I play GTA IV i don't do it to comple the storyline missions since I use a PC I decided to download a complete save game file. The problem it requires this mod called XLiveless which consits of a little file called xlive.dll that hangs out in your game directory. The good news is this bypasses a check the game does to make sure YOU made the save game file. The bad news this disables multiplayer.
The good news a complete save game does me no good on multiplayer anyway so I don't need to access it when I play multiplayer. A quick workaround is to get rid of xlive.dll before starting the game if u want to play multiplayer. I took this a step further and made two batch files to automate this process.
For each of the batch files simple paste the code in notepad and save the file with the extension .bat instead of .txt,
Batch File 1: Play in single playerSo this batch file I just have saved to my desktop under the name "Play GTA IV Single Player.bat" the name is unimportant but something so you know its for single player helps. The batch file will make sure xlive.dll is setup in the game directory then start the gta iv launcher program for you.
| QUOTE |
@echo off
cd "C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\Grand Theft Auto IV"
If exist xlive.disabled ren xlive.disabled xlive.dll
start LaunchGTAIV.exe
exit |
For those who care here is an explaination of each line of commands
Line 1: This command simply tells the command prompt not to output the commdand to the command line that pops up,
Line 2: This sets the working directory to the GTA IV directory, you may need to change the value between the quote marks if your directory is diffrent.
Line 3: When you want to play multiplayer these batch files are set to rename xlive.dll to xlive.disabled, this looks to see if there is a file called xliveless.disabled and if there is it renames it to xlive.dll to enable XLiveless so you can access your downloaded save game files for single player mode.
Line 4: starts the GTA IV launcher, making this a one click solution to play GTA IV in single player mode with XLiveless.
Line 5: Self explanitory, exits the batch file closes the balck command prompt window that comes up.
Batch File 2: Play in multi playerSo this batch file I just have saved to my desktop under the name "Play GTA IV Multi Player.bat" the name is unimportant but something so you know its for multi player helps. The batch file will make sure XLiveless is disabled by renaming xlive.dll to xlive.disabled so you can access multiplayer. The one side affect you can't access any save game files you did not create. I simply started a new game got as far as finishing the mission where Roman gives me a cell phone then saved that so I have the phone to access multiplayer. When XLiveless is not runing it will load this save game file automatically. Like before this is once click, it will start the GTA IV launcher for you once its done its job. Here is the batch file for that.
| QUOTE |
@echo off
cd "C:\Program Files\Rockstar Games\Grand Theft Auto IV"
If exist xlive.dll ren xlive.dll xlive.disabled
start LaunchGTAIV.exe
exit |
For those who care here is an explaination of each line of commands
Line 1: This command simply tells the command prompt not to output the commdand to the command line that pops up,
Line 2: This sets the working directory to the GTA IV directory, you may need to change the value between the quote marks if your directory is diffrent.
Line 3: When you want to play multiplayer these batch files are set to rename xlive.dll to xlive.disabled, this looks to see if there is a file called xliveless.dll and if there is it renames it to xlive.disabled to disable XLiveless so you can access multi player mode.
Line 4: starts the GTA IV launcher, making this a one click solution to play GTA IV in multi player mode by disabling XLiveless.
Line 5: Self explanitory, exits the batch file closes the balck command prompt window that comes up.
The end result of using this method. Once GTA IV install great if you want to mod it and have the same mods on both single player and multiplayer but you use XLiveless to use a download save game file to unlcok everything for your own personal use in single player without having to complete the missions for you. You simple click the appropriate batch file based on whether you want to play single player or multiplayer this does everything else up to and including luanching the game for you.
Hope someone else finds this useful.
Grand Theft Auto IV
