GTA VCS Recomp changelog

New: the pause menu works with the keyboard and mouse

• The mouse cursor can now be used to navigate the in-game menu.
• Escape now opens the pause menu.
• In the pause menu, Enter selects and Escape goes back. Escape on the row of tabs closes the menu.
• The gamepad still works in the menu just as before.

Car reflections

• The stripes and lines that crawled over car paint as the camera moved are gone (#75).
• Above 1x Internal resolution, the reflections on cars are smoothed, so panels no longer flicker as you drive past. The PS2 has this flicker too, but at a higher resolution the rest of the picture is sharp, so the cars stood out. At 1x the reflections stay as on the PS2. There's no setting for this: the internal resolution picks it.

Widescreen

• The pause menu's own Display → Widescreen option is gone. It was the PS2's mode for TVs that stretch the picture, so with the game's settings (F2) → Display: Aspect ratio set to 16:9, it squeezed and stretched everything a second time (#52). Use Aspect ratio instead. A save that had it on loads with it off.
• New in the game's settings (F2) → Display: Cutscene black bars (on by default, as on the PS2). On a screen wider than 4:3, turn it off to see the whole picture in cutscenes (#52). At 4:3 the bars are part of the original picture, so they always stay on there. Your choice still applies when you switch back to a wider aspect ratio.
• At 16:9, the black mask around the sniper scope, the camera and the binoculars now reaches the screen edges. Before, the world showed in strips at the sides (#53).

Fixes

• Above 1x Internal resolution, the first letter of the pause menu's tabs lost its left edge ("stats" showed a square S).

Updating: on Windows, go to Settings → Updates → Update now in the launcher, close the launcher and start it again, then update the build. The build only compiles part of the game again and links it, so it's much quicker than a first build. Your saves aren't touched. You can also extract the zip into a new folder. On Linux, update from Settings in the same way, or download the new AppImage.

Files: VCS-Recomp-0.2.3-windows.zip (84.6 MB), VCS-Recomp-0.2.3-x86_64.AppImage (38.1 MB). Full notes on GitHub

New: building works again after updating to 0.2.1

• Windows: building the game stopped at "Setting up the build failed", with "Could NOT find Python3" in the log (#67, #68, #70, #73). This happened on every PC that didn't have its own Python installed, or had a broken one. 0.2.1 needed Python while building, but only looked for one installed on the PC, not the one that comes with the game's folder. It now uses the one in the game's folder. You don't need to install Python, and if you installed it only to get around this, you can uninstall it.

Fixes

• Windows: in a folder with a long path, like the ones Quiver installs into, building could stop right at the start with nothing in the log while the compiler was being unpacked (#69). This should hopefully be fixed now; we couldn't reproduce it here.
• Windows: a disc image whose file name has an unusual character in it (like "꞉" instead of ":") made the build stop with "A tool could not run" (#62).

Launcher

• An update that can't replace a file, because another program like an antivirus is holding it, no longer leaves the folder half old and half new (#66). It now says which file it couldn't replace, keeps the folder on the old version, and you can just update again. This arrives with this version, so it helps from the next update on.

Updating: on Windows, go to Settings → Updates → Update now in the launcher, close the launcher and start it again, then update the build. If your build failed after 0.2.1, this build takes as long as a first build, because 0.2.1 changed the compiler and that build never finished. Otherwise it only rebuilds the shaders and links the game again. Your saves aren't touched. If an earlier update stopped halfway (#66), or the launcher won't update, extract the zip into a new folder instead. On Linux, update from Settings in the same way, or download the new AppImage.

Files: VCS-Recomp-0.2.2-windows.zip (84.5 MB), VCS-Recomp-0.2.2-x86_64.AppImage (38.0 MB). Full notes on GitHub

New: no Visual Studio needed on Windows

• The game is now built with llvm-mingw (clang), which the first build downloads by itself (~190 MB, once). You no longer have to install Visual Studio. It runs as fast as before.
• If you installed Visual Studio only for this game, you can uninstall it.
• The first build after updating compiles the whole game again, once, because the compiler changed.

The car camera

• The mouse now turns the camera behind a car freely. When you stop moving the mouse, the camera eases back behind the car. Before, it moved slowly and fought you.
• New in the game's settings (F2) → Keyboard: Car camera sensitivity (how far the mouse turns the camera in a car, separately from on foot) and Car camera return (how long the camera waits before it goes back behind the car; 1.5 s by default).
• The gamepad's right stick takes the camera back from the mouse straight away. Before, it did nothing until the camera was back behind the car.

Fixes

• Fire, explosions and flame-thrower flames were invisible on AMD graphics cards (#4). This should hopefully be fixed now.
• Bikes no longer fishtail or spin onto their side when braking at high frame rates (144 fps and up) (#64).
• The frame rate cap "Display refresh" stayed at 60 fps after the game was restarted, until you changed the setting again (#64).
• Farewell To Arms: the helicopter door gun no longer snaps to the left the first time you turn right. With free aim on, the mouse or right stick aims it and the gamepad's R1 fires.
• Linux: on Fedora with RPMFusion's FFmpeg, installing the build's packages failed because of a package conflict, and none of the other packages were installed either (#63).

Launcher

• After an update, a Restart button closes the launcher and opens the new one. This arrives with this version, so you'll first see it on the next update.

Updating: on Windows, go to Settings → Updates → Update now in the launcher, close the launcher and start it again, then update the build. This first build after updating takes as long as a first build (see above). Your saves aren't touched. You can also extract the zip into a new folder. On Linux, update from Settings in the same way, or download the new AppImage.

Files: VCS-Recomp-0.2.1-windows.zip (84.5 MB), VCS-Recomp-0.2.1-x86_64.AppImage (38.0 MB). Full notes on GitHub

New: Linux

• The launcher now runs on Linux as a single AppImage, VCS-Recomp-0.2.0-x86_64.AppImage. It works on Ubuntu 22.04, Debian 12, Linux Mint 21 and newer, on X11 or Wayland. It needs a Vulkan driver (Mesa or NVIDIA).
• Make it executable and start it. It walks you through the same steps as on Windows, and installs the packages the build needs (it asks for your password). On Ubuntu 22.04 and Debian 12 it first adds LLVM's own repository, because their clang is too old for the game.
• The game is built in ~/.local/share/VCSRecomp/install. It uses the same saves as a build from a git clone.
• Prefer the command line? You can still build without the launcher: clone the repository and follow Install by hand in the README (python3 tools/build.py --recompile).

Also

• Performance improvements targeting Linux.

Updating: on Windows, go to Settings → Updates → Update now in the launcher, restart it, then update the build. Your saves aren't touched. You can also extract the zip into a new folder. On Linux, download the AppImage; later updates replace it from Settings in the same way.

Files: VCS-Recomp-0.2.0-windows.zip (84.3 MB), VCS-Recomp-0.2.0-x86_64.AppImage (38.0 MB). Full notes on GitHub

New: smoother driving, far fewer stutters

This release addresses the micro-stuttering some players have reported. The game should feel a lot smoother, especially while driving.

What changed:

• New areas no longer stall while their textures load. Entering a new part of the city can bring 100 to 400 new textures in a single frame. They're now decoded faster, and they're created by two helper threads instead of between the frame's draws. With anisotropic filtering on, their mipmaps are built alongside them on the CPU instead of one texture at a time on the GPU.
• Crossing between the beach side and the mainland no longer pauses for up to half a second. The game stops the music before it loads the other half of the city and waits until the music has stopped. That wait now ends right away instead of at the sound system's next update. The crossing still takes one long frame of about 40 ms, a little less than before. (In future, an enhancement will be available to remove island transitions altogether.)
• The game does less work every frame: faster matrix maths, a faster mission script interpreter, a quicker check for models that haven't changed, and faster decompression when loading. With the frame rate uncapped, a test drive through the city runs about 10% faster.

Updating: in the launcher, go to Settings → Updates → Update now, restart it, then update the build. Your saves aren’t touched. You can also extract the zip into a new folder.

Files: VCS-Recomp-0.1.2-windows.zip (84.3 MB). Full notes on GitHub

Fixed a critical bug that could delete save games when saving. Saves lost this way should (hopefully) be recovered the next time you start the game.

Files: VCS-Recomp-0.1.1-windows.zip (84.3 MB). Full notes on GitHub

New: Rebuilt launcher from scratch

• The launcher has been totally rebuilt as a native Windows app, drawn with Direct3D 11: it's smaller, faster and flashier.

New: screenshot key

• F8 saves a screenshot as a PNG in the screenshots folder next to vcs.exe. It captures exactly what's on screen, at the window's resolution, including the settings menu, the trainer and the F3 overlay. You can rebind it under Keyboard → Menus → Screenshot in the settings (F2).

Free aim in more places

• Jive Drive: with free aim on, you aim the passenger-seat shooting with the mouse or the right stick. On a gamepad, R1 fires.
• Phil's shooting range: the mouse or the right stick aims, and R1 fires on a gamepad. Before, pressing the right mouse button ended the range's aiming for the rest of the round.

Fixed since 0.0.3:

• The game no longer crashes at start when its folder or your Windows user name has letters outside your system's language, such as Cyrillic. Before, it stopped with "No mapping for the Unicode character exists in the target multi-byte code page".
• With Display → HUD set to Screen edges, the radar stays on the left and subtitles, mission text and stunt results stay in the middle. Before, they could jump between left, middle and right, and the radar sometimes moved to the middle with them.
• A relative iso= path in vcs.ini now works when the launcher starts the game.

Updating: in the launcher, go to Settings → Updates → Update now, restart it, then update the build. Your saves aren’t touched. You can also extract the zip into a new folder.

Files: VCS-Recomp-0.1.0-windows.zip (85.2 MB). Full notes on GitHub

GTA Vice City Stories Launcher v0.0.3

New feature: free aim

• You can now aim freely with the mouse or the right stick, the way a PC shooter plays. Turn it on under Keyboard → Free aim or Gamepad → Free aim in the settings (F2).
• In scopes and first-person weapon views, the mouse turns the view 1:1, and the mouse wheel changes weapons on foot and zooms the scope.
• On foot, moving the mouse up and down is now as direct as moving it left and right.

Fixed since 0.0.2:

• The launcher now supports older CPUs. Until now every build needed AVX2, so on processors without it, such as Intel's Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge generation, the recompile step failed within a second with an empty log. The build now detects your processor and builds for what it supports: AVX2, AVX or SSE4. The Build tools step shows which one your PC gets, and if you change CPUs, the build sets itself up again.
• When a build step crashes, the launcher now says why. Before, it only showed a generic "recompiler failed" message. Now the log ends with the exit code and what it means, and the launcher names the cause, such as an instruction the CPU can't run or a missing DLL. That makes a problem much easier to report and fix.
• Above 50 fps, Vic no longer falls out of the ferris wheel or slides off escalators.
• Above 50 fps, the follow cameras swing back behind the player as quickly as they do at 30 fps.
• The F3 overlay fits its text and has a new panel showing the game's state.

Updating: in the launcher, go to Settings → Updates → Update now, restart it, then update the build. Your saves aren’t touched. You can also extract the zip into a new folder.

Files: VCS-Recomp-0.0.3-windows.zip (85.3 MB). Full notes on GitHub

Fixed since 0.0.1:

• “Configuring the build” no longer fails when only Visual Studio’s Build Tools are installed. The build now finds CMake and Ninja wherever they’re installed and skips versions that are too old. If none will do, it downloads them once.
• Releases are built and published automatically again.
• The first build no longer gets stuck. In time zones behind the one the release was made in (the Americas, for example), the build could re-run CMake over and over and then fail with ninja: error: manifest 'build.ninja' still dirty after 100 tries. Files in the release zip are now always dated in the past. The build also fixes any file dated in the future before it starts, so a folder extracted from 0.0.1 builds too, with no need to delete build\. If it still happens, the launcher tells you to check the PC’s clock and time zone. Thanks to the player who tracked this down.

Updating: in the launcher, go to Settings → Updates → Update now, restart it, then update the build. Your saves aren’t touched. You can also extract the zip into a new folder.

Files: VCS-Recomp-0.0.2-windows.zip (85.3 MB). Full notes on GitHub

You need your own copy of GTA: Vice City Stories (PS2, USA) as an .iso. No game files are included.

• Download VCS-Recomp-<version>-windows.zip and extract it to a short local folder, e.g. C:\Games\VCS (not Program Files or OneDrive).
• Run VCSLauncher.exe. If Windows warns about an unknown publisher, click More info → Run anyway.
• Press the big pink button and follow it: choose your disc, install the build tools if asked (a free Microsoft download, about 6 GB), build (10–60 minutes the first time), then Play.

In-game settings: F2. Problems? Use Help → Make a report in the launcher and attach the zip to an issue.

Files: VCS-Recomp-0.0.1-windows.zip (86.3 MB). Full notes on GitHub

VCSNative 1.0.0

First public build of GTA Vice City Stories for PC, made by statically recompiling the PSP game to

x64. Bring your own game files: this release contains no game data.

The Vice City look

This is the part that makes it feel like Vice City on a big screen rather than a PSP on a desk, and

all of it is on by default:

• Vice neon colour grade. A preset tuned for the classic Miami look: saturation lifted into the 1.15-1.30 band (high enough to make the neon read, low enough that it never goes cartoonish), with a slight warm-red push, neutral green and a mild blue in the shadows. It replaces the PSP's flat, washed-out daytime palette with the sunset-neon tone the game is remembered for. Switch and the individual controls are on the launcher's Quality page ([ColorGrading] in VCSNative.ini).
• Sky palette remap. The PSP's skies are a handful of banded gradients. This remaps them into a hazy gradient with a warm horizon, so the skyline, the sea and the sunsets finally sit in the same colour space as the neon grade instead of fighting it. On by default at 0.85 strength ([SkyPalette] in ProperShaders.ini).
• Bloom. Streetlights, headlights, neon signage and sun glare all pick up a soft glow. This is what turns Vice City at night from a dark map with bright dots into a night scene.
• CloudWorks volumetric clouds. The raymarched cloud layer ported from ProperShaders, with the sun scattering through it, at about 2 ms of GPU time per frame.
• Project2DFX distant lights. Traffic and street lamps beyond the game's own LOD cutoff show as points of light, so the skyline reads at distance.

Together with the optional texture pack and SMAA or FXAA, this is the "Vice City graphics" preset:

nothing to configure, and every piece can be turned down or off separately if you prefer the

original PSP look.

New

• Native Windows build on the Vulkan graphics backend, and a native macOS build for Apple Silicon through MoltenVK
• Settings launcher (VCSLauncher.exe) with Window, Rendering, Quality, Controls, Addons and Performance pages. It edits both ini files in place, keeps comments and line endings, and installs or removes the optional texture pack
• Keyboard and mouse controls with raw mouse look, and the game's own prompts rewritten to show your keys and mouse buttons, switching to Xbox button names when a controller is connected
• Correct framing and HUD layout at 16:9, 21:9, 32:9, 4:3, 16:10, 5:4 and tall windows, following live resizes
• 60 fps frame pacing with audio as a second clock reference, plus a guard that drops stale audio instead of letting it drift
• Graphics: hardware transform and culling, display lists on their own thread, non-blocking texture uploads, SMAA and FXAA, colour grading, sky palette, dither, sharpening, CloudWorks volumetric clouds, Project2DFX distant lights
• Cutscene audio fixed: ATRAC3+ streams with 280 and 376 byte frames were misread as ATRAC3, which

Files: VCSNative-macOS.zip (20.5 MB), VCSNative-Windows.zip (20.9 MB), VCSTexturePack.zip (655.8 MB). Full notes on GitHub