Tool to edit car spawns

[fastdriver]

Does anyone know of a tool that you can edit car spawns (parking) locations, like when Ryder's car spawns in his driveway and when Sweet's car spawns next to the curb?

[Justin]

Edit the mission script with any of the popular mission builders (Sanny, BW's, etc.).

[Soukien]

yo f*ck you

[OrionSR]

Does anyone know of a tool that you can edit car spawns (parking) locations, like when Ryder's car spawns in his driveway and when Sweet's car spawns next to the curb?

The only tool I know that can move car spawns is a hex editor. Fixed car spawns and other pickups are part of the game save. Many are included from the start of the game, I'm not sure how they get in there. Others appear to get created as the game progresses. So if you know what you are looking for, can translate everything into hex, and can fix the checksum so the game save isn't recognized as corrupt, then a hex editor can do what you ask.

 

You need to be careful with cars like Sweet's and Ryder's that have custom plates. If you change to a vehicle that can't support custom plates then the game crashes when CJ approaches the area. I'm not sure which cars can and can't support custom plates, and would appreciate reference links if available.

 

Um... I'm not sure how much I should try to explain. If you were looking for a tool that can read your save, find the fixed vehicle spawns, change them to other vehicles, adjust the colors, locks, alarms, and spawn probability, and change the custom plates, then an explanation on how to adjust the bytes manually probably won't be of much help. But I hoping to generate some discussion on this topic, so this may be more information that you need.

 

Sweets car is a Greenwood, Model ID 492. This translates to 01EC in hex, so you need to search for EC 01 to find Greenwoods, but this isn't very precise and will have many false positives. So look up the text string for his license plate, GROVE4L a and identify the handle for this vehicle spawner. It's different on different saves, and includes the two bytes that are 4 bytes ahead of the string. G in grove is represented by the byte 47. On my save it looks like this:

 

 

0001ddb0h: 00 32 00 00 00 20 53 48 45 52 4D 20 20 00 00 00; .2... SHERM  ...0001ddc0h: 00 33 00 00 00 47 52 4F 56 45 34 4C 20 00 00 00; .3...GROVE4L ...0001ddd0h: 00 62 00 00 00 48 4F 4D 45 47 49 52 4C 00 00 00; .b...HOMEGIRL...

 

 

On this save, Ryders car is 32 00, Sweet's is 33 00, and Denise's Hustler is 62 00. These handles can be used to identify the vehicles. So now you can search for the vehicle ID and model, 33 00 EC 01. You should find a vehicle with the colors 3B 22 (this is all in hex so I haven't tried to figure the colors yet). The next 8 bytes (maybe only 7) represent the location. Changing these values will move the car. It looks like Sweet's car doesn't have an alarm, a has a low probability of being locked, and a value of $10,000, but I haven't messed with these bytes much.

 

 

0001c420h: 00 42 02 00 00 FF FF FF FF 00 01 00 00 32 00 58; .B...ÿÿÿÿ....2.X0001c430h: 02 54 54 4C 4D 2F CB 68 00 00 00 00 18 00 00 10; .TTLM/Ëh........0001c440h: 27 00 00 42 02 00 00 FF FF FF FF 00 01 00 00 33; '..B...ÿÿÿÿ....30001c450h: 00 EC 01 3B 22 61 4E ED CB 68 00 0B 00 00 18 00; .ì.;"aNíËh......0001c460h: 00 10 27 00 00 42 02 00 00 FF FF FF FF 00 01 00; ..'..B...ÿÿÿÿ...

 

 

I think I left out one empty byte on Sweet car, but all of Ryder's vehicle spawner is included in the hex code above. I'm not sure about the rest of the record. It has something to do with Flags, Value, Timers, and cars to generate, but I haven't tested these settings or which bytes are which.

 

Before you change anything, keep in mind that you'll need to change the checksum at the end of the file accordingly or the game save will be recognized as corrupt. The checksum includes the last 4 bytes of the file and is the sum of all bytes and encoded with the byte order reversed, so 01234567 hex is encoded as 67 45 23 01. To change Sweet's Greenwood to a Flash (565, 0x0235, 35 02), I would need to change this checksum to B1 44 23 01. The Windows calculator can figure the hex values for you, but I find it easier to manage my hex code in a spreadsheet.

 

Changing the vehicle or color isn't too difficult using this method, but moving a spawner means changing a lot of bytes, and it can be a pain to track the difference. When experimenting with different spawns, I find it easier to use paultjuh's <savegame editor> to fix the checksum for me. It recalculates the checksum from scratch and will brush over any changes I make to the file, but it bypasses the error checking of the checksum and can cause problems if I make unintended changes to the file - simply load and save the file to fix the checksum. However, I have noticed the the checksum calculated by the savegame editor is different than the calculations made by hand or on a spreadsheet, so it must be doing something else to the file, but I'm not sure what.

 

Moving vehicle spawners isn't too difficult, but the calculations are difficult to explain. Go to the desired position and take a reading with GTA Control Center's Location function - there are other map tools that will do this, but I've only tried the control center. I'm moving Ryder's car to Mulholland and changing it to an Infernus.

 

X = 1360, Y = -617, Z = 110, Angle = 54

 

Then run these formulas on X, Y, Z, to convert it to hex and position them correctly to transposition all the bytes.

 

=RIGHT(RIGHT(DEC2HEX(B12*8,4),4),2)=LEFT(RIGHT(DEC2HEX(B12*8,4),4),2)=DEC2HEX(E12/360*256,2)

 

The 3rd formula is for converting angle into radians and encoding it in hex. BTW, I think this number is a two byte number, or at least is read that way be location tools, because I've seen some strange angles when exiting from the Palomino Safehouse.

 

 

0001c420h: 00 42 02 00 00 FF FF FF FF 00 01 00 00 32 00 58; .B...ÿÿÿÿ....2.X0001c430h: 02 54 54 4C 4D 2F CB 68 00 00 00 00 18 00 00 10; .TTLM/Ëh........Is changed to:0001c420h: 00 42 02 00 00 FF FF FF FF 00 01 00 00 32 00 9B; .B...ÿÿÿÿ....2.›0001c430h: 01 FF FF 80 2A B8 EC 70 03 26 00 00 18 00 00 10; .ÿÿ€*¸ìp.&......

 

 

I changed the color to FF FF which is -1, random. Then I tweaked the license plate, loaded and saved with the savegame editor, and went check out the vehicle. Only problem is, the spawns don't usually work when exiting the safehouse to a location near the spawner - something to keep in mind when choosing a good location.

 

I'm not sure what would happen with these changes during normal game play. I tried the mission with Sweet and his car which had been changed to a Flash. When the mission started the regular old Greenwood was still used, it had the same plates as the Flash that was spawning, and at the end of the mission the Flash was back.