[AK-73]

VC.Config
VC.Config is actually not a single mod but a series of mod under a single catch-phrase.

At present it encompasses VC:Weather (Part I) and VC:Traffic (Part II), while a third part VC:RPG (and possibly a 4th: VC:Graphics) is being planned. There will possibly be even more to form together one single "suite" of mods.

Functionality for non-standard (that is non-US1.0) exes is supported.

VC:Weather
Allows configuration of world climate beyond what timecyc.dat does:
-configurable game world tint overlay (a la GTA3)
-makes the two weather tables of Vice fully configurable
-allows for true random weather with configurable probabilities (from weather state a to weather state b)
-configurable rain properties (speed, size, density)
-VC:Snow allows using snow in weather state 05, as replacement for stormy weather, while maintaining rain in 02
-Control over winds allow for true hurricane weather
-Rainbow time control has been added (mainly because Ben from GTA:LC asked for it )

The current version, v0.9.2, can be downloaded at gtagarage here: VC:Weather.


VC:Traffic
Configuration of ped and vehicle flow and behaviour:
-raising the top speed of all vehicles (including player's) by a global factor
-increasing ped and vehicle limits
-adjustable spawning and despawning and visibility behaviour (ranges, times) for peds and vehicles
-traffic density tables by daytime
-driver behaviour customization (speed of drivers in traffic, reaction to being shot at, escaping burning vehicles and much more)
-creation of highways is now possible, thanks to VC:Traffic enabling setting the speed of vehicle nodes
-rudimentary control over gang set-up

Under consideration: plenty of assorted stuff, especially wrt gangs, yet nothing definitive.

The current version, v0.9.2.1, can be downloaded at gtagarage here: VC:Traffic.
The latest update fixes a taxi mission glitch.

VC:RPG
Only in a rough planning stage at this point, the purpose of this segment is to give the player stats similar to what exists in SA, if not more.


VC:Graphics
Also only in a rough planning stage at this point, the purpose of this segment is to enhance the looks of VC. Options are: specular lighting, trails, fake hdr, cel-shading, realtime reflections, perhaps a few more directx features.

----
That's it for now. More news on it later,

Alex

This post has been edited by AK-73 on Monday, Apr 30 2007, 13:15

[TheDude5000]

Looks pretty damn interesting.

One question: is it possible to alter the atmosphere of VC? The literal atmosphere, like perhaps if I wanted an aurora effect like this:

[AK-73]

Sorry for the delay I was held up coding the new GTA:FPS version which is about to be released. Wrt your question: that image looks like it was done over the timecyc.dat values alone. You might want to study the contents of that file.

What the mod, among other things I might add, does enable is this:


Original GTA3 screenshot


GTA:LC without VC:Weather


GTA:LC with VC:Weather


Except for brightness and sun position pretty exact, I'd say.
As mentioned before, the tint can be used to bathe the whole world in a specific light - like red at dawn in this case.

Plus if you're writing a TC, you can make the weather as rainy or as sunny or as foggy as you want to. You can make the weather truly random and not based on a repeating weather state table. Lastly, you can tweak the rain a bit.

Alex

[SteaVor]

Just to verify:
The latest version of your mods does support non-standard exe's, I'm using it with a German one in my GTA:LC installation successfully! (after not getting it to work with the previous versions, so it really was worthwhile to resort to vcversion.dll)
Hammer really should've made a topic about his versioning module, as it covers each and every released VC executable and should therefore be really useful for more than just the LC mod (and now your mods).

btw:

GREAT WORK!

[AK-73]

Thanks a lot for the information. That is very good to know. Still with future updates it will still be an issue as missing to properly adjust a single offset might cause a mod to not work for non-standard.

Right now I am working on snow as weatherstate 00 05. I already have it in the game but there'll be plenty of things to take care of to make it look and behave right.

Alex

PS I trust it works for VC:Traffic too?

[SteaVor]

Yes, it does, no problems with either one here!

[AK-73]

Thanks again. I have modified the top post and both descriptions on gtagarage accordingly.

Alex

PS (Not just to you, Steavor:) If there's some questions about what a .cfg value does, feel free to ask in here. A lot of this is trial and error at this stage. Plus, some sections might undergo some change in the future. (But compatibility/easy conversion will be ensured.)

Alex

This post has been edited by AK-73 on Wednesday, Feb 14 2007, 16:34

[AK-73]

Folks, we have a new release.

VC:Weather 0.9.2 is out.

It features VC:Snow (true snow for the Vice City engine, which can replace stormy weather - if so desired), hurricanes and rainbow control (for the LC folks).

Here a few additional screenshots (to the ones on gtagarage.com):


Let It Snow, Let It Snow, Let It Snow...


Hurricane kicking up mighty a-dust...


Nothing too fancy since fog could be had in Vice before but VC:Weather allows to set it very easily through the config file...




Also I'd like to announce that a new release of VC:Traffic is coming up soon. I have already implemented (at home) high speed nodes (use 3 as value of the first flag for each inner node in paths.ipl) plus customizable traffic density per daytime (heavy traffic during rush hours, light traffic in the early morning hours) to give your city some life, some pulse. Awaiting to be implemented is driver's behaviour (which speed ranges do they use, how do they react to being shot at, etc) as well as some ped/gangers behaviour.

Combined with the current VC:Weather release this should give tc and map makers more then necessary to further differentiate their mod from others and to give their city a unique flair. How crowded are your city's streets are going to be? How about the nightlife? Or the lunch break? What weather does your city have? Constant rain? Deep snow? Or sunshine all the way?

Lol, so much for my advertizing...

the rest is up to you (or not).


Alex

[ThugLord187]

Wow, Man, I'd like to congratulate you on this magnificant mod Downloading now.

[AK-73]

If anyone has trouble getting things to work, has some request for additional features, or needs some clarification/advice on how to use the .cfg, this is the place to post it to.

Alex

[SteaVor]

That's really awesome, it makes VC a paradise for modders! It can get really complex, but the achievable, customizable effects are absolutely worth it!

How exactly do the 'density adders' of the Traffic module work? Did you really notice your changes when you used them together with the corresponding opcodes (03DE/01EB)?
I wasn't able to get more traffic or more peds unfortunately when tried it last time but I didn't have enough time for thorough parameter testing lately.

[AK-73]

The density adder never got implemented when I found out about the density multipliers available through scripting (that's what the DEPRECATED in the description in the .cfg was to denote). You need to adapt the general density level to your map. I recommend this be one of the last thing to do, after a map has been finished.

I also felt that for the serious modder it was necessary to make all the stuff available even if that would make it very complex. But then again if someone is serious about tcs, they won't mind putting up a few days fiddling with the values (which is what it comes down to).

I would also like to point out here that for those who have some basic knowledge of prgramming and data types that the ptr to the VC:Weather struct can be found at 0x6DFFE0, while the ptr for VC:Traffic is at 0x6DFFD0. The structure of the structs can be discerned via the source code files. Most, in fact almost all, values are "live" values in the sense of changing the value with tsearch, artmoney, ollydbg will have an impact right away in the game. That saves the serious modder the effort of having to restart the whole game and allows live tweaking of values. As to which values are "live", just try it, almost any will be. If you're not sure about whether a value change has any effect, study the source. If the mod writes the value straight away in some address only without some code attached to it, it's not live. Otherwise you can assume it is.

Alex

[X-Seti]

I looking at those pics wondering if VC config would beable to give me the weather effects I'm after in GTA SOL.

Very bright and sunny for LA, VC, and Vegas, and mostly cloudy weather for SF, LC and MLL.

As for peds spawning, this has been hard to work out, mainly because of the size of the map used, and I would be interested in your findings.

[AK-73]

QUOTE (X-Seti @ Mar 10 2007, 18:03)

I looking at those pics wondering if VC config would beable to give me the weather effects I'm after in GTA SOL. Very bright and sunny for LA, VC, and Vegas, and mostly cloudy weather for SF, LC and MLL. As for peds spawning, this has been hard to work out, mainly because of the size of the map used, and I would be interested in your findings.

Funnily enough I have been reading the thread of your mod recently and thought about how vc:weather could be applied to your mod. It can be done with a little bit tweaking of the mod. Essentially you'd create .cfgs for each section of your map and switch between the data depending on the camera coordinates. The greatest difficulty would be in managing smooth transitions. I would suggest in such cases that you use the random weather functionality rather than fixed weather tables.

Beyond that, it's clear that VC:Weather would have to be adapted to your mods need. It would probaby too mod-specific to be of interest to me though. But as my mod is open source, I have no problem with anyone doing their own spin-offs. You'd need someone who can do assembler though *or* someone who can do c or c++ or java or some other programming language fairly well and who is willing to spend 2-3 weeks learning assembler. If you have someone like that, I'll be very willing to help them implement their stuff. VC.Config had always been intended as some kind of springboard, a foundation for modding.

As to peds spawning, could you elaborate?

Alex

[AK-73]

VC:Traffic v0.9.2 is out.

The list of new features contains this:
-detailed instructions how to use VC:Traffic in a how-to
-a global factor to increase the top speed of all vehicles
-vehicle path's node speed configuration, allowing now the creation of highways ala GTA San Andreas
-traffic density tables by daytime (give your mod/TC its own unique flavour/flow)
-driver behaviour customization (*plenty* of stuff, you need to check it out first hand)
-rudimentary control over gang set-up (this is to be expanded)

If you don't know yet what this mod is about, try counting the peds in this picture (and consider that plenty more will be existent but out of sight):


Vicers love to shop in the Washington Mall at night

:-)

Alex

[VinnyGouveia]

man, bloody amazing!

[AK-73]

QUOTE (VinnyGouveia @ Mar 23 2007, 20:50)

man, bloody amazing!

Thanks.

Anyway, there is a bugfix update for VC:Traffic out. The latest version is now v0.9.2.1 and it fixes a taxi mission glitch that I have been made aware of by the GTA:LC folks.

Alex

[fireofinferno]

This rocks!keep up the good work!

[VinnyGouveia]

I know I can be wrong/outdated, but I wanted to know if it is posible to make any program to do it, and not editing a text file.... Please?

[AK-73]

QUOTE (VinnyGouveia @ Apr 30 2007, 14:34)

I know I can be wrong/outdated, but I wanted to know if it is posible to make any program to do it, and not editing a text file.... Please?

You mean a windowed frontend? Like the LC launcher? Well, the stuff is open-source and anybody can put their spin on it, if they want to. Theoretically it's even possible to manipulate the stuff through a trainer.

Alex