Saints Row thread

[Slav Power]

5 hours with no crashes. Kinda, game froze after alt-tabbing. Still, solid 5 hours of uninterrupted gameplay on the PC port.

Should I write up a tutorial on how to patch up Saints Row 2?

 

[Prophetic Spirit]

Should I write up a tutorial on how to patch up Saints Row 2?

Please do.
I'm waiting for a vanilla plus guide for SR2 for a long time.

 

[Slav Power]

Please do.
I'm waiting for a vanilla plus guide for SR2 for a long time.

Before I do, consider looking at the PC Gaming Wiki to get links and tips on all the main mods. The one thing I applied that isn't listed there is DXVK, but it's easy to apply. Meanwhile I'm down to 100%ing all the activities before starting the storyline missions, though I should at least do Three Kings so that I can also 100% Heli Assault.

Also lol @ OG Volition making fun of 'jeets back in '08. Apoop.

 

[werbwub]

Before I do, consider looking at the PC Gaming Wiki to get links and tips on all the main mods. The one thing I applied that isn't listed there is DXVK, but it's easy to apply. Meanwhile I'm down to 100%ing all the activities before starting the storyline missions, though I should at least do Three Kings so that I can also 100% Heli Assault.
View attachment 7432685
Also lol @ OG Volition making fun of 'jeets back in '08. Apoop.
View attachment 7432680

If you do go through with making a guide, there are a couple of points that you should add.
1: use the hdr fork of dxvk and reshade if you have a good hdr screen. Only the safest preset will work correctly, any other presets cause major graphical issues.
2: Use borderless windowed mode no matter what. Both AMD and Nvidia gpus support hardware flip in vulkan which gives you hdr, good performance, and good alt tab. Since you use special k, you might know all this but I doubt the other 99% of users do.
3: I would mention that you shouldn't use any texture mods or the extend draw distance option in jucied, both break the game's render. Only the dynamic draw distance in juiced is stable.
4: Use at least 2x msaa. Msaa is required for some alpha effects, hair for example, to render correctly.

 

[Slav Power]

use the hdr fork of dxvk and reshade if you have a good hdr screen. Only the safest preset will work correctly, any other presets cause major graphical issues.

I don't have an HDR capable monitor so I can't really vouch for something I have no direct experience with. Also ReShade simply sucks ass due to only being able to influence the final rendered frame and is at best good for color grading and sharpening. Been there done that, anything more will look like shit.

By the way, I just read up in the Juiced manual that the GOG executable is more stable, and I was thinking about explaining how to prep both of them, so using Steamless for the Steam one, adding the 60FPS patch to the GOG one and patching them to be LAA. How much of it does Juiced handle for you nowadays, and is the GOG executable really that much better than the Steamless unpacked one?

 

[Chapalapachapa]

I can never quite say SR3 sucks mainly because unlike SR2, which I admit wholeheartedly I like a lot more, I didn't have to worry about the game crashing as much. Even Gentleman of the Row can't fix that, and I found it's still more unstable than New Vegas, which is saying a lot. I also do admit the controls and gameplay in SR3 is fun; a bit of a guilty pleasure so to speak.

I will however state that the story is horribly paced, and that is one of the reasons I never got around to beating it, which is telling. I also fucking hate Professor Genki as a whole, and preferred probably every other activity to that one.

I fondly remember the xbox 360 because i played both on it

 

[werbwub]

I don't have an HDR capable monitor so I can't really vouch for something I have no direct experience with. Also ReShade simply sucks ass due to only being able to influence the final rendered frame and is at best good for color grading and sharpening. Been there done that, anything more will look like shit.

By the way, I just read up in the Juiced manual that the GOG executable is more stable, and I was thinking about explaining how to prep both of them, so using Steamless for the Steam one, adding the 60FPS patch to the GOG one and patching them to be LAA. How much of it does Juiced handle for you nowadays, and is the GOG executable really that much better than the Steamless unpacked one?

You can get pretty good hdr inverse tone mapping with reshade. The quality of inverse tone mapping will greatly improve if you can upgrade the render targets, unlock the brightness of the game and reduces banding. sadly, sr2 breaks when upgrading render targets with dxvk.
The gog exe is just the steam exe without steam's drm and a 30 fps lock added. Juiced will automatically create a version of the steam exe with the drm stripped and LAA applied if you install it onto the steam version of the game.

 

[Foltest]

SR2 is when the game hits it peak.
Silly enough to be fun, but also knew when it needed to be serious (Carlos being dragged across the concrete was not treated like a joke) when it was called for.

 

[Chapalapachapa]

sr2 boss was a legit sociopath, even the rest of the gang were dude you went too far with the brotherhood

 

[Slav Power]

The gog exe is just the steam exe without steam's drm and a 30 fps lock added. Juiced will automatically create a version of the steam exe with the drm stripped and LAA applied if you install it onto the steam version of the game.

See, this is interesting. I did some tests and it seems that if you have the Steam EXE, Juiced will autorun the XDelta patch you've extracted with the mod to patch it. The interesting bit is that when doing a comparison between the Juiced and the GOG Unlocked EXE, there are a few differences.

Juiced has a bit of leftover Valve gibberish at the beginning that no other EXE has, not even the Steamless one, as well as a few extra bytes flipped near the beginning

And then for some reason near the end of the part where the GOG Unlocker does the job, some bytes got flipped to "10". So it's not 1:1 but very close.

Another interesting tidbit, Juiced will autopatch the EXE's to be LAA as it's just one value change, but it won't patch the GOG EXE to be unlocked the same way. So it seems that:
-if you have the Steam version, Juiced will run the XDelta patch to prep the EXE for you
-if you have the GOG version, Juiced will only have to adjust the process in memory to unlock the FPS
And both end up running virtually the same.

However, what isn't quite the same is the patch.vpp_pc file. They differ quite a bit between the Steam and GOG version, where the GOG version is larger by ~15MB. It's possible that GOG applied some extra fixes.

I've attached both all the various EXE's, as well as the two differing patch.vpp_pc files if anyone wants to take a look at them themselves. From now I'll be running the game with the Juiced EXE and the GOG .vpp_pc since they seem to be interchangeable so why the hell not.

On a sidenote, I figured out why I couldn't run SuperUI with Juiced patch. I was trying to use the version that came with Stilwater Overhauled, and that one was outdated. Even better, you can load SuperUI with Juiced loose file loader so you don't have to repackage patch.vpp_pc every time you make an adjustment. I tried loading Stilwater Overhauled mods the same way but it would crash so I'm not gonna bother.

EDIT: Forgot to share this one.

The Attriazone fleet. Saints Bling, Lambo, Vice and Ferrari.

 

[werbwub]

After unpacking and looking at the contents of the vpp_pc files for both versions, the only difference is that the gog version has strings for additional languages packed in the vpp_pc unlike the steam version. I'm going to assume that the gog version handles different languages differently and has support for more languages. For example, Steam version doesn't have Japanese as an language option while the gog version has the Japanese strings in the vpp_pc file.

 

[Slav Power]

After unpacking and looking at the contents of the vpp_pc files for both versions, the only difference is that the gog version has strings for additional languages packed in the vpp_pc unlike the steam version. I'm going to assume that the gog version handles different languages differently and has support for more languages. For example, Steam version doesn't have Japanese as an language option while the gog version has the Japanese strings in the vpp_pc file.

Yep, seems like it.

These are the files you're left with once you XOR the GOG installation over the Steam one. Out of all the game files, only the .exe and the patch.vpp_pc are different, and the rest is GOG exclusive stuff.
I ran "language_setup.exe" and looked at what it was doing with Process Monitor. It made a new registry key at "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\GOG.com\Games\1430740458" and added language settings, so yeah, it doesn't matter all that much. Just some GOG exclusive specifics that don't really matter since you'll be doing "forcelang_en" on the EXE shortcut anyways.

So the bottom line is:
-Steam: Juiced will autopatch the .exe to be Steamless and LAA
-GOG: Juiced doesn't need to patch the .exe, will unlock FPS in memory
-the patch files are virtually the same

So you're only left with adding DXVK and installing Stilwater Overhauled. Juiced already handles the biggest wildcard well.

 

[Slav Power]

Yes I'm still at Down Payment, now doing all the CD's and tags. Then after I do Three Kings I'll do the Heli Assault activities and then I can actually start playing the story missions.

On a sidenote, I've taken the vehicle stats from the Saints Row Fandom wiki and converted them into an Excel spreadsheet so that I could filter it properly for comparisons. Maybe someone will find it useful.

 

[Would]

During my yearly playthrough of 1&2 I noticed something within the character creator of 2, something that is pretty explicitly a “slider” for the gender of the character. I wonder how many of the modern day woke grifters would take this, is this pretty based game now woke because of that slider? I’ve seen tards claim wokeness for much, much less.

Can't, because SR2 openly mocks homos and freaks.

I'd consider Saints Row to be "woke" before "woke" was a thing. SR2 onward, you could be a male or female gangbanger. Each gang had both sexes as members. You had Johnny Gat, a bad ass Asian dating a Black, female rapper. I think the first Saints Row had some NPCs in walkers.

Nigga how the purple hell is it woke?
Woke isn't "non-white". In fact, I think most people are glad SR wasn't littered with whites because at release wiggers were (and still are outside of cities) seen as a laughing stock.
Blacks, Asians, and Hispanics in then-contemporary street clothes isn't woke; it's a reflection/parody of American ghetto populations.
Woke isn't "coloreds being cool", it's coloreds being Mary Sues at the expense of whites and for no reason other than the writer's personal wishes. Johnny Gat isn't a badass at the expense of anyone except his victims.
Thinking Johnny Gat walked so General Holdo could suicide dive is ludicrous. Johnny Gat would've shot up the joint after seeing that scene at the cinema.

If the Soy's Row crew were a bunch of alienated youths who banded together out of a necessity to survive as opposed to pay student loans, we wouldn't have this problem.
If they were crass and ruthless thugs who were products of their environment rather than millennial-snark quote machines and 2010's random/irony (sub)urban apartment dwellers, people would've warmed up to them.
If the nerd nigger had more of Lester Crest-personality of a misanthropic genius who has a bone to pick with crony-capitalists and MIC kingpins rather than a pathetic larper with a pseudo-intellectual's understanding of activism/economics, he would've been fine.
If the car beaner proved why she was Panteros stock with her engine knowledge, edgy trigger finger, physical prowess, and short-temper at disrespect rather than cry like a bitch about how the car she takes to criminal activity and treats like a stuntman beater was momma's special car and reduces herself to an oh-so relatable modern kid pretending to be a criminal as opposed to a hardened gangbanger, she might've been the reboot's favorite Saint.
If the zesty Asian were... you know what, I don't think you can salvage the Asian twink. A low-T fruitcake who likes to DJ and joined up with a bunch of hippie not-Marxist domestic terrorist zoomers is just not something I think anyone can rework without a complete scrape and re-write.

Oh, and the bit regarding "proto-woke because you can play as a girl", that was 110% about player freedom to watch some ass on-screen as opposed to today's standards where a female lead is intended as a symbol of liberation and female excellence by the writers and devs. You made a female character in SR2/3 because you wanted to, period. Not because you were going to stick it to the patriarchy or decolonializing yourself.

Calling the original gangsta-Saints Row woke is like calling DooM satanic or GTA a murderer maker.

 

[The Last Stand]

Nigga how the purple hell is it woke?
Woke isn't "non-white". In fact, I think most people are glad SR wasn't littered with whites because at release wiggers were (and still are outside of cities) seen as a laughing stock.

I was being facetious. There were threads here that defined what is considered "woke" in context with video games.

 

[Would]

sr2 boss was a legit sociopath, even the rest of the gang were dude you went too far with the brotherhood

Keep in mind he only had Maero crush Jess with his truck as retribution for the brutal slaying of Carlo.
Dragging a man who had nothing to do with your newfound scar across town in a slow death is not equal to an acid tattoo.
The Boss proved he was not only not a person not to be fucked with, but that any attacks on their underlings WILL be returned tenfold onto yours.
It's psychotically brilliant; it shows your members that as boss you have their backs and will scour the earth to find and annihilate your enemies in revenge, and it shows your enemy that for as crazy and violent as you can be, the Boss is not only adept at playing the same game, but better at it than you.
Maero is so morally defeated he has to go ask Ultor for help. The Punk-Rock outlaw has to go look for the top exec suit to even the odds against the Saints and bring back morale to the Brotherhood.
Not even Gat got to 1-up the Ronin that hard following the death of Aisha. The Boss is the leader for good reason and no one will make a better crime protagonist again in contemporary game development.

 

[Adamska]

I was being facetious. There were threads here that defined what is considered "woke" in context with video games.

There are people who are this fucking retarded by the way, because of course there are. Also no this is not a poe, this motherfucker's serious with the demented list of nonsense that he fails to explain properly.

 

[The Last Stand]

There are people who are this fucking retarded by the way, because of course there are. Also no this is not a poe, this motherfucker's serious with the demented list of nonsense that he fails to explain properly.

Case in point:



I can understand the first entry, but how is 3 and 4 "woke," besides the option to... create a male or female character with limitless options? It doesn't even explain what "subtly pro-LGBTQ+ messaging" IS in context with the games.

AFAIK, Saints Row 2 had the choice to have a male voice with a female body and vice versa. Correct me if I'm wrong.

 

[GeorgeFloydFentanylStash]

SR2 is when the game hits it peak.
Silly enough to be fun, but also knew when it needed to be serious (Carlos being dragged across the concrete was not treated like a joke) when it was called for.

I’m looking to do my first play through when i get home via SteamDeck. Also are the mods easy to install on a Steamdeck so i can have the best SR2 experience?

 

[Prophetic Spirit]

Case in point:

View attachment 7440832

I can understand the first entry, but how is 3 and 4 "woke," besides the option to... create a male or female character with limitless options? It doesn't even explain what "subtly pro-LGBTQ+ messaging" IS in context with the games.

AFAIK, Saints Row 2 had the choice to have a male voice with a female body and vice versa. Correct me if I'm wrong.

The romance "options" in Saint's Row IV are basically parodies of Bioware's ones. Man, even the redhead punches you before kissing you and the bot is a fucking joke, same as trying FISTO in New Vegas.