Hello! Over the past month, I pushed multiple additions to the blog that are worth covering in a separate post. I made numerous improvements to help people stay up to date with my smaller mod releases, not just the “big” blog posts published together with notable updates. Let’s get to it!

The state of SilentPatch

After the newest SilentPatch for the Grand Theft Auto games was released last month, I immediately started working on a hotfix to address some mod conflicts and incompatibilities. I’m working on a second hotfix, so if you’re experiencing issues listed there, they will be resolved soon!

Updates feed

Notable mod releases on my blog usually accompany a blog post, but smaller ones are not. Therefore, if you are not following me on any social media and are not checking the Mods pages regularly, you may have missed the release of e.g. Triggers Control Mappings for NFS Hot Pursuit 2 (PS2). I now come up with a solution – in the top navigation bar, you may find a new Updates feed! Available as a page or an RSS feed, the Updates feed will list information about:

• New mod releases.
• Mod updates, no matter how small.
• New pages on the blog, for example, new games added to the Bonus Codes page.
• Relevant blog updates, like… this one, for example 😉.

At this moment, I backfilled this feed with all updates from 2024. I recommend checking back regularly (or subscribing to the RSS feed)!

New social links

I recently diversified my social media presence to more places and reflected this in the social media links available at the bottom of this page. Now, alongside X/Twitter, you may also follow me on Bluesky or Mastodon (I’m not too active on that one). See you there!

Flipper Zero applications

I’ve been toying around with my Flipper Zero for a while and published several apps for it, but I never got to feature them on this blog. Now, the little dolphin tool has its own space! Currently, you may find two apps available for download there.

A bit of history

Has it been ten years already? Exactly a decade ago, I opened a new thread on GTAForums about my fix-mod for GTA III and GTA Vice City:

The first releases were relatively small mods – SilentPatch 1.0¹ for GTA III included 12 fixes, while the one for GTA Vice City – just 6! The first fixes for San Andreas spun off my various experiments in VCS PC Edition; in the end, the patch for SA was released considerably bigger, with just over 30 fixes. Ever since then, these patches tripled in size, which is an achievement considering I initially said I’d not update them with any more fixes 😁

During that time, SilentPatch went through a lot. Some of the moments I remember the best are:

• The release of Rosenberg’s Audio Fix and Road Reflections Fix on November 10, 2012 and November 24, 2012 respectively. Those two small modifications are essentially “proto-SilentPatches” and have directly influenced the decision to make a bigger “fix compilation” mod a year later.
• The release of SilentPatch for San Andreas on June 16, 2014, after it had “leaked” a day prior.
• The release of SilentPatch for Colin McRae Rally 2.0 on August 8, 2015 – the first non-GTA patch.
• The first SilentPatch update with an update name released on December 28, 2019, turned out to be named rather unfortunately: The Corona Update.
• The SilentPatch that, to date, went the most viral due to the obscurity of a bug it fixed: SilentPatch for Mass Effect.
• SilentPatch with the biggest scope of changes to date: SilentPatch for Colin McRae Rally 3. Not only it introduces so many improvements it could be called a “remaster”, but it’s also notable for having been playtested by two ex-Codemasters developers who originally worked on the game in 2003!
• The first SilentPatch that directly influenced an official fix: SilentPatch for EA Sports WRC.

Nowadays, SilentPatch spans over 25 games of various ages and genres – dating from games released as far back as 1998, to games released just two months ago as of the time of writing this post.

Celebrating 10 years of fixes

1. As the SilentPatch name lives as its own “brand” now, I’ve created a page specifically dedicated to it: About SilentPatch On this page, I included a list of all supported games and an explanation of what SilentPatch is – as more often than not, once a patch reaches a community previously unaware of my work, people assume “silent” shall be taken literally, and these patches mute sounds in the game 😅

2. I have updated the timeline of the SilentPatch history. I highlighted the most important events related to those, mostly focusing on the GTA patches due to their historical significance, but also listing all the other supported games, as well as some other events that directly led to the creation of, or influenced the shape of SilentPatch.
   The legend for colours is as follows:
   • Blue – SilentPatch events.
   • Green – miscellaneous events directly related to SilentPatch.
   • Pink – events related to other modifications, which were relevant for SilentPatch development nonetheless.
   • Orange – ‘community spotlight’ events.
     I recommend viewing the timeline fullscreen!
3. Last but not least, a formal announcement – The original SilentPatches for GTA games will become open source in January 2024! 🥳 My interest in these games has lowered over the years, but I still want to give these original patches a proper sendoff – therefore, they are going to receive a new update together with a full repository history publishing on GitHub. You’ll not only be able to see the current state of the code but also follow it throughout most of the development cycle!
   To clarify – I don’t intend to say this is going to be a definite final update for those SilentPatches. However, considering that they were last updated in 2020, this is highly likely.

What’s next?

As always – I’m not sure. SilentPatch has been thriving as a “brand” and I’ve expanded into many more games, so I hope it continues. I’ve recently also been taking contracts to help re-release older games on modern digital gaming platforms that I suppose can be called “official SilentPatches”; even though they don’t carry the name, internally they work just like SPs, patching the game’s code at runtime 🙂

That said, I have very high hopes for 2024 – if everything goes well (and it still might not), perhaps next year we will see the first game officially released carrying the SilentPatch name… Fingers crossed!

Recently I’ve been using DuckStation, a relatively new, modern PS1 emulator, quite a lot. Not only it’s fast and accurate, but also includes modern features like PGXP, cheats, post-processing shaders, and is aimed to include overclocking soon. Of course, me being me I could not only play those games – so I started experimenting with cheats enhancing the games.

While cheats making some games widescreen and/or 60 FPS exist, I was not satisfied with how incomplete some of them are and how the information is spread around numerous websites and random Excel spreadsheets; this has affected Gran Turismo 2 the most, which has 10 versions and the versions I have did not have proper cheats anywhere!

Combining these issues with the fact that I figured out how to work with PS1 games by using no$psx, another debugging-oriented PS1 emulator, I decided to do something about it – so I’ll be hosting my cheat codes on the blog, just like mods for PC games; starting with cheat codes for PS1 games, but it may or may not expand to more consoles and emulators.

Current and planned codes

I have created a Sony PlayStation page, listing PS1 games I currently have codes for. At the moment of writing this post, it includes the following codes:

• Gran Turismo
  • 60 FPS cheat – improved the existing cheat by re-enabling tire smoke, which was originally removed at 60 FPS for performance reasons¹.
• Gran Turismo 2
  • 16:9 Widescreen hack – a better widescreen hack that does not cut off the objects on screen edges; originally made by HugoStanced, I contributed with additional research and ported it to different game versions.
  • 60 FPS cheat – improved the existing cheat by re-enabling tire smoke, which was originally removed at 60 FPS for performance reasons¹.
  • Metric units code – a cheat changing imperial units to metric units in the NTSC-U version of the game.

Later on, I plan to add more codes – such as the metric system for NTSC-U versions of Gran Turismo, No UI patches, etc.

Since every emulator has its way of supporting cheats, for setup instructions please refer to the documentation of your emulator of choice.

What do I offer in return for sponsorships? As mentioned on the sponsorships page, not much for now – so far I’m only able to offer a place in credits for those who sponsor. I want to avoid perks like early/exclusive access, because I believe fragmenting the community is not a good idea – that said, I may come up with something better later which also will not lock people out!

The link to my Sponsors page is now added to the footer of the website, next to a PayPal link. If you wish to visit the page, either scroll down or click here: Become a sponsor

What started as a small modification for GTA III and GTA Vice City is now nearly a brand, operating as a series of patches with continuous support! At the time of writing, SilentPatch has releases for 7 games:

• GTA III (6 releases)
• GTA Vice City (8 releases)
• GTA San Andreas (29 releases!)
• Colin McRae Rally 2.0 (1 release)
• The Godfather: The Game (1 release)
• Bully: Scholarship Edition (2 releases)
• Far Cry (2 releases)

with one more game (Saints Row: The Third) being occasionally looked into – a release may happen at some point, but it’s not going to be anything huge.

To celebrate the anniversary, I created an interactive timeline showing all major events throughout SilentPatch development. Hope you’ll find it entertaining!

The legend for colours is as follows:

• Blue – SilentPatch events.
• Green – miscellaneous events directly related to SilentPatch.
• Pink – events related to other modifications, which were relevant for SilentPatch development nonetheless.
• Orange – ‘community spotlight’ events.

I recommend opening the timeline in a separate browser tab and viewing it fullscreen!

What next?

SilentPatch ended up being far bigger than I ever expected and I consider it a game changer (literally and figuratively) for a lot of things, including my professional career. I hope it is going to stay strong and encapsulate even more games in the future!

Thank you for all your support so far, since without the people using the ‘patches, suggesting things and spreading the love they would have gone nowhere!

TL;DR: If you want to cast a vote, go here and pick your favourite! Who knows, maybe GInput is going to be your pick 😊
https://dev.wooting.nl/vote-it/

What is Wooting? And what’s the contest about?

Wooting is a brand of mechanical keyboards, which unlike any other keyboard out there (as of now) has pressure sensitive buttons. On top of that, the keyboards are fully lit with RGB LEDs, with each separate key being fully controllable.

Now, since analog keyboard buttons are a new concept, there have to be some ways of getting them working, since naturally no existing API can grasp the concept of an analog keyboard key. Apparently, it is possible to map specific keys to DirectInput and/or XInput gamepads and map them in games this way. Wooting also provides their own SDK for both analog keys and RGB lighting, but naturally that needs to be supported by the application itself.

You see where I’m going? With GInput, we can do exactly that! The mod already hooks deeply into GTA input processing, so adding one more feature was in fact fairly easy.

Coincidentally, Wooting has also announced a CODE IT contest, which encourages people to come up with interesting ways of using keyboard’s SDK. GInput seems like a perfect fit, and thankfully there is a Wooting keyboard emulator (created by hollow – huge props for that!), so I don’t even need to get the keyboard in order to submit something! It wouldn’t ship in time anyway…

Cool, but what did you do?

So far, the list of features is not long. It should be enough for starters, though:

• Full support for analog keys
• Backlight reflects gang activity in the area you are in
• Function keys flash when the police is after you
• Keyboard dims when the player is hidden in the shadows
• During dancing minigames, relevant keys reflect your score while all the other keys are dimmed

If the project picks up, more features may be added!

May I see it?

I prepared a few previews – treat yourself:

However, those previews are kind of… boring. What if we could come up with something more entertaining?

I raise you a mix of LEDs and the most known cutscene from the game 😁

I’m sold – let me vote!

If you want to cast a vote, go here and pick your favourite! Who knows, maybe GInput is going to be your pick 😊
https://dev.wooting.nl/vote-it/

GInput presentation on the voting page also hides a download link – if you want to give it a try on your own, go ahead and grab it!

If I got your attention this far, why not go through all the new features!?

Categories

This website bases on Type on Strap theme that supports tags, however in my version they were always disabled. As the size grows in content, I figured it’s time to make those return in form of Categories. From now on, posts are going to be categorized:

• Articles – any “meaningful” content, like post mortems or other tech revelations from myself.
• Releases – new mod releases and other announcements.
• Progress Reports – mod-related posts which do not fit in neither of the above. I can’t promise Progress Reports as exciting as the ones posted by Dolphin or RPCS3 developers, however.
• Other – everything else! Rants, personal opinions on games and anything else, announcements like this or, occasionally, cats.

Bear in mind that this list may change at some point.

Finished Mods & Patches page

Until now, that page was a mess, but no more! Now the page contains most mods sorted by game – or, in the case of GTA, sorted by series, then games. That also means all SilentPatches are finally listed on the website – better late than never!

All image assets and design for this have been done by Ash R. – kudos to the man!

NOTE: Not all mods are listed yet – expect the other entries to appear very soon! I also plan to introduce a Tools section in nearby future.

Polished Portfolio page

Portfolio page also has received a minor makeover – now entries are more consistent styling wise, and display their respective game logos upon hovering. Once again, all image assets have been provided by Ash R.!

Support link

Last but not least, some people have been asking if there is any way to support me – now there is! If you want to buy me a cookie, some beer or provide some cat food, you can use a PayPal button on the very bottom of this page!

Any donations are absolutely voluntary and you should not feel bad if you don’t send one – it’s just a minor extra motivator for myself and not anything pressing!

I’ve been thinking about a blog for a while, as those who follow me on social media (if you don’t, links are on the bottom of this page!) might have noticed my online activity is increasing over time. Rather than spreading articles, code snippets, rants and mod submissions all over the cyberspace, having them centralized in there seems like a far better idea.

What can you expect to see here?

• Updates on various modifications and other projects I take part in
• Technical articles (in fact, the main reason I’m creating the blog just now is an article like this)
• Personal portfolio and download pages for all most game modifications I have worked on (but not yet)
• Personal rants (maybe)

Got any suggestions or feedback? Reach me out on Twitter! (EDIT: or leave a comment below!)