//====================================// // True Crime: New York City // // Glitch FAQ (v0.2) // // Copyright 2006 Y|yukichigai // //====================================// This FAQ is intended to cover as many of the many many many many MANY serious or otherwise game-altering glitches located in True Crime: New York City, and to list any known solutions or workarounds to said glitches. Glitches are broken up by the missions they occur in; glitches which occur regardless of mission can be found in the General section. (at the top, can't miss it) Glitches come in two main types: . (e.g. IV. Glitch) -- Major or otherwise game-altering glitch. Usually (but not necessarily) will have a cause/solution listed. . (e.g. c. Glitch) -- Minor glitch, with minimal to no effect on overall gameplay, e.g. minor visual errors, audio problems, etc. These can also be glitches which are simply amusing. I have tried to reproduce all of these glitches on my own as best I could, but many are infrequent enough that I have not seen them. I have included those glitches that I have not seen and that have very little documentation, but with no entries for cause/solution. Glitches are tested using the XBox version of True Crime: New York City. (since that's the only version I own) As such this FAQ is written primarily for XBox users, though most glitches occur on all releases of the game. All "official causes" are what were listed on the Activision support website for True Crime: New York City, and are copyright their respective owners. I make no guarantee that this list is complete or even remotely complete, and likely will never be fully complete due to the high number of glitches in the game. If by some miracle I happen to find all glitches in the game then and only then will I mark the FAQ's version as 1.0. If you come across any glitches that I have no details for and remember what you were doing when it happened email me and I'll add your information to the FAQ. Similarly if you encounter a glitch not listed in the FAQ at all send me an email with whatever information you have, e.g. where you were when it happened, what you were doing, what mission, etc. =================== ------------------- CONTACT INFO ------------------- =================== Email me at yukichigai (at) hotmail (dot) com. You can also send a private message to username "yukichigai" at GameFAQs.com, Gamespot.com or TV.com. ------------------- But before you send me an email.... ------------------- DO NOT ASK ME ABOUT "RELATED" GAMES OTHER THAN THE PREVIOUS TRUE CRIME GAME. The only games I have any decent knowledge of in terms of glitches are the two True Crime games and Deus Ex. I CANNOT help you with glitches in other games. DO NOT ASK ME ABOUT HOW TO BEAT DIFFICULT MISSIONS UNLESS IT'S DUE TO A GLITCH. I am not writing a walkthrough; someone else has done that already. Check one of the walkthroughs on GameFAQs for that information. DO NOT EMAIL ME ASKING FOR ADDITIONAL SOLUTIONS TO GLITCHES COVERED BY THE FAQ. If you want to say, "hey, your solution doesn't work for me," that's one thing, but IF I KNEW ANOTHER WAY TO WORK AROUND A GLITCH I'D HAVE INCLUDED IT IN THE FAQ ALREADY! If you email me asking for help on a previously covered glitch I WILL put your email address in my "junk senders" list, ESPECIALLY if you send me something like: "how do U push teh guy off of the crat?" You have been warned.... =================== ------------------- Important Stuff ------------------- =================== At the moment this FAQ is only authorized to be posted on GameFAQs.com and its partner sites. (e.g. Gamespot.com and other CNET partner sites) Any other websites hosting this FAQ are committing copyright infringement. Websites wishing to host this FAQ may contact me and request permission to do so. All trademarks and copyrights contained in this document are owned by their respective trademark and copyright holders. IMPORTANT NOTE TYPE THING: This FAQ is also full of all manner of disrespectful and otherwise rude comments about Activision and the people who coded this game, i.e. my opinions/cynical humor. I have no exclusive or valid insight into what went on in the development of this game, nor have I met any of the people responsible for programming this game. My statements are simply based on many years of watching average game quality go down the crapper. This game just happens to be unlucky enough to bear the brunt of my anger over those things. On the plus side, the result should be mildly funny. =================== ------------------- Glitch List ------------------- =================== =================== PBCAC Glitches (Problem Between Controller and Couch) =================== a. "I keep getting the same random street crime every other crime." NOTES/DETAILS: Every other crime that comes over the police scanner will be the EXACT same crime. Crime may be at a different geographical location but will involve the same building layout, (if inside a building) the same vehicle(s) and the same suspects. CAUSE: Dude, do you not understand "PBCAC"? SOLUTION: Certain suspects will have a triangle icon above their head, indicating they are "key suspects". They can ONLY be take down using non-lethal methods, e.g. neutralizing shots or non-lethal weapons such as the Beanbag Shotgun. IF YOU KILL A KEY SUSPECT YOU FAIL THE MISSION. IF YOU TAKE THEM DOWN AND DON'T ARREST THEM BEFORE THEY "ESCAPE" (fade out) YOU FAIL THE MISSION. This applies to random street crimes as well. If you fail a random street crime then you must do it over and over again until you get it right. In short, STOP KILLING KEY SUSPECTS. =================== General =================== I. Gameplay suddenly freezes. A loud buzzing may also be heard when this occurs. NOTES/DETAILS: This is one of the more frequent and severe glitches to occur, and is identical to the freezing glitch found in the previous game in the series, True Crime: Streets of L.A. This seems to occur more frequently on the XBox version of the game than the PS2 version. Once the game has frozen there is no way to get it working again short of resetting the console. CAUSE: No official cause. My guess is that someone cut and paste a large chunk of code from the first game without bothering to check how stable it was. SOLUTION: For most players there is no way to outright avoid this problem, though certain actions have a significantly higher chance of initiating a freeze. Players who have modded their XBoxes may find that "installing" the game to the hard drive drastically reduces the frequency of freeze-ups. PS2 players may have similar success using products such as HDD-Loader to do something similar, though I have not been able to test this. II. Compass-map and entire HUD disappear during gameplay, shading effects look strange and menu is unviewable. NOTES/DETAILS: Perhaps the most common "severe" glitch in the game, this seems to occur randomly, though usually when you are driving a vehicle at night. You may be able to see an outline where the compass-map should be on the screen. You may also see a distorted version of the license plate background from the menu flash across the screen on occasion, and blur with certain elements on screen. CAUSE: According to Activision's website, this occurs when the weather changes from/to rain or snow for an unspecified reason. Personally I have seen this happen at other times than that. SOLUTION: Usually this glitch will go away after a few seconds, though in rare cases it can stay for several minutes. (or seemingly indefinitely) Resetting the game in these rare instances will resolve the problem. III. When entering or exiting a car, if another car scrapes along the side you are entering/exiting you will take massive amounts of damage. NOTES/DETAILS: The amount of damage depends on how long the car scrapes along the vehicle you are entering/exiting. While I cannot state a specific damage rate per second it is very high, likely 3000+ per second. (enough to kill you outright in the Redman Bonus game most of the time) CAUSE: No official cause. This is what you get when you "encourage" your coders with bullwhips. SOLUTION: No known solution. IV. All vehicles on the road are Police Cruisers or parked Sedans. (CODENAME: "COPLAND") NOTES/DETAILS: This can occur at any time, but almost always happens when you return to the "Free Roam-Time" mission, be it from another mission or even from entering and exiting a store/building/etc. You will usually see a large number of Police Cruisers in traffic with maybe one or two "normal" cars, and may occasionally see a variety of vehicles in cross-traffic in the distance. A short time later the only moving vehicles you will encounter on the road will be Police Cruisers. Additionally, any parked cars you find on the side of the road -- if there are any -- will be Sedans. (Look like Crown Victorias) You will likely find the streets completely devoid of pedestrians as well. Fortunately the Cruisers are not bad vehicles at all, so while you're trying to clear up the problem you can at least drive around in relative style. CAUSE: No official cause. Only appears after the game has been running for an extended period of time, indicating a possible flaw in the random number generator used for picking which cars to spawn. SOLUTION: A number of possible solutions exist, though only one is guaranteed: 1) Save your game and reset the console using either a Hard (button) or Soft (controller) reset, then load your game. This is the only guaranteed solution. 2) Enter a building or business and stay for a short period. Sometimes this is impossible however, as Copland usually seems to occur when all shops are closed, even during the daytime. 3) Commandeer a non-Sedan (Cruisers are just Sedans with sirens) vehicle and drive for a few blocks. Unless by fluke a "normal" vehicle is parked on the side of the road or some of the distant "normal" traffic glitches and causes a collision-injury you will have to wait until you get a random crime specifically involving a non-Sedan vehicle. 4) Go to a Police Box/Headquarters and bring out one of your vehicles from the garage. Once it's been pulled around get in and drive for a few blocks. This is easier than number 3 if you happen to be near a Police Box, but it may take more time than simply restarting, especially because it is not guaranteed to solve the problem. As mentioned, the only guaranteed solution is number 1. All other solutions may not work immediately or at all. V. After the end of a mission involving an interrogation, the player doesn't receive any calls from informants and has no informant missions left to do. NOTES/DETAILS: This is usually only noticed when the player fails an interrogation, but can happen regardless of whether or not the interrogation at the end of the previous mission was successful. CAUSE: As listed on Activision's website, occurs when the "voice" volume is set to 0. Basically new informant missions are triggered by phone calls being played, and setting the volume to 0 stops them from being played. Wow, way to code for contingencies guys. SOLUTION: Set voice volume to something above 0, and reload from your last save. ------------------- a. Headlights on cars will occasionally point upwards, rather than forwards. NOTES/DETAILS: Though sometimes hard to spot, headlights on vehicles may occasionally "shine" upwards, usually only on vehicles you are not driving. CAUSE: Even if I knew, would you really care? SOLUTION: No solution. Point at the car and laugh if it makes you feel better. b. A car/my car suddenly shot high into the air around Hwy 9a & 10th Ave. NOTES/DETAILS: This occurs somewhat rarely, only when a car is driven slowly over a particular section of curb on a frontage road parallel to Highway 9a, near 10th Avenue, where a gap in the road surface is located. This is likely only present in the XBox version of the game. CAUSE (Long Version): The physics engine used by TC: NYC is not a incredibly precise engine, and (apparently) uses some math tricks to function. The physics engine does however scan for nearby terrain and ensures that any object moving in any direction stays at or above the level of the terrain. This is what lets you walk up stairs in the game, in fact walk on the ground in general. However, when an object is located BELOW the terrain the physics engine breaks down. It is likely that it only performs x update checks per second and assumes that if an object is y units below the terrain then it was traveling at y times x units per second. For the player and NPCs this does not matter, but cars and many other objects bounce. In this particular case the tires of the vehicle fall through a small gap in the surface of the road, then when the horizontal velocity of the car carries the tires under another solid chunk of road the physics engine assumes that the tires, being y units under the terrain, were traveling at y times x units per second downward, and thusly corrects their position and applies a velocity somewhat less than y times x units per second in the opposite direction to the car. In practice this velocity in units per second seems to translate to about 120 miles per hour, the velocity getting higher the farther the tires dip below the surface of the road. CAUSE (Short Version): Physics engine behaves weirdly when things fall into holes in the map. Because the poor mappers for TC: NYC were actually Vietnamese slave laborers chained to workstations for 20 hours a week, paid only in pocket lint and dried prunes, there are a number of small, near impossible to detect gaps in the surface of the road in a few places, including at this particular curb. SOLUTION: Drive over it fast, or avoid it. Then again, it's pretty fun to launch your car 6 stories in the air. c. Selected car color when purchasing vehicle doesn't match actual color, nor do any subsequent paint jobs. NOTES/DETAILS: This glitch seems to occur when you cycle through the possible choices for car color multiple times after initially purchasing the vehicle and then cancelling the purchase menu, thereby undoing the purchase. You will see the paint job you desire in the preview window, but when exiting the Dealership you will find that the car is a different color, likely the default color or color you initially purchased it in. You will be able to change the paint job at a mechanic's shop and the color you select will match the color of the car, but once you return to the Police Garage the preview for the car will display a different color. CAUSE: No official cause. Likely another rush coding error. SOLUTION: The only viable solution is to reset the game and load the game at a point prior to the purchase of the vehicle. Once loaded simply purchase the vehicle with the desired color without cancelling the purchase. If no save exists before the purchase of the vehicle then the best that can be done is to change the color at a mechanic's shop so that the actual color matches the desired color; the color in the preview window of the Police Garage will remain incorrect. d. Flamethrower continues to fire after player is knocked down. NOTES/DETAILS: This only occurs if you're knocked down by something while you are in the process of firing the flamethrower. It is highly unlikely that this glitch will be seen outside of the Redman Bonus game, as that is one of the few times when an NPC will run towards you unarmed when you are firing the flamethrower. The flame that is shot will damage anything it hits, though it will be aimed mostly upwards. CAUSE: No official cause. Game likely requires code to un-trigger any weapons held by the player when tackled, but is lacking that functionality. SOLUTION: The flamethrower will only cease firing once the player gets back up or drops the weapon, at which point it will function normally. e. Precinct has been cleaned up, but "Precinct Cleaned" message never appeared on screen and Marcus did not receive a phone call from the Chief. NOTES/DETAILS: N/A CAUSE: No official cause for this specific issue. However, another glitch listed on their site occurs because certain events in the game only occur after the player receives a phone call, which will not happen if the in-game volume is set to 0. This glitch may be caused by the in-game volume being set to 0, though it can occur even when the in-game volume is not at 0. SOLUTION: Make sure the in-game volume is set to something above 0. This glitch may still occur infrequently, however. =================== Palermo Mob =================== ------------------- Bad Accounting ------------------- I. After cuffing a suspect on the edge of the moving bookcases Marcus and the suspect disappear as though they've been gibbed, but Marcus isn't dead. (CODENAME: "GHOST-WHO-WALKS") NOTES/DETAILS: This occurs when you KO as suspect from behind while near the sliding bookcases, then arrest them. In the process of the arrest animation Marcus and the suspect will move into the closed bookcases, which will gib him. (For those of you not familiar with the term, "gib" is when a person is reduced to little more than a blood splat and some chunks o' flesh) However, since Marcus is invulnerable while arresting a suspect you will still be able to play, just with no body. You can still shoot, punch and grab NPCs, and they can still see Marcus somehow, despite the fact that he has no tangible form. A lack of tangible form also means that you can manuver through solid objects and cannot be hit by bullets or anything else. The lack of tangible form will carry over temporarily to anybody you grab, though they will reappear as soon as you release them. (in one way or another) This glitch should not prevent you from completing the mission. CAUSE: No official cause. Likely due to the way the gib effect of the sliding bookcases is coded, i.e. it doesn't check to make sure the gib-ee's health is at zero before it destroys the body. SOLUTION: There is no way to restore Marcus' body other than restarting the mission from the beginning. Fortunately this glitch makes completing the mission easier than normal, so long as you don't wander too far outside the walls of the level. ------------------- Vertigo ------------------- I. An armed goon walks through the elevator wall at the last elevator stop. NOTES/DETAILS: Occurs if you shoot the goons coming out of the elevator the first chance you get with a high damage weapon, most likely a Tactical Shotgun dropped by an earlier goon. Either the force of the shot or the falling body of one of the goons will push the last goon back into the elevator just as the doors close. The trapped goon will most likely remain inside the elevator until you proceed across the wooden planks, at which point the goon will walk through the wall of the elevator. CAUSE: No official cause. Likely due to surfaces inside the elevator not being made collideable, as the elevator is not supposed to be reachable, combined with inopportune placement of the goons. SOLUTION: Avoid shooting at the goons until the elevator doors are closed. If a goon is trapped inside the elevator already simply strafe around it until he walks through the elevator wall. =================== Shadow Tong =================== ------------------- A Bad Crowd ------------------- a. Goth Leader continues to shoot flame when knocked down or even when unconscious. NOTES/DETAILS: This only occurs if you knock the Goth Leader down as he is shooting flame. The flame will continue to do damage as it is shot, though it will most likely be aimed in a mostly upwards direction. CAUSE: No official cause. Code executed when knocking down an NPC likely needs to un-trigger any weapons the NPC is holding, but missing that functionality. SOLUTION: There is no way to stop the Goth Leader from shooting flame when knocked down. It will stop when he gets up again, unless he is unconscious. Just avoid the path of the flame in the meantime. ------------------- Human Cargo ------------------- I. Unable to push Tommy off of the cargo crate when prompted to. (CODENAME: "TOMMY") NOTES/DETAILS: This glitch is usually only reported by XBox players, though a few PS2 reports have shown up to my knowledge. When in the grapple with Tommy atop the cargo crate you will eventually be prompted to press a button to throw him off, but nothing will happen. Often times the "