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GTA4 + iCEnhancer mod. Holy mother of god.

S

SneakyStephan

Banned
Glorious, was afraid he'd bork it, but he managed to keep that photorealistic natural lighting look while cleaning it up , toning down those lens flares and the blur.

Also shows again and again what an unbelievable difference high quality textures (and a lot of variation in them) makes.
 
T

thundr51

Member
So far this mod has been great. Added a couple of cars (Lexus LFA & Scion TC ftw) and everything was going well until I tried to do the mission where Roman sends you to the internet cafe. I go there talk to the lady behind the counter but I can't get to a terminal. Is there something special that I should be doing or is this a side effect of the mods?

edit: Yep, side effect of car mods..
 
J

- J - D -

Member
Does adding a texture mod (like Better City Textures) really make a big difference? And for anyone using BCT or Ultimate textures, how big is the performance hit?

Thanks and big props to this thread. This mod has actually motivated me to pick up GTAIV again. Never got far in the past and quit.
 
V

Veritas_

Member
WonkersTHEWatilla said:
Does adding a texture mod (like Better City Textures) really make a big difference? And for anyone using BCT or Ultimate textures, how big is the performance hit?

Thanks and big props to this thread. This mod has actually motivated me to pick up GTAIV again. Never got far in the past and quit.
Click to expand...
I'm running an i5 2500 with a GTX 580 and I can't honestly say I've seen a difference before and after all the modding. At full settings I get 40-50 fps average. More Liberty + ENB + Ultimate textures are all installed. It might be that I haven't spent a lot of time with vanilla GTA4 on this PC, but performance impact seems minimal. It's more then playable with all the goodies installed.

I did install a custom car mod and that did have an immediate impact of 15 fps or so. Uninstalled it.

I've got about a million screenshots to sort through, and I'll post some more highlights later.
 
J

- J - D -

Member
Veritas_ said:
I'm running an i5 2500 with a GTX 580 and I can't honestly say I've seen a difference before and after all the modding. At full settings I get 40-50 fps average. More Liberty + ENB + Ultimate textures are all installed. It might be that I haven't spent a lot of time with vanilla GTA4 on this PC, but performance impact seems minimal. It's more then playable with all the goodies installed.

I did install a custom car mod and that did have an immediate impact of 15 fps or so. Uninstalled it.

I've got about a million screenshots to sort through, and I'll post some more highlights later.
Click to expand...

Thanks. I'm also running an i5 2500k and 580 your post makes me optimistic. I'm thinking about turning off SSAO, it flickers too much.
 
C

Crazypanda_85

Member
I'm finally ordered a new laptop this week (it hopefully should be here in two weeks) and this will be my first PC I've ever bought that's actually capable for real PC gaming. Since I'm a college student, I couldn't get a pc that was too expensive. I bought a XPS 17 w/ : 2nd generation Intel Core i5-2410M processor 2.30 GHz with Turbo Boost 2.0 up to 2.90 GHz, 6GB DDR3 and NVIDIA GeForce GT 550M 1GB graphics with Optimus. Will my PC allow me to play GTA4 with the iCEnhancer mod?
 
J

- J - D -

Member
I'm not sure whether I'm imagining it or not, but it seems as though installing custom cars reduces the overall density or amount of cars on streets. Has anyone else seen this? And I've only installed 3 cars, and it seems like they're everywhere! I know the Feltzer car type is common, but damn I'm seeing Infiniti G35's (my replacement for Feltzer) on every other block.
 
S

Sethos

Banned
WonkersTHEWatilla said:
I'm not sure whether I'm imagining it or not, but it seems as though installing custom cars reduces the overall density or amount of cars on streets. Has anyone else seen this? And I've only installed 3 cars, and it seems like they're everywhere! I know the Feltzer car type is common, but damn I'm seeing Infiniti G35's (my replacement for Feltzer) on every other block.
Click to expand...

That will happen. Rockstar had to fix a significant memory leak issue that was plaguing the game and they did that by allocating a certain amount of RAM to traffic spawns. That means, when you install many of these custom cars that are quite a lot bigger than a default car, you are using a lot of that RAM. So after a few installs you will see reduced traffic and a quite a lot of duplicates as it's easier to load something that is already in the memory. When you reach the RAM max you'll get the taxi bug which is basically just the game loading a low-ram car and mostly only that.

A lot of the "taxi bug" fixes are done by messing with RAM allocation settings within the game, usually leads to some crashes and undesired effects.

You will never see natural flowing traffic again once you dabble with custom cars.
 
J

- J - D -

Member
Sethos said:
That will happen. Rockstar had to fix a significant memory leak issue that was plaguing the game and they did that by allocating a certain amount of RAM to traffic spawns. That means, when you install many of these custom cars that are quite a lot bigger than a default car, you are using a lot of that RAM. So after a few installs you will see reduced traffic and a quite a lot of duplicates as it's easier to load something that is already in the memory. When you reach the RAM max you'll get the taxi bug which is basically just the game loading a low-ram car and mostly only that.

A lot of the "taxi bug" fixes are done by messing with RAM allocation settings within the game, usually leads to some crashes and undesired effects.

You will never see natural flowing traffic again once you dabble with custom cars.
Click to expand...

Okay. I know there are snippets of info regarding this scattered in the past 40 pages, but thanks for consolidating the details, Sethos. It's a shame, I'm already spoiled by having realistic cars (even just 3 started messing things up). Oh well.

Edit: Yup, I wasn't Encountering the taxi bug earlier but it started happening as soon as my third custom car spawned (took about half an hour of play).
 
Grinchy

Grinchy

Banned
HooYaH said:
ICEhancer blog: http://icelaglace.wordpress.com/

1.3 Alpha video: http://youtu.be/IfGIs-NiX-g
Click to expand...
Wow. That's seriously stunning. In GTA4 fashion, some lighting scenarios are better than others, so with the mod the visuals range from incredible to holy shit.

If Rockstar hired this guy to steal all his work, and then re-released the game like this I'd buy it again at full price. Maybe re-do some of the crappy missions and put in some less boring elements too.
 
D

DerZuhälter

Member
Quick question: Anyone tried playing the campaign with those mods. Driving around usually works fine, but every 2nd or 3rd cutscene while playing the missions, the game crashes on me.

I'm using iCEnhander 1.25, Better City Textures, a car pack and the first person mod.

Hardware: X3 440, GTX460, 4GB Ram
 
L

L0st Id3ntity

Member
Sethos said:
Here's a quick guide, quote it for people, now the questions are getting out of hand :p


Get the retail version.

Install patch 1.0.4.0:
http://www.gamefront.com/files/13914788/Grand-Theft-Auto-IV-PC-Patch-v.-1.0.4.0/

Download Xliveless:

http://public.sannybuilder.com/GTA4/xliveless-0.999b7.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/392993489/xliveless-0.999b7.rar

Place only the "Xlive.dll" in your root GTA IV folder, where the .exe is placed.

Download iCEhanced 1.2:

http://www.gta4-mods.com/misc/icenhancer-12---enb-graphic-mod-f9236

Keep the folder structure and copy them into your root folder and just replace any files when it asks. ( Remember to back up if you want to restore )

Open the newly copied "iceconfig" and find the [TREE] section. Replace the numbers below with the following;

[TREE]
LeavesReflectionAmount=0.0
LeavesSpecularPower=0.0
LeavesAmbientAmount=0.95
LeavesColorMultiplier=1.0
LeavesColorPow=1.8
LeavesColorFilterR=1.0
LeavesColorFilterG=1.0
LeavesColorFilterB=1.2

It gives you some better looking trees, the default are overly green and very ugly.

Now you can, alternatively, download a texture mod of your desire. I suggest "Better City Textures" that clock in at over 7GB unpacked.

http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=5906

Another Copy & Paste job, copy over to the root folder, keep the structure and replace when it asks ( Remember to back up ).

Start the game, enjoy. That's the basics. Plenty of more modding to do, cars, in-game trainers, skins etc. but you can toy around with that yourself.
Click to expand...
I followed this and get a crash on startup.

edit: D3DOverrider was the culprit.

Game looks great, but any fixes for the distracting lighting sources? It just doesn't look right.
 
F

fresquito

Member
I've just installed this. Downgraded my Steam version, followed all the steps, game looks great. However, I have two problems:

1- Menu text is missing.
2- Cutscenes are too bright and can't see nothing.

Anybody willing to help me?

(Film grain is annoying as well)

Edit:

Proof of the menu:
F95832086E2705C829B1D8CD335DE911F747E2C8


Proff that it looks fine otherwise, except for cutscenes:
528977BCB9342A2CF038957B0B873A684BE1D58F

22E17B45340275B09918C8203673232CAA20FD7E


Now, I have to try using some MLAA.
 
R

RumblingRosco

Member
DerZuhälter said:
Quick question: Anyone tried playing the campaign with those mods. Driving around usually works fine, but every 2nd or 3rd cutscene while playing the missions, the game crashes on me.

I'm using iCEnhander 1.25, Better City Textures, a car pack and the first person mod.

Hardware: X3 440, GTX460, 4GB Ram
Click to expand...

Well, I don't know how to alleviate your issue, but I can confirm that the campaign has worked well for me so far. I've played quite a few of the main missions and side missions and haven't had any issues yet.

i5 2500k, 560 Ti, 8 GB RAM on W7 64-bit if that matters.
 
E

elseanio

Member
fresquito said:
I've just installed this. Downgraded my Steam version, followed all the steps, game looks great. However, I have two problems:

1- Menu text is missing.
2- Cutscenes are too bright and can't see nothing.

Anybody willing to help me?

(Film grain is annoying as well)

Edit:

Proof of the menu:
http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/560915367900821650/F95832086E2705C829B1D8CD335DE911F747E2C8/[IMG]

Proff that it looks fine otherwise, except for cutscenes:
[IMG]http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/560915367900826070/528977BCB9342A2CF038957B0B873A684BE1D58F/[IMG]
[IMG]http://cloud.steampowered.com/ugc/560915367900828223/22E17B45340275B09918C8203673232CAA20FD7E/[IMG]

Now, I have to try using some MLAA.[/QUOTE]

For the missing text, use this fix: [url=http://www.gtagaming.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2198884]When using Xliveless (Asi-Loader) the menu-texts disappear[/url]

I think for film grain, lower the following parameter in options.txt: float NoiseAmount=
Click to expand...
 
S

ScRYeD

Member
DerZuhälter said:
Quick question: Anyone tried playing the campaign with those mods. Driving around usually works fine, but every 2nd or 3rd cutscene while playing the missions, the game crashes on me.

I'm using iCEnhander 1.25, Better City Textures, a car pack and the first person mod.

Hardware: X3 440, GTX460, 4GB Ram
Click to expand...

It's most likely one of the cars in the pack thats crashing your game.
 
S

ScRYeD

Member
fresquito said:
Thanks! Any fix for the bright cutscenes?
Click to expand...
If your running 1.0.7.0 it's not possible, pressing shift+f12 you can disable some of the enb mod and reduce the brightness but not completely :(
 
F

fresquito

Member
ScRYeD said:
If your running 1.0.7.0 it's not possible, pressing shift+f12 you can disable some of the enb mod and reduce the brightness but not completely :(
Click to expand...
I was running 1.0.4 (or so I thought, I followed the steps to downgrade).
 
D

decyx

Member
The game seems really dark for me in certain areas. Is there any value that I can adjust in the iceconfig.ini to change the gamma or brightness? I have my in-game brightness cranked up all the way, but it's not enough. Any help would be appreciated.

gtaiv2011-08-0300-30-5cue9.png


Edit: Never mind! I accidentally changed my HDTV settings last night and set the black levels too high. I lowered them just now and everything looks just as it should.
 
F

fresquito

Member
The game now works flawlesly for me. I've installed everything again, but with a different configuration. Now, even cutscenes look good (and performance, for some reason, is not abysmal anymore (maybe v-sync off has something to do with this).

Wow, it will be my first play through and it's going to be awesome.
 
BigTnaples

BigTnaples

Todd Howard's Secret GAF Account
This looks so amazing.

Runs great too, albeit not at max.

Can't wait when I have a new build with 8 cores and a new GPU to go back and play this at absolute max 1080p.
 
S

ScRYeD

Member
BigTnaples said:
This looks so amazing.

Runs great too, albeit not at max.

Can't wait when I have a new build with 8 cores and a new GPU to go back and play this at absolute max 1080p.
Click to expand...
Core number wont effect anything, it will still only use 3 or 4 can't remember.

My pc
Amd 1100t @ 4ghz
8g ram
2g hd6970 @ 950/1500
Was only getting between 15 to 30 fps no AA, now that I replaced my gpu with a gtx 580 I'm now getting between 30 and 50fps with AA and everything on max settings. My advice go intel & nvidia if your gonna upgrade.
 
F

fresquito

Member
Don't make decisions based on a game with a shitty optimization. No matter what gpu you have, the game will understand you've got an Nvidia. As for the cpu, the game uses only 40% of mine.

That would be my advice. Lame port is lame port.
 
T

Twinduct

Member
Is there any one-stop-shop mod thread for GTA IV on neogaf? Getting the game next week and need some suggestions on custom cars/ mods and etc
 
S

SneakyStephan

Banned
Hm, seems like he did away with much of the the natural lighting look.

Granted it was too contrasty at times and could be a huge eyesore, but some tod's looked incredible.

This is a lot easier on the eyes.

Played some gta4 on my brother's xbox last week for the first time in a year, and man was I in for a shock.
They look more than a gen apart.
 
R

Red

Member
SneakyStephan said:
Hm, seems like he did away with much of the the natural lighting look.

Granted it was too contrasty at times and could be a huge eyesore, but some tod's looked incredible.

This is a lot easier on the eyes.

Played some gta4 on my brother's xbox last week for the first time in a year, and man was I in for a shock.
They look more than a gen apart.
Click to expand...
Vanilla GTAIV PC looked a gen ahead anyway, the gap is just getting wider.
 
F

Foliorum Viridum

Banned
So I just read you can do this on Steam.

It didn't dip below 20... but it didn't go over 30, either, haha. In the day it looks really bright though, horrible contrast, and kept crashing.

I'll fiddle with it later and download the HD texture pack.
 
S

Smokey

Member
Does the Ice mod include ENB or whatever it's called? What about texture packs? I've got a huge urge to mod and play this during the weekend. I have the Steam version btw.
 
S

SneakyStephan

Banned
Foliorum Viridum said:
It says something when a 4ghz quad core is a bottleneck :p

Should I be getting better performance than that, then?
Click to expand...
Pretty sure he is trolling you... (or just clueless)

Turn down view and detail distance to 70 percent, 100 percent is (still) for future hardware or crazy set ups if you use mods.
 
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