GTA San Andreas Official Thread

2014-07-03 08:48:27 pm

no savestate mod - if you play it on emulated ps2 there is but obviously that isn't quite ideal

2014-07-04 02:59:56 pm

You could edit the .scm and change the following things (for OG Loc)

1) Start OG Loc on New Game instead of In The Beginning
2) Enable Trip Skip from the start (or change the coordinates for the two markers to be at the same spot as where you spawn)
3) Disable the guy's invulnerability and ability to move, so you can just kill him without having to chase him through the alleys first.

any

2014-07-04 07:40:59 pm

I did find something, but nothing useful for this misson, could be useful somewhere else though.
If you get off the bike and look through the scope of a sniper or camera (right after freddys bike catches on fire) the cutscene will not start until you stop looking. I could even slide down to the pigpen and have a lap dance. I tried the same after the third wave of doberman and it was the same, cutscene didn't start until I lowered the sniper.
I also tried it before the los sepulcros tutorial but that cutscene played, so it probably only works for completed objectives and not trigger zones.

Powdinet

2014-07-05 09:29:35 am

I found out you can headshot the bikers in T-Bone Mendez. This eliminates 3 bikers from the chase, removing most RNG in the mission. However, the positioning is important, and it must be a headshot. Missing, hitting the van, hitting the bikes, or hitting the body of the drivers triggers the cutscene. Not exactly sure how consistent the position in the video is, but I've done it 3 times (once with a M4, which you don't have at that point in the run and twice with the rifle, which you have to conserve all the way from Badlands)

S.

2014-07-05 11:23:27 am

That's old news any.

@ TBM: Looks like an easier variant of the LLS snipes. Also you dont want to pick up that cop bribe, it'll fuck you over during MT. Nice one

K.R.

2014-07-06 11:56:04 pm

Quote from S.:

As Patrick said, the discomfort of knowing that you can input cheats affects performance. Modification of the game has never been allowed except for some visual things (windowed mode), why would it now? If I am allowed to set variable "Can input cheats" to False, I am also allowed to set variable "Perennials can spawn" to False. In both cases all I'm doing is change one single value.

I know I shouldn't do this, but I cannot resist playing the devil's advocate. What is there to actually there to stop anyone from doing just that? If I disabled all cheats, would anyone ever know? If I did some modification, that was not plainly visible (double run speed), would anyone know? In the end, the video that gets uploaded is just a parlor trick. You only see, what the performer wants you to see. If it was me, and inputting a cheat was a real problem, that could possibly ruin whatever attempt, I would go ahead and patch it out, without thinking twice. But that is me. Some other guy might go ahead and increase the run speed by a fraction. You would not see it, but after a 6 hours of gameplay, the difference would be present, if not evident. And the guy might not think twice about it as well. So what is there to stop me from doing it? Just my honor?

[quote="S."]
As Patrick said, the discomfort of knowing that you can input cheats affects performance. Modification of the game has never been allowed except for some visual things (windowed mode), why would it now? If I am allowed to set variable "Can input cheats" to False, I am also allowed to set variable "Perennials can spawn" to False. In both cases all I'm doing is change one single value. [/quote]

I know I shouldn't do this, but I cannot resist playing the devil's advocate. What is there to actually there to stop anyone from doing just that? If I disabled all cheats, would anyone ever know? If I did some modification, that was not plainly visible (double run speed), would anyone know? In the end, the video that gets uploaded is just a parlor trick. You only see, what the performer wants you to see. If it was me, and inputting a cheat was a real problem, that could possibly ruin whatever attempt, I would go ahead and patch it out, without thinking twice. But that is me. Some other guy might go ahead and increase the run speed by a fraction. You would not see it, but after a 6 hours of gameplay, the difference would be present, if not evident. And the guy might not think twice about it as well. So what is there to stop me from doing it? Just my honor?

S.

Edit history:

S.: 2014-07-07 05:48:56 am

2014-07-07 05:48:07 am

Your honor, yes.

Joshimuz

Edit history:

Joshimuz: 2014-07-07 08:45:23 am

Joshimuz: 2014-07-07 08:45:13 am

2014-07-07 08:43:15 am

Why cheat with just modding out cheats? What's to stop anyone cheating in massive ways? Why not increase the speed of all cars by 10% like you say, I doubt anyone without massive scrutiny of the footage would notice.
You could setup a macro for sliding, maybe even look into ways of guaranteeing vehicle spawns.

There are loads of ways someone could cheat if they wanted to. You just have to hope people don't want to

Tuplanolla

2014-07-07 07:07:17 pm

Accidentally typing cheats has a trivial solution. Just use the keys from JOY1 to JOY25 or the ones from MXB1 to MXB25. Keyboards can be mapped at user, kernel or hardware level just like any other controllers.

There is another obvious trick for shortening loading times. Run the game from a memory mapped read only file system. Some operating systems support it out of the box while others rely on extra tools.

One more trick exists that might improve stability. Configure the operating system to zero out all newly allocated memory before handing any of it to the game.

Since the game is written in C or C++ for Windows, the permitted modifications can be found by looking at both the language specification and the platform documentation. For example specifying the contents of newly allocated memory is permitted in section 7.22.3 of N1570 and section 5.3.4 of N3337, whichever the game follows, and in the respective sections of all the other revisions.

wOoX

2014-07-09 05:49:55 am

train, now with 100% less rng

burning desire indoors

tanker comander s pausebuffer works flawlessly when u are in a car, and is hard/impossible on a bike for w/e reason

its possible to save 6-8 seconds with pausebuffer at the end of photo opportunity, however it seem to work exactly half of the time, and i was unable to find any consistent setup, since u cant move camera ( at a high enough speed). best advise i can give is to start pb next frame after taking last picture, learn the point at which it work/(doesnt work), it is always the same one, and act accordingly

pb can potentially save 12 seconds at the end of zero 3(new model army), based on limited testing i did, it seems that lines at the end are independable of one each other, and are likely to be on timer

killing kane asap in los sepulcros is best strat -> grenade is slow

Tirean

2014-07-09 08:09:44 am

killing kane asap in los sepulcros is best strat -> grenade is slow

Grenade is more for preserving HP so you can do shotgun strats in RTF without healing.

S.

2014-07-09 08:55:22 am

You lose health during Los Sepulcros? Never really paid attention to it.

wOoX

2014-07-09 02:08:53 pm

snail trail now with 100% less NRG&RNG

i recomend bike for this as u need to circle and 180s in close quarters, also i recommend circling around pillar infront of entrance to spawn a train. and of course slow down(almost to a dead stop point) before entring station, or ceiling will wreck u

the 4-way split is we take first,second or fourth train VS unrealistic driving back w/ fcr and almost instant switch to nrg

in a nutshell just learn the strat and use it, i would only consider driving back w/ infernus cheetah or banshee

S.

2014-07-11 09:06:44 am

Does this not spawn a freight train occasionaly?

wOoX

2014-07-11 09:35:47 am

#getmoresleep

yes it does, u despanw it. f.e. top left

tduva

2014-07-21 11:24:08 am

Snail Trail (Taxi Spawn, Taxi Driving Route)

In case you didn't notice yet, I have updated the Snail Trail information on the wiki and moved it onto a seperate page: Missions/Snail Trail (I will not put all the details here as well, so I suggest you also check out that page.)

Taxi Spawn
Contrary to what I suspected before, the Taxi spawn (North or South of Market Station) is not determined by how far away you are from it or if you look at it, but rather by a single trigger that stretches over the road south of Market Station. If you are in that trigger area (which is only a few metres high), then the taxi will spawn in the North.

Taxi Route
I checked out a lot of VODs of runs and also tested it myself, paying special attention to the route the taxi takes and how it drives. There seem to be only three routes it can take, which is also supported by the mission script (which is not easy to read for me, because I'm not used to it's structure, so I might be wrong), which shows that the route selection is random:

Code:

:SCRASH2_13794
0209: 50@ = random_int_in_ranges 0 3

After that the local variable 50@ is used to set 127@ to either 1, 2 or 3, which is then used to select the first coordinates to drive to and also to increase 127@ to the next number later, for the next checkpoint. Strangely enough, when checking out VODs some routes still seemed to be more common than others.

The driving part starts at label :SCRASH2_14847 where it can go to one of three "drive_car" opcodes, which are only slightly different:

Code:

05D1: AS_actor 79@ drive_car -1 to 135@ 136@ 137@ speed 25.0 1 model #NULL 2 
05D1: AS_actor 79@ drive_car -1 to 135@ 136@ 137@ speed 70@ 1 model #NULL 5 
05D1: AS_actor 79@ drive_car -1 to 135@ 136@ 137@ speed 70@ 1 model #NULL 2

For one of them the speed is set, for the others it is calculated by the script (capped at 25), but more importantly two of them have 2 as the last parameter, the other 5. I couldn't find any documentation on what that means (maybe someone knows), but from context it seems that with 2 the taxi is running red lights and with 5 he is just swerving around traffic but stopping at red lights. How the selection of which drive_car to take works I'm not sure enough to explain here, but one interesting thing is this statement before the drive_car with the 5 parameter:

Code:

 2 > 129@

The 129@ is increased at the end of this section of code, so after every drive_car basicially. So this should mean that if the number of checkpoints driven to is smaller than 2, then it will use the drive_car without skipping red lights, otherwise it will jump to the other one. So for the route to the first and second checkpoint it will not skip red lights as far as this part of the code is concerned. There is however a drive_car command before that, which seems to be random whether it is called (the code has an if based on a random_int_in_ranges in the section that leads up to it). Again, I'm not sure enough how it works to explain it in detail.

The code seems to support the observation made in VODs and testing (and vice-versa), that the taxi always seems to stop at red traffic lights up to the first checkpoint and sometimes stops at red traffic lights up to the second checkpoint, but never stops after that. Scaring the taxi does not seem to have any effect, as is also demonstrated in this Video comparing trying to scare the driver with the Helicopter vs. following him with a car (and also shows the spawning of the taxi).

Taxi Route Times
I also timed how long the taxi takes from the reporter getting in until he reaches his destination. The main factor seems to be traffic light RNG (whether they are red and whether the taxi decides to skip them), followed by traffic RNG. Traffic lights are not really RNG, but instead seem to be based off the playing time (like weather), however it might as well be interpreted as random in this case, because you can't really control at which exact time you get there. If you would get out of the water early enough to manipulate the spawn of the taxi in the North or South depending on what the traffic lights currently are, it might save some time (because for one he might not stop at the first traffic light for possibly 15-20 seconds), but would probably not be possible with current strats anyway (and it would need to be figured out, which spawn to actually choose).

The times I found range from 2:13 to 3:16, with an average of 2:38. All in all I timed 40 VODs. I decided to time VODs, because loading from a save would result in similiar RNG (or at least the same traffic light cycle unless you wait for a different amount of time before starting the mission, which might still not result in data like you would get from real runs).

All routes seem to be roughly the same length, however the West route seems to be the fastest on average, which may be because there is no additional traffic light up to the first checkpoint (additional as in in addition to the intersection directly at Market Station), whereas both the North-West and the North-East route have at least one additional traffic light up to the first checkpoint, where the taxi will stop at if it's red. After that all 3 routes seems to be pretty similar concerning traffic lights up to their second checkpoint.

[b]Snail Trail[/b] (Taxi Spawn, Taxi Driving Route)

In case you didn't notice yet, I have updated the Snail Trail information on the wiki and moved it onto a seperate page: [url=https://kb.speeddemosarchive.com/Grand_Theft_Auto:_San_Andreas/Missions/Snail_Trail]Missions/Snail Trail[/url] (I will not put all the details here as well, so I suggest you also check out that page.)

[i]Taxi Spawn[/i]
Contrary to what I suspected before, the Taxi spawn (North or South of Market Station) is not determined by how far away you are from it or if you look at it, but rather by a single trigger that stretches over the road south of Market Station. If you are in that trigger area (which is only a few metres high), then the taxi will spawn in the North.

[i]Taxi Route[/i]
I checked out a lot of VODs of runs and also tested it myself, paying special attention to the route the taxi takes and how it drives. There seem to be only three routes it can take, which is also supported by the mission script (which is not easy to read for me, because I'm not used to it's structure, so I might be wrong), which shows that the route selection is random:
[code]:SCRASH2_13794
0209: 50@ = random_int_in_ranges 0 3 [/code]
After that the local variable 50@ is used to set 127@ to either 1, 2 or 3, which is then used to select the first coordinates to drive to and also to increase 127@ to the next number later, for the next checkpoint. Strangely enough, when checking out VODs some routes still seemed to be more common than others.

The driving part starts at label :SCRASH2_14847 where it can go to one of three "drive_car" opcodes, which are only slightly different:
[code]05D1: AS_actor 79@ drive_car -1 to 135@ 136@ 137@ speed 25.0 1 model #NULL 2 
05D1: AS_actor 79@ drive_car -1 to 135@ 136@ 137@ speed 70@ 1 model #NULL 5 
05D1: AS_actor 79@ drive_car -1 to 135@ 136@ 137@ speed 70@ 1 model #NULL 2 [/code]
For one of them the speed is set, for the others it is calculated by the script (capped at 25), but more importantly two of them have 2 as the last parameter, the other 5. I couldn't find any documentation on what that means (maybe someone knows), but from context it seems that with 2 the taxi is running red lights and with 5 he is just swerving around traffic but stopping at red lights. How the selection of which drive_car to take works I'm not sure enough to explain here, but one interesting thing is this statement before the drive_car with the 5 parameter:
[code] 2 > 129@[/code]
The 129@ is increased at the end of this section of code, so after every drive_car basicially. So this should mean that if the number of checkpoints driven to is smaller than 2, then it will use the drive_car without skipping red lights, otherwise it will jump to the other one. So for the route to the first and second checkpoint it will not skip red lights as far as this part of the code is concerned. There is however a drive_car command before that, which seems to be random whether it is called (the code has an if based on a random_int_in_ranges in the section that leads up to it). Again, I'm not sure enough how it works to explain it in detail.

The code seems to support the observation made in VODs and testing (and vice-versa), that the taxi always seems to stop at red traffic lights up to the first checkpoint and sometimes stops at red traffic lights up to the second checkpoint, but never stops after that. Scaring the taxi does not seem to have any effect, as is also demonstrated in this [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwpKrQmCbno]Video[/url] comparing trying to scare the driver with the Helicopter vs. following him with a car (and also shows the spawning of the taxi).

[i]Taxi Route Times[/i]
I also timed how long the taxi takes from the reporter getting in until he reaches his destination. The main factor seems to be traffic light RNG (whether they are red and whether the taxi decides to skip them), followed by traffic RNG. Traffic lights are not really RNG, but instead seem to be based off the playing time (like weather), however it might as well be interpreted as random in this case, because you can't really control at which exact time you get there. If you would get out of the water early enough to manipulate the spawn of the taxi in the North or South depending on what the traffic lights currently are, it might save some time (because for one he might not stop at the first traffic light for possibly 15-20 seconds), but would probably not be possible with current strats anyway (and it would need to be figured out, which spawn to actually choose).

The times I found range from 2:13 to 3:16, with an average of 2:38. All in all I timed 40 VODs. I decided to time VODs, because loading from a save would result in similiar RNG (or at least the same traffic light cycle unless you wait for a different amount of time before starting the mission, which might still not result in data like you would get from real runs).

All routes seem to be roughly the same length, however the West route seems to be the fastest on average, which may be because there is no additional traffic light up to the first checkpoint (additional as in in addition to the intersection directly at Market Station), whereas both the North-West and the North-East route have at least one additional traffic light up to the first checkpoint, where the taxi will stop at if it's red. After that all 3 routes seems to be pretty similar concerning traffic lights up to their second checkpoint.

Attachments:

MarketStation_Taxi_NorthSouth_Trigger.jpg

Snail_Trail_Routes_Waypoints_Routenames.jpg

m381

2014-08-01 11:49:17 am

hi,

i wanted to stream SA too, but OBS just cant capture it? patched it down to 1.01 but just cant get it working.

can anyone maybe help?

Random_Machine

Edit history:

Random_Machine: 2014-08-01 10:17:28 pm

2014-08-01 06:31:47 pm

Quote from m381:

hi,

i wanted to stream SA too, but OBS just cant capture it? patched it down to 1.01 but just cant get it working.

can anyone maybe help?

Try changing the game resolution. There are 2 sets of 32-bit resolutions. Only one set works for the OBS game capture without windowed mode.

m381

2014-08-04 05:29:50 pm

capturing through dxtory and streaming with obs, is the solution i came up with

any

2014-08-10 01:54:04 pm

Josh: The Grove 4 Life duplication you posted (http://www.twitch.tv/m/607529) could possibly be caused by the girlfriend progress happening at the same time you started the mission. I know that progress bar can break CJ free from fixed camera angles, like when you play blackjack, so you are able to move around. There was a video on youtube about it but I can't find it.

Joshimuz

Edit history:

Joshimuz: 2014-08-10 02:38:08 pm

2014-08-10 02:10:54 pm

The progress with Denise bar doesn't pop up for a second after I start the mission though. The reason it pops up is because I'm not in a mission.
CJ says "So you got a plan?" then you hear the "boop" of the bar

Unless the bar takes a long time to process/load then it visual pops up I don't think it could be that. I have no idea what else it could be though

EDIT: http://www.speedrunrecords.com/Grand_Theft_Auto_San_Andreas/thread/kalf9/1#vledo

S.

2014-08-11 07:57:13 am

http://www.speedrunrecords.com/Grand_Theft_Auto_San_Andreas/thread/kalf9/1#vledo go here please yes thanks.

CotySA

Edit history:

CotySA: 2014-12-25 08:38:29 am

CotySA: 2014-12-25 08:37:57 am

CotySA: 2014-12-25 08:37:35 am

2014-12-25 06:15:37 am

Hey,

I´m currently playing the steam version of GTA:SA on Win 7. At some time the mouse just freezes and doesn´t react anymore, pressing ESC multiple times solves it, but this bug occurs so often, that it´s just annoying. Running the game in Windows ME compatibility mode solves the problem durably, but this goes along with weird color errors.

How did you guys solve this problem? Thanks in advance!

Edit: Problem solved, someone already helped me! I run the game now as administrator in XP compatibility mode and I disabled the visual themes.