General FAQ

• Chat rules Explained
  • Rule 1: Don't lower the chat quality.
  • Rule 2: Speak English.
  • Rule 3: No Backseat/Tech Support etc.
• What are your PC specs?
  • What is your Sim Rig?
• Why don't you use Channel Points?
• WHERE IS TRUE 100%+?!?!?!?!

General GTA FAQ

• How are you instantly reloading your weapon?
• What are you doing with the camera?

GTA:SA FAQ

• General

  • Why did you blow up Ryder's car?
  • How do you slide / What is sliding?
  • Why are you flicking the camera up and down?
  • What mods are you using for the game?
  • What's ESA HYPE.bat?
  • What is OHKO?
  • What is Rainbomizer?
  • What's up with the frame rate / What does 30-5 FPS mean?
  • Why do you restart the game after every run?

• Any% FAQ

  • What is this? / Why is Any% "Dead"?
  • Does this mean Normal/Old/Classic Any% runs are gone?
  • What version of the game are you playing? / Why does the game look weird? / What mods are you using?
  • What's the plan? / How do you do it? / What's the route?
  • Why avoid Vending Machines?
    • Why only avoid them sometimes?
  • What's the Arcade Machine for? / Why are you blowing yourself up?
    • Why not use CJ's game console?
  • Why not use a timer to help time the Vigilante cancel?
  • Why is this run so hard?

• Any% (No AJS) FAQ

  • What does No AJS mean?
  • What is duping?

• No Major Glitches FAQ

  • What are Major Glitches?
  • Why are you swimming randomly?

• DYOM Speedruns FAQ

  • What is DYOM?
  • How do you speedrun it?
  • Why don't you use Vending Machines (or other things)

GTA:VCS FAQ

• What is GTA:VCS?
• What are you playing this on?
  • Why not PSP?
  • Why not PS2/3/4?
  • Why not PPSSPP/PCSX2?
  • Do you know about the SA VCS mod?
• Why are the graphics so bad?
• What is duping?
• What is PACB?
• Why do you "Save n' Quit"?
• Why do you go out of bounds?
• How did you buy this, I can't find it on the PS Store?

This is the main rule. It's a bit hard to explain exactly what I mean by this, but imagine the difference between a League of Legends (or any other very large esport) chat without moderation, slow mode, sub-only etc., and a friendly 5 viewer stream where everyone in chat knows each other. One is just thousands of people screaming all caps / copy pasta / ascii art into the void, while the other is just a bunch of friends chilling out and having a conversation with each other.

Basically what I'm asking is that wherever possible, we all try our best (me included) to keep the chat a "high quality" fun place where we all act like normal human beings talking to each other, as opposed to a bunch of screaming where no one actually communicates.

There's a time and a place for the massive chat rooms going berserk for sure, but I would prefer if we didn't do that here (outside of epic/funny moments or whatever).

This one might seem like a strange one, as if I'm z trying to protect "power hungry mods" or something, but it isn't that—it's about chat quality.

Asking why someone/yourself got timed-out/banned in chat can have the result of starting a big argument between everyone, and sometimes it's hard to explain the reasoning for something in Twitch chat. Asking these questions is fine elsewhere, but specifically doing it in the public chat room during a stream just leads to so many more headaches and overall "chat quality" loss.

This instance of "tilt" means when someone in a competitive setting begins to get agitated about things in the game, thus making more mistakes as they "reel" from the previous mistakes.

What I mean by "tilting Josh/Chat" here is when bad things happen to me and people send messages which just make my mindset worse. A common example is when people say "reset / run's dead" when something bad happens. I know it seems totally innocuous and like a tiny thing, and one person doing it once is fine. However, the problem arises when the mood in chat changes and people start focusing on the bad things / mistakes etc., or when multiple people over a long period of time say the small things. Honestly, this is more a flaw with me than anyone else. I have tried over the years to just "deal with it" / "ignore it" but I just simply can't, I'm sorry.

If you start speaking another language only a fraction of people in chat will understand what you are saying, making your message pointless spam to everyone else. Even if you only post a simple "hello" in another language, what happens is that other people who do speak that language then try to also talk to you in that language.

Another problem is moderation, I only speak English and the moderators only speak a handful of languages, letting people speak in whatever language they want means we can't effectively moderate what is being said, stuff could be spambots or really hateful for all we know.

Long story short:

Hundreds of people shouting advice at once isn't helpful, it's harmful. It derails the stream/chat and lowers chat quality as well as being not useful advice and very stressful.

A lot of people don't actually know what they're talking about or just want to be funny or troll. Even if you actually are knowledgeable and correct about a thing, I need to know you are, otherwise I must assume that you aren't knowledgeable. The "default" must be that I cannot trust everyone.

People can join the stream after details about a problem have already been explained or solutions already tried, and then ask about the same details / suggest already tried solutions / misunderstand the problem because of it, and then we just enter a horrible chat cycle of going around and around the same details/solutions forever.

I understand most people just want to help and I appreciate that, but it just isn't helpful. If you really do want to help with a long term issue, please message me privately as this avoids the above problems. I don't not want help, I don't want it specifically in Twitch chat.

• Stream/Main PC: "Phantom-MKIV"

  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3900x

  • GPU: MSI GeForce RTX 4060

  • RAM: 32GB DDR4-3000

  • Motherboard: ASUS PRIME X570-PRO

  • Storage:

    • Crucial P1 1TB M.2 NVMe SSD (Main drive)

    • Kingston SSDNow V300 240GB SSD

    • A bunch of various HDDs for high quality local recordings and bulk storage

• Gaming PC: "4000D-MKI"

  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 4.2 GHz

  • GPU: ASUS GeForce RTX 3070 (thanks faye :3)

  • RAM: 64GB (2 x 32GB) DDR5-6000 CL30

  • Motherboard: Gigabyte B650 AORUS ELITE AX ATX AM5

  • Storage:

    • Samsung 990 Pro 1TB M.2 PCIe 4 NVME SSD (Main drive)

    • Two Samsung 990 Pro 2TB M.2 PCIe 4 NVME SSDs in Raid 0 (Game drive)

• Laptop: MSI Katana GF66

  • CPU: Intel i7-11800H

  • GPU NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3060 (the Laptop one, not the Desktop one)

  • RAM: 16GBs of DDR4 I guess?

  • Storage: 512 GB SSD

• Peripherals:

  • Keyboard:

    • Keychron Q6 UK ISO Knob Edition

    • (Backup) Razer Blackwidow Ultimate 2013 (ones released past 2013 didn't use Cherry MX switches and are bad)

  • Mouse:

    • Steelseries Aerox 9 Wireless

    • (Backup) Corsair Scimitar PRO

  • Headset: Sennheiser PC 360 (Highly recommend, I've had it for like 6 years it's 100% fine)

    • This headset finally died, RIP. Lasted 8 years before I finally broke the cable. I replaced it with a Sennheiser Game One which is basically the same headset but with a removable cable!

  • Microphone: AT2020 XLR Microphone

  • XLR AMP/Mixer: GOXLR Mini

  • VR Headset: HTC Vive

  • Wheel and Pedals: Heavily modified Logitech G29

  • Monitors: LG 27Gl850-B and two TVs

  • Camera: Sony a5000 Mirrorless Camera

  • StreamDeck XL

  • Capture cards:

    • AVerMedia GC573 (For game consoles/general capturing)

    • Elgato HD60 Pro (For the Camera)

  • Desk: Flexispot EZ1 Standing Desk

• Wheel Base: ClubSport Wheel Base V2.5

• Wheel Rim: Porsche 918 RSR

• Pedals: CSL Elite with additional Loadcell addon pedal for brakes

• Shifter: G27 Shifter plugged in directly through hacky Leo Boddar USB adapter, mainly to use as a button box

• Rig: GT Omega Pro Cockpit

Long story short: I don't like them.

Long story long: todo

Long story short: Hard to make, people obnoxious, low motivation, idk lol.

Long story long:

(This was originally a YouTube comment by me, so sorry if the formatting/wording is bad)

I get sick of doing SA, right now I'm taking a break from it (because I've been running it for like 18 months straight), so I don't want to do it right now. And when I am running SA I get sick of it real fast. Unfortunately for True 100%+ fans, I'm a speedrunner first and foremost, and it's my "job" to stream it, so unless I have enough SA resistance to do BOTH speedruns and True 100%+ at the same time, I'm doing speedruns (or neither like right now). If I don't want to do True 100%+ the episodes will just be really bad, and despite what people think, no episodes are better than bad episodes.

True 100%+ got really complicated really fast. Now that I'm doing missions I have to be really careful with everything I do. I have to research if there is any content I can miss, any dupes I can do, any glitches I can show, any special vehicles I can get, will I despawn the Hydra, will I lose a Girlfriend, what will I unlock, what phonecalls will I need to take (and lose), etc etc. Back when I just ran around and did stuff in LS for the mastersave, it was a lot easier to do, but now it's really hard and takes a lot of pre-production work (research, testing, routing/planning etc.) to even start to make one.

I have a lot of side projects/Steam projects now. Back when I started the series I just streamed speedruns and that was it, I needed more stuff to do. But now I'm:

• Streaming speedruns (main income source and my "job")
• On a podcast
• Broadcasting/commentating iRacing
• Helping to organise and lead the fundraising team for ESA (as well as actually donation reading/hosting)

Then I also have lots of short term/timely stuff:

• Recently I organised and ran JDQ (and that was pretty stressful)
• I'm still trying to catch up with Highlights
• I was doing crazy modded SA runs around special events
• I was speedrunning in various marathons (Bingothon, ESA, QuickCade come to mind)
• I restarted and ran an MTA server
• I made a video game for a GameJam and then tried to make it a longer term thing
• I play/stream other things sometimes too (when the SA bois allow me)

I could go on but it just turns into me complaining about how "hard" my streamer life is, but that isn't the point, the point is that I'm busy and True 100%+ takes a lot of time.

There is next to no income generated by True 100%+, this is because no one wants to advertise on GTA:SA on YouTube (probably because it's both a GTA game and they say very naughty words a lot). The Minecraft Dungeons AFK farm video I made in like 30 minutes has made more money for me than every True 100%+ video combined in advertising. Obviously money isn't the only reason to make things (otherwise I never would have in the first place), but I have bills and stuff like everyone else, I need to spend my time wisely and do the things that actually make me money. In an ideal world I don't need to worry about this and this point can be deleted, but I'm not rich. And no, I'm not making a Patreon.

The next episode (which is Episode 40, not 41, the April Fools one doesn't count) is a Basketball commentary episode and the gameplay recording was really easy to do, so I did it. The problem was, I never found the time to do commentary/editing/etc., and now it's been so long that if I actually do it, people are going to be really angry at the timestamp on the save file and be like "OMG YOU SAT ON THIS FOR OVER A YEAR!?!" or whatever (don't try to convince me that they won't). So in order for me to actually finish that episode I probably have to make the one after that at the same time and release both or something, either that or re-record the gameplay or try to hide the time stamps, but both of those options seem disingenuous. Also since it's just a Basketball episode it won't exactly be the most thrilling thing ever.

I get so much hate over True 100%+ (and it creates annoying drama) that it really incentives me to just not do it. Not every comment I ever get is bad, but we're at the point now where every single YouTube video I ever upload is just swarmed by people being obnoxious over True 100%+ and I feel like my own YouTube channel is being held hostage, like everything I upload that isn't True 100%+ is just doomed, and even if I did upload one, all the comments would just be "OH ABOUT TIME YOU FUCKING ARSEHOLE" and "SEE YOU IN 2 YEARS GUYS XD". "Oooohh you shouldn't listen to comments" etc etc., but what people don't understand is one shitty comment is whatever, ignore the arsehole, but 1000 shitty comments will really hurt you. Like TotalBiscuit used to say: "Comments are like papercuts, one hurts, 1000 will kill you".

I hate video editing (no, you can't edit them for me, I either pay someone to do it or I do it myself).

todo: Add more reasons I remember here

Regardless of all that, I'm sorry I kinda just abandoned it and was always super inconsistent with it, I never expected it to be super popular or anything and kinda set everyone up for disappointment.

It's not "cancelled" whatever "cancelling" a YouTube series means (like if I say it's "cancelled", what's stopping me just making another one in the future lol, it's not like I'm firing a bunch of production crew or not renewing a contract or something). If you really want to hear it for some reason, here you go: "True 100%+ is cancelled." There, happy? What changed? My YouTube channel didn't spontaneously combust or anything.

Anyway, basically: I don't know when the next episode is. But just know that by NOT asking me for it constantly, you're helping me slowly want to do it again. I'm sure I will eventually, unless I die or something. If that happens then idk, get some SA speedrunners together and finish it for me.

Switching between weapons automatically reloads the weapon for you. The exact details vary between games, but most (if not all) the GTA games have this "glitch".

Most if not all the GTA games have funky traffic manipulation with the camera. In III and VC if you go fast enough and look away from your direction of travel, no traffic will spawn. In SA if you flick the camera down and up, you can respawn/despawn the far away traffic that you're looking at. In IV and EFLC if you look down, you allow cars (Taxis!) to spawn in front of you as they don't like to spawn when you can see them pop in.

It saves about 40–50 seconds. Failing certain missions allows you to skip normally unskipable cutscenes later in them. Currently this is the only practical mission we have found this usage for, as it is easy to just kill Ryder and restart the mission and it skips a sizeable cutscene.

Watch this awesome video by tduva: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXVSs0uQU9U

tl;dw: I get to move faster in certain areas by doing certain inputs while using certain weapons.

I do this to de/re-spawn the traffic which is in the distance in front of me. This can be useful in certain spots to make the road in front of me clear, but it still relies on RNG, meaning sometimes a car can just spawn directly in front of me and screw me over.

None. (Unless otherwise specified like OHKO, Chaos, etc.)

Simply put, it runs SA on one CPU core, and skips introduction sequences when booting up the game, resulting in fast loading times. It's explained here: https://youtu.be/5pT2iZU6FII?t=1040.

@echo off
start /affinity 2 gta_sa.exe -skip
exit

Depending on whatever your game's EXE file is labeled you'll need to change it.

One Hit Knock Out. Basically, you die in one hit. Its just a fun mod made by Lighnat0r to add an extreme challenge to the game.

You can download it here http://www.speedrun.com/gtasaohko/resources (Just run the .exe while playing the game)

todo

Rainbomizer is a mod for GTA San Andreas that randomizes many aspects of the game. It allows for a replay of the game in a new, fun way. The mod randomizes everything from traffic, vehicle colours, vehicle handling, mission vehicles, weapons, cutscenes and even the missions! You can get it here: https://rainbomizer.com

Imagine a pie. Think of it like a clock. The pie represents 1 second, you go around the circumference over the course of the second, like a clock that only measures 1 second instead of a whole day. If you take the pie and cut it into 60 different slices, you have 60 slices a second evenly distributed across 1 whole second. The slices are frames. 30 frames a second would be 30 evenly distributed slices etc. The whole pie is still there, just cut up into slices of time. You get a nice consistent frame rate around the whole second. The bigger the slice, the longer you see that frame on the screen until you get to the next slice.

What I mean when I say that SA's frame rate is 30 minus 5 is that the pie is cut up into 30 slices, so the pacing of the frames is that of 30 seconds, but 5 of those slices/frames are missing. This creates gaps in the pie, for some of the pie you get a new slice consistently as you should, but then all of a sudden one slice is missing. You sit on the last slice/frame until you get over the gap from the missing one and finally onto a new one. This means that 5 of the frames every second remain on the screen for twice as long as the other 20.

The reason I take care to explain it as such is that this is different to just 25 frames a second. That would be 25 slices in our pie, evenly distributed across the whole second, nice and smooth. Not as smooth as having more slices, but still fine. What SA does is much worse, what I'm explaining here is a frame PACING issue, not a frame RATE one. The amount of frames in the second is 25, but they are paced extremely poorly, which makes it way worse than just pure 25 frames a second.

(copy pasted from tduva in my discord) The game doesn't reset some memory values when starting a new game or loading a save, so progress of certain skills (such as lung capacity, max health or cycling skill) and other things may be carried over. When loading a save during a run that's fine, because the progress has been achieved during that same run, but for starting a new game/run closing and restarting the game ensures that everything is reset properly. Detailed explanation on skills (and how they reset or don't reset): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7cR4U5KJ00

The run is based on a new skip found by Powdinet on 5/10/2019 after 3 years of research, starting with the original PC version of the game and Boat School and (probably) ending here. The skip takes us from Ryder (the second mission of the game) to End of the Line Part 3 (the final part of the final mission of the game), which as you can imagine is quite the substantial skip. The issue with it however is that it is extremely difficult to pull off.

No! These runs are not lost, not ruined, and will be still be ran as much as they always were! They simply have their own category called "Any% No Arbitrary Jump in Script" or Any% No AJS for short which bans this skip. This exact scenario (massive glitch found to skip the whole game) has already happened to Vice City (and lots of other speedruns!), and what happens is that there is an initial rush to the "new" Any% but then everyone goes back to running the "fun" run instead.

I'm playing the Windows Store version because the skip only works on this version with this exact mission script (Not the mobile versions or the other 10 year anniversary versions). Unfortunately this means I have to play one of the worst renditions of the game that was released. The stupid shaders and GUI look like some kind of crappy mod, the frame rate is shit, and worst of all the controls are TERRIBLE. It feels like I'm using a Keyboard and Mouse to emulate a Touch Screen which is emulating a PS2 Gamepad; I have to hold Right Click then hold Left Click, then release Right Click and then release Left Click in order to Aim a gun AND shoot at the same time, and I can't even lean forwards/backwards on bikes. Inputs randomly activate and get stuck (I'm sure while you were reading this I've already screamed "CONTROLS" on the stream/video). It's impossible to describe just how awful the controls are unless you've tried it yourself.

I need to cancel Vigilante either 82061, 82063, 82070, 82071, 82073, 82077 or 82093 milliseconds after the game starts, then get an OM0 phone call by using the Go Go Space Monkey arcade machine and Grenades and then start the Ryder mission. Then during Ryder use the OM0 phone call to regain control, keep the cutscene going indefinitely by pausing and dupe the mission. Then finally blow up Ryder's car (not a joke), start Vigilante and get off the bike all at the perfect time to start End of the Line (Part 3). If the game crashes instead, I most likely didn't cancel Vigilante on the correct millisecond at the start of the run.

I might write a long version here at some point, for now just read the Reddit post and then come back: https://redd.it/ddrsfd

The biggest difference is using the Arcade Machines to get an OM0 call instead of Burglary/Safehouse.

After cancelling Vigilante at the start I need to avoid updating the $CURRENT_TIME_IN_MS2 value to the actual current time in milliseconds. Lots of things in the game update this value and unfortunately Vending Machines are one of them. This means I have to avoid going too close to a Vending Machine or I will be unable to preform the skip, thankfully I know where they are and can take detours around them.

When a new game is started or a game is loaded the first Vending Machine you encounter does not update the value, so we get one "Free Pass" Vending Machine every run/reload. This "Free Pass" is used on the Vending Machine outside the Grove Street bar when entering to get to the Arcade Machines. In addition to this, the value only needs to be set once (around 7:46 ingame time) and it is safe to go near Vending Machines before that point if I do not need the "Free Pass".

By cancelling and restarting the Go Go Space Monkey Arcade Machine you can regain control of CJ while leaving the minigame running in the background. This minigame persists when you die, so by using Grenades (that we need to pick up anyway) we can die, which gives OM0. Now we have an OM0 Arcade Machine minigame. Then you hold the phonecall and cancel the minigame (using the Hospital Tutorial Cutscene) and then you have an OM0 Phonecall!

It updates $CURRENT_TIME_IN_MS2. Go Go Space Monkey is the closest Arcade Machine that does not update $CURRENT_TIME_IN_MS2.

Other speedruns use this method to help time an input, like Pokémon Heart Gold (press button and start timer at the same time, then when the timer hits 0 press another button), and while that looks like a good idea here, unfortunately starting the game is inconsistent in how long it takes to happen (and maybe varies between different PCs?). For me, the best timing seems to be to cancel Vigilante when I think the ingame timer is about to hit 7:46.

It may sound easy enough since we have everything planned out and know exactly what to do, and reading about the challenges in isolation makes the run as a whole not seem too hard. However a few factors make this run extremely difficult, and without finding a consistent setup for things or better-than-humanly-possible reaction times, a lot of things basically come down to dumb luck. And with so many things that have to go right, the odds of getting them all in one run are extremely slim.

Here are the main challenges of this run ordered by difficulty:

The trick must be performed inside the post-barber shop cutscene between two of Ryder's voice lines, which creates a few issues. You don't have control of CJ in cutscenes, you can't move the camera, you can't enter vehicles and even if you could you can't start Vigilante during missions, and then you don't have enough time until the voice lines play to do anything.

By pausing the game we can keep Ryder's voice line going for as long as we want. Using an OM0 phone call we can regain control of CJ and go OM0 so we can start Vigilante, then by going back into the Barber Shop Interior we can regain camera control, then by duping the mission we can regain access to vehicles AND get an easy way of ending the voice line AND regaining OM0 when we want to.

The main difficulty is in the timing of Vigilante both starting and cancelling. As soon as Ryder's car blows up, his voice line will be skipped (and the camera will change back to where the cutscene is). This starts the 1000 millisecond window to do the glitch. Then you have to start Vigilante and if the $CURRENT_TIME_IN_MS2 variable is the correct value, End of the Line (Part 3) will start. However the game will crash 500 milliseconds after starting Vigilante if another mission is running, so Vigilante then has to be cancelled. This is achieved by getting off the bike somehow. Just starting Vigilante and then getting off the bike is not fast enough for the 500 millisecond window, so you have to start getting off the bike FIRST and then start Vigilante before CJ gets fully off the bike. This has to be done while you cannot see CJ because the camera is now looking at the Pizza place. While this isn't too hard using the One Elephant method, it is at the very end of the run after getting everything else right and nerves will play a part. Getting it wrong results in an instant game crash.

When two mission scripts love each other very much...

AJS stands for 'Arbitrary Jump in Script', it's the glitch that allows Any% to skip from Ryder (mission 2) to End of the Line part 3 (the final mission). For a detailed explanation of how it works, see the Any% FAQ above. No AJS just forbids usage of that glitch and nothing else.

Duping is short for Duplication, which in GTA means duplicating (or making multiple copies of) a mission. Basically, when we say duping, we mean when we start two or more copies of the same or different missions at the same time.

To put it simply, there is a on/off switch (called OnMissionFlag) which the game uses to track whether or not you are on a mission. When OnMissionFlag = 0 (the switch is OFF), you can do anything you want in the world, like start missions and side missions, eat fast food, date girlfriends, go to Ammu-Nation etc etc... However when OnMissionFlag = 1 (the switch is ON), all the mission markers disappear, side missions can't be started etc etc...

OnMissionFlag is normally set to 1 (switch ON) when you are on a mission, which is why all the map markers and whatnot disappear when you are doing one.

By tricking the game into turning OnMissionFlag to 0 (switch OFF) DURING a mission, we can then do what we want again. The primary use for this is, of course, starting another copy of the mission, because we can just start the mission, walk back into the marker and start another copy of that mission (there are other uses too but I won't get into that here).

The CURRENT method we have for doing this involves getting a phone call during some specific side missions and using that to set OnMissionFlag to 0 (cancelling a phone call sets OnMissionFlag to 0, as does failing a mission such as Trucking or Quarry).

To put it simply, the game tracks how many times you have completed a mission in or for a certain place/chain/person. For example the Air Strip has 4 missions in its "chain": N.O.E, Stowaway, Black Project and Green Goo. When you beat N.O.E, the number of missions the game thinks you've completed at the Air Strip increases by 1 (So it goes 0 -> 1). The game uses this number to determine what missions you start next, so now if you start the next Air Strip mission, you will start Stowaway (because you have 1 mission completed).

The reason duping is useful is because we can complete one mission multiple times to increase that number multiple times. So if you were to dupe N.O.E once, you could beat both copies of N.O.E at the same time, but the game would track it as you completing two missions (0 -> 1 -> 2). Then if you started the next mission you would instead start Black Project (Because you have 2 missions completed).

This is incredibly useful in speedrunning because you would only have to do the objectives of ONE mission, while actually beating two or more missions.

There are other uses as well: to start the mission Monster (which is the mission after the last mission of San Fierro, leading into Las Venturas) you need to complete both the Triads mission chain (The red dragon icon missions, like Pier 69, Toreno's Last Flight) AND Woozie's missions (Amphibious Assault, Lure etc.), however if you were to dupe the first mission of the Triads' chain (Ice Cold Killa) three times for a total of 4 copies (so 4 mission passes), then you would unlock Monster WITHOUT having to do ANY Woozie missions and only ONE Triad mission. This would obviously save a lot of time...

OK cool, so why isn't the game 2 hours long now?

Well, as with all things, it unfortunately isn't that simple. Both the examples of dupes I gave here aren't without their problems (or even factually correct) and our current method of duping takes a long time to set up and only allows us to dupe one mission once (for two copies).

Major glitches are any glitches that manipulate the OnMissionFlag variable (explained in What is duping?). The name was picked in order to be futureproof.

In San Fierro there is one mission that requires me to have upgraded my lung capacity stat at least twice before it will let me start it. I try to do the swimming required for these upgrades during parts of the game where I would lose little to no time by swimming.

DYOM (Design Your Own Mission) is a mod that helps people more easily create custom missions for GTA:SA without needed to write any code, in a similar style to something like Super Mario Maker. They also have a database of missions that people have created on their website, where you can download them and play them.

Short A: See how many random missions I can beat in an hour

Long A: In a similar way to that of Super Mario Maker "speedruns" or Trackmania Random Map Challenge "speedruns". Using the Rainbomizer mod's "DYOM randomiser" function, it's possible to play random missions from the website without having to download them manually. Then just like with Trackmania's Random Map Challenge "speedruns" I can play random missions for an hour and see how many I can beat before the timer runs out. However both SMM and Trackmania also include some kind of "skip" feature, whereby if you get a really terrible level/track you can skip it and move onto another one. SMM allows this freely while Trackmania has some limitations. Since this is a brand new format the rules are probably going to change a lot as I and others find problems with it, but for now trying to keep things simple (the simpler the better) the rules will be as follows:

1 Hour Timer

Passing a Mission awards you 1 "point"

Skipping a Mission costs 1 "point"

Watch every cutscene, unless I've watched it already (like if I failed and restarted the mission)

If the game crashes during a mission, I'm allowed to skip it without losing a point

If the mission obviously requires mods that I don't have and is agreed unbeatable by me and chat, I'm allowed to skip it without losing a point

Vending Machines, Ammunation, Food places etc are all part of the main mission script, which isn't loaded because I'm playing a different mission pack, so none of them work

Short A: VCS is a PSP prequel to Vice City.

Long A: Vice City STORIES is a Rockstar game released in 2006 for the PSP (and later PS2). It is a completely different game to Vice City, the 2002 PS2 (and later PC) game; it is however a prequel to Vice City (set 2 years before) and plays on the same map with only some minor changes, however everything else is completely different (story, gameplay, missions, physics, etc).

Short A: PSTV.

Long A: As with most console speedruns, using a later console's backwards compatibility is often the fastest way to run a game, be it because of better load times, frame rates, controls, stability or new/different glitches. The PSTV is, other than having no inputs, cameras or screen, essentially just a Vita. And the Vita has PSP hardware inside it to be backwards-compatible with PSP games. While I could use a regular Vita, unlike PSPs, Vitas do not have a native TV output port. PSTV just uses nice simple, clean, easy to capture, high quality HDMI. Fortunately it seems Sony did a good job with their PSP emulator and the frame rate, stability and glitches all seem to be accurate to a real PSP.

One problem: A real PSP is actually faster. In later updates to its system Sony increased the clock speed of the PSP to 333mhz (it's not quite that simple but I won't go into massive detail), so the game actually loads much faster AND has better frame rates (and better fire rates on weapons...) on PSP. The PSTV didn't get this update and has its internal PSP hardware running at 222mhz for VCS. So the gains of running a digital version from the Playstation Store are lost and I should be stuck with using a PSP with its terrible controls and video quality. While I could use a PSPGO, because that has Bluetooth controller support, they are semi-rare and the dock that allows for charging and TV output at the same time is even more rare.

The solution is to softmod the PSTV and install Adrenaline, which is software that modifies the official PSP Emulator using taiHEN CFW framework to make it run a PSP 6.61 custom firmware. I use this to have my PSTV have the same overclocking that a PSP uses. While this technically means that I'm not running on official software, I'm/the community is OK with it because I am still running on official hardware and through testing have found no issues in emulation accuracy compared to PSP (and no one else who is running on PSPs uses official software either).

Short A: The controls and video quality are worse.

Long A: The reason I'm using a PSTV/Vita instead of a PSP is because of the controls (I can use a PS3/PS4 controller instead of a PSP). Playing on a PSP for extended periods of time really hurts my hands and I don't want to do that to myself. Also, PSP outputs best with a component output, which is worse than HDMI. Comments about the video quality now are already common and using component output would exacerbate the issue.

Short A: Route is different, it's probably slower and I don't own a PS3/PS4.

Long A: While the game does have a PS2 port (and therefore a version on PS3 and PS4) which offers higher resolution (but worse performance and load times (yes even with a HDD/network PS2)), some additional content (some useful in speedruns, some not) and better controls etc., it is PROBABLY not the better version to speedrun. This is due to a few factors, but mostly it comes down to almost all previous research, routing and runs being done on the PSP version. The PS2 port is actually different in lots of small ways for the speedrun route (different dupes crash, different glitches, etc). Also since all previous runs were done on the PSP version (including mine), I'd rather just compete in this version. A few people are running the PS3(?) version currently so this may change in the future (someone buy me a PS4 XD <3 lol).

Short A: Emulators are bad.

Long A: PCSX2 is SUUUUPPPPPEEERR bad and should never be used for speedruns. It's just completely and totally inaccurate in so many respects (loading times, glitches, etc.) and it's also a really terrible user experience. I think PPSSPP is better (I've never used it), but it still has inaccuracies and is currently separated on the leaderboards from the "real" versions (with rules like: Don't use glitches you can't use in the "real" versions). As with all speedruns, it's better to just play on real hardware with the real software. For casual play I would recommend PPSSPP though for better controls and resolution (I think there is even a 60FPS patch or something).

Short A: Yes, it's very unfinished.

Long A: Yes, a lot more than most people, since I actually played it! When I played it, it was completely unfinished (only half the map available, about 5 missions, countless bugs) and obviously not an official version, so speedrunning it would be... weird. Development stalled after 2013 and the mod was not updated for ages (which is the version I must've played) however the latest update seems to be from 2018 (on the forums, not MODDB) so hopefully this can one day be finished!

Short A: It's a PSP game.

Long A: Being a PSP game (a hand-held console released in 2004 with a 480x272 screen) the resolution is quite low, as is the general graphical quality. I am however doing my utmost to make the video quality as good as possible. The reason it looks so bad is because you're probably watching it on a 1080p (8 times larger than 272p!) display over 10 years after it was released. Emulators and/or PS2 can increase the resolution, but I do not want to use those (as explained elsewhere).

Short A: Doing the same mission twice (or more) skips missions. (See GTA:SA FAQ about dupes, largely the same)

Long A: todo

Short A: Glitch that lets me skip certain missions in Chapter 2 and 3

Long A: https://gist.github.com/Joshimuz/86122078b21416f4195a85013e7b38e2

Short A: To prevent the game from crashing.

Long A: Duping missions makes the game unstable in strange ways because lots of stuff never unloads correctly and restarting the game completely refreshes the memory used by the game. Some missions have a high likelihood of crashing if done in the same session as another missions when duped (e.g. Cleaning House and Got Protection), some seem perfectly happy to run the whole time (e.g. Oh Brothel Where Art Thou?) and some will crash the game at any point seemingly randomly (e.g. The Colonel's Coke).

Short A: It flips every vehicle.

Long A: For some unknown reason going out of bounds (and also going into some interiors) causes every loaded vehicle to flip in every axis (X, Y and Z). This is less useful than you would think, being only used in Waking up the Neighbours (to flip and thus blow up the three vans you need to destroy) and then sometimes in Truck Stop (if the Truck you need to steal is upside down due to duping).

Short A: Buy it in the GTA Handheld bundle with LCS and CW.

Long A: todo