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This page contains modifications only for the “classic” PC version of GTA: Vice City. The Definitive Edition is not supported.
SilentPatch for the 3D-era Grand Theft Auto games is the first and flagship release of the “SilentPatch family”, providing numerous fixes for this beloved franchise. SilentPatch addresses a wide range of issues, from critical fixes for crashes and other blockers to various major and minor improvements identified by the passionate community in these games over decades. SilentPatch does not alter the core gameplay experience, making it an optimal choice for both first-time players and the old guard returning for yet another playthrough.
Featured fixes
Fixes marked with can be configured/toggled via the INI file. These options are enabled by default unless stated otherwise.
Critical fixes
Compatibility issues, crashes, progression blockers.
- Fixed an issue where installing the game on
A:orB:drive made the game ask for the CD. - The mouse should not lock up randomly when exiting the menu on newer systems anymore.
- The mouse will no longer go beyond the game window dimensions, making it possible to play the game on multi-monitor setups without problems.
- More precise frame limiter, reducing lag spikes a bit when playing with Frame Limiter on.
- The game now performs a bit better on high FPS. It doesn’t freeze on fadeouts anymore, although it still has issues with car physics, gravity, and sounds. Therefore it’s still recommended to play with the Frame Limiter set to ON.
- DirectPlay dependency has been removed – this should improve compatibility with Windows 8 and newer.
- The game will not crash on startup if Data Execution Prevention is enabled for all applications anymore.
- The “Cannot find enough available video memory” error showing on some computers has been resolved.
- Path to the User Files directory is now obtained using a dedicated API call rather than a legacy registry entry, future-proofing the games more.
- Fixed an issue that would cause games to freeze if III/VC/SA were running at the same time.
Other fixes
All the remaining, non-critical fixes.
- The mouse vertical axis sensitivity now matches horizontal axis sensitivity.
- The mouse vertical axis does not lock during camera fade-ins now.
- Wet road reflections render properly again (just like with Road Reflections Fix).
- Reintroduced light glows under weapon/health/armor pickups, bribes, hidden packages, and money pickups – they showed only on PS2 due to a bug in all PC versions.
- Corrected crime codes for police dispatch audio – police dispatch now refers to player crimes correctly.
- Fixed a bug causing cheat-spawned melee weapons to be forcibly replaced by other melee weapons upon walking into a pickup.
- Alt + F4 now works properly.
- Some car panels now are detached after the car’s explosion (like they were meant to be but the code forcibly fixed them immediately after damage).
- Metric-to-imperial conversion constants have been replaced with more accurate ones.
- Pathfinding for cars chasing the player has been improved.
- Bombs in cars stored in garages now save properly.
- Car generator counters now work properly for generators with a fixed number of spawns.
- Extras on bikes now behave correctly, following bike lean and not floating in the air.
- Keyboard input latency decreased by one frame.
- Fixed corona lines rendering on non-NVIDIA graphics cards.
- Corrected FBI Washington siren sound.
- Fixed a glitch allowing lightless taxis to spawn in traffic.
- Allowed extra6 parts to be picked when a random extra is to be picked.
- Made Drive-By use the correct sounds based on what machine gun is used.
- Some props in Malibu Club, Ocean View Hotel, and Pole Position Club have been restored; more environment shows outside when the player is in the interior too (just like on PS2).
- All text shadows, onscreen counter bar shadows, and the loading screen outline now scale to resolution correctly.
- The trace (Destination) blip outlines are now scaling to the resolution properly.
- The radar’s horizontal position, the disc texture, and the shadow now scale to resolution correctly. The radar disc was also shrunk slightly to fix gaps and make the icons sit better on the edge.
- Credits now scale to resolution correctly.
- Mission title and ‘Mission Passed’ texts now stay on screen for the same duration, regardless of screen resolution.
- The inner padding of the text boxes with a background now scales to resolution correctly.
- The vertical offset of the weapon name text in Ammu-Nation now scales to resolution correctly.
- The downward-pointing destination blip in the Map Legend now displays with a correct outline.
FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERINGflag has been removed from IMG reading functions – speeding up streaming.- Free resprays will not carry on a New Game now.
- Fixed ambulance and firetruck dispatch timers – they reset on New Game now.
- The rain stream effect on roads, which displays for a short period after the rain stops, now resets on loading a save. This prevents the effect from showing when the weather in the loaded save is sunny.
- Adjusted the probability of traffic vehicles turning on their lights to match the PS2 version, including a low chance that they may never turn them on.
- Fixed an issue where vehicles exploded twice if the driver left the car before the explosion.
- Script randomness is now 16-bit instead of 15-bit.
- Lines read in
CPlane::LoadPathandCTrain::ReadAndInterpretTrackFileare now null-terminated, fixing issues with plane/yacht paths under specific conditions in a modded game. - Environment mapping is now applied to vehicle extras.
- Mouse sensitivity is no longer reset on starting a New Game.
- Asset money pickup text has been given a generic red color, resolving a bug where it changed colors every frame.
- Fixed an issue where the minigun pickup had a bright pink glow instead of a purple one, and had an additional white glowing spot on the barrel.
- Fixed an issue where the muzzle flashes from guns faced the wrong direction (contributed by Wesser).
- Fixed an issue where looking at a shopkeeper while using Classic controls counted as aiming at them (contributed by Wesser).
- Fixed the LOD model of the construction site displaying underneath the damaged building model after “Demolition Man”.
- Fixed the “Greetings from Vice City” outro splash displaying longer than intended – now displays for 2.5 seconds.
- Fixed an issue where Tommy wouldn’t shake his fist at incoming traffic when holding Brass Knuckles, yet would do it when holding a chainsaw.
- Fixed an issue where Tommy wouldn’t shake his fist at stopped traffic when holding any weapons introduced in Vice City.
- Hitting vehicles and objects with a screwdriver now produces an impact sound.
- Pedestrians and Tommy are now much more talkative, like in the PS2 version (integrated Ped Speech Patch from Sergeanur).
- Tear gas can now deal damage to Tommy and other mission characters, like in the PS2 version.
- Fixed siren corona placements in Police, Firetruck, Ambulance, Enforcer, Vice Cheetah, and FBI Washington.
- Added siren corona to FBI Washington.
- Fixed taxi light corona placement for Taxi.
- Fixed police chopper’s searchlight and red tail light placement.
- Fixed numerous model glitches by disabling backface culling on detached vehicle parts, ped models, and a subset of map models specified in the INI file.
Enhancements
Any changes that don’t strictly fix game bugs.
- If the settings file is absent, the game will now default to your desktop resolution instead of 640x480x16.
- All censorships from German and French versions of the game have been removed.
- Made the game select metric/imperial units based on system locale settings.
- Sliding mission titles and odd job texts from the GTA III beta can now be re-enabled (off by default).
- An unused ‘Minimal HUD’ feature can now be re-enabled (off by default).
Credits
SilentPatch includes code contributions from:
- aap
- B1ack_Wh1te
- DK22Pac
- Fire_Head
- Nick007J
- NTAuthority
- Sergeanur
- spaceeinstein
- Wesser
Hey, what’s going on? You plugged in your PlayStation or XBOX pad in hopes that you’ll be able to play GTA on your PC just like you used to play on the console, and for some reason you can’t make the controls work properly? You can’t use full possibilities of your brand new, XInput-compatible pad? Maybe you want to refresh your childhood memories after ages of playing IV and you’re sick of the old-fashioned controls?
If any of these apply to you, GInput is the mod you’ve been looking for! This modification completely rewrites GTA controls handling and ditches DirectInput in favour of XInput. This way, your PlayStation 3 and XBOX 360 pads will be handled by the game just perfectly, taking advantage of all their features, including analog triggers. If used with DualShock 3 controller and SCP Driver Package, it can go as far as making full use of SIXAXIS feature, just like some PS3 titles do!
This modification features:
- Complete XInput support, so pads are mapped to match console versions perfectly (including Start button, which can’t be mapped on PC version without this modification).
- Proper vibration support - something that was cut from all PC versions of the game!
- FIVE different control mappings - four setups matching PS2 selectable setups and fifth one being a recreation of GTA IV controls!
- Pad buttons in In-Game helps, replacing PC key names (depending on user’s choice, either PlayStation or XBOX buttons are shown).
- An INI file with tons of options - including toggleable vibration, selecting controls setup, Invert Look option from console versions, axis inversion options from San Andreas and more!
- Automatic switching between keyboard & mouse and pad controls, basing on last device input.
- Support for Guide/PS button. The button is fully functional and can show your Steam Overlay menu if you launched the game via Steam!
- Cheats input from the pad. Use classic PS2 cheats on PC!
- Extended support for DualShock 3 controllers and SCP Driver Package - including pressure sensitive buttons and SIXAXIS accelerometers.
What up? Are you ready for the best Audio ASI Ever? Are you sick of TC mods and conversion mods badly messing and converting the audio wrong? Well guess what, we’ve got a great mod for you! VBDec, the first actual ASI plug-in for Grand Theft Auto III and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City!
What does it do? Well this plucky little plug-in enables playback of the PlayStation 2 .VB audio format on these games, NOT CONVERTED, NATIVE, untouched audio, so now you can finally get the full quality of these files without doing the conversions all by yourself or hoping that someone else hasn’t messed things up and badly converted to MP3 or something.
How about an added bonus? Well now the “MP3 Player” slot can also playback these files! Finally you can use stream audio from the PlayStation 2 versions of Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories exactly how Rockstar intended, with no quality loss!
“I use it on every installation so I can fight with the best sound” -Ash
VBDec, by Silent and Sergeanur (…and Ash_735, WHAT UP!?)
Download (VBDec) Download (Audio Samples)
See VBDec source on GitHub See Audio Samples source on GitHub
This modification restores some early left behind code found in Grand Theft Auto III which had money amounts display in game after blowing up vehicles, picking up money, etc, just as it displayed in older GTA titles such as Grand Theft Auto and GTA2. The same code was left in Vice City too, so the modification re-enables this feature there as well.
Money pop-ups will now show when:
- Picking up a money pickup
- Destroying a police helicopter
This modification restores some beta GTA III code, allowing the player to blow up the Airtrain. In the final game version, the player could only destroy a Dodo flying above the city, yet destroyable Airtrain was shown in some places before III release (such as a German TV commercial).
Related reads:
- SilentPatch for Grand Theft Auto goes open source!
- New SilentPatch releases with support for Rockstar Games Launcher version!
- New SilentPatch builds for Grand Theft Auto!