Grand Theft Auto Iii Series Options

[Blitter+Twisted]

Hello, new around these parts

I've recently got myself an xbox for using emulators and playing some older games that I missed out on over the years. I've got myself (original) copies of San Andreas, and now a double pack of GTA3 and Vice City.

My xbox is a PAL model but now changed over to NTSC to get progressive working. The games are all PAL versions.

San Andreas runs in widescreen but only 480i. I am told there's a hex edit that will fix this but need to install a new HDD first as I'm out of disk space and can't copy the game to hdd and edit it.

GTA3 and Vice City I find really confusing. Firstly even though they are older games than San Andreas, the graphics look better to me!?!?

Also, they run in 480p but I have to turn off widescreen in the MS dash, otherwise the display is badly corrupted.

Does anyone have any advice on how to sort this mess out? I noticed there is something in NDURE which says it will force 480i to 480p but I don't really want to go through the hassle of softmodding my xbox again - is this feature any good? If not can I get hold of the NTSC default.xbe files for these games?

[fallenangle]

I have all three PAL games: GTA:SA (Classic) and the GTA: III/VC double pack. I don't think anything I know will help but here it is anyway

I was aware that PAL GTA:SA only played at 480i and doesn't support widescreen. But I wasn't aware of the GTAIII/VC problem because originally I played them both on an unmodded PAL machine via RGB SCART. The games displayed no fault whether widescreen or 4:3 was selected via the PAL MS dash. Of course this also means 480i too.

I tried GTAIII/VC earlier today and now know that also applies when using the same console, now softmodded, region changed to NTSC again via RGB SCART.
But put either in a Component cable connected machine and select 480p widescreen and, you're right, the screen display is all messed up and in a very odd way.

Even odder, when you deselect widescreen via the dash the two games play perfectly in 480p 4:3. Obviously the prog scan makes them look better than GTA:SA.

Many Xbox games don't support WS but I've never come across ones where just selecting WS actually affected the progressive scan display. BTW I've not checked to see what happens when you deselect the Xbox WS option from the dash but manually select widescreen on the TV.

There is an outside possibility that this is a specific Xbox model version issue ie. v.1.6. What version is the machine you're using?

Again I didn't have time to check it myself in this case but just this week I've posted here about Panzer Dragoon Orta and Gun Valkeryie, two PAL games which won't play on v.1.6 Xboxes at 480p. With all other Xboxes, apparently those which use a different video encoder, there's no problem. On the v.1.6 you can only play them if you deselect 480p and use 480i.

If it is this or connected in some way I don't think you will get these problems sorted. Somebody here may be able to offer more help on GTA: SA but I doubt very much that the NTSC versions of GTAIII/VC supported WS either so you're stuck with 4:3 480p anyway.

This post has been edited by fallenangle: Jan 28 2011, 08:06 PM

[Blitter+Twisted]

Thanks for trying a few things out. I find GTA:SA does support widescreen, but it only runs 480i. I've read there's a hex editor hack for fixing this but I haven't tried it yet.

It's really weird isn't it that the other two games screw up so badly when widescreen is enabled in the MS dash. In 4:3 they are fine and do work in progressive unlike GTA:SA. The only workaround I can think of is to get the NTSC versions of the default.xbe file for these games and run from hard drive.

[fallenangle]

I've now tried them all on a v.1.1 (0b) Xbox and that made no difference to the results.

You can play the GTAIII/VC in widexcreen and pseudo-widescreen in 480p if you select it on the TV itself. But, of course, in both cases as the Xbox output format is still 4:3 you get the usual widescreen distortion.

However If you can get into the TV's service menu you can minimise this and pseudo-widescreen may then become an acceptable option.

Sorry I couldn't be any real help.

[Blitter+Twisted]

I got GTA:SA working in prog scan!

Installed to HDD with dvd2xbox and then did this hex edit:

Locate: 83 C8 20 F3 0F 11 05 0C
Change for: 83 C8 40 F3 0F 11 05 0C

That works

Picture is not massively better though, I was hoping it would be a bigger improvement.

[fallenangle]

I'll have to try that - thanks for the info.