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Dataminers are finding developer comments and unlicensed songs in GTA Trilogy

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11–20 of 84 posts

Re: Dataminers are finding developer comments and unlicensed songs in GTA Trilogy

#11
post #9
post #2

> At the time of writing the Rockstar Games Launcher has been down for 24 hours. I wondered why I couldn’t start GTA 5 yesterday after finally finding some time to play PC again. So yeah not only fuck DRM, but ban it. Why is punishing honest customers allowed?

>Why is punishing honest customers allowed? I'll go further, why is it punishing customers allowed? What authority does a company hold to punish anyone?

Companies are not forced to provide service, even if the customer """bought""" something that requires that service to function. If it weren't "honest customers" being punished, but rather people being banned from accessing an online game for hacking or racism, we wouldn't see nearly as much concern for this being allowed.

Re: Dataminers are finding developer comments and unlicensed songs in GTA Trilogy

#12
Question - I don't have the new DE version. There is a sign next to the bridge in GTA:SA which has stats on the front. What is on the back of it now? Did the developers keep the back of the sign or erase it because they didn't understand its true meaning?

https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3ylmm4/a_staggering...

Re: Dataminers are finding developer comments and unlicensed songs in GTA Trilogy

#13
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Why is punishing honest customers allowed? I'll go further, why is it punishing customers allowed? What authority does a company hold to punish anyone?

Companies are not forced to provide service, even if the customer """bought""" something that requires that service to function. If it weren't "honest customers" being punished, but rather people being banned from accessing an online game for hacking or racism, we wouldn't see nearly as much concern for this being allowed.

The problem is that the only reason that something requires the service to function is so that the company can control how you use it. So, they are effectively stopping you from using a product you bought, because they can't keep tabs on you at that particular time. Some people consider that abusive.

Re: Dataminers are finding developer comments and unlicensed songs in GTA Trilogy

#14

Question - I don't have the new DE version. There is a sign next to the bridge in GTA:SA which has stats on the front. What is on the back of it now? Did the developers keep the back of the sign or erase it because they didn't understand its true meaning? https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3ylmm4/a_staggering...

Many of the game's textures were seemingly upscaled with machine learning (or very poor human work) because a lot of the assets now have details removed. A lot of text is even misspelled in the "definitive" release.

Re: Dataminers are finding developer comments and unlicensed songs in GTA Trilogy

#15
post #6
post #4

Is it news that they are using ogg music files? San Andreas was already doing this in 2004.

They were especially doing that back then to avoid having to pay for a patent license for the MP3 codec. You could only play mp3s in the user playlist channel if the OS supplied the mp3 codec.

Is there a commercial consumer OS that doesn’t provide an MP3-compatible decoder api?

Re: Dataminers are finding developer comments and unlicensed songs in GTA Trilogy

#16
post #2

> At the time of writing the Rockstar Games Launcher has been down for 24 hours. I wondered why I couldn’t start GTA 5 yesterday after finally finding some time to play PC again. So yeah not only fuck DRM, but ban it. Why is punishing honest customers allowed?

I some wargames like indie game but required an online ping to even play. Their previous title they did the same but not required a connection for it. They said just for their other title, over 90% of them were pirated copies. So that is why they mandated DRM.

I wouldnr have so much of an issue wirh online DRM if I got a guarantee of X years to play it. Some of these devs could just drop support or Windows messes with it that ita unplayable. So at that point I just want support.

Re: Dataminers are finding developer comments and unlicensed songs in GTA Trilogy

#17
post #7
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They were especially doing that back then to avoid having to pay for a patent license for the MP3 codec. You could only play mp3s in the user playlist channel if the OS supplied the mp3 codec.

Vice City predates San Andreas and used mp3 files for the built in radio stations.

[deleted]

Re: Dataminers are finding developer comments and unlicensed songs in GTA Trilogy

#18

Question - I don't have the new DE version. There is a sign next to the bridge in GTA:SA which has stats on the front. What is on the back of it now? Did the developers keep the back of the sign or erase it because they didn't understand its true meaning? https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/3ylmm4/a_staggering...

Unlike most others, they updated this one with care. I guess it's a somewhat notorious dev joke, so it makes sense.

https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/2246626-grand-theft-auto-the...

Re: Dataminers are finding developer comments and unlicensed songs in GTA Trilogy

#19
post #4

Is it news that they are using ogg music files? San Andreas was already doing this in 2004.

GTA3 for the radios was using IMA ADPCM on both PS2 and PC. Some cutscene files were PCM, some files were mp3.

Vice City used adf, a custom container for (horrible quality) mp3 files. PS2 still used ADPCM. Most PC cutscene files are mp3 (twice encoded btw, so extra terrible quality), on PS2 they're also ADPCM.

SA was the first 3d GTA game to use ogg for the radio, and also doesn't use miles sound system anymore.

It should be noted that the GTA3 Definitive Edition ogg encodes are just encodes from the original PC ADPCM files, NOT from lossless masters. The cutscenes are also the same quality the PC version had, so a mix of mp3 and PCM sources.

Re: Dataminers are finding developer comments and unlicensed songs in GTA Trilogy

#20
post #3

Has anybody found a link to these files (especially the main.scm mission scripts)=

main.sc is just one of the files the main.scm is compiled from.

They actually published everything except the main.sc for GTA3 in the iOS release, years ago btw. Same studio ... but now they included all the source script files for all 3 games (probably not untouched, I haven't checked). One can probably get a gist of what they changed by diffing the iOS scripts against the new versions.

They also included the script compiler, the gxt (text files) compiler ... War Drum/Grove Street Games really doesn't seem to know how to keep private tools/assets from being included in published versions. They also included alpha multiplayer maps in the iOS GTA3 release ...

You should add your email in your "about" field ...

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