TheGTAPlace.com - Latest News

Happy New Year, and a new TGTAP!

Chris — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 01:44:55 +0000

First of all, a happy new year to all our visitors, hope 2009 is a great year for you ignoring all the economic problems and whatnot!

If you're reading this, you're now viewing version 4 of The GTA Place. At the moment the changes you'll see are purely aesthetic ones. We will be adding numerous new features and content over the coming weeks. We hope you like the new design. It should be working perfectly on the vast majority of modern browsers we were able to test, though if you spot any issues or bugs with any part of the site then let us know in the forums.

Our forums remain unchanged for now, they'll be undergoing upgrades in the next couple of months along with some other exciting changes, not just a matching skin, but also changes we're planning on making to the gang scene to name one. Not a member on our forums, why not register now? Signing up only takes a few moments, and you'll be able to make your own topics and posts, and discuss GTA among other things with over 20,000 other people.

If you have any feedback then let us know. Enjoy the year ahead!

SparkIV 0.5.1 and OpenIV 0.8 updates released

Chris — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:33:42 +0000

Modders in the community will be happy to know that texture file editing has now been made possible with the latest update aru has made to his excellent SparkIV tool. This latest update also includes the following features and fixes:

QUOTE

- Support for Texture File editing with Import (replace only) functionality
- Support for viewing Texture mipmaps and viewing colour channels separately
- Support for showing most of the filenames in Audio RPF (v3) files.
- Support for launching external registered editors based on extension
- Fixed some bugs with IMG file saving

You can Download SparkIV here which will take you to the GTAF thread (download link in first post).

The other major tool we've been covering is OpenIV, also currently in beta stages. That program also underwent a small update today to fix a few bugs and add a couple of new features:

QUOTE

- fixed bug with RPF files
- fixed bug with geting information form GTAIV.exe
- Added ability to edit �Levels� of texture.
- Added automatic check for updates.
- Now it’s possible to edit *.WHM files.

You can Download OpenIV here.

It's great to see development in both tools progressing so well. As these tools get bigger and better we'll hopefully see some very interesting mods very soon.

OpenIV public beta and large GTA IV map

Chris — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 19:22:57 +0000

In my last news post regarding the state of the GTA IV modding scene I talked about various tools currently in development by members of the community. Today we have another to add to the list. I mentioned OpenIV in the first mod round-up here, and since then it has gone through a number of versions in closed beta testing. Today they have just released the first public beta version of 0.8, and the tool is now a very powerful piece of software, and is comparable to SparkIV for those of you who have already used that.

OpenIV's already extensive feature list includes the following (download links at end of post):

QUOTE

Viewing of GTA IV files via function �Open Content�
Full support of the RPF2 format. You can add, delete or replace any files
Viewing and extacting data from RPF3 archives (file names are normal)
Full support of the IMG3 format. You can add, delete or replace any files
Textures replacing in any *.WTD and *.WHM files. The current version supports only PNG images and replacing files with the ones with same resolution. (For example, a texture 512х512 might be replaced only with another 512х512 one)
In-built SCO scripts decompiler (Currently is very bugged)
Ability to preview most of the GTA IV file formats
Ability to extend program features with external tools
Ability to extract resource (RSC) files either in original compressed or decompressed state via function �Save content�. For example this function allows to save all textures from a *.WTD file without opening it.
Any file could be viewed as raw byte data via �View in Hex� function

Large GTA IV map
On a slightly related note, yesterday I used SparkIV to extract all of the radar images from texture files. I then pieced these together (all 63 of them!) in Photoshop to create a very high resolution map of GTA IV's Liberty City. The map measures 5632x4096 and is around 1.9MB in lossless PNG format. Those on slower connections might want to view a medium sized version I created, that's 2048x1489 and just over 1MB. View the full map or the medium sized version.
In time we'll be adding various items of interest to the map, pigeons, jumps, weapons etc. So stay tuned for updates on those, or keep an eye on our GTA IV maps page.

Links
Download OpenIV
Download SparkIV

Merry Christmas!

Chris — Thu, 25 Dec 2008 11:17:53 +0000

TGTAP would like to wish all our visitors a Merry Christmas and happy new year! Hope you're all enjoying the holiday season, I would do one of the infamous "don't drink and drive" safety speeches but this is a GTA fansite, none of us even care do we!? Plus it's not my style ;).

Rockstar are also celebrating the Christmas period with the release of some cool new wallpapers and screensavers, Celestial Deities and Rockstar Monolith, check them out over at their 2008 winter wallpaper collection.

Have a good one!

Psst. Look out for our brand new design going live on new year's day!

GTA IV modding progress

Chris — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 17:06:17 +0000

A lot of progress is being made in terms of where we're getting in modding GTA IV on a large scale. Numerous talented programmers in the community are busy creating some excellent tools to aid us in modifying the game to our heart's content. This post is essentially a round up of some of the recent developments.

SparkIV
SparkIV is a very promising IMG/RPF archive viewer and editor being created by aru. It's still heavily in public beta stages but already very powerful. Not all features are finished yet and there may be bugs, but it's looking like this is going to be the main successor to the GTA3 era's famous IMG Tool. Download SparkIV.

Alice
Alexander Blade, whose name you may recognise from the likes of Sanny Builder and CLEO, has started work on a new scripting project for GTA IV entitled Alice. In similar fashion to CLEO, Alice allows you to create scripts for GTA IV in a programming language called LUA, the download itself contains three examples including a Superman (God Mode) script, save anywhere, and the ability to view/read co-ordinates. Since Alice has just been released we don't have any mods available for it yet, though we're sure it's popularity is only going to increase over time. Download Alice.

Tools by CoMPMStR
CoMPMStR has uploaded a whole suite of useful tools to our database. His easy to use editors for GTA IV include one for handling, weapons, vehicle colors, vehicle groups, ped personality and a mod assistant. There's bound to be a number of you looking for at least one of these tools, hope they come in handy for you.

Hope everyone is enjoying their Christmas holidays, we'll have more updates for you regarding the website in the next few days.

4 Mod Installer v0.1 released

Chris — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 15:41:02 +0000

Gunner over at GTA4Mods has just given me the heads up that his mod manager, 4 Mod Installer, the first mod manager to be released for GTA IV is now online. Gunner, who has been working on the tool for over 6 months now, has created this tool to simplify the mod installing process for GTA IV.

Similar to Vice City's VCM mods and San Andreas' SAMI, 4MI has both a mod packager and a mod installer. The packager creates .4mi files which can then be distributed online, allowing other GTA IV players to download and, using the installer, add into their game. 4MI also enables modding of GTA IV without the use of a patch, which is so far what users wanting to mod the game have had to use.

QUOTE

How does this work?
Simply extract all contents of the zip somewhere and then run the exe of your choice.
To add mods to the list simply drag the .4mi files in the /mods/ folder.
ONLY 4MI FILES WORK!

You won't be able to add files that go in IMG or RPF files yet, they're still working on support for that. Until then, look out for modders starting to release .4mi mods.

Want to make .4mi versions of your mods to upload here? Download 4 Mod Installer from our database.

Eight new screenshots of The Lost and Damned

Chris — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 01:12:59 +0000

Rockstar have released 8 brand new screenshots showing off scenes from episode one of the Xbox 360's downloadable content, The Lost and Damned. Click the thumbnails below for the high res versions.

More: GTA IV DLC screenshots

The Lost and Damned trailer, GTA IV gets GOTY at Spike VGA

Chris — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 05:17:37 +0000

Earlier tonight the first trailer for The Lost and Damned premiered at the 2008 Spike TV Video Game Awards. Grand Theft Auto IV won three of the seven awards it was nominated for, "Game Of The Year", "Best Action Adventure Game", and "Best Performance By A Human Male" for Michael Hollick as Niko Bellic.

The action-packed trailer gives us an insight in what to expect from the DLC. Watch below via YouTube.

GTA IV PC patch released

Chris — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 04:12:33 +0000

The patch promised by Rockstar for the PC version of Grand Theft Auto IV has now been released. Start up GTA IV and connect to LIVE to initiate the download. The patch is 32.6MB and will take a few minutes to install. It should fix the following issues:

A fix to the crash after legal screen that some German customers were reporting.
Numerous improvements to the video editor: Smarter naming of videos, improved rendering quality, better fx during replays.
Fix to bowling while using certain sensitive mice.
Fix for ATI 1900 shadows.
Overall savings to memory.
Graphic improvements to particle systems and mirrors.
Multiplayer character settings are preserved.
Support for DirectInput controllers.

Let us know if it's helped improve things for you in our forums.

Thanks to gamerzworld for the heads up.

NOTE: If for any reason you would like manually install the patch rather than update from LIVE, you can download the patch here.

New Lost and Damned screenshots

Chris — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:47:57 +0000

Microsoft launched a mini-site for Grand Theft Auto IV's downloadable content for the Xbox 360 last night. On it they included three screenshots of The Lost and Damned which we haven't seen before. Unfortunately they aren't high resolution but we'll update them if get some better versions.

Link: The Lost and Damned screenshots

Source: Microsoft
Credit to }{oT~dEv1L 666 for finding these.