Rockstar working on GTA IV PC patch News

"Small number of fans" having issues.

Yeah, sure, and the Iraq war was a 'little local difficulty'.

From what im reading the shit has hit the fan with this one.

£2000 uber Pc's cant even get a stable 20fps, DRM up the kazoo

P.O.S

LOLZ, they have even issued a list of Error codes you might be getting...

RMN20 - Windows Vista: Need to have Service Pack 1 or higher to proceed.
RMN30 - Windows XP 64 / Server 2003: Need to have Service Pack 2 or higher to proceed.
RMN40 - Windows XP: Need to have Service Pack 3 or higher to proceed.
DD3D50 - D3D Error - DirectX 9 video card required
TEXP110 - D3D Error - Failed to create texture - Please restart the game
DWIN20 - D3D Error - Failed to query memory. Please re-start the game.
DD3D10 - D3D Error - Please re-boot your system
DD3D10 - D3D Error - Please re-boot your system
DD3D30 - D3D Error - Please re-boot your system
DWIN30 - D3D Error - Please re-boot your system
DD3D20 - D3D Error - Please re-install the game and/or re-install DirectX
DWIN10 - D3D Error - Please restart the game
DD3D60 - D3D Error - Shader Model 3.0 or higher is required
DD3D70 - D3D Error - Unable to retrieve D3D Device. Please re-boot your system
GPUP10 - D3D Error - Unable to retrieve D3D Device. Please re-boot your system
TEXP20 - D3D Error - Unable to retrieve D3D Device. Please re-boot your system
TEXP30 - D3D Error - Unable to retrieve D3D Device. Please re-boot your system
TEXP80 - D3D Error - Unable to retrieve D3D Device. Please re-boot your system
DD3D40 - D3D Error - Unable to retrieve device capabilities. Please install latest video card driver and/or re-install DirectX
TEXP10 - D3D Error - Unable to retrieve device capabilities. Please install latest video card driver and/or re-install DirectX
DD3D80 - D3D reset failed - Please restart the game.
STRB10 - Failed to delete file - Please re-boot your system
RMN10 - Failed to read file - Please re-boot your system
STRM10 - Failed to read file - Please re-boot your system
STRM20 - Failed to read file - Please re-boot your system
BNDL10 - Failed to write file – Please re-boot your system
STBF10 - Failed to write file – Please re-boot your system
VOIC10 - Fatal voice chat error - Please restart the game
RESC10 - Out of video memory - Please re-boot your system
BA10 - Out of virtual memory - Please re-boot your system
EA10 - Out of virtual memory - Please re-boot your system
TEXP60 - Unable to create color render target - Please re-install DirectX and/or install the latest video card driver.
TEXP70 - Unable to create depth render target - Please re-install DirectX and/or install the latest video card driver.
AE10 - Insufficient Memory to Start Game - Please close some applications and restart the game
PC10 - Unable to retrieve D3D Device - Please reboot your machine or reinstall your display driver
TF10 - Unable to write to disk - Please restart the game
WS20 - InitWinSock failed - Please re-boot your system and/or re-install the game
WS30 - InitWinSock failed - Please re-boot your system and/or re-install the game

Well the tons of other people that had issues are no longer fans, so it's kind of truthful ;)

Welcome to the world of DRM!

"The problems appear to revolve around lengthy validation and astronomic graphics settings that not even the best PCs can utilise."

What a joke! It seems the game doesn't work with the most common ATI cards like 3870, 4850 AT ALL! This is even worse than the Stalker - Clear Sky debacle, especially after waiting over 6 months. Fuckers deserve to get pirated.

apparently downloading beta drivers from guru3d which are newer than the nvidia.com beta drivers resolves the graphical issue where objects further than a few meters away are invisible.

I still cant get the stevie missions on the xbox 360 version - a problem that never got patched - despite a whole army of gamers complaining about it

Um... maybe it's just me, but I don't see any mention of a patch in that statement - just that they're (allegedly) helping people with online support.

The game's a disgrace. My PC is by no means super powered (2.6ghz Core2Duo, 2gb RAM, 1gb 8500GT) and does pretty well on Crysis and COD4, but I've had to reduce the resolution down to 800x600 and set everything to low to get anywhere near a reasonable framerate. Plus I got the MMA10 error before I even started, so have to be logged out of Rockstar Social Club to play. And what do I find after that? It's just another GTA game. Once you've brought the graphics back down to PS2 levels to make it playable, I've seen nothing revolutionary so far.

Quite frankly, I wish I'd pirated it instead of bought it.

And I'm not holding out any hope for patches either. Remember the audio bug in San Andreas for the PC? The one where it sounded like a helicopter and a lawnmower were having sex next to your house in Grove St and the only way to shut it up was to drive away as fast as possible? That was discovered on launch day too and never got fixed. Rockstar = No help or support after launch

And people were asking *why* the PC version only got a 9 from EG and not the 10 that the console version got?!? :?

To be honest, this is typical of PC gaming in general, that there's so many billions of combinations of hardware and software that is just sheer luck whether you'll be able to play the game perfectly from the off without it crashing or asking you to install X number of patches and updates before hand. And god help you if you do have any issues because they may be caused by some other software you have installed so not everyone will experience the same issue as you, making it hard to isolate the exact cause of the problem. Is it your graphics drivers, some video codec you have installed, old chip set drivers, incompatible sound drivers, etc., etc. Sometimes I'm just so thankful for consoles with their fixed hardware, it means everyone has the same experience and any bugs can be traced back to the game itself and thus patched easier.

I've just returned to PC gaming having upgraded my graphics card and despite having around 30 odd games installed that work fine had frustrating issues trying to get Fallout 3 and Far Cry 2 running without issues. The former kept BSODing and which was ultimately tracked down to an ffdshow incompatibility and the latter corrupts my sound drivers when the game crashes and I've yet to resolve that so I cannot play the game. Still at least Tomb Raider Underground, Crysis Warhead and the demos of Command & Conquer Red Alert 3 work with no problems.

PC gaming really does suck at times though... my recent experiences reminded me exactly why I gave up on it in the first place!

SecuROM = problems. If Rockstar weren't so greedy and actually cared about their customers they would have ditched it, but no, consumer be damned, we just want to stop it being pirated for a few hours, maybe, if we are lucky.

Gald this is happening, Rockstar should know better than adopting DRM... fucking idiots, I think people should simply boycott these cretins...

Long live Valve!

I haven't had any problems at all and my pc is hardly the latest and greatest.

Can't help thinking a lot of the whinging is from people with:

a) PCs they are too fucking lazy to maintain and update in terms of drivers

b) securom whingers talking shite for the sake of it.

I had the MMA10 error, so have had to log out of the R* social club to get it working.

My system is a Q9550 with a 8800GTX (768mb) and 4 gig of RAM. It recommended a medium texture/high object details for me.

I pushed my luck and upped it to high/high. It warned me that I was pushing things too far (it tells you how much GPU RAM you will need against how much you actually have). I ignored that and played at the my own settings. (High/High 1680x1050, draw distance 25). The frame rate seemed good, but 5 minutes in.... CTD.

I tried again, and again .... CTD.

I changed back to the recommended medium texture setting, the red warning went away, and it has been smooth and stable ever since.

My suggestion is this... Over-pushing your settings doesnt just affect framerate. IT MAKES THE GAME UNSTABLE.

Oh, and one other thing... disable SLI if you have it. It isnt supported yet anyway. That may affect stability. Crossfire is supported apparently.

Naturally, I'm not posting this as an answer to eveyones problems, just passing on the results of my own experiments as things to try.

Oh, yes I did update to the latest non-beta nvidia drivers (180 I think!)

@Orange

Don't think so. The biggest German PC games mag "gamestar" also confirms many of the issues. Especially the disgrace that is the incompatibility with the most common ATI cards. The issues don't seem to affect everybody, nevertheless the majority of users experience serious technical problems with the game. Not good at all.

I'm not going to defend the performance of the game or how badly optimised this must be but the statement that it doesn't work on 4870s (no idea about other ATI cards) at all is incorrect.

Unless I have a magical 4870 in my PC.

R* - You used to be our heroes... now you've gone and thrown it all away. Please for gods sake do the only decent thing left remove the drm rubbish and just let us bloody play the game. The cracked version is already out.. your DRM failed all you did was look stupid... well done.

Technical issues aside, the one thing I'd really like to see changed is the camera when driving. In previous PC GTAs the camera would stay behind the car but in IV I have to manually move it with the mouse to keep it behind the car when I go round a corner. For me it scuppers one of the key elements of a GTA game: the driving.

Regarding the graphics settings, I found that setting shadows to 0 gave a good boost to framerate (they are exclusive to the PC version so you won't be losing anything). Also, the console equivalant of draw distance is 22 and detail distance is 10 - taken from here (third post) http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?...

I've read elsewhere that disabling the clip capture facility has increased performance for some people (maybe because the game doesn't have to expend resources recording a history of your gameplay), but not for me.

Performance really isn't the greatest, but I don't have any other problem.

Agree partly with Orange, it's a mixture (if you check the official forums) of people not having Service Packs installed, people moving all sliders to the right, similar nonsense, and a few genuine problems.

As you mention Gamestar: I browsed the latest issue at the kiosk, and they had their typical hardware chart, claiming it would run pretty fine on a wide variety of systems, and that you're safe with any multicore CPU and a reasonably up to date GPU. So, what has happened in the meantime?

Technical issues aside, the one thing I'd really like to see changed is the camera when driving. In previous PC GTAs the camera would stay behind the car but in IV I have to manually move it with the mouse to keep it behind the car when I go round a corner.

I am pretty sure that was the same in GTA SA already, at least. I actually prefer the manual camera to the ultra-slow camera if you use the pad. The camera moves behind the car way too slow, so you're blind-driving after every corner.

Well I'm close to having my download finish so I'll see how my machine handles.

GTA SA kept the camera behind the car if you selected classic or standard controls (I forget which one). The camera could still be freely moved with the mouse but would stay behind the car if you didn't move it. I'll try driving with a 360 pad and see if it feels more intuitive that way. As you say UncleLou, the camera is slow to automatically adjust but it does adjust eventually - maybe there's a nice variable that just needs to be turned up to speed up the camera response (maybe a community mod if not a patch).

With the internets being so large these days, does anyone ever actually call a premium technical suport number!?

Internets are quite large these days, the one we are all using here is especially big. Over 1000 sites rumoured!

:)

@UncleLou

I meant their homepage since the mag has been published before the release of the game, obviously. And yes, it's all in German.

Their article about the ATI "problem" (which affects mainly 3870 and 4850, to a lesser extent 4870):

http://gamestar.de/news/pc/action/3rdper...

Very good comparison video (GTX 280 vs. 8800 GT, both rather dissapointing performance):

http://gamestar.de/news/pc/action/3rdper...

Another good and detailed article telling its readers why you shouldn't buy the game now:

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,669159...

Rockstar released an unoptimized game giving people a better excuse for pirating. Good work;-)

Runs fine for me, but it is under-rating my resources. I can get away with upped' textures if I can figure out how to get the norestrictions to work on the steam version.

@Orange - My, my... that's a very naive thing to say... just because you're not having any problems running GTA IV on your PC means absolutely nothing when you consider that the chances of anyone else having *exactly* the same setup and software as you is very, very, very slim. Or are you going to say that you've never had *any* issues running software or games on your PC *ever*? ;)

Many issues that people encounter with games are down to conflicts with existing software or even hardware and not always to do with poorly maintained PCs at all. My own PC has all the latest drivers for DirectX, its chipset, graphics and sound card plus I'm running anti-spyware, anti-virus software and registry cleaning software regularly so I certainly know how to look after my machine yet it doesn't stop me having issues with certain PC games such as Fallout 3 (now resolved) and Far Cry 2 (unresolved).

Who are you morons calling it a "disgrace" and "it deserves to get pirated"? Who the hell are you exactly? Do you know how hard it is to get games working on every sodding PC combination out there? No, cos you haven't made a game in your entire lives. Web 2.0, where any moron can pretend to be an expert on any topic as long AS THEY SHOUT LOUD ENOUGH.

But keep pushing the "wish I'd pirated" line and wonder why PC is at the bottom of the list of supported platforms.

If its not working on certain manufacturers cards, has anyone stopped to ask why? Maybe ATI don't get off *their* arses to make sure their drivers work properly? But no, it must be the game developers, those money-grabbing bastards that they are.....

As for the DRM - I really am not a fan at all - but who decided to put it in? R*? Or possibly TakeTwo.....I wonder. Same accusations thrown at FM2009. Was that the developers decision? No, it was Sega's. So why are you all blaming R* for something that more than likely wasn't their choice?

"small number of fans have issues"

Why if i buy a game am i labelled as a "fan"

"your DRM failed all you did was look stupid... well done. "


Yes.. they're having problems with the graphics on certain pc's.. and it's DRMS fault..

DRM killed my dog you know...

sheesh..

It's like starforce all over again, only even more ill informed and even more OTT "securom killed my baby" etc etc.

Lets forget that pretty much every pc game in the last 10 years has used securom WITHOUT A PROBLEM (and without most of you moaners even knowing it was there).. and just jump on the hating bandwagon thanks to EA adding some stuff which required internet registration.

Because the pirates prefer it if everyone hates a anti-piracy system.. if they get them band it means they have less work to do to crack it... "yay! i no longer have to download a crack and hope it doesnt contain a trojan!"

*sigh*

"@UncleLou

I meant their homepage since the mag has been published before the release of the game, obviously. And yes, it's all in German.
"

Yeah, I know. :-) I am just wondering how Gamestar could publish such a bullshit chart in their printmag.

What a disgrace

This is why so many people pirate Before they buy. And rightly so.

You will only get burned so many times...

Many issues that people encounter with games are down to conflicts with existing software or even hardware and not always to do with poorly maintained PCs at all.

Yet I've been using at least two different PCs at the same time for many years (and many different PCs over the years), play lots of games, and can count the number of serious problems I had on one hand. Easily. Yeah, I am most likely also lucky, but if you browse official forums a bit, you'll find many people haven't got the foggiest idea how to keep their PC in shape, but are always quick to blame the developers.

I mean, just look at the GTA forums. About a gazillion threads of enraged gamers who complain it doesn't run. Turns out they don't have the latest Windows service pack installed (and in many cases are reluctant to do so - I wonder why?), which it even says is required ON THE GAME BOX.

I am convinced that if you subtract problems that are caused by faulty hardware, outdated Windows warez versions, problems people have because they install any old shit they have torrented form dubious site, the list of genuine, show-stopping bugs shrinks enormously.

Fuck you Rockstar its going back to the shop and being pirated in janurary YES I SAID IT

well said smelly!!!

I have nothing against securROM, and I have seen it on tons of my old games ( I even found it on Combat Mission 1 the other day - now that is old!)

What I detest (because I have innocently fallen foul of it simply by installing a new processor) is the new fad of online activations coupled with limited (3 usually) installations.

I am always uninstalling and reinstalling games, and see it as my right to do so. Hard disk space can still be a problem to gamers remember. After running out of installs one of my games, it took a number of emails and around a weeks wait before I could play it again. This was a game bought through Metaboli by the way.

It felt like I was guilty of doing something wrong and had to almost beg to get my game back. They gave me the right for one more install!!

This has to stop. It is not the answer. Things are no better. These games are being cracked and distributed as quickly as they ever were. People who usually buy games turn to cracked versions because you can install and reinstall indefinately. It is having a negative effect on piracy. The innocent consumer is suffering in order to attempt to drive down piracy. secuROM have got a bad name over the last 12 months or so because of these draconian measures.

@Smelly:

I called it a disgrace and said I would have pirated it not because of the SecuRom probs, but because I from the few hours I played yesterday, the game is extremely poorly built (in terms of the graphics performance), and that the gameplay doesn't seemed to have moved on from the previous GTA games. I honestly don't think it was worth the money I paid for it, and given my lack of faith in R* to rectify issues, I would really rather not make them any richer. No disrespect to the staff involved, but IMO they did a poor job on the PC version from what I've seen so far. I've always been happy to pay for R* games because I genuinely felt they tried to be inventive and I loved the GTA3 games on PC, but I can't see me buying anymore GTA games from now on (or even bothering to "acquire" them through other means), that's how disappointed I am

@Uncle Lou - Well then I guess you've been lucky in that you've been playing the right games but I'd say that I've had issues with at least 10% and possibly as much as 20% of the games I've played on my PC over the past 15 years, many of which were later resolved by patches or graphic driver updates specifically for those games so I think that speaks volumes myself.

For example, I've read that Rockstar have admitted that none of the current graphics drivers are perfect for running GTA IV so expect newer ones to fix a lot of problems for many users, especially those with ATI/AMD graphics cards which are supposedly more prone to crashing the game. That is obviously not the user's fault...right?

@MGG

"Do you know how hard it is to get games working on every sodding PC combination out there?"

I also know how hard it is to write a book yet still refuse to pay full price for one where the publisher decided to release it before proof-reading the whole damn thing. Which is basically what Rockstar is trying to pull off here - barely optimized, unfinished business that will need a couple of patches to work as it should from day one.

"If its not working on certain manufacturers cards, has anyone stopped to ask why? Maybe ATI don't get off *their* arses to make sure their drivers work properly? But no, it must be the game developers, those money-grabbing bastards that they are....."

I'm sorry to burst your cute little bubble that you present as your argument. They are selling and I'm buying - it is Rockstar's liability to make sure their product works with the current drivers available to the users. ATI is not selling anything, they don't have to come up with bloody new drivers every time somebody decides to release an unoptimized game.

"a) PCs they are too fucking lazy to maintain and update in terms of drivers"

I think it is pushing things somewhat to try and place all these issues at the door of gamers. I mean what kind maintenance are we talking about here, daily checks for new drivers?

Seems like there are only two conclusions we can draw here. Pick which ever suits your bias.

1. If the majority of gamers can run other games fine, the fault is Rock*'s for putting out a shaky product.
2. If this is truly down to "badly maintained" PCs, no wonder PC gaming is dying. Making your PC run games properly shouldn't require that frequent maintenance.


I read some stuff today about the GTAIV install procedure. All the extra crap you have to install and sign up to is just taking the piss. It is games like this that are killing PC gaming, so nobody should be making excuses for them.

@smelly

Well said. I'm not a fan of the limitations these DRM solutions place (5 installations or whatever) but I appreciate that the companies have to try something and it is popular to blame DRM for everything from crashes to the weather to decreased sexual appetite.

PC games are more likely to contain bugs than console games as there is no "standard" PC, just a vast mixture of different CPUs/motherboards, graphic cards, memory types, OS revisions, background applications (esp. security applications), driver versions and so on.

"My PC is by no means super powered (2.6ghz Core2Duo, 2gb RAM, 1gb 8500GT)"

An 8500 is really going to hold you back.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2008/12/...

LOL! Imho Rockstar just lost a "small number" of paying customers...

So many comments from people who don't even play PC games and most likely do not have a clue what they are talking about.

Do people really think this much of a fuck-up is typical for a PC game, or the huge amount of bugs, errors and crashes is just the way it is because of "hardware combinations"? Is multiple hardware combinations just a phrase you once read on the internet?

And Darren, if 20% of the games I bought didn't work, I would have given up on PC gaming many years ago. That is just crazy, and if it was in any way typical, then the "PC gaming is dying" prediction would have come true a long time ago.

Yup. I guess some people are just extremely unlucky. For those there are the consoles. ;p

@smelly

Wrong again, it's not just the newer versions of SecuROM that are problematic. My copy of STALKER is unplayable without a crack on my new machine, and if I install it it stops my other SecuROM games from working until I delete all SecuROM entries from the registry and reboot. Then again you probably don't belive me and think I'm making it up it because SecuROM doesn't have any problems etc despite my accounts and plenty of video evidence on youtube, etc.

As if PC gaming was not problematic enough, without Rockstar engineering some sort of mechanism to make the game crash or halt if it suspects piracy, oh and SecuROM never gets that wrong does it?

As for "the majority having no problem with it" how many people are knowledgeable enough to know to edit the registry and flush out SecuROM? Most people would put it down to another fault on their PC, not consider that the games they purchased actually came with malware.

(edited for additional rantage)

@ Feanor:

Didn't cause me too much hassle with Crysis or COD4. I might not have been able to max them out, but I didn't have to play them at 800x600 just to hit 15fps

@skillian - I never said that 20% of games didn't work, I said that I've probably had issues with as many as 20% of the games but many are eventually sorted through numerous patches or graphics driver updates to properly support them as I'm sure will be the case with GTA IV. Of course, that doesn't make the initial gaming experience particularly enjoyable, knowing that you might have to wait weeks, months even, to play the game you've just bought. ;)

So, yes, that 10-20% is no exaggeration. Of course, there's billions of combinations of PC software and hardware so it is impossible to guarantee that every game will work perfectly for everyone. And they don't and it isn't always down to user ignorance either, although that is usual lame excuse from people who reckon they've never had any problems running games on the PC (surely an outright lie if ever there was one?).

Of course I'm speaking from my own experiences but you ony have to look at PC forums to see the number of people having issues with the latest games such as Fallout 3, Far Cry 2 and now GTA IV. It's one of the reasons people turn to consoles for games I expect (it was for me), that and to avoid the need to upgrade the hardware to play the latest games. With some games I've actually spent longer trying to get them to work than actually playing them, e.g. Far Cry 2 which I'm still unable to play properly after a month of owning it without it corrupting my sound when it crashes and Ubisoft have been absolutely useless as far as support goes. But I really shouldn't be too harsh because it must be a nightmare trying to solve issues on the PC for the reasons I stated earlier.

Part of the problem I think is because developers assume everyone has the latest upgrades and hardware so they don't test older systems properly even though they might be very capable of running most of the latest games just as my three year old dual-core AGP system is now I've installed a RADEON HD 3850 graphics card. I can play Crysis and Tomb Raider Underworld with no problems at all for example at 1680x1050 and High settings.

Feel free to slag of gta4 (i have it on the 360 and i think it's shit)

.. but i'm just arguing against all the people on here who have immediately blamed the problems they're having on drm...

it's a pc game! Pc's have multiple configurations!

I used to make games a looong time ago.. Once we released a game where to run with the highest graphical options - you'd need a pc which didnt even exist when we launched the game. We figured that the fans would like that because if they played it again a few years down the road (or by buying it on budget for example) - then it'd still stand up against the games being released then too. We EVEN had a very big WARNING in the manual explaining this.

.. Unfortunately gamers are stupid.. And we just got loads and loads of people moaning on forums that the game didnt run fast enough on their machines.

Guess what we did? We "patched" the problem.. We just got renamed the "high setting" to "ultra setting" and got rid of the ultra setting from the game..

Gamers rejoiced! And everyone was posting on the forums how impressed they were on how well we'd optimised the game!

Ever since then i known what i know now.. gamers on forums are stupid and just go by mob mentality - you can tell them the reality until you're blue in the face... but unless the "mob" tells them otherwise they'll believe that black is white...

gamers on forums are stupid

must... bite... tongue...

Smelly, every time any problem arises, you throw around insults and accusations of piracy, idiocy and deception. This is even when there are reviewers, retailers and even game makers admitting to problems.

You must be the only moron left on the internet that still defends StarForce, and now you've decided to take it upon yourself to be the defender of every dipshit DRM scheme that comes along regardless of what you hear, read or know. Just like your thoughtless FPS rants that everyone is so sick of, you have an opinion and you will stick to it regardless of what is going on around you.

Yes, there are idiots on the internet and no, they're not always telling the truth, but it's not just a land of make-believe that has everyone but you fooled. You glean what information you can based on experience and trusted sources, and if you still don't know the story, maybe because you don't even like or own the game in question, then perhaps it's best to STFU.

Who said i was defending drm?

I just dont think there needs to be this level of histeria about it, where it gets blamed for problems (such as this one) where it has little or nothing to do with the issues they're having.

It's the gaming equivalent of the daily mail blaming immigrants (or games for that matter) for every problem the country has.

Congratulation though on making yourself look idiotic :-)