If you don't want to use a ramdisk to make GTA load faster, you can use DxWnd instead:
- Install DxWnd and enable expert mode (Options -> Expert mode)
- Add GTA to the list and enable Fix buffered IO after Win98 in the I/O tab
Background: There is a bug in GTA Vice City that prevents certain files from being cached. One of the affected files is gta3.img. GTA reads from this file when loading the game or moving between Vice City beach and mainland. It is opened with the FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING flag if the WinAPI function GetDiskFreeSpace returns a value less than 2048 for the lpBytesPerSector parameter. On my computer the value is 512. I don't know the reason for this behavior. Maybe it made sense when GTA was run on old Windows versions. When the DxWnd fix is used, the FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING flag is ignored, allowing all files to be cached.
In addition to using DxWnd or a ramdisk, there is another method for achieving faster load times: Create an .iso file from the contents of the folder C:\Program Files (x86)\Rockstar Games\Grand Theft Auto Vice City and then launch the game from the mounted ISO file. This works because CDs and DVDs have a sector size of 2048 bytes, and the game therefore omits the FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING flag.
Hello everybody. Due to the nature of the Any% (SSU) category, Vice City moderation team has agreed to make mandatory following video requirements for all top 3 submitted runs:
