. They will turn metallic dark green and never change colour again. Better keep what you got :) I now have both types of Infernus cars, one has a rear spoiler while the other hasn't.

Pic: That.. is a heavy drift  :-()
[smg id=3554 type=link align=center width=500 caption="GTA IV 007"]
(I worked over the lower part of the pic, made it brighter because the dark car in the shadow kind of merged and was hardly visible).

[Art Blade]

Oh, apart from driving I like to blow up stuff. Part of a mission or just a decent pastime.  :-D

[smg id=3555 type=link align=center width=500 caption="GTA IV 008"]
[smg id=3556 type=link align=center width=500 caption="GTA IV 009"]

[ninzza]

GTA IV is interesting. I tried it but I gave it up due to my terrible driving skill. I always crashed hard when I turned at corners and failed at mission  :-[

[Binnatics]

There's another way of getting an infernus: Start the first race with brucie and steal the best colour available at the start. They all drive one  :-()

And indeed the carspawning is inspired by what you drive. It has allways been like that. I remember in the earlier GTA's you had car-find-missions too. You had to find a specific truck for example: Just go to a location where trucks spawn usually, like the docks. Steal a truck, and drive around. This first truck will inspire the game to spawn all types of trucks whereever you drive. Just wait until the right truck spawns and hop over  ^-^
I did that a lot, since earlier the car-find-missions were to collect all available models in the game. When you completed them, you could make them respawn in the location where you brought them, any time you'd like. I'm not sure if this works for the stevie missions as well. I thought yes; you could order them by phone. But I'm not sure. I'll check it out in my savegame.

Edit: I thought wrong, it's not possible. You won't get Stevie's number and your telephone is worthless in this matter. I drove to Stevie's Car Parts location and what is left there after doing his missions is the garage. It will open and you can drive in any car you'd like; Stevie will pay you for it. The quantity he pays depends on the type of car you bring in, and the condition. If it's nearly crashed, you will get less money then when you bring it in mint.

[Art Blade]

In my 2nd playthrough I will leave my mobile on at all times so I won't miss any important calls and texts (particularly Stevie's). Now that I know the trick regarding friends (take any calls and just call them back to cancel the appointment without losing reputation) those calls and messages won't get on my nerves any more. :)

Collecting Infernus types is fun, and driving around in them even more  :-()

[Art Blade]

This is about what it looks like when I bomb down a main road in my Infernus  :-()
[smg id=3559 type=link align=center width=500 caption="GTA IV 010"]

[Binnatics]

 :-X Cool pic!!!

[Art Blade]

cheers  :)

I added some motion blur for dramaturgic reasons (else it'd look like parked cars) :-()

[JRD]

GTA SA had that motion blur very well implemented... when driving fast cars or boosting on highways the side of your vision would blur that way giving you a great sense of speed... that's one thing I really missed in FUEL  :-(

Nice pic, Art  :-X,

[Art Blade]

Cheers again :)

As you seem to like that speed type of imagery, here's one more with me going through the windscreen screaming at the top of my lungs.  :-()

[smg id=3578 type=link align=center width=500 caption="GTA IV 011"]

[Art Blade]

Hand grenades are great in GTA IV. Recently my favourite pastime is driving around in my Infernus and casually drop a few grenades out of the window while passing a traffic jam.. and then leg it as fast as possible which is quite easy with that car.

Then I had the idea of doing some suicide bombings for fun..  :-()

[smg id=3583 type=link align=center width=500 caption="GTA IV 012"]
[smg id=3584 type=link align=center width=500 caption="GTA IV 013"]
[smg id=3585 type=link align=center width=500 caption="GTA IV 014"]

[Binnatics]

 ^+-+

Good idea to pick the "minor injuries unit" to do that ;)

[Art Blade]

I hoped someone would notice  :-()

[Art Blade]

Funny Moments

Driving friends to (or home after) an appointment, at very  high speed:

Dwayne: "Relax! You make me feel uncomfortable here, man!"
Little Jacob: "Niiiiiiice speed, Rasta!"
Packie: "You don't waste time, I like it."
Michelle: "Are you in a hurry?"
Roman: "Wow!"
Brucie: "You really don't need to drive that fast!"

When bumping into another car, Niko (player) goes,

"Only in this country they let blind people drive!"
"F*** me!"
"Outta my way!"

When another car bumps into Niko, he goes,

"Ow! That hurts!"
"Where did you get your license?"
"Idiot!"

When Niko runs over a pedestrian, he goes,

"I hope it doesn't hurt as much as it looked like."
"I hope you have insurance."
"Soooorry!"
"Didn't see you there."

***

I already had a serious police and health problem accompanied by a five star rating (6=most wanted) when I drove through a pile of burning cars rendering my rear tyres burning away so the car was short of blowing up. I didn't have time to slow down with the explosion of my car being rather imminent so I jumped out of the driving car -- and immediately hit my head on a lamp pole I was about to pass. That knocked me out and the car blew up a few yards away which finally killed me.  :D ^+-+

***

Paramedics came to rescue the guy I had shot and ran over the cop who was chasing me. Cheers  :-D

***

A police car tried to overtake and stop me but instead they hit a solid obstacle. The police car which had been on my side disappeared abruptly and fell behind but the cops, bared of their car (having gone through the windscreen), still kept overtaking, hollering, and somersaulting. Hilarious  :-D

[Art Blade]

Oh, two more:

I had just shot down a police helicopter heading towards me and was turning back to the attacking police ground force when I got crushed by the burning tail of the chopper which had fallen right out of the sky onto my head.  ??? ^+-+

***

Binnatics was driving a car and I was his passenger. We tried to get rid of police and suddenly we blew up and died.

Binnatics (surprised): "What was that?!"
Me (innocent): "I wanted to throw a hand grenade out of the window but kept it too long in my hand.." ^+-+ (it was my first ever attempt of dropping a grenade out of a vehicle)

[Binnatics]

Yeah, I remember you saying to me "I just didn't know what to do with it", like you were talking about a pocket handkerchief or something  ^+-+
Anyway, it was a funny moment  :-X Especially since I still was sitting on the driverseat of the burnt car :P No friendly fire can make some nice situations  :-D

[Art Blade]

 :-()

I just thought I might as well post a pic of what GTA IV is like when you're not racing, shooting, detonating, escaping and so forth but just walk around -- there is life in the streets  :)

[smg id=3591 type=link align=center width=500 caption="GTA IV 015"]

[Art Blade]

Then again.. why would you want to do that if there are other options available?  :-()

[smg id=3592 type=link align=center width=500 caption="GTA IV 016"]

[fragger]

Funny tales there, guys ^+-+

And cool pics, that's a great looking game :-X

[Art Blade]

Cheers :) And yes, a very good game.

When I first read about GTA San Andreas and GTA IV, the reports of countless serious bugs for the PC version simply nipped any desire to get it in the bud. Reports ranged from not starting at all over missions not triggering to game crashes up to freezing up the PC entirely. Who wants to buy 100% risk?

On top, when you want to play it, you need to register with STEAM, Games for Windows Live and some RockStar social network. Three social networks at once! ???

Now that I got this STEAM version with all the latest patches, thanks to Binnatics, I only had one glitch  in the game (mobile phone switched to sleep mode which stops any calls and text messages, basically puts you in an undisturbed free roam mode) which prevented me from receiving the initial text message and thus all other texts from Stevie, hence the name "Stevie bug." He is the guy who sends you text messages to steal unique cars and after you stole them his garage is the only place where you can keep making easy money by selling any of the cars you "found."

Else, during perhaps 180 hours of gaming, there hasn't been any bug nor has the game ever crashed.  :-X

[Art Blade]

This is one of those moments you're just lucky to have captured. I watched the cop throw a can of coke out of his window  ^+-+

[smg id=3593 type=link align=center width=500 caption="GTA IV 017"]

[JRD]

Weird about all those bug reports you mentioned  ????

I played through GTA Vice City three or four times, GTA San Andreas three times and, well didn`t play GTA IV yet  ::) and never found a game stopping bug. I don`t even remember having any serious bug during all those experiences... sure something happened but whatever it was, didn`t stop me from finishing the games.

In fact GTA is pretty known for being a well polished game!  8)

[Binnatics]

I have never experienced bugs either during lots of playthroughs in GTA III, Vice City and San Andreas. I had them obtained with all types of patches, but it was all nice and smooth.
In GTA I have had recent crashes (not before, when I played it a lot) but I'm sure they are caused by something else but GTA. I think my current GPU driver is mismatching some of the engine used in GTA. Earlier didn't experience problems, except for not responding quite smoothly when the shadows were put to the max. They fixed that issue later, allthough it's still not the brightest engine of the latest years.
I've had weird artifacts with it 2 years ago, but that was caused by a broken graphics card. Glad I ccould change that at the shop since I still had garantee.  ^-^

There's one downside (or has been) to GTA IV. It's (or was) absolutely not protected against online cheaters. At times it was even hard to find a ranked match without cheaters  >:D
Somehow GTA attracts lots of modders and cheaters, who don't even care messing up ranked online matches with their stunts. There were great cheats, that really shocked me because of what you could do with it. But they shouldn't have used them online.
I believe they installed some anticheat protection later on, but I guess it only involved not getting achievements when you cheat. And there was a 'bug on perpose' that prevented a player from reaching absolute 100% completion when having cheated during the gameplay. That was a funny tactic. I've read a lot of comments on the net about ppl who tried to find out why the H*** they couldn't get that last 0.1%, after checking and doublechecking all their stats  ^+-+ Finally they found out that cheating did the damage  :-()