Mapping Off-the-Map Turf and Zone Glitches

[VercettiKiller 9]

Great rhans, I was able to do that glitch too on JEFF1B with Gang 9 = 1 and Groove, by using mastermind glitch on JEFF2 ( ballas,gang 9 and mafia)without triggering the defence and luring three ballas con JEFF1 for 3rd kill and R3 for taxi mission and there you go gang9 with higher density.

 

Rhans, are you able to activate gang 10?

[rhans 431]

Yes, but they are the exact same stuff as gang 9 (look like LVA and drive Sentinels), the only way to tell them apart is having a tool editor.

 

I had gang 10 appear on C.U.N.T.C1, and gang 9 on Playa del Seville. Mafia appeared on RING (Clown`s Pocket). The bad thing aabout gang 9 and 10 is that all other gangs have priority over them. so if there is any density of any other gang in the same territory, means you can`t manipulate gang 9 and 10 densities.

Edited September 30, 2017 by rhans

[VercettiKiller 9]

Yes, but they are the exact same stuff as gang 9 (look like LVA and drive Sentinels), the only way to tell them apart is having a tool editor.

 

I had gang 10 appear on C.U.N.T.C1, and gang 9 on Playa del Seville. Mafia appeared on RING (Clown`s Pocket). The bad thing aabout gang 9 and 10 is that all other gangs have priority over them. so if there is any density of any other gang in the same territory, means you can`t manipulate gang 9 and 10 densities.Sorry

No one here? Well rhans, I will try to buy a Memory Card with Freemcboot and a USB to take my PS2 save to my PC, I want to know what gang I activated. And for Orion to investigate, my map is pretty messed up.

 

UPDATE: FINALLY EXTRACTED ALL THE SAVE DATAS FROM THE MCBOOT.

http://gtasnp.com/QTBiNT

 

Checked the save on GTA SA Savegame Editor and Indeed... on SILLY2 changed from Bussiness to Desert.

Edited November 2, 2017 by VercettiKiller

[VercettiKiller 9]

OrionSR just uploaded my PS2 gamesave, check it... Indeed flying outside the map could change the type of pedcycle there... From Bussiness to Desert. Any program to add the gang9 and gang10?

[rhans 431]

Orion, I would like to thank you for making this map, really useful. With its help I was able to put Mafia on PLS, Gang 8 on LDOC3C and Gang 9 on C.U.N.T.C.1, since those are very close to the border of the map it was possible to reach them without getting negative side effects.

 

I have a few questions, when you reach a popcycle sector, will the popcycle change to a specific one? Changing SFGLF2 and SFGLF3 to something that spawns gangs would be interesting.

 

What do Alpha and Ethnicity do? Also reaching a color sector should change that target territory to that color? And reaching a Dealer sector adds dealer even if there is no gang in that territory?

 

So adding gangs to unused0 and unused1 will increase territories in the stats?

 

Also, I was thinking about a strategy to reach further sectors while avoiding specific sectors without using blips. I think the easiest way, even though time consuming, would be calculate how long it takes to cross a sector by swimming, and then swim to thoose cordinates just by counting how long you went on a specific direction. Boats, planes and Helicopters might be too hard to do that.

[OrionSR 1,799]

Um, I'm rusty on this stuff, so call me out if my statements seem illogical.

Popcycle Sectors: I have confirmed VercettiKiller's discovery that Business (type 00) zones can be glitched into Desert (type 01), so if you enter the wrong sector you can disable gang peds in some areas. This is one of those glitches that SnP fixes automatically, btw. I have yet to update the map to color the business zones. Let me know if you think this information would be useful.

 

IIRC, Golf Course zones are near the end of the pool so you won't be able to link it to another zone with gangs.

 

Ethnicity Flags

struct tEthnicFlags {    eByteFlags  BlackPeds : 1;      // 0x1    eByteFlags  WhitePeds : 1;      // 0x2    eByteFlags  AsianPeds : 1;      // 0x4    eByteFlags  HispanicPeds : 1;   // 0x8    byte        unusedFlags : 4;    };

 

The Ethnicity field's function is a fairly recent discovery so the editors don't label this field properly and display the sum of all flags instead of breaking out and labeling the individual flags. This is related to the rare hispanic dealer that only spawns in zones without black or white peds, a setting not present in a standard game but has been reporteded as an unexplained but natural glitch. The peds' ethnic groups are selected based on the first letter of their model name. Forgive the technical reference, the key info is in the comments following //. Hex is the same as decimal here, so ignore the 0x. Most zones allow all ethnic groups, 1+2+4+8 = 15. If a zone did not have white peds the total would be 1+4+8 = 13. There are no zones with an ethnicity setting of 00 so there isn't much glitch potential here, but experimenting with an editor helped me better understand how the ethnic filters worked so I could recognize the settings in game.

 

Alpha controls the transparency of the zone's gang color. I'm not sure how Red=1, Green=0, Blue=0 would appear with an alpha of 1 or 0 (probably invisibly faint), but there are RGBA web tool available if you want to experiment. I used them for custom blip colors in the experimental saves but didn't save the bookmark, sorry. Be aware that mods and cheat device codes that alter zone colors are frequently frustrated when the game updates the colors of all zones and erases their edits. So again, I don't think there's much exploit potential here.

 

I forget exactly what happens with the dealer density when gangs aren't present. I think they just hang around until killed and aren't replenished if there is not gang density. When I learned that the game automatically adds dealers with gang density I didn't really follow up on the dealers.

 

I don't know how or if the unused gangs are displayed in the stats, but I'm curious to learn what you discover.

 

My navigational strategies are purely hypothetical, but lean more towards the techniques used by James Cook or Charles Lindbergh. I hadn't consider swimming. You've got game stats like distance traveled to help refine your time measures. Lacking a decent compass, I figure the large square pattern of the ocean waves was probably the best tool for staying on a direct path without straying due to wind or waves. Do you have a particular destination in mind?

Edited February 25, 2018 by OrionSR

[rhans 431]

I will try to reach -20 and -37 and see what happens.

 

From what I can see it takes about 1:45 in game to cross a sector swimming holding sprint button (0 muscle, 0 fat and Burglar completed).

Edited February 25, 2018 by rhans

[rhans 431]

Hey Orion, could you do me a favour? Can you craft me a save with blips on specifir sectors, so I can do tests similar to what Bender did, but for PC. I think we should test reaching sectors -37 or -38, -19 or -20 or -21 to see whats the deal with those unused territories. Also we could also try reaching one of the ethinicity territories to see which effect it has on different territories.

 

Also, if you have any suggestion of a sector we should try to reach tell me, I am very curious about what results it may have.

 

This is a save that already has 379 territories in the stats, we could use that as a testing save:

http://gtasnp.com/y44ZKG

Edited March 9, 2018 by rhans

[OrionSR 1,799]

Space for the "Unused" zones is allocated in memory but is not saved. Normally, no zone links to these unused records but it looks like conf1b and conf1a could be edited for this purpose. Unfortunately, conf1b and conf1a are out of range of the same glitch that you used to link sanand to zones in LV. The only thing I can think of that would be unique about these business zones (type 0) would be that all ethnic groups would be filtered out (no flags). I think there are a couple/few peds that might spawn anyway. With a lot of effort you might be able to glitch this temporarily into a black only neighborhood like a few others already in the game, and add some temporary gang density. Just be careful not to glitch the zone type to desert or you won't spawn any gang peds.

 

All standard zones have have ethnicity flag sums of 1, 9, 10, or 15. There are no zones with a value of 0 (no ethnic groups) so there isn't really any glitch potential to be exploited.

 

My preference, however, is to test it anyway, just to see what happens. I'm just not sure how to craft something that might show an effect. Would you like a save with blips in Unused zones AND edits to conf1b and conf1a? I kind of figure you'd lose interest as soon as editing is required.

[rhans 431]

I did some testing on some sector that are easy to reach even without blips. My aim was to reach -244, -227, -210, -193 and -176. I think I was able to do so since I only needed to fly straight south from a given reference on the map, and the gangs i added to the territories reinforce my belief that I was able to reach the desired sectors.

 

To my surprise none of the territories SFGLF2, SFGLF3, C.U.N.T.C1, C.U.N.T.C3, and PLS had their popcycle changed. Unfortunately I am only able to check the popcycles and the gangs on those territories with the save editor that I have, so I dont know if I was able to affect ethnicity, alpha or some of the colors.

 

I dont know if this can provide any useful information, but here is the save that I tested reaching those sectors:

http://gtasnp.com/CTaqjR

[OrionSR 1,799]

Yes. It certainly looks like you were glitching the targeted territories. All the 00s have been replaced with 01s.

 

There are no PC zones within range of the glitch with a popcycle of Business (type 00) that can be changed into Desert (type 01).

 

There are no standard zones on any system with no ethnicity flags. Ethnicity appears to be immune to this specific glitch.

 

You probably glitched a little color or alpha during your flight but those values were overwritten when the map updated the color for the gangs in the zone. If you wanted to test this glitch you'd need to somehow avoid flying through the Ballas, Grove, and Vagos sectors that would preceed the color sectors on a southernly trip. Even then, the game is likely to remove all color from the zone if there are no primary gangs present. There are weird rules for when the map colors are updated; players that work with gang war mods might be able to provide more details.

 

It looks like SASE1.00 can display and edit the zone color values for you. This might be the easiest way to test the effects and recoloring rules, or what it might look like if it was glitched to RGBA 01010101. I'm pretty sure an alpha value of 01 will be almost completely transparrent.

 

The Savegame Editor 3.x displays the ethnicity value in it's Pedestrians field. The value is displayed as an integer, but with only 4 flags it's not too hard to read and write the desired values manually.

[BlackScout 6,267]

How am I supposed to calculate the flight time?
I can't get my head around this.

 

600m square blocks? Is that a 25m wide block?
6 blocks south are 150m or about 480ft. However, that is not enough for the overflow/glitch...
 

Or should I just ditch the flying method and f*ck it?

Edited June 13, 2018 by BlackScout

[OrionSR 1,799]

The easiest way to visualize the 600m square blocks (usually referred to as map "sectors" as to not confuse them with "zones") is to start a new game and observe how the map unfogs as CJ moves into new areas of the map. Each fog sector measures 600m. 10 of them cross the 6000m main map (-3000 to 3000). 

 

Rhans has had quite a bit of success getting the glitches he wanted. You can probably find more information on his YouTube channel. 

 

Otherwise, I'm not sure what to suggest for navigation strategies. My idea was to use in-game stats and clocks to estimate distance and do my best to maintain straight N-S and E-W flight paths by observing the repeating pattern of the ocean waves. Even then, I would expect it to take a few tries to narrow down my target - make a test run, check my glitches with a save editor, try again with new time variables for more or less distance. 

 

I was hoping that players might devise and share successful navigation and glitch strategies now that we've got an accurate map. This is an area of exploration that is still open to new discoveries.

Edited June 13, 2018 by OrionSR

[rhans 431]

I want to correct something I said earlier, a territory to get attacked needs to have at least 16 GSF density, not 20.

 

I also said that a territory to attack another needs at least 20 Vagos or Ballas density, which is not correct either. If a territory has both Ballas and Vagos density, it will attack other territories (or itself if it also has at least 16 GSF) if Ballas density + Vaggos density is equal to or higher than 20.

Edited June 18, 2018 by rhans

[rhans 431]

What are the dimensions of a sector? I tried to "measure" it and found around 2020 ft, but I am not sure if it is reliable.

[OrionSR 1,799]

Pretty close, 1969 feet is a tad over 600 meters, the standard in-game unit.

On-the-map coordinates, west to east, range from -3000 to 3000 meters. 6000 meters are split between 10 sectors, 600 meters across.

 

Added: Come to think of it, I think there may be some problem with SA's conversion strategies. I'm not sure of the details but at this distance there might be some deviation from the expected values.

Edited August 20, 2018 by OrionSR

[rhans 431]

I think I found something weird on territory LTD8. It seems GSF density can only be increased up to 55, really weird, unlike other territories that go up to 255 and beyind that revert back to 0.

I had 50, added 10 but only raised to 55. I tried to add +10 again and still remained at 55. Really wierd.

[OrionSR 1,799]

Your observations for LTD8 match my expectations for a normal turf. I would be surprised to learn that other turfs provided different results.

 

Early testing conducted during the Mastermind Glitch investigation suggest that 55 is the maximum density that can be obtained by successfully defending zones from attacks. To increase GSF density further would require losing an attack to increase rival density and then conducting a gang war to add their density to GFS.

[rhans 431]

Today I did a bit of testing. First I went to sector 132 to link SAN_AND to SUNMA and everything worked as expected, gangs present on SAN_AND were replaced by gangs present on SUNMA, and not only that, but more sport cars started appearing on SAN_AND as it was now behaving like a RESIDENTIAL_RICH. But what I did next was what surprised me, as I went then to sector 165, which linked SUNMA to its ID + 255, which would be JN1 (I think it was JTN1, but could be JTE1, not sure), but what I observed is that SUNMA no longer had the gangs it had, and also no longer behaved as a RESIDENTIAL_RICH, but those changes were not applied to SAN_AND that was linked to it, as it still spawned sports cars, and it didn`t have its gangs changed.

 

Also, this is a bit weird, why all other territories seemingly can only be linked to its ID + 255, while SAN_AND can be linked to either its ID +1 or its ID + 255.

Also, this glitch seems to affect a wide span of territories, all the way from ID 0 (SAN_AND) to ID 75 (BLUAC) could be linked to ID 255 up to 330 respectively, correct?

Edited December 25, 2018 by rhans

[OrionSR 1,799]

I have a very hard time holding onto the details of this glitch. I don't remember which zones were suitable for glitching but I seem to remember it being a fairly limited set. You might be able to gain a few clues by reviewing my comments in this topic from when I was much more current on the details.

 

But your SAN_AND question is easy to answer. The zone ID is stored in a word - two bytes. San_And, as zone 0 (word = 00 00) is the only zone with two blank bytes. It should be possible to link it to zone 1, 255, or 256.

 

Zone ID 256 could be glitched to 257 (if it is in range), but this is the only other zone beside zone 0 with a blank least-significant byte.

 

Seems to me that most of the zones were inappropriate for glitching. Mostly because they are out of range of the glitch, but I think there are other factors but I can't remember what.