River

The mapping and texture work, world detail/character details are really good in this game. You can tell R* spent a lot of time working on the world and world effects in this. Seems like a well refined version of the GTAIV engine. After playing around with the editor a little more I did also notice that it has some cool new options to the free camera mode which I like a lot. I still wish the distance could be much longer on camera positions (moving them farther away from the player than is currently allowed would rock) Some of the camera movements and presets are cool also.

^^^ Yes, a copy and paste from project to the next would be nice too. (or being able to save the camera positions in a clip, and reopen that in another project) Basically once you finish with a clip, you can either add to it or leave it there. You cannot copy one scene into another project window which makes putting together longer movies quite a paint in butt.

Alright so after a few days of playing around (and only a few missions haha mostly just playing around and checking out new vehicles and the map) My initial impression of the game is GOOD, well better than good. Despite the long ass download for the "patch" and after everything updated (a couple more smaller patches too?) the game has run very smoothly and hasnt crashed/dumped yet. I even messed around with the video editor which seems to be really cool. (although havent dove in all the way yet) Some things of note about it I wish would be addressed with a mod, or with a patch. Perhaps make the draw distance and camera placement distances to be about twice as long as they are currently in the video editor mode. (so that rendering distance is even farther than currently, and camera placement can be made further away from the player, perhaps twice as far or more (why is it limited for video editor?) Game play is awesome, havent found any map glitches yet either. After another week or so of gameplay I'm writing up a longer article about this that might be a bit more indepth with some more info and possible suggestions for R* or modders!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LYPmXV0flfk

Oh cool it just took a while to show up on the site. Prob getting hit pretty hard. Here's the first one I have done.

How are you guys doing the larger res snapmatics?

Alas got the game loaded and updated. So far so good, no glitches or freezes etc and the graphics look great. (hoursss to install haha) Time to wreck this bitch a little bit, and play thru some missions. I'll give an initial impression after a couple days worth of play.

Well my discs arrived. I'm a little put out though. I'm not quite sure why they send you discs, when the first thing it does after slowly installing 7 discs for over an hour is - it downloads a 60 gb "patch". Wow. Why send the damn discs to people if its pretty much nulled, and you have to download the practically the entire game all over again anyways for it to work? I have not been able to play yet, so please excuse my disgust for this release so far. Totally not impressed with the way this has been released.

Yeah, so lame. I ordered the game in august of last year. Yet steam users have been playing since 4 pm yesterday. At least Rockstar cares about its customers getting the game on time. I'm actually in the middle of writing an article on this crap. It has been really lame (the delays and excuses) despite the game being cool. I'm a bit pissed that I could preorder a game nearly a year ago and someone could order it last night on steam and get it before me. (so my disks will arrive 2-3 days after most people get to play the game) Cool Rockstar thanks!! Not like it wouldve been awesome to get the game a day earlier or something, but no. Lets make it a couple days late.

Yeah I've used all those options and played around with it a lot. I was talking about a full blown mission editor capable of setting objectives that must be completed etc (objects picked up, or people eliminated) The one in flashpoint was bad ass in that you could setup missions just like the real game for single player or multi (not just limited to the two mp options) It would be really cool to see a mod for that if rockstar wont ever release something to do that with. im curious to see what we can do with director mode in those ways. @the editor badass! im excited to play around with it some. i got a tracking number today. R* should offer a special edition version on a cool shaped USB thumb drive (maybe a V and one end plugs in?) for this PC version.

Yeah I've done those preset missions. I'm talking about custom making your own waypoints for races etc so that you'd basically have a bunch of hoops (that you place whevever instead of the preset ones, basically just build your own) or gates to make it through in order to finish. The TGAIV multiplayer missions were alright. Most of the time we had more fun just getting all of our warning levels up and trying to hold down the fort someplace for a bit then race to someplace else and do the same thing (talking on vent) but yeah... i get yah man }-) gtaiv was def much fun

You know what else would be cool? (and some of this may be in the director mode? havent gotten it yet obviously haha) Is having some sort of waypoint control on the map so that you can actually creat say a race for multiplayer with your friends, or accomplish a certain task (say travel to this waypoint, and kill this dude and you could arm his camp with his mates etc) But basically like the mission editor where you can spawn certain assets and make a task that must be completed type of thing. (or a race where you set waypoints and everyone has to follow) I personally would love to be able to make my own races!! I'm pretty good at finding weird routes through alleys and jumps etc. Anyhow, THAT would be cool as fuck. Ever played the old game flashpoint? It had an awesome interface for a mission editor that was user controlled. You could save the missions and send it to your friend (put it in the proper folder on their local box etc) and then everyone could play the mission. Pretty badass!

actually there is way better examples of the car handling mods stuff fin here. (i set up the handling much dif than anything ive seen in other mods?)

Yeah, I had the steam version. I was able to save copies before updates and play with the mods still. (without opening steam, just open the game directly) Just playing in offline mode, but then to play with friends and all online I'd have to close out and drag a huge dir from a backup drive over and overwrite it etc, was just a pain to keep trying to mod or play the actual game (switching between them sucked since i was not able to with the updated version) I did some of this video with the mod I made. (the car drift stuff was with my mod)

Well, One of the things I was a little upset about was in GTAIV you could access the .ini files basically and edit the car handling .dat files and adjust all of those characteristics that cars have in game. I really liked that because I like to adjust the cars to my own liking, like ultra drift cars sometimes, or maybe a stiff handling car another time, or one made just for big jumps etc. BUT, the problem was with the update to liberty episodes I believe the coding was changed so that those files were no longer "exposed" in the bare dirs for editing. (likely compressed and held in mem etc) So yeah! If its possible to have a dialog box or editor for all of the car handling (.dat files, or whatever extension they used for this build) would be kickass. I love the director mode stuff that was put in the game. I'm pretty sure that kind of stuff was not included though, but to someone that likes to mod or use them that would be a GREAT mod for me personally. (i made one personally for GTAIV, gave it to many friends but never published it) Possible in GTA5 pc?

Having a good PC definitely matters for sure with gaming. I'm currently running an i7 4770 @ 3.4 ghz and 16 gig ddr3 ram. the graphics card is a gtx 970.

Well its always a personal preference thing. I know a lot more PC users from using irc and from some other websites like facebook and blogs etc over the years so its cool to play stuff like left4dead2 with the old school friends sometimes or free ride in GTAIV and choose our own races and shit. I guess GTA5 will be really cool for that too. I'm about to splode in my pants already and its 3 days away from release date. (and my discs will prob arrive like weeks later with my luck hahah)

Definitely only for install lol. PC really gives you more precise controls also for playing. (IMHO!) Also graphics are going to be much better! With a console you're going to always be limited to how much that box can do, but with PC its easy to upgrade to newer/better hardware. I'm sort of anti console though so don't listen to me! Future will be all in one tv/console/pc and that is already happening to some degrees. (hdmi cables make your laptop/pc a large screen tv)

^^^ yeah. I'm the type of person that loves to keep hard copies of stuff. I keep like 3 backups of my studio stuff. (because i got ripped off once, and lost some important shit! dif locations one of them being my safe for a monthly backup) This game seems worthy of having hard copy.

The video editor and game capturing (30 sec clips - continuous) sound like they are going to be amazing on this. I'm pretty excited to play around with that part of it as much as the game itself. I'll post up when it arrives. (preordered disc)

Hope it gets here on the release date! If it's delayed again I'm going to have to change my lucky diaper. It can't go past 8 months and still have that fresh feeling.

Yeah it should be nice. That said, It left a huge bad taste in my mouth watching the console game get priorities and the PC version being released OVER a year later. After all, the game is made and developed on computers? (hoping?! haha) I just feel like Rockstar dropped the communication ball, and the timely release ball on this one. Many people like myself pre ordered this months ago. (myself, 7 months ago!!!) a bit ridic. I was a huge fan of GTAIV, and definitely got many of my friends to buy the PC version. I'm a bit ashamed this time to say, its quickly losing my interest due to the long ass wait, and due to the lack of communication to the people who did pre order. I've read that they are compensating some of those preorders by in game money and the likes. Lets see if they make it worth the wait. I'm on the fence right now. Lets see if it gets here in a timely manor, and if steam users get it before the people who actually ordered it nearly a year ago. (which would be the final blow to me) If that happens, I'll never buy another version of Rockstar products/games. The key to good business, and good praise has been ignored for PC users. Lets see how Rockstar moves forward. How they treat their customers should reflect well on the company. Right now, it reflects poorly in these cases. Rockstar: "hey give us your money, we're releasing at 18 November 2014 (same as console) "Oh wait, now that youve pre ordered, we're going to release in 27 January 2015." "ohh shit, my bad, did I say January? I meant 24 March 2015." "damn, i mustve been high, i really meant 14 April 2015" right.... Crappy business practices.

I bought it from Rockstar directly. No they havent said anything. In fact, I msg them on twitter, and no reply. Less than stellar opinion about this release so far. nearly a year late, and lack of information given out to those that prepurchased the game long ago. (i pre ordered in August!)

When will preorders be shipped out? I preordered back in August. I still have not received my discs and users on steam and other platforms will be able to download tomorrow? Doesnt seem fair to the folks that preordered long ago? Anyone know when people should be getting discs shipped to them?