Vice City Visual Enhancements Version 0.2

[Hanney]

Awhile ago on another server forum (Hunting Arena which is now no longer with us R.I.P ) I created a topic about a mod pack which updates the graphics of the game. Back when graphics mod Vice Cry 1.6 was released I excitedly downloaded it and installed it onto my copy of Vice City. However, when I got ingame I noticed that it was not usable on Vice City Multiplayer. It included too many extra objects which didn't exist in the original game, it changed collision data on objects aswell such as the palm trees into newer ones, and also contained some textures which I thought to be an eye sore.

The idea of Vice City Visual Enhancements was to initially make the Vice Cry 1.6 compatible to be played with on vc-mp. So I took all the mods files and started breaking them down and seeing what I liked and what I didn't like and removed it. I then re-shaped all the files into a way in which it was reusable on vc-mp and created an install script using Vice City Mod Installer. Afterwards from there i've built upon it adding more and more different mods in an attempt to give the game a rich new high definition look whilst trying to preserve much of the Vice City atmosphere without making drastic changes.

This is basically a mod compiliation of lots of other mods created by modders. None of this work is mine and I have only collated it together and created an install script in which it is compatible with vc-mp. Please give all credit to the individual modders who created each one of these mods included.

The file size is roughly 138mb. It is reccomended that you install this mod over a clean installation of vc-mp to avoid any errors later on. Below is an extract of the read me file included within the mod which describes some of the mods which were fully or partially included.

Vice City Visual Enhancements

This is a compilation of mods by others that I have gathered and combined together to attempt to give Vice City a cleaner high resolution look whilst being compatible with Vice City Multiplayer. I do not take any credit for the creation of these mods as I only gathered them together and combined them into an install script. Below is a list of the mods featured in this installation as well as a link to the source each mod.
I do not recommend you use this mod if your PC cannot reach 30 fps in vanilla Vice City at a stable constant rate.
Vice Cry 1.6 by kowal125xr
http://www.moddb.com/mods/vice-cry/downloads/vice-cry-17

(Some of the contents have been removed to make it suitable for use on Vice City Multiplayer. E.g trees that were not in the game originally, ventilation shafts on roofs in Little Haiti, other misc. objects such as the Hulk Hogan statue etc.
I removed some textures as well as I thought they were poor in comparison to the others. Some textures also weren't added in because it was too time consuming for me to find all of the texture names required)

This compilation is comprised mainly of this mod. New things contains:
-   Various new textures around Vice City
-   New Roads
-   New Vegetation
-   Higher Resolution Fonts
-   Higher Resolution Weapon Icons
-   Higher Resolution Map and Icons

Vice City Realistic Palm Trees v2 by Black Hole (PG) & kromvel
http://www.gtavision.com/index.php?section=downloads&site=download&id=749
(Acts as a compatible replacement for the trees from Vice Cry. These are suitable for multiplayer as they do not modify any collision data.)
 
Vice City real reflections and specular lighting by DexX
http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?s=e12a807791cd22c57cd49c2f3254d52e&showtopic=281790&st=0
(Adds in specular lighting to vehicles, the player, and water ingame. Adds a nice little touch to the graphics but can be very demanding on a system if there is a large amount of vehicles on scene at once.)

HQ Vice City Radar Icons by yojo2
http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=6714
Gives a sharper higher resolution look to icons on the radar such as the "D" for Diaz on the radar.

Extended Draw Distance by Adtec_224
(DrawDist.asi - Extends the draw distance beyond normal limits doubling the values. As a result trees will load farther in the distance as well as textures. An additional “override.txt” file is included aswell where the values can be dynamically altered to suit preference)

Loading screens remover by created Nitzkit (Uploaded by flatface)
http://www.thegtaplace.com/downloads/f4672-vice-city-load-screen-remover
(Removes loading screens between islands making the gameplay more fluent.)

GTA IV Streets For Vice + Hi Res By GTA3&VCmodder
http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=9856
I took the grass from this mod (unpatched) because I seem to like it. I also took a few other textures from Starfish and some Alley ways in Ocean Beach.

Missing Textures Fix by Beckermann-Dewitt
Fixes the missing textures on some barricades and street signs.
http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=16538

Improved Lens Flare Graphics by JVT
http://www.gtagaming.com/downloads/gta-vice-city/misc-mods/781
A slight tweak which improves the lens flares from the sun.
 
Hurricane Charlie by Switch Designs
(Makes the rain a little more heavy and violent looking more representative of tropical storms)
http://www.gta-downloads.com/en/gta-vice-city/mods/647-hurricane-charlie.html

Xbox Vehicles to PC by ALMOST610
(Ads in quite nice smoother looking Xbox version vehicles to the PC version as well as 3d wheel trims)
http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=14197

HD Tommy for Vice City Mod by vakooja
Replaces the in game player model and skin with a more sharp high resolution skin.
http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=4113

Road Reflections Fix by SilentPL
Graphics cards more recent than AGP have problems with displaying the reflections of roads when it rains. This mod corrects this problem restoring the reflective surfaces from rain.
http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=22398

Vice City – Sky Full of Stars by MW_29
This mod adds in stars to the sky of Vice City on clear nights. Makes the sky appear less bare and more pretty at night.
http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=18341

ORG Patch VC v1.1
Haven’t actually used the collision fixes here as they are not suitable for multiplayer. The larger resolution images from the file “generic.txd” were taken from this mod and combined with this compilation.
http://dimzet13.3dn.ru/load/vice_city/tekstury_vc/org_patch_vc/16-1-0-14

Vice City Hi-res Loadscreen by UJIbU4
Replaces the main loading screen with a high resolution 1920x1080 resolution version.
http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=21472

Screenshots:

Starry Sky at night - http://i.imgur.com/OI3Io.jpg

Extended Draw Distance (see further) - http://i.imgur.com/KMVLu.jpg

New rain effects, reflections on ground, specular lighting, HD Hud, Fonts and Xbox Vehicles - http://i.imgur.com/cXCVI.jpg

Reflective water surfaces (isn't really reflective and is quite buggy, however its a nice little touch) - http://i.imgur.com/XSCns.jpg



Download: http://www.mediafire.com/?kue163ttapm614h
(The download link above does not seem to work for some people, so here is an alternative link for you.)

Instructions on how to install are included. MAKE SURE TO USE THE OPTION PRESENTED TO BACKUP YOUR FILES!!!


Issues:
If you have any problems post here and let me know and i'll see if I can fix it. Depending on your system aswell a large performance hit may be present. Mods/Files which may have a severe affect may be:

VCDrawDist.asi - The draw distance is extended from the default which can have an impact on performance - try deleting "VCDrawDist.asi" in the root folder.

vc_carref.asi and vc_speclight.asi - This may have an impact on performance especially if there are alot of vehicles on screen at once.

Loading screens between islands remover - Not sure if this has a major impact or not, depends on the amount of RAM your system has perhaps. Maybe it's only helpful for the console versions e.g ps2 version specifically. The original Vice City uninstallation files are included within the mod itself when seperately download from here: http://www.thegtaplace.com/downloads/f4672-vice-city-load-screen-remover

Good luck!

Extra note: Some of the functionality of this mod uses .asi files which is blocked by 0.4. This includes extended draw distance and specular lighting.

Also please note that if you wish to use this in vc-mp:

you must type into the console/chatbox the following command: /setconfig game_streammem 512 on any server then restart your game. IF YOU DON'T DO THIS PART YOU WILL PROBABLY RECEIVE LOTS OF FLICKERING TEXTURES INGAME!

[DareN]

Great work Hanney! 

[Jellyfish]

Impressive. I really like the water enhancements.

[StriKe]

From dead VC-HA forum

Introduction

Over the past week or two I have been searching for mods created by others which were created with the intention of making Vice City more visually appealing whilst still keeping the atmosphere of Vice City itself and being suitable for use in Multiplayer. I've gathered up quite a bunch of them and took my personal most favourite mods and parts from other mods in an effort to try and create one large complimation which can be installed in pretty much one go.

NOTE: I did not create any of these mods I only gathered them. Therefore the original creators of the mods are the ones who put the majority of the effort in.

Below is a part of the readme file which is included in the mod describing the mods included.

A full package of all of these mods in one installer is available for download at the bottom.

Vice Cry 1.6 by kowal125xr
http://www.moddb.com/mods/project-125xr/downloads/vice-cry-16
(Some of the contents have been removed to make it suitable for use on multiplayer. E.g trees that were not in the game originally, ventelation shafts on roofs in haiti, other misc stuff Hulk Hogan statue etc.

I removed some textures aswell as I thought they were poor in comparison to the others. Some textures also weren't added in because it was to time consuming for me to find all of the texture names needed)

This complimation is comprised mainly of this mod. New things contain new textures around Vice City, New roads, Higher resolution fonts on text e.g the "Mission Failed" text aswell as HP, armour, money and wanted level. Some higher resolution vehicles included aswell e.g Infernus, Comet, Ambulance and Police.

Vice City Realistic Palm Trees v2 by Black Hole (PG) & kromvel
http://www.gtavision.com/index.php?section=downloads&site=download&id=749
(Acts as a compatible replacement for the trees from Vice Cry. These are suitable for multiplayer as they do not modify any collision data.)

Vice City real reflections and specular lighting by DexX
http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?s=e12a807791cd22c57cd49c2f3254d52e&showtopic=281790&st=0
(Adds in specular lighting to vehicles, the player, and water ingame. Adds a nice little touch to the graphics.)

HQ Vice City Radar by yojo2
http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=6585
(Changes the radar to look much sharper and appealing whilst keeping the original look. )

HQ Vice City Radar Icons by yojo2
http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=6714
(Works great along with "HQ Vice City Radar". Gives a sharper higher resolution look to icons on the radar such as the "D" for Diaz on the radar.

Extended Draw Distance by Adtec_224
(Extends the draw distance beyond normal limits doubling the values. As a result trees will load farther in the distance aswell as textures.)

Loading screens remover by created Nitzkit (Uploaded by flatface)
http://www.thegtaplace.com/downloads/f4672-vice-city-load-screen-remover
(Removes loading screens between islands making the gameplay more fluent. Worksgreat in combination with Adtec_224's extended draw distance file.

GTA IV Streets For Vice + Hi Res By GTA3&VCmodder
http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=9856
I took the grass from this mod (unpatched) because I seem to like it. I also took a few other textures from Starfish and some Alley ways in Ocean Beach.

Missing Textures Fix by Beckermann-Dewitt
Fixes the missing textures on some barricades and street signs.
http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=16538

Improved Lens Flare Graphics by JVT
http://www.gtagaming.com/downloads/gta-vice-city/misc-mods/781
A slight tweak which improves the lens flare from the sun.

Hurricane Charlie by Switch Designs
(Makes the rain a little more heavy and violent looking)
http://www.gta-downloads.com/en/gta-vice-city/mods/647-hurricane-charlie.html

Xbox Vehicles to PC by ALMOST610
(Adds in quite nice smoother looking Xbox version vehicles to the PC version aswell as 3d wheel trims)
http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=14197

Screenshots

Theres quite a lot of stuff included so it would take forever to screenshot all of it but heres some highlights...

Specular Lighting on vehicles, xbox wheels and higher res Sabre Turbo:

http://img833.image$hack.us/img833/3801/gtavc2011080416574424.png

Specular Lighting on water and new water texture:

http://img819.image$hack.us/img819/2050/gtavc2011080416584909.png

Increased Draw Distance:

Before: http://img11.image$hack.us/img11/5282/vcmp034.jpg
After: http://img41.image$hack.us/img41/7813/vcmp035.jpg

Heads up display:

http://img823.image$hack.us/img823/2259/gtavc2011080419013401.png

Army Base:

http://img135.image$hack.us/img135/2994/gtavc2011080417043879.png

Beach:

http://img543.image$hack.us/img543/1821/gtavc2011080419432831.png


Things you should know before downloading

1.] The package itself is stable however there are a few inconsistencies that you will come across such as old textures cutting off suddenly and overlapping onto new textures. (I'm too lazy to go and fix all of that)

A few examples of this are:

http://img13.image$hack.us/img13/5426/gtavc2011080417224095.png
http://img94.image$hack.us/img94/2548/gtavc2011080417142661.png


The new palm trees look nice but the visual appearances do not match the collision data of the palm trees. Basically palm trees look thicker than the old trees but the collision data has not been changed. This results in you standing inside the palm tree on an invisible surface of the old palm tree.

(Hopefully that makes sense. If not maybe this screenshot will - http://img69.image$hack.us/img69/3298/gtavc2011080419523808.png)

2. I wouldn't recommend that players with extremely old PC's try this mod. If your PC cannot reach an always stable 30 fps on vanillia (unmodded) Vice City then this mod is not for you. It will just decrease your FPS and cause stuttering especially the extended draw distance. (possibly overheating of components inside your PC)


3. I can already see some players from the vc-mp community in my head kicking a fuss about extended draw distance. Draw distance is only altered for static objects on the map e.g buildings, trees, fences. It does NOT alter the distance at which vehicles/LOD's of vehicles aswell as players is shown. The vc-mp devs have also increased the draw distance for player models in 0.3 R2 anyway.


4. Before you install create a full backup of your Grand Theft Auto Vice City folder. If the mod doesn't work or perhaps you just don't like it you can then always just easily revert back to the previous copy.

5. Please take the time to check out each individual mod of the original mod creators.

Download

You can download the full package from here:

http://www.mediafire.com/?ak21veps33xnz9y


Installation

1.Mod Manager Instructions
1. Extract the folder "VC Visual Enhancements" from the .rar and place it anywhere you wish on your hard drive.

2. Run GTA Mod Installer.exe
3.  Once it has launched fully click "Continue"
4.  Choose the option "Install a Mod (with a script file) to GTA3 or Vice City."  then click Next...
5.  Choose the option ""I want to select a folder that contains all of the mods files" then click Next... again.
6. Click the "Browse" button and Locate to where you extracted the "VC Visual Enhancements" folder and then select the "VCVE" folder. then click Next...
7.  Click the "Browse" button again and then Navigate to your Vice City installation folder. Click next once more...

8. Mod Installer will begin to extract the files whilst it is doing this you will not be able to do anything on your PC it should only take up to 1 minute or so.

9. Once it has finished click "Finish"

Configuring Anti-Aliasing

Anti-aliasing removes the horrid jagged edges around models and buildings etc. As a result this makes models in the game especially vehicles look much more smooth and visually appealing to look at. All new graphics cards and most old graphics cards support this feature but it depends on wether or not your PC can handle this. If your the typical vc-mp poverty nab with a PC from 2001 then it probably won't go so well.

Nvidia graphics card owners:

Credits go to Ryz for taking the time to type out the follow instructions.

Manage 3D Settings -> Program Settings -> Add -> gta.vc.exe -> Antialising Gamma Correction -> On -> Antialising Mode -> Override any application setting -> Antialising Setting -> choose depending on your system -> Antialising Transparency -> Again, depends on your system -> Apply

ATI / AMD graphics card owners:

If anyone has an ATI card feel free to post a step by step on how to do it with the most recent ATI software.

(If you get an error when launching Vice City about a missing "DCVS.dll..." then download Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package (x86) from here - http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=5555)

NewK's Custom Weapon HUD icons.

Our lovely vc-mp community member NewK went ahead and made his own replacement for the weapons part of the heads up display in Vice City. There are 4 different versions available for download:

#1 Version = This version is the same version I posted but with all the improvements/fixes
#2 Version = This is the same as version #1 but this one has the new backgrounds, the ones with the better lighting
#3 Version = This version has the default backgrounds to each weapon like in the game. The color of the background will be diferent depending on the weapon you have.
#4 Version = This is the same as version #3 but this one has the new backgrounds, the ones with the better lighting

Credits go to NewK for these lovely sets.

Version 4:

Version 2:

Download:http://www.mediafire.com/?eceltsu9uczh6ek
- Hanney

[Avenger]

If someone likes Zera's icons, this package may be an alternative.
It contains weapon models and Zera's icons added to them; both fit each other with no differences.





Mods used:
~ Renegade's weapon packs
~ Commando Funebrero's weapon packs (excluding melee's)
~ HD melee weapons
~ Zera's icons (excluding brass knuckles)
~ OnePiece's icons (brass and fist)

Installation:
~ Replace the weapon files in your gta3.img with the ones provided, preferably with IMG Tool or G-IMG.
~ Put the fist icon into hud.txd using TXD Workshop (open the file, roll down till you see fist.txd, import modified one).

DOWNLOAD

[Bestrafer]

Issues...
VCVE Issues

[Avenger]

Rebuild your gta3.img using IMG Tool. It should help.

[Hanney]

Haven't had those issues apart from the first set of shrubs. As for the vehicles it may be related to the LOD's on the Xbox vehicles or perhaps the reflections on vehicles .asi (vc_carref.asi)

[AdTec_224]

That first issue appears to be a missing texture after a quick search through VC's map files the file you appear to be missing is 'starf.txd'.

[Harry_Potter]

Hanney, how can i install the compilation of mods ?   

[Bestrafer]

Hanney, how can i install the compilation of mods ?   

you need to download all the mods here, extract all the archives to desktop, and then put every file in the right folder one by one.

[Harry_Potter]

Well, I downloaded the compilation of mods but when i tried to extract it, it gives error

I tried to extract it with winrar,winzip and 7zip

[Hanney]

Download it and follow the instructions provided in the text file of the mod.

[Noori]

downloaded intalled but it gives a bit lagg in the game when i move r shoot just a slight lag

[Avenger]

downloaded intalled but it gives a bit lagg in the game when i move r shoot just a slight lag

Try deleting vc_carref.asi, vc_speclight.asi and vc_gfx.ini files, they may cause lag when rendering car reflections in areas that are crowded with such.