A Crazy Idea With GTA3...

EvilFoo · May 23, 2002, 09:50 AM

Hmm.. if anyone has checked out CD2 of GTA3, there are audio files for playing the game. If you play them with Winamp, you will see that they are encoded at 354kbps and 44Khz; personally I think this is a bit high for just some radio stations and conversations! I think such a high bitrate might be the cause of some performance problems that many people are having.

What I think we should do is, take all of these wav/mp3 files in the /Audio folder of CD2, and re-encode them into 128kbps and 44KHz, and reburn these onto another CD with all of the other appropriate files and filenames. The game should still recognize them to be the same as before... What does everyone think of this idea? Comments, suggestions?

UberLord · May 23, 2002, 10:29 AM

Depends on how the game uses MP3's. My soundcard (Sonic Fury) has hardware decoding for MP3's, thus taking a lot of the strain off the CPU. Some games can actually use this, but most can't.

Whatever the MP3 hardware support, its always going to lower memory and bandwidth requirements, so its worth trying out from that angle

EvilFoo · May 23, 2002, 10:51 AM

I see.. well I have a SB Live! Value card, and I doubt it has hardware decoding for MP3.

XSgore · May 24, 2002, 11:49 AM

Yes this should work in theory, as long as you keep them as proper MP3 files then it should be fine, although, CD2 will then become a lot smaller! (wow)

i would recommend you did them at 160kbps or 192kbps as opposed to 128 though.

As for hardware decoding, SBLive! cards and Audigy cards i think support MP3 decoding hardware ways, thus reducing the load from the CPU (uhm 1% running winamp on my XP2000 anyways)

GT

I WANT GTA3 NOW