Version 2 Changes
Version 2 is nearing completion, I've got many fixes and enhancements, see below for a complete detailed list.
- I received a lot of messages regarding installation and crashing. For this version I've contacted the creators of SilentPatchVC and SkyGfx regarding bundling these mods in the next release, this should make installation for less experienced modders a Drag & Drop kind of deal and allow me to optimise the visual settings.
- Foliage has been improved again, the mobile textures used were larger in size than intended, which caused them to appear pixelated and blurry, I've correctly downsized and AI enhanced them all which has worked much better than previous attempts.
- Particle effects have been improved some more, some of the smoke and water didn't scale too well and had grey artefacts on the edges, this has been fixed by making them all white and transparent manually.
- Lights and and bloom has been improved, there were some gamma and dithering artefacts which didn't look nice, this has been fixed by AI enhancing the XBOX effects which are more clean than the PC/PS2 versions.
- Ground textures have been improved, some of the ground textures in Vice City are stretch over large surfaces such as car parks, grass and alleys (a good example is the vice city airport). Version 1 improved this slightly but they still appeared blurry. I've spent quite some time manually finding and multiplying ground textures X4. This will shrink the ground textures down to a more realistic size and blend together with road and other surfaces more seamlessly.
- If you were unlucky enough, you may have come to a point where the road and building textures stopped loading, this was caused by some memory streaming limitations, I believe i have fixed this with some changes to the limit adjuster.
- I've also opted to use MipMapping which should improve performance for anyone with a toaster PC. It should also improve texture quality over longer distances. The only downside to this is a larger download compared to Version 1.
- I've also got many small fixes and improvements across the board, such as applying the correct banner to the Dodo and XBOX style number plates applied to all cars.
A massive thank you to Silent and The Hero for allowing me to include SilentPatch and SkyGfx.
I think that's everything, i'll update if i remember anything else.
Oh and those comparison's I've promised everyone will be uploaded before release.
