Daniel Saner (3503) on 10/27/2008 3:13 AM · Permalink · Report

I am currently playing through the Windows version of Grand Theft Auto again, and came upon a very mysterious and nasty bug. I am currently in Vice City Chapter 1, and have had no problems so far. However, in this level there are two chase missions that I am aware of: in one I have to follow a car to a crack den, and in the other one I should follow another gangster that is about to sing to the D.A. In both missions I am told to find the car that guy is driving, and follow it until he reaches his destination.

But these cars never reach their destination! My target arrow points at them, they drive faster than normal traffic, but they just go around and around the city without any particular destination, forever. Up until this level and these two missions, I had no problems with the game at all. But this happens every time, rendering these missions unwinnable. The only way to end it is to "lose" the car or blow it up, failing the mission.

I was wondering whether this might be a compatibility bug with Windows Vista or 64-bit, which however would be a very weird bug considering how flawlessly everything else works, and that this sort of path-finding algorithm probably shouldn't depend on the operating system much.

Also, I am playing from the original game disc and without any modifications. I found out that ironically, the XP-optimised Rockstar Classics version is almost impossible to get to run, while the original Windows 95 version runs fine.

Is this a known mission scripting bug, am I doing something wrong, or could it really be the Vista influence?