popctl 0.2.0

The crowd limit is the far-ped pool, not a distance.

0.1 patched the off-camera cull and claimed it was why crowds vanish. Tracing every deletion (new TraceRemovals=1) showed that cull never touches a ped you can see. The visible cut-off is the far-pool-full cull: under 12 free of 150 dummy-ped slots the game deletes the farthest, 20 per frame, no visibility test. Stock route: 4,426 of 8,129 deletions, 2,847 on camera at a median 74 m.

0.2:

• replaces that cull with one that never takes an on-camera ped (0 on the same route)
• grows the far pool 150 to 300 with the twelve pools sized to it, verified against stock first, live sizes logged
• keep distances 130 m for on-camera, off-camera and never-seen peds; spawner far edge 105 to 130
• spawns per frame back to stock 8
• README, figures, explainer and trace logs in the repo

Tested dead ends, documented: 450 far peds breaks physics; growing the vehicle pool corrupts memory.

popctl.asi SHA-256 2afd688dacd161810866c377ee39805c1562ec6bac519997eb73a47225989ecd

popctl 0.1.0

First release.

Moves GTA IV's ambient pedestrian and traffic removal radius, the per-frame spawn cap and
the vehicle population statics. Complete Edition 1.2.0.59 only.

Drop the contents of GTAIV/ next to GTAIV.exe and launch. popctl.log records every
patch attempt and its outcome. See README.md for the method, the findings, and the
limitations, including what was deliberately not measured.

popctl.asi SHA-256 e5ee804cb323b75168ac2774d70c3978fa311590ac390e27a5fb30c8b8158dbf

Companion release: https://github.com/gutbash/revd