VCSNative macOS v1.0.4 Beta (Apple Silicon)

Changelog (since v1.0.3)

Graphics (on by default; each can be turned off in the launcher or ini)

• Added 3-pass SMAA 1x anti-aliasing (replaces FXAA when enabled).
• Added a Vice City sky palette: the flat sky and distance fog now follow the in-game clock (pink dawn and dusk, teal days, violet nights). Weather keeps its grey-outs.
• Added a time-of-day colour grade, AMD CAS sharpening and an anti-banding dither (ProperShaders.ini).
• Volumetric clouds are now on by default (about 2ms of GPU time per frame), restyled to match the sky palette and weather.
• Bloom is now on by default, widened and warm-tinted.
• The "Vice Neon" colour grade is now on by default, with saturation and contrast eased (1.18 and 1.05) so it stays natural.
• The draw-distance patch is now on by default.
• Textures now get a full mip chain for sharper distant surfaces.
• Added an optional VHS filter (tape wiggle and colour smear), off by default. Toggle in the launcher (Quality → Post effects) or [VHS] Enabled=true in ProperShaders.ini.

Textures (optional)

• Optional built-in upscaler and surface detail exist as ini options ([Textures] Upscale, Detail), off by default.
• Added an optional higher quality texture pack: VCSNative-TexturePack.zip (7,021 textures, about 613 MB) is attached to this release as a separate download and is not part of the game zip. To install it, open VCSLauncher.app → Quality → Texture pack → Install… and choose the zip, then restart the game. Uninstall removes it. Without the pack the game looks exactly as before.

Changes

• Draw-distance limits: world and model detail capped at 6x, vehicles and pedestrians capped at 2x (higher values made them despawn). Default world distance is now 6x.

Notes

• Vulkan GE backend only. No effect on a default Windows DirectX12 build.

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Native macOS ARM (Apple Silicon) build of GTA: Vice City Stories via a
Vulkan/MoltenVK GE backend, ported from jessicanataliagta's original
Windows/DirectX12 PSPRecomp VCS profile.

What's in this release

• VCSNative.app — the game itself
• VCSLauncher.app — a native settings GUI for VCSNative.ini
  (display/resolution, rendering, addons), with per-setting explanations
• VCSNative-TexturePack.zip — optional higher quality texture pack (separate download; install it from the launcher)

Requirements

• macOS 13+ on Apple Silicon (M1 or newer)
• Your own legally obtained copy of GTA: Vice City Stories PSP game data
  (not included — see the main README for how VCSNative finds it)

Use

1. Download and unzip.
2. Place your own decrypted PSP_DATA folder inside VCSNative.app>MacOS.
3. Open VCSLauncher.app to configure settings, then hit Play — or launch
   VCSNative.app directly to use whatever VCSNative.ini already has.

WARNING: DO NOT use GPU hardware transform, as it is not yet functional and will lead to rendering issues (now off by default).
If macOS says the app cannot be opened run this command in terminal "xattr -cr (drag app here)" and press Enter for both VCSNative.app and VCSLauncher.app

VCSNative macOS v1.0.3 Beta (Apple Silicon)

Changelog

New graphics options (off by default)

• Added raymarched volumetric clouds, ported from ProperShaders/CloudWorks.
• Off by default. Toggle in the launcher (Quality → Volumetric clouds) or [VolumetricClouds] Enabled=true in ProperShaders.ini.
• Vulkan GE backend only. No effect on a default Windows DirectX12 build.
• Adds approximately 2ms of GPU time per frame when enabled.

---

Native macOS ARM (Apple Silicon) build of GTA: Vice City Stories via a
Vulkan/MoltenVK GE backend, ported from jessicanataliagta's original
Windows/DirectX12 PSPRecomp VCS profile.

What's in this release

• VCSNative.app — the game itself
• VCSLauncher.app — a native settings GUI for VCSNative.ini
  (display/resolution, rendering, addons), with per-setting explanations

Requirements

• macOS 13+ on Apple Silicon (M1 or newer)
• Your own legally obtained copy of GTA: Vice City Stories PSP game data
  (not included — see the main README for how VCSNative finds it)

Use

1. Download and unzip.
2. Place your own decrypted PSP_DATA folder inside VCSNative.app>MacOS.
3. Open VCSLauncher.app to configure settings, then hit Play — or launch
   VCSNative.app directly to use whatever VCSNative.ini already has.

WARNING: DO NOT use GPU hardware transform, as it is not yet functional and will lead to rendering issues (now off by default).
If macOS says the app cannot be opened run this command in terminal "xattr -cr (drag app here)" and press Enter for both VCSNative.app and VCSLauncher.app

VCSNative macOS v1.0.2 Beta (Apple Silicon)

Changelog

Rendering

• Vehicle/pedestrian model-detail (low-poly → high-poly) switch distance is now a separate setting from the Vehicles/Pedestrians spawn-range multipliers, with its own launcher slider ("Model detail switch")
• World draw-distance scaling now also applies to clump-type objects, previously excluded
• Bloom's sampling kernel changed from a 13-tap uniform average to a 25-tap weighted Gaussian
• FXAA anti-aliasing now searches along detected edges to determine blend strength, instead of using a fixed 3×3 neighborhood

---

Native macOS ARM (Apple Silicon) build of GTA: Vice City Stories via a
Vulkan/MoltenVK GE backend, ported from jessicanataliagta's original
Windows/DirectX12 PSPRecomp VCS profile.

What's in this release

• VCSNative.app — the game itself
• VCSLauncher.app — a native settings GUI for VCSNative.ini
  (display/resolution, rendering, addons), with per-setting explanations

Requirements

• macOS 13+ on Apple Silicon (M1 or newer)
• Your own legally obtained copy of GTA: Vice City Stories PSP game data
  (not included — see the main README for how VCSNative finds it)

Use

1. Download and unzip.
2. Place your own decrypted PSP_DATA folder inside VCSNative.app>MacOS.
3. Open VCSLauncher.app to configure settings, then hit Play — or launch
   VCSNative.app directly to use whatever VCSNative.ini already has.

WARNING: DO NOT use GPU hardware transform, as it is not yet functional and will lead to rendering issues (now off by default).
If macOS says the app cannot be opened run this command in terminal "xattr -cr (drag app here)" and press Enter for both VCSNative.app and VCSLauncher.app

VCSNative macOS v1.0.1 Beta (Apple Silicon)

Changelog

Performance

• Batch/state-change coalescing for the GPU render loop
• Memoryless/tile-resident depth buffer on Apple Silicon
• -O3 optimization level for the game-logic interpreter (previously -O2)
• NEON-accelerated vertex transform math
• Native Vulkan swapchain present path, now the default presentation path (replaces the previous CPU-readback/SDL present path); includes handling for the software/video-present path alongside it
• Frame rate locked to 60

Rendering defaults

• GPU hardware transform now defaults off (still available as an opt-in toggle)

New graphics options (all off by default)

• Bloom (Vulkan only)
• FXAA anti-aliasing (labeled as FXAA, not SMAA)
• "Vice Neon" color grading preset, tunable
• Texture sharpening (unsharp-mask)

Quality of life

• World draw distance increased (8x); vehicle/pedestrian draw distance at a moderate multiplier
• Metal HUD toggle in the launcher
• Launcher UI and tooltips added for all settings above; debug/validation environment variables forced off on launch

---

Native macOS ARM (Apple Silicon) build of GTA: Vice City Stories via a
Vulkan/MoltenVK GE backend, ported from jessicanataliagta's original
Windows/DirectX12 PSPRecomp VCS profile.

What's in this release

• VCSNative.app — the game itself
• VCSLauncher.app — a native settings GUI for VCSNative.ini
  (display/resolution, rendering, addons), with per-setting explanations

Requirements

• macOS 13+ on Apple Silicon (M1 or newer)
• Your own legally obtained copy of GTA: Vice City Stories PSP game data
  (not included — see the main README for how VCSNative finds it)

Use

1. Download and unzip.
2. Place your own decrypted PSP_DATA folder inside VCSNative.app>MacOS.
3. Open VCSLauncher.app to configure settings, then hit Play — or launch
   VCSNative.app directly to use whatever VCSNative.ini already has.

WARNING: DO NOT use GPU hardware transform, as it is not yet functional and will lead to rendering issues (now off by default).
If macOS says the app cannot be opened run this command in terminal "xattr -cr (drag app here)" and press Enter for both VCSNative.app and VCSLauncher.app

VCSNative macOS v1.0.0 Beta (Apple Silicon)

Native macOS ARM (Apple Silicon) build of GTA: Vice City Stories via a
Vulkan/MoltenVK GE backend, ported from jessicanataliagta's original
Windows/DirectX12 PSPRecomp VCS profile.

What's in this release

• VCSNative.app — the game itself
• VCSLauncher.app — a native settings GUI for VCSNative.ini
  (display/resolution, rendering, addons), with per-setting explanations

Requirements

• macOS 13+ on Apple Silicon (M1 or newer)
• Your own legally obtained copy of GTA: Vice City Stories PSP game data
  (not included — see the main README for how VCSNative finds it)

Use

1. Download and unzip.
2. Place your own decrypted PSP_DATA folder inside VCSnative.app>MacOS.
3. Open VCSLauncher.app to configure settings, then hit Play — or launch
   VCSNative.app directly to use whatever VCSNative.ini already has.

WARNING: DO NOT use GPU hardware transform, as it is not yet functional and will lead to rendering issues

If MacOS says the app cannot be opened run this command in terminal "xattr -cr (drag app here)" and press Enter for both VCSNative.app and VCSLauncher.app

Built from source at commit de03b9a.