To commemorate the launch of Grand Theft Auto 4 DLC packages ‘The Ballad of Gay Tony’ and ‘The Lost and Damned’ on PC today developers Rockstar have announced that a new patch for the massively popular open world title will also be made available.
The 104MB download brings a number of new fixes and features to the game including improved shadow rendering, better performance, bug fixes and removes the requirement to run the Rockstar Games Social Club application before playing the game.
Patch notes
GTA IV Title Update 1.0.6.0 \ 1.0.5.1 \ 1.0.4.2 (Patch 6)
Rockstar Games Social Club
– Remove Rockstar Games Social Club application
– Separate RGSC application no longer required to launch game
– Social Club login now occurs during the launch process
Shadows
– A new, less memory-intensive, and better-looking scalable shadow solution has been implemented
– Enhanced Night Shadows added with user-selectable level of detail (replaces Shadow Density)
Performance
– Rendering optimizations have been made to improve performance, particularly when enabling shadows
– User-configurable graphics settings have been added for shadow control
– Improved memory management
Multiplayer
– Enhanced security to isolate users from cheaters and hackers
Episodic Content
– Provide in-game support to purchase “The Lost and Damned” and “The Ballad of Gay Tony” (Not available in Russian/Japanese Versions)
– Bug Fixes
– Vehicle shadows re-enabled between 8pm and 6am
– Fix floating street textures
– Pedestrians in vehicles appear further out from the player to allow for long range sniping
– The Moon has been implemented with simulated lunar phases
– Fixed garbled text in Japanese Multiplayer menus
– “RESC 10” error fix for specific hardware configurations