Rockstar Games Social Club

Rockstar Games today announced the creation of Social Club, a website which will track progress of players in Grand Theft Auto IV and many other titles. The website’s features for Grand Theft Auto IV include:

LCPD Police Blotter
A virtual map and tracker of single-player criminal activity logged in Liberty City from the aggregated data of millions of connected players – showing the most dangerous areas of town, most commonly used weapons and more.

The Story Gang
This special single-player leaderboard recognizes players who complete Niko Bellic’s main story arc of Grand Theft Auto IV. The leaderboard ranks players according to the total amount of playing time it’s taken to complete the story, as well as a historical rank by who has completed it first. Members of this club will receive special online widgets and merit badges marking all of their in-game accomplishments.

The 100% Club
Watch to see who will be the first to complete 100% of the game. The first ten people to be identified on the Social Club as reaching 100% will be sent an ultra-rare commemorative ‘key to the city’ to mark their accomplishment. In the future, the 100% Club will then carry a historical leaderboard showing rankings of who has completed 100% of a game in the shortest span of playing hours.

The Hall of Fame
This area will dynamically recognize those singularly elite players who have reached the top of the hill on various statistical leaderboards, and will also contain a personal awards display of special in-game landmarks and successes in Social Club competitions.

The Liberty City Marathon
A ranking of special physical milestones achieved in the game – from the amount of miles walked, driven, or swam – to the number of bullets fired and stunt-jumps jumped. There will be additional special marathon-based competitions in the future from this area as well.

Registration opens on the 17th of April

OXM GTA IV multiplayer preview

The latest issue of OXM (Official Xbox Magazine) contains a seven-page preview of Grand Theft Auto IV’s multiplayer modes. The preview contains a lot of new screenshots, several new pieces of artwork, and some interesting information. Here’s a summary of the new points covered:

  • The entire map is playable during multiplayer
  • You can’t play as Niko during multiplayer, but you choose a male or female character with custom clothing
  • The money you earn during multiplayer, achieved by killing opponents, determines your rank – weighted 0 to 10
  • There are three styles of voice chat chosen by the host: free, team, or proximity chat
  • You can use any vehicle (that means cars, boats, helicopters, etc) in race modes
  • Hangman’s NOOSE is a four-player mode that starts at the airport. In this mode, you have to take Kenny Petrovic to a safe zone in the city while pursued by the NOOSE team (National Organization of Security Enforcement), similar to “VIP” multiplayer modes in other games
  • You can skip rockets on the ground with good aim
  • Free roam has no rules or cash, and the host decides what weapons appear. It should prove to be the most popular multiplayer mode.
  • via: gtagaming.com and gtaforums

    Play Magazine GTA IV multiplayer preview

  • Deathmatch + Team Deathmatch: 16 players
  • GTA Race: 16 players
  • Mafiya Work: 8 players
  • Team Mafiya Work: 16 players (in up to 8 separate teams of 2 players)
  • Cops n’ Crooks: 16 players (in two teams of up to 8 players each)
  • Hangman’s Noose: 4 players
  • Free roam: 16 players
  • The game appears to use the Eastern European/Russian spelling of Mafia – “Mafiya”
  • The magazine maintains like many others that the differences between the PS3 and XB360 versions of the game are undetectable “with the naked eye”
  • Multiplayer games are accessed from the in-game cell phone in a similar manner to that of Burnout Paradise’s quick launch menuv
  • The host can control the time of day that the match takes place
  • The host also controls the location of the match by choosing from a predefined set of levels in Liberty City
  • Levels sampled by editors included Colony Island, Francis International Airport and Broker
  • Police intervention can be turned on or off by the host prior to starting a game
  • Multiplayer character customization is very detailed – you can change what the character is wearing right down to their choice of eyewear and accessories
  • Thanks to Play Magazine, GTA Gaming and GTAForums.com for the news.

    SA-MP v0.2.5 info

    What happens when you take the 0.1 player limit, add the 0.2 player limit, multiply by 3.3 recurring then divide by 2? That’s right, you get a close approximation of 500 – which is the 0.2.5 player limit.

    We have rewritten large portions of the SA-MP dedicated server and now the hard limits on players and vehicles comes down to server CPU and bandwidth.

    In 0.2.5 we have taken advantage of this new server system and raised the vehicle limit to 2000 with virtually unlimited amount of vehicle models. This isn’t just some theoretical limit either, we’re working on a new script to replace lvdm which will cover all of San Andreas. The SA-MP beta team has been hard at work and have placed 2000 vehicles in these reusable lists.

    SA-MP.com

    GTA IV multiplayer modes

    Some detailed information about GTA IV’s multiplayer modes has finally been released. There are a total of 15 multiplayer modes.

    1. Hangman’s NOOSE
    2. Car Jack City
    3. Bomb da Base
    4. Bomb da Base II
    5. Mafia Work
    6. Team Mafia Work
    7. Deathmatch
    8. Team Deathmatch
    9. Turf War
    10. Cops ‘n Crooks
    11. Race
    12. GTA Race
    13. Deal Breaker
    14. Free Mode
    15. Unknown

    Check out: gta4.net/multiplayer for descriptions of most of the modes.