GTA IV patch 6 Official details

Source

With the impending release of the GTA IV DLC disks, this news was to be expected and obvious, however, it is still great to hear more details and to have it officially confirmed.

 

Thank god they got rid of that social club crap !!

 

Thank god they got rid of that floating street texture crap !!

 

Hmm, I might just re-install GTA IV now.

 

There is a good reason to buy the DLC online via a download Vs buying it on the DVD like I had originally planned to:

 

im glad they are going to fix the ped in-car thing. i miss sniping people out of cars. i can't wait.

 

Cool. I hope this will add a few more FPS.

Nikko : "Hey they better make this a good one! 6 is my lucky number!"

 

Sweet... This is great news.

Can't wait. How many more days to go?

 

I am almost finished the main campaign. Would have liked these tweaks earlier. Oh well.

 

I think it comes out tomorrow

 

Cool! They're implementing the moon and moon phases.

 

Episodes from Liberty City is available on Steam right now ... Im going to grab the retail box but figured id mention its available now...

 

The episodes are now available through the Games for Windows Live client. It costs 1200 points per episode. Yikes. I hope it's worth it!

Good news about the patch. Extra performance is always welcomed.

Edit: The patch as of right now is unavailable through GFWL. Hopefully it will be available this afternoon.

 

Patch is out.

 

Is it available for direct download yet?

 

Anyone have any links?

 

Oh my god, this patch sounds great! Thought this was going to be just another title update but wow, fixing those texture grey boxes floating in streets, wow, i really thank them for doing this. However, it's hard to say whether the longer ped "draw" distance will make it even more CPU dependent :/

 

Has anyone tried out the new patch? GTA4 runs well on my desktop but like crap on my mbp. Hoping there's enough of a bump so I can play on the go. Also 1200pts isn't bad at considering Xbox was 1600. Also not bad if you paid ~$32 for 4000 points like I did recently on amazon =P

 

Yeah, it doesn't run too well on my 9600M GT either, but mine only has 256MB VRAM though.. :C

 

I'm guessing Europe, as always.. has to wait a bit longer to get it.

And according to their web site so it does:

Grand Theft Auto: Episodes from Liberty City includes both The Lost and Damned, and The Ballad of Gay Tony together on disc and does not require a copy of the original Grand Theft Auto IV to play. Now available for Xbox 360® and coming for PlayStation®3 and Games for Windows® - LIVE on April 13th in North America and April 16th in Europe.

 

I am now back to patched version 1.0.04 on both my original and Modded. I get 45 - 55 fps with my Modded version but 22 - 25 fps with my original version patched to version 6. Not worth it. I will just buy the DLC on Steam and play it completely separately.

 

Just for anyone's information, the patch is available around here: http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=445395&st=340

Make sure you download the correct patch for your locale.

 

The Steam copy of the game already has the patch applied, so you guys do not need to download the standalone copy of the patch and apply it.

 

I wonder if the patch works with the Direct-2-drive versions of the game?

 

Got it early this morning and toyed around, ended up in the airport and running from 4 stars (and getting an achievement).

It doesn't run that well on my 512MB 9600m GT, Only usually get 20fps with all low settings and the sliders at 30 at 1280x720, 1920x1080 drops it to 18, but I get more slowdowns at it.

I should have went for the quad core.

 

The game lags after installing the patch .. even when turning shadows off etc.

 

Yeah my performance went down with this patch also .

 

Same =/

Before i was getting 25-30FPS now im barely getting 20fps on the same settings i been using for months.

 

I experience the same lower frame rate post-patch, but only with TLAD (haven't tried Gay Tony yet). TLAD seems to have an innate film grain effect that cannot be disabled. I tried loading normal GTA 4 to see if that same effect is there, but it is not. As such, my frame rate in classic GTA 4 remains very high (40s to 50s). The film grain effect forces it down to the 20s, and never seems to stray from there. Lowering the settings improves FPS, but it sucks to have to do that simply because the film grain can't be disabled.

Does anyone else experience this same problem?

 

How did you conclude that its the film grain that causes it?

 

Stupid me.

It's not the film grain. It's the shadows.

"Shadows

• A new, less memory-intensive, and better-looking scalable shadow solution has been implemented"

The way they have been coded now actually really strain the GPU(s), although they certainly do look stellar. Night shadows in particular kill the frame rate. I lose about 5-10 FPS with both daytime and night shadows enabled. I think we're going to need new drivers for the way this has been coded. Regardless of my draw distance, detail distance, and vehicle density, it still gives a low FPS (20s) with both shadow settings enabled [Low (night shadows off), medium (both), high(both) -- does not matter]. Changing the resolution from 1920x1200 to 1680x1050 does not help. Disabling shadows does help, but where is the fun in that?

PS: Very High on shadows is unplayable for me, and is completely out of the question.

 

This is precisely why I went back to 1.0.04 and also decided to purchase the DLC separately on Steam as opposed to integrated with the original GTA IV because it would mean being stuck on patch 6. I am not sure whether a Driver could do much but for this, the aesthetic improvements weren't enough to justify the loss in performance. Even with shadows set to medium I was getting 25 fps on my laptop whereas before I would be getting almost double.

 

Wow too bad. So I guess I shouldn't install patch 6 then?

 

Very high on the new shadow renderer is not equivalent to very high on the old one. The renderer produces far more shadows than the old one and creates them the way they are supposed to look, like real shadows. Performance wise, very high on the old scale is closest to high on the new scale. Very high also produces some of the small intricate shadows in many details found in the old shadow density setting, so very high is pretty much a blend of both now. The option for night shadows just adds the depth portion of the old shadow density setting.

 

So overall, would you say minus the new shadows, this patch would be a keeper?

Also i found if you got used to GTA 4's stock vaseline blur it made things look a bit better, and put some pseudo-antialiasing into it. I used the mod for it that disabled all near blur, but kept blur used to smooth trees, edges, and faraway objects.

 

And the original is 1080 pts - great deal for anyone that has not finished it.

I finally completed the game tonight. Just in time for DLC.

The patch did not adversely affect my frame rate. And to me it looks the same.

 

thinkpad knows best. This latest patch is indeed a keeper. Not only do you get improved shadows with the scalability for even better shadow quality for more poewrful future cards. Visible alpha layering when you drive over grass or dirt has been fixed. The notorious memory leak has been fixed. Various other minor performance optimizations have been implemented. It will only take a few days for the GTA community to crack the game again and allow the largest library of mods in any PC game franchise.

 

I have to agree with you on this one despite the performance issues I had since I am sure that was due to the increased shadows quality in relation to the corresponding settings before and after the patch. Regarding modding, XLiveLess has already been updated to support patch 6 and that must have only taken a few hours

Once Scripthook has been updated, all of my favorite Mods should work already.

Edit:

I have spent a lot of time testing the new patch, changing settings, testing out Realizm IV 6.2 on it and I have come to the conclusion that no matter what you do, patch 6 will never perform anywhere near as well as 1.0.04 even if you change shadows to low. The guy who makes the Enb series Mod for GTA IV has even refused to update for it because he is so disgusted. This makes me wonder if other modders may do the same.

 

Then maybe R* should add warning to patch stating: before installing, upgrade your GPU, buy new more powerful PC or wait for the future...
Before patch, game runs fine with shadows on high, now to get same fps I have to turn them off (yeah, nice scalability).
Thank you R* for making "futuristic" patches.

 

it still wouldn't have helped much.. 9600M GT is a average card and hp using DDR2 really killed it..

 

A user on another forum said he noticed that the Ragdoll physics after the new patch were non existent and many people disagreed. I just tested two installs side by side and on the one patched to the latest version 6, it is as if Ragdoll physics no longer exist or like they have been censored just try ramming your car into pedestrians in the game and you will see. It is probably gone unnoticed by most because they only have one install. After all, most users only install the same game once.

I am in the process of testing out Realizm IV 6.2 on an install patched to version 6 to note performance.

With patch 6, you can easily run two different installs alongside eachother but on previous patched versions, you would need to separate the settings because they were incompatible with each other.

Edit:

I got realizm IV 6.2 to work with the new patch version 6 with no other hooks. I imagine after Scripthook has been updated, quite a few hooks and other script based Mods will also work but many will probably need updating.

So Mods that change the visual look of GTA IV will work fine with patch 6, it is the Mods that hook into the game and manipulate the low level features that will need an update from the modding community to work again.

Note that after installing Realizm IV 6.2 on patch 6, I can now set all shadows to High with no slow down.

 

What the hell? They censor what was one of the strongest points of GTA 4?? It's physics?

 

Some say they notice no difference, others say they notice a slight difference and a few say something is completely different.

Have a read here

 

I noticed no difference but i don't doubt that some people are having issues with the physics.

 

Hmmm, seems like you are right LaptopNut, i think i agree with one guys post though, in that maybe they have reduced the number of constant physics calculations in physics to hinder the CPU dependent "myth" whether it really is just a myth or not for GTA 4.

 

So what's the final answer on this? I have read for some people, it lowers performance, others gained performance.

Does it vary for each user?

 

Good news for anyone into modding, Scripthook has been updated and now supports patch 6 already!

 

By the sounds of it, the vast majority of users have lost performance and for some, even having all settings to low doesn't even perform as well as all settings on high in their original install.

I find the EFLC performs much better than the original did patched to 6 though.

 

it lowers your performance period.

good if you have a quad sli 5970 desktop though

 

I lost perfomance. where can i download the 1.0.0.4 patch?