Northstar Radio 1.2

• New 3D ambient radio: the radio heard from passing cars is now spatial. The sound pans between your speakers following the car's position relative to the camera, the muffling opens up as the car gets close (a distant radio is all bass; the actual music emerges as it approaches), cars behind the camera sound duller, and a doppler effect shifts the pitch as the car drives past — like real life. Toggle with AmbientRadio3D in [SETTINGS] (on by default; set 0 for the old flat volume-only fade). Requires AmbientRadio = 1.
• Ambient radio reliability: the car a broadcast belongs to is re-checked against the game's vehicle pool every frame, so a car despawning mid-broadcast can no longer leave a stale broadcast behind, and a car that despawns just as its broadcast starts is skipped safely.
• Ambient radio is now silenced during cutscenes and scripted scenes, like the main radio (it previously kept playing underneath them, and could even start mid-scene).
• The radio now switches off the moment you begin exiting a vehicle (or are pulled out of it), like the original game, instead of playing on until the exit animation finishes. Holding exit at speed keeps the radio on until the car is slow enough to actually get out, also like the original.
• Fixed the mouse wheel not working for other menu mods (for example map zoom in menu-map mods) while the pause menu is open — the radio no longer consumes the wheel while the menu or a cutscene is up.
• The car radio is now disabled during the stadium events (Hotring, Bloodring, Dirt Ring), like the original game: the radio stays silent while you're in the event vehicle inside the stadium (this also stops the stadium's own music carrying on outside after the event) and works normally again once you're back on the street. Missions that turn the radio off through the game script are honored too.
• Fixed the station-tuning static getting stuck in a loop when changing stations: switching again while a station was still loading dropped the new station entirely, leaving the static playing with nothing to stop it until you changed station again. The switch is now retried instead of dropped, and the static always stops if a station fails to load.
• Fixed a crash-to-desktop (no error dialog) when a story announcement finished while the radio was turned off on an install with no MP3 PLAYER station (empty mp3 folder): the finished announcement stream was mistaken for a finished MP3 track and the plugin tried to play the next track of a playlist that doesn't exist. The radio now stays cleanly off after the announcement, and invalid station loads are rejected and logged.
• Fixed an uninitialized field in the ambient radio's muffle-equalizer setup.
• Fixed a random crash when getting into a vehicle: the on-screen radio cleanup could read a stale vehicle reference during the split-second the game is seating the player. It now reads the live vehicle and checks it first.
• Fixed the radio still changing station while the pause menu (or a cutscene) is open — the change button and mouse wheel are now ignored there instead of firing the moment you close the menu.
• Fixed the station name briefly showing the previous station when scrolling quickly — the button/wheel is now read in the same frame it is acted on, so the on-screen name keeps up with the dial.
• Fixed a rare silent crash-to-desktop (no error message) when using very large radio files: loading a station that runs out of memory now simply skips that station and keeps the game running, and stations load using less peak memory. Tip: converting large ADF stations to MP3 streams them from disk and avoids the memory cost entirely.

Northstar Radio 1.1

• New radio-icon HUD: optionally show a station's icon instead of its text name when changing stations. Icons are loose PNGs in a "RadioHud" folder next to the asi, each named after its station; the plugin ships the nine Vice City station icons, the MP3 player, and a "radio off" icon. Turn it on/off with [SETTINGS] RadioIconHud (on by default), and size/position it with RadioIconScale and RadioIconY.
• Custom-station icons: map any station to its own PNG in the new [STATIONICONS] section ("Station Name | texturename"), then drop texturename.png in the RadioHud folder. Stations with no icon fall back to the text name.
• Hold to turn the radio off: holding the station-change button (keyboard key or controller button) for about 2.5 seconds turns the radio off; the same "Radio Off" state as scrolling past the last station. A quick tap still changes station.
• Fixed a rare flash of the stock game radio-name banner (top-center, behind the new one) when scrolling through stations; the native radio display is now cleared right before the HUD renders.

Northstar Radio 1.0

Version 1.0:

• Stronger suppression of the original radio: the stock Vice City radio and its on-screen station name are now fully disabled, so the game's radio can no longer play or switch underneath the plugin — including via mouse scroll, the radio key, and the controller button.
• Station name display fixed: it now scales with the game resolution, is slightly larger, and no longer shows a black box behind it when other on-screen text is present.
• Radio volume now matches the game: the new radio follows the menu's Radio Volume slider correctly (re-calibrated so it is no longer roughly twice as loud, and fully silent at zero). The radio pauses while the menu is open and the new level applies when you return to the game.
• New [NORADIO] section: list vehicle model IDs that should have no radio at all — no music, no police radio, no story announcements, and no ambient radio from that model in traffic. Takes precedence over [VEHICLES].
• Story radio announcements restored: the hurricane / bridge-status bulletins now play through the new radio system at the right story moments.
• Mission radio changes honored: missions that set a specific car-radio station now switch the new radio to that station.
• Original Vice City stations now start at the top of the broadcast on a fresh new game, while added/custom stations keep the randomized "already playing" start.
• New [STARTOFFSET] section: open a station at a specific point in its broadcast (for example Flash FM on Billie Jean, like the original intro). Applied to the new-game intro only — loading a save resumes the radio naturally.
• Fixed a bug where the radio could play over the loading screen when loading a save (and could resume a stale station before the player was back in a vehicle).
• Added a Visual Studio project file (NorthstarRadio.vcxproj) so the plugin can be built from source out of the box.
• The radio now goes silent during cutscenes and scripted mission scenes — including a cutscene triggered while you're driving — and resumes when the scene ends.
• The [STARTOFFSET] intro song (e.g. Flash FM on Billie Jean) now plays reliably no matter how long the intro cutscenes run, and continues forward after a radio announcement instead of resetting to the start.
• Audio ducking: the radio now dims while mission characters speak (mission dialogue) and during the "mission passed" jingle, then smoothly returns to full volume — like the original game.
• Fixed the [STARTOFFSET] intro song replaying when loading a saved game — the intro cue now applies only to a genuinely new game (even across a full game restart), and loaded saves always resume the radio naturally.
• Fixed an occasional crash when entering or changing vehicles (and when knocked off a motorcycle), caused by reading the vehicle before the game had finished seating the player in it.
• Vehicles now remember their station for as long as they stay loaded: leave a car or get knocked off a bike, come back any time later, and the same station is still playing (it previously re-randomized after about 5 seconds).
• A different/new vehicle now always starts on its own station (its [VEHICLES] assignment or a random one) instead of briefly carrying over the previous vehicle's station — how close the cars are no longer matters.
• New [SETTINGS] RadioAutoTune option: set to 1 to make the station you're listening to follow you into every vehicle you enter, regardless of distance (off by default).
• Fixed the original Vice City stations restarting from the top of the broadcast after quitting and loading a save — they now resume at a natural spot, and only open at the top on a genuine new game.
• New [SETTINGS] ScriptIntegration option: set to 0 to run the core radio without hooking the game's mission script (no story announcements, mission-radio changes, or ducking) — for total-conversion mods with a custom main.scm where that integration would otherwise crash on missions.
• The default controller button for changing station is now LEFT SHOULDER (L1 / LB) — Vice City's native radio button — instead of D-PAD LEFT.
• Fixed interiors that play their own ambient music/radio (clubs, shops, etc.) being silenced by the radio suppression — they now play normally while you're on foot inside an interior, with the radio still fully suppressed in the open world and in vehicles.

Northstar Radio 0.9

First release, all details are in README.