(GTA 4) How to disable sun shafts(godrays) at night?

[Surena2000]

Wow I did not expect answer this quickly, thank you very much for your response.

As far as I know or have understood it is the Z-fighting fix that made using enb incompatible with that mod/fix. It isn’t a fusionfix exclusive but fusionfix has implemented that fix. I think Parallellines had got that fix on GitHub. I am not a developer so I don’t understand or have the capability to explain why it is but everyone keeps saying this.

But regardless, considering enb was built to work best on 1.0.4.0 and never got official support for 1.0.7.0 I am asking for reconsideration for this mod since the game has matured and is now using 1.0.8.0 (gta CE is a thing too but people downgrade to patch 8 because it’s mod friendly whereas CE isn’t as much especially with scripthookdotnet stuff).

Fusionfix is not the reason I am requesting a reconsideration of enb on gta4 but I highly recommend giving it a try and you might be surprised how far and active the modding community has become for gta 4. Maybe roadblocks or bugs that made you hate the game could be fixed now. And if you were perhaps willing to reconsider developing enb final version then that would be great. The reason I mentioned fusionfix was because it was a collaborative huge project fixing up the pc port of gta 4 and you strictly mentioning that you don’t want to develop enb for games that are dead or have no modding community.

Now onto the main reason for a reconsideration, enb had some issues working on patch 8 or even patch 7 which was around if I read the gta 4 enb page but wasn’t supported/developed on. Think about red sky bug or other functions not available or kinda broken compared to previous patches which were preferred in the past but now long ancient and abandoned which is sad to see because enb was always a must have mod if your pc could handle it.

Now that the game has picked up in player base and modding perhaps like never before, and there isn’t a new patch coming out that breaks everything each time, perhaps you could revisit it? Not to mention maybe some special stuff being possible now that dxvk is around so maybe not limited strictly to dx9 stuff?? I don’t know.

[ENBSeries]

I already gave a game second chance when players asked me to update for 7th patch, but as all my other experiences with dead games, result was predictable. Because of different versions of the game there is a mess with mods for it and modding tools support as i know. Most likely develop for older patch is same bad idea as for latest game version. New enb also means incompatible with existing presets entirely, because even 4 and 7 patch versions of enb have very huge difference cause of how renderer of the game changed much. No doubt latest also different a lot, otherwise would not be complains about bugs with enb. Gta4 gave me lot of problems cause of these patches, i was forced to update several times doing basically new mods from almost scratch. I'm not okay with that. And after all, what is the reason for me to do the mod? I'm busy with skyrim version, why to add more headache? I have other reasons to avoid modding, caused by situation in my country and my life. To make me work on something is very difficult now. I can answer, but the chance i accept in current situation is extremely low.

[Surena2000]

Again, thank you for your time to reply.

I can understand that in the past it was annoying to have to start from scratch due to the patches, but as of now I doubt there will be any new patches for GTA CE by Rockstar themselves, and if it will be then that would be irrelevant as GTA CE had multiplayer artificially stripped out so you have to go back to 1.0.8.0 to play multiplayer afaik and have good modding support. Thus people mostly discourage the use of CE edition with advertisements of downgrading everywhere. People even made decent and simple almost one-click version downgrader with the ability of installing radiostations from old, new and eflc into gta4 etc due to this fact.

It seems like the renderer between patch 8 and the latest complete edition which included EFLC is the same, and it looks like patch 7 is also close if not the same as patch 8, considering the settings and the game looks the same and the same enb issues occur on patch 7 and 8, but I might be wrong. I believe CE launched to force players to use rockstar launcher to play the game, even if you use Steam...

Regardless, it was just a suggestion as it would have been great if we had a new version of enb that would have solved issues, fixed broken- or even added new features into the game based on your rich knowledge, tools and hindsight on the game after years of getting to know gta 4 to the bone. However, I can understand that you are busy with your life which has priority of course. I didn't want to come over as some sort of jackass but was sincerely showing that there is interest from the gta 4 community for a new enb mod if that was possible. Not working existing presets is not a problem for talented and active members in the community today being able to make something perhaps better if they had the better tools. I think it was DayL that was one of the last reputable modders that pulled the plug on supporting enb ICE 3.0N mod and just changed over to fusionfix with timecyc and lighting modifications and while it's not bad, it's not the same without ENB. The skylighting alone is such a big missing... I also don't want to speak on behalf of the fusionfix team, but I think they showed the interest to make fusionfix or other fixes for gta 4 work with enb if that was possible but that they were unable to because enb was not open source or something, so they could not get it to work. And using ENB alone with dxvk doesn't really work well. Instead of making the game buttersmooth, it becomes unplayable trying to run enb through vulkan for some reason unknown to me.

Anyways, I have one last question if I may ask before I sound like a broken record. What was the reason to give the game a second chance but ending up not finishing/abandoning patch 7, considering the gta 4 enb page states no patch 7 support and having bugs if you do try? Was the game not popular anymore or too bugged to continue development back then?

[ENBSeries]

Several people told me similar things you did, about community awaits, need to make mod for latest game version, so on. So i did several updates but none of them took any attention, so i stopped development. You can see in changes log version 0.128 and up to 0.162 were made for 7 patch (which was last at that time).

considering the gta 4 enb page states no patch 7 support and having bugs if you do try

I don't know where did you find this, it's not true.

I am not okay to make mod for gta also because i started to hate take two and rockstar for what they did to me personally and to community. What you say about CE version of the game just one more time prove they are assholes and by doing mod i simply increase their sales at cost of my life. Why should i? Don't think i'm interested in such modding, unless it can be very good commercial investment of my time.

[Surena2000]

Where can I find those logs regarding version 0.128 and 0.162 as I only seem to find v0.163, v0.082 beta, v0.081 sora and v0.079 sora on the GTA 4 page on enbdev.com. I am quite interested to read these if I can just out of curiosity. I like ENB so I would love to know more about its development time.

As for the community support, I started playing GTA 4 on PC since 2015 (before that only console) and between 2015-2021 I don't recall much modding happening for the game. Same for multiplayer mods, only IV:MP T3 was available with two servers and that client was buggy as hell, it would randomly crash at times and you didn't have vehicle damage or Z-axis shooting so different height no damage. Now you have HMP in development, GTAC already out and playable with multiple servers and daily players and also being continually improved, GFWL still works I think but not sure. Not to mention since SAMP (GTA SA multiplayer) is dead because people stepping over to GTA V and it on it's turn has been milked out for 10 years with GTA Online DLCs and recent aquisition of FiveM, so interest in GTA 4 has boomed especially after the corona pandemic came around. You can see it on youtube too, many GTA 4 videos are dated either very long time ago (10+ years or are recent within 0-3 years old, with just a couple scattered inbetween). Add to that the fact that computers have become faster in the last 10 years, modders picked up the game with huge and interesting fixes I thought previously were impossible and the fact we can run the game through DXVK to have smooth Vulkan gameplay, yeah GTA 4 never had a peak on PC like it has right now as far as I can remember since 2015.
Here is a Youtube video that highlights what mods like Fusionfix fix/do, maybe you are interested in the new options added to the game such as antialiasing, soft shadows, dynamic shadows, fixed z-fighting and more in the short video.

I found about the enb no patch 7 support here.

Latest game patch is unsupported, i don't like reduced quality changes in it and don't have time now for adopting code. Best compability of ENBSeries with game pre 1.0.7.0 patches.

^ I was pretty sure that enb page hadn't been modified for years but just to be sure I opened up wayback machine and opened a snapshot of that page from 2015/2016, which is a year before patch 8 was first announced on rockstar site. There the exact line is used that latest game patch is unsupported, which was patch 7 at the time, hence why I mentioned it.

CE is probably an attempt of moneygrab by supporting GTA 4 through rockstar games launcher so they can sell the game there directly instead of cheap cd finds or steam discounts, I suppose. Else it's basically the same as patch 8 (IV) or 1.1.3.0 (EFLC), based on performance and the looks so I doubt the render engine itself has changed since 2016 only now combined under one name. Most mods that work on patch 8 work on CE too, except script mods afaik. Still I insist if you ever reconsider modding for the game I highly recommend patch 8 over CE. It might still work on CE but most modders use patch 8. And if it were to work with fusionfix (or built upon it) then that would be fabulous.

As for commercial investment, I think people would be able to subscribe to you if you have patreon or something similar for your work. I mean people are making paid mods and they seem to sell. Reshade and ICE4 seem to be good examples for IV I think, but with new enb mod/engine perhaps with modern features or vulkan support I think it would blow out any graphical mod for gta 4. Some people do leak files but those are usually old builds or taken down quickly after. The developer of the ICE4 mod say it will release for free when done, but it's been so long I doubt it will happen any time soon. No clue on Reshade ever becoming free. Anyway, if there was ever monetary gain to be made, I think that would be possible depending on the charge of course. I would understand you would be able to do more if you were paid for your work. Another option would be I think to opensource the GTA 4 mod so others could implement fixes to it, but I don't know how this would work out and if you are even willing to do so. I also do agree with you that take two company execs are jackasses, their legal team too.

By the way, this is a bit unrelated to enb mod itself but if you go to here under GTA 4 documentation, that link is dead. It opens a generic polish site. Perhaps people could use wayback machine on the url but yeah, just wanted to point that out.

Thanks for reading and spending time on explaining everything, I really appreciate it.

[ENBSeries]

That text about 7th patch on the site is outdated and invalid.
Changes log is in readme_en.txt file.
I repeat gain, there is no way to support and develop enbseries for mods which change the game. Except if i am by myself would be creator of such mods. If FusionFix is popular mod, then there is zero reason for me to make enbseries because they both never be compatible. Multiplayers most likely not compatible with enbseries too as part of anticheating protection. Summ up these problems with multiple games versions (while i can only install latest one available in steam, i don't use cracked games by security reasons) - there is no sense to make new enbseries.

[ENBSeries]

Changed description on the download page. Part of it was actually correct, but confused myself when you gave a link, cause of my english. The meaning is that older versions have better features, which not exist in 0.128+ for 7th patch.

[Surena2000]

Alright then. It would've been cool if there was any possibility of collaboration with FusionFix team or even regardless of FF mod just that there would be a final version of ENB that had the same features or better, like volumetric clouds and shadows from clouds as mentioned in the future plans of your original gtaforums topic. A version of ENB that rivals or beats the capabilities of 1.0.4.0, with modern mod support.

I am currently using half power (I guess) of ENBseries v0.163 on patch 8 together with Zolikapatch, which does support ENB and also has some minor fixes and features such as dynamic shadows cast from everything, GTA Connected multiplayer mod and I guess that is as best as I can get the game to look. The exact preset I'm using is the Ice 3.0N by DayL on patch 8. It doesn't have things like godrays, dof etc (couldn't get it working somehow to hide some of the Z-fighting and stuff) and such, but it's as natural game looking as I can get the game to look. Bugs here and there but what can I do.

It does look very good at times, but I will envy the fact knowing that if GTA 4 didn't have so many patches and issues, maybe the game and enb engine would've been fabulous graphics wise. The physics engine is still great, keeping up or exceeding games that even release today. The story is cool as well, something dark and touching. Not the bling bling and constant joking like SA or V but the dark and ugly truth.

As always, thank you for your time and effort to thoroughly elaborate on the situation and history of enb.

[ENBSeries]

I don't understand why to bother at all? People played game with 4th patch totally fine and had good looking presets which hard to beat by any newer version. Just accept that some changes are to worse and ignore them. What's the difference anyway, if you say CE version as latest is worse than 8th patch? No difference to 4th by logic. Issues in the heads.

[Surena2000]

Whoa, where did that last reply come from. I concluded with my last post that it's unfortunate that there will be no final ENB coming out and we will have to do with what we have. As for why CE is worse than patch 8? If you don't care for GFWL multiplayer or script mods, it's the exact same as patch 8 so by logic it is not the same as patch 4 like you are stating. More on it below.

Patch 4 has been deprecated, a very small minority still plays on it but it's nowhere near as much as what it used to be. In the past patch 4 had best performance/speed, worked the best with mods, had best ENB support and had the least bugs. Now, the only reason to go through all the hassle to downgrade to patch 4 is ENB support. That's it.

Due to the active modding community as of late, mod support has gone up, supporting usually patch 7+ only. And those mods have exceeded what patch 4 had or could do, both in terms of features but also bug fixes. Also the DLCs such as The Ballad of Gay Tony and The Lost and Damned were never supported on patch 4 as they were introduced in patch 6. The bugfixes from fusionfix are not supported on patch 4 as the developers from that mod are not bothered to support every gta patch, especially since ENB isn't compatible with fusionfix anymore there is no reason to support patch 4. Other mods creators usually base their mods with fusionfix support or Fusion Overloader (modern modloader without modifying game files themselves) like Project Lights by DayL or VariousFixes, or even merge into fusionfix (which is what Parallellines0451 did as far as I know) so it's hard to recommend anyone these days to get back on patch 4, all things considered.

So combine modern mods dropping support for patch 4, performance on patch 8+ being comparable to patch 4 and having DLC/multiplayer support not to mention most of the community being on patch 8, I think it is clearly visible why I was bothering. DXVK adds the last point by translating dx9 to vulkan making the game run smooth and stable, sometimes even with fps uplift. The only thing missing that would make patch 8 the best of the best would be ENB support to give that eye-candy graphics uplift combined with the fixes and new features. I hope I explained well enough because from your answer it seems that you might have misunderstood my previous post slightly.