What it does
Open the game's archives, look inside every file and change them safely. SparkIV reads the files of your own copy of the game; it contains no game data.
Archives
Browse the IMG and RPF archives of GTA IV, The Lost and Damned and The Ballad of Gay Tony.
Cutscenes .cut
Plays the cutscenes with cast, camera, lights, sound and location, lit and shaded the way the game does it.
Models .wdr .wdd .wft
Models in 3D, with their textures and shaders.
Textures .wtd
View and export the textures of a dictionary.
Animations .wad
Play the animations of a dictionary.
Audio .ivaud
Listen to sound banks, including multichannel tracks, and export them.
Scripts .sco
Decompiled or disassembled mission scripts.
Collision .wbn .wbd
See the collision of the map.
Editing
Replace and import files in an edit mode. The original of every file is backed up before SparkIV first writes to it.
Get started
A legally owned copy of GTA IV or Episodes from Liberty City for PC is required.
Download
Get reditec.SparkIV-win-Setup.exe from the releases.
Install
Run it. As the app isn't signed yet, Windows may warn you: choose "More info", then "Run anyway".
Open your game
SparkIV finds the game folder or asks for it. New versions install with one click and show what's new; the channel is set in Settings → Updates.
What's new in 0.9.0 Alpha 6
Released on November 6, 2026. Cutscenes, models and animations are now drawn by SparkIV's own Direct3D 12 renderer: smoother, faster and closer to the game.
- Cutscenes, models and animations are drawn by SparkIV's own Direct3D 12 renderer instead of a web page: much smoother playback, also in busy scenes like the intro's harbour, faster loading, and a picture closer to the game.
- Playback no longer jumps back and forth after pausing and resuming; the picture follows the sound smoothly.
- A cutscene's .wad file opens in the cutscene view with just its section, with its models, place, sound and subtitles.
- The night sky has its stars and the galaxy, and the clouds drift with the time of day.
- The cutscene's own lights and the lamps around light the scene as in the game; glowing signs fade into the haze, and car and ped glass is lit as in the game.
- New "Open file" button (Ctrl+O) opens a single file from disk.
All versions: changelog · release on GitHub
Where it's heading
Version 1.0 will be the first that fully supports GTA IV on PC:
- every file of the game opens;
- all cutscenes look as they do in the game;
- export, edit and import, compatible with OpenIV's openFormats.
Known differences from the game are tracked in the issues.
Open source
SparkIV is free software under the GNU General Public License v3.
It was started by aru in 2008 and carried on by Ahmed Walid and Silent Spud; reditec has rebuilt it as a WinUI app since 2026. Contributions and bug reports are welcome on GitHub.
