GTA III on the PowerPC

[pakra]

Hello everyone!

Earlier this year there was a thread on these forums regarding RE3, a reverse engineered effort of GTA III, and whether it could be ported to PowerPC. Well, during the same time I was also exploring the forgotten architecture and all its software, and likewise, the lack of games... but when the re3 source code was released (and taken down), I immediately wanted to bring my all-time favorite gaming franchise to the PPC OS X.

And after a few months of work patching it up on my slow hardware, it actually runs! Pitifully slow on my 400mhz/fx5200 with negative fps, but a person i'm working on this with reports better results with 1,8ghz/x800xt to almost becoming playable. So clearly, some optimization is necessary. However, it's really exciting seeing it work, and it didn't even take much effort -- most of the basic cross platform porting was already done by the initial reverse engineering team, and all I did was to make it compile under OS X Tiger.

There is a lot of work left to make it fully playable, and I'm also waiting for upgraded parts to develop and debug faster, but the initial results are very promising... so expect a native PowerPC release of GTA III in the future. =)

First picture is from the x800xt setup, while the second screenshot is from my own development setup. (Yeah, it's OS X Tiger with a custom theme... however to my knowledge this game should be compilable on Panther, or even Jaguar.)

 

[bsamcash]

Here we go again.

 

[Project Alice]

Hello everyone!

Earlier this year there was a thread on these forums regarding RE3, a reverse engineered effort of GTA III, and whether it could be ported to PowerPC. Well, during the same time I was also exploring the forgotten architecture and all its software, and likewise, the lack of games... but when the re3 source code was released (and taken down), I immediately wanted to bring my all-time favorite gaming franchise to the PPC OS X.

And after a few months of work patching it up on my slow hardware, it actually runs! Pitifully slow on my 400mhz/fx5200 with negative fps, but a person i'm working on this with reports better results with 1,8ghz/x800xt to almost becoming playable. So clearly, some optimization is necessary. However, it's really exciting seeing it work, and it didn't even take much effort -- most of the basic cross platform porting was already done by the initial reverse engineering team, and all I did was to make it compile under OS X Tiger.

There is a lot of work left to make it fully playable, and I'm also waiting for upgraded parts to develop and debug faster, but the initial results are very promising... so expect a native PowerPC release of GTA III in the future. =)

First picture is from the x800xt setup, while the second screenshot is from my own development setup. (Yeah, it's OS X Tiger with a custom theme... however to my knowledge this game should be compilable on Panther, or even Jaguar.)

Awesome! Let me know if there's anything I can do to help. I'm not a dev, but I'm willing to do whatever I can. I have been wanting this for years.

Here we go again.

?

 

[bsamcash]

?

GTA reference.

 

[TheShortTimer]

?

Ah sh_t, here we go again.

 

[feelingsupersonic]

I'm happy to test this on a dual G5 system if you are looking for people.

 

[ExclusiveMac]

You will offer a link to download when is ready?

 

[Project Alice]

GTA reference.

Ah sh_t, here we go again.

Right! I should have known that. Lol

 

[PowerfulEra]

would love to test this on a quad with x1950 xt

 

[nxstudiomc]

Can't wait to test that on my G5!

 

[alex_free]

I can’t believe someone got this to work with OpenGL 1.x!

 

[Akulareb]

I’m so glad actually someone is making it happen, I guess we can dream of a vice city some time.

As other said above, happy to test it on my quad g5 with x1900xt

 

[Project Alice]

I can’t believe someone got this to work with OpenGL 1.x!

GTA III was released on PC back when it was new and ran on Windows 98. It should work on OpenGL 1.x.
It required a 450MHz x86 with a 16MB VRAM graphics card.

 

[LightBulbFun]

Hello everyone!

Earlier this year there was a thread on these forums regarding RE3, a reverse engineered effort of GTA III, and whether it could be ported to PowerPC. Well, during the same time I was also exploring the forgotten architecture and all its software, and likewise, the lack of games... but when the re3 source code was released (and taken down), I immediately wanted to bring my all-time favorite gaming franchise to the PPC OS X.

And after a few months of work patching it up on my slow hardware, it actually runs! Pitifully slow on my 400mhz/fx5200 with negative fps, but a person i'm working on this with reports better results with 1,8ghz/x800xt to almost becoming playable. So clearly, some optimization is necessary. However, it's really exciting seeing it work, and it didn't even take much effort -- most of the basic cross platform porting was already done by the initial reverse engineering team, and all I did was to make it compile under OS X Tiger.

There is a lot of work left to make it fully playable, and I'm also waiting for upgraded parts to develop and debug faster, but the initial results are very promising... so expect a native PowerPC release of GTA III in the future. =)

First picture is from the x800xt setup, while the second screenshot is from my own development setup. (Yeah, it's OS X Tiger with a custom theme... however to my knowledge this game should be compilable on Panther, or even Jaguar.)

Oh wow thats awesome!

the GTA series of games are one of my favourite games of all times

and I have always wished I could play them on my PPC macs

(especially as GTA3-SA could on the PC side run on some pretty low end hardware, so would make a good fit for older PPC macs)

very cool to see it becoming a reality

 

[B S Magnet]

Oh wow thats awesome!

the GTA series of games are one of my favriout games of all times

and I have always wished I could play them on my PPC macs

(especially as GTA3-SA could on the PC side run on some pretty low end hardware, so would make a good fit for older PPC macs)

very cool to see it becoming a reality

Rockstar finding this thread and being all ✭✭✭✭✭✩

 

[alex_free]

GTA III was released on PC back when it was new and ran on Windows 98. It should work on OpenGL 1.x.
It required a 450MHz x86 with a 16MB VRAM graphics card.

Back when the original reverse engineering project was released they only had an open gl 2.1 renderer

 

[netsrot39]

Since I'm a big GTA fan, I can't wait to try this out. I have an arsenal of various PPC based Macs that I'd like to give it a try on. @pakra Do you have it fully working or are there bugs? Afaik GTA 3 and GTA Vice City had their code reverse-engineered, so @LightBulbFun I think GTA SA is out of the question sadly. @pakra Have you tried Vice City already? Thanks for sharing the information.

 

[thedoctor45x]

Since I'm a big GTA fan, I can't wait to try this out. I have an arsenal of various PPC based Macs that I'd like to give it a try on. @pakra Do you have it fully working or are there bugs? Afaik GTA 3 and GTA Vice City had their code reverse-engineered, so @LightBulbFun I think GTA SA is out of the question sadly. @pakra Have you tried Vice City already? Thanks for sharing the information.

He has it running without major bugs on PPC 10.5 Leopard but the Tiger version is still giving us a lot of trouble with graphics glitches.

A 32bit Leopard compatible Intel build is also in the works fyi.

 

[iHorseHead]

Rockstar finding this thread and being all ✭✭✭✭✭✩

Rockstar doesn't like Apple.
They mock Apple all the time since GTA IV.

 

[thedoctor45x]

We've decided to share the latest alpha build publicly so people can test it on their setups and report their results.

GTA 3 PPC 0.1a.zip - AnonFiles

anonfiles.com

Install instructions:
right click on the GTA 3.app and select "Show package contents" from the dropdown menu - then place the data files from your GTA 3 installation into the "/Contents/MacOS" directory. Do not overwrite any existing files!

Known bugs:
• keyboard controls aren't saved and default to "unbound" after a restart - select "restore defaults" to get the default control scheme.
• The mouse cursor isn't captured by the game window so turning 360 degrees isn't possible atm.
• In-game Audio is low quality and has distortions
• The game is highly unoptimized and performance is especially bad on low-end Macs running Tiger.
• Graphics glitch out massively under Tiger/OGL 1.x.

Running this under Mac OS X Leopard on a Dual G4 setup with 1,25 Ghz or more is highly recommended.

 

[netsrot39]

Thanks for sharing this launcher! @thedoctor45x

I gave it a try on my Early 2005 17" PowerBook G4 and it crashes after the loading screen (when it almost finishes converting the textures). I attached the error report and a picture showing where it happens.

 

[alex_free]

We've decided to share the latest alpha build publicly so people can test it on their setups and report their results.

GTA 3 PPC 0.1a.zip - AnonFiles

anonfiles.com

Install instructions:
right click on the GTA 3.app and select "Show package contents" from the dropdown menu - then place the data files from your GTA 3 installation into the "/Contents/MacOS" directory. Do not overwrite any existing files!

Known bugs:
• keyboard controls aren't saved and default to "unbound" after a restart - select "restore defaults" to get the default control scheme.
• The mouse cursor isn't captured by the game window so turning 360 degrees isn't possible atm.
• In-game Audio is low quality and has distortions
• The game is highly unoptimized and performance is especially bad on low-end Macs running Tiger.
• Graphics glitch out massively under Tiger/OGL 1.x.

Running this under Mac OS X Leopard on a Dual G4 setup with 1,25 Ghz or more is highly recommended.

Is this using a new OpenGL 1 renderer? When I looked at this before there was only an OpenGL 2.1+ renderer in the original project. I’m really curious how this is being pulled off.

 

[pakra]

Since I'm a big GTA fan, I can't wait to try this out. I have an arsenal of various PPC based Macs that I'd like to give it a try on. @pakra Do you have it fully working or are there bugs? Afaik GTA 3 and GTA Vice City had their code reverse-engineered, so @LightBulbFun I think GTA SA is out of the question sadly. @pakra Have you tried Vice City already? Thanks for sharing the information.

I have not yet tried the vice city branch of this code, the first step would be to get GTA III up and running.

Thanks for sharing this launcher! @thedoctor45x

I gave it a try on my Early 2005 17" PowerBook G4 and it crashes after the loading screen (when it almost finishes converting the textures). I attached the error report and a picture showing where it happens.

Thanks for embedding the error report. It looks like it tries to convert textures after comparing to the data/caps.dat file. Make sure you have it, if not, make sure you started the game at least once on Windows.

Is this using a new OpenGL 1 renderer? When I looked at this before there was only an OpenGL 2.1+ renderer in the original project. I’m really curious how this is being pulled off.

I didn't implement any OpenGL 1 renderer, with some tweaks it seemed to run on 1.5 although with heavy graphical glitches. So for now, it's recommended to run on minimum OSX Leopard that has 2.0.

 

[xeno74]

@pakra Is it possible to compile your modified source code on Linux-PPC?

 

[pakra]

@pakra Is it possible to compile your modified source code on Linux-PPC?

I'm not sure, but if you want to try I could invite you to the private PPC repo.