Any way to make detailed zones?

[Foreman]

Hi! i wanted to make custom zones in SA as i don't like original zones in game. Because it seems that you have to use rectangle areas which aren't very accurate for making zones for some areas, I was trying if i could make them by making multiple little areas which would in the end be one big zone. I managed to add 1 area to existing zone meaning when I start gang war game thinks those zones are the same. Both areas flash red and after 3rd wave you get those both areas.

 

Below is test zone in Palomino Creek where east & south Palomino are one zone and moved 'Hanky' zone from north to be north-west Palomino. Have done something similar for Glen Park zone where I made 'JEF1b' (Glen park houses and area between houses and Jefferson motel) smaller and added houses to GLN1 (Glen Park area). Wanted also add that backalley behind houses without adding car shop which is located in top of alley behind houses.

PALO, 0, 2344.25, -225.253, 0.0, 2595.25, 204.746, 200.0, 1, PALO
PALO, 0, 2101.25, -225.475, 0.0, 2345.25, 42.7567, 200.0, 1, PALO
HANKY, 0, 2117.25, 42.7568, 0.0, 2344.25, 204.756, 200.0, 1, HANKY

 

But If I make more than 1 these kind of zones or add more than 1 extra areas, when starting new game my camera is locked in desert. I tried to paste accurate coordinates for my areas. In info.zon coordinates are written in short 1249.62 or 851.449, my coordinates were long like 970.9827270507812. It caused game to remove colors from Vagos hoods and ignoring my second custom zone, i was able to do gang wars in vagos hood and after 3rd wave,  zone turned green or in some cases camera lock in desert after first cutscene.

 

 

Edited May 12, 2020 by Foreman

[ZAZ]

 

you gave the answer by yourself

23 hours ago, Foreman said:

But If I make more than 1 these kind of zones or add more than 1 extra areas, when starting new game my camera is locked in desert.

 

double existing zones seems to cause bug

make rectangle zones, each with other names

 

Note: gangwar enemies appear on car paths only

 

 

 

 

[OrionSR]

On 5/6/2020 at 9:40 AM, Foreman said:

But If I make more than 1 these kind of zones or add more than 1 extra areas, when starting new game my camera is locked in desert.

I just had a peek at the NavigationZoneArray in memory, and there appears to be room for just one more entry. You might want to check if a limit adjuster can increase this limit.

 

I would expect that your strategy of giving two zones the same name and letting the game act as they are a single zone to work properly. MONINT is defined in this manner in a standard game without issue. Also, it's possible to exploit the flying-off-the-map glitch in v1 to link two NavZones in different cities with a single ZoneInfo entry, and that works without issue. You have enough room to test adding another MONINT zone to see if a triple link works too.

Note: Appending new zone(s) to the end of info.zon would maintain a little more compatibility with standard zone addressing and should work the same.

[Foreman]

On 5/8/2020 at 1:16 AM, OrionSR said:

I just had a peek at the NavigationZoneArray in memory, and there appears to be room for just one more entry. You might want to check if a limit adjuster can increase this limit.

 

I would expect that your strategy of giving two zones the same name and letting the game act as they are a single zone to work properly. MONINT is defined in this manner in a standard game without issue. You have enough room to test adding another MONINT zone to see if a triple link works too.

I added that last working entry for MONINT and tried gangwar and it worked. Didn't have luck with the limit adjuster, same camera lock in the desert, and crash in loadingscreen if doing 3 or 4 new zones while without it SA didn't always crash but now my cutscenes were all black and my camera was in the sky. Only moment when camera seems to work is that short moment when stepping into interior mark or if doing something in gym, after 3-4 new zones textures (buildings and objects) around seemed to be missing 

 

edit: i found out my game messed my draw distance settings, they were in lowest so that might be the reason for missing textures. 

Edited May 10, 2020 by Foreman

[Foreman]

I did more testing. Managed to get 'MONINT' to be consisted now for 4 zones (x2 for it's original zone's + That last entry which works + took 'SASO' (water zone between LS and LV, not mentioned in main.scm) re-named it and moved it to close to other MONINT zone's. They all show in a map but unfortunately, if I start gangwar my SA crashes after first wave is spawned on streets. It seems to work otherwise normally. A bug I found with zones consisted of 3 or 4 zones: I mainly tested this with Vagos, Danang, Mafia, or Gang 10. Moment when i had started gangwar, there was sometimes that 1 same Ballas member who had appeared into traffic somehow even if their hood weren't even close

 

Making by this method wouldn't work for me anyway bcause i should take zones that are not mentioned in main.script or mods and 1/3 Santa Maria Beach or quarry in my plans needed close to 30 because of their shape so I would run out of zones really soon. This testing really didn't give a much hope for this kind of multizone system anyway so unless there would be a way to do circle or polygyn zone but that seems to be impossible for the main game.

Edit:Tried to do Santa maria zone (Picture above). Deleted all mods  (except Gangwar Enable/Disable & gangwarsupport) wanted to try if mods affect somehow. Succeeded to have 8 areas for one zone, seemed to work, meaning SA didn't crash but after i dumped rest of my cleo mods started to crash again so then again deleted all mods but didn't help.

 

Bugs found:

* Even though they technically are same zone, when travelling between them game may show location name (like when you enter another place in game 

* First i tried having areas separate from each other. Started war in one of the zone areas and some point of war walked zone's second area and stayed there. Still got ''get back in the war zone'' text and later it cancelled whole war bcause i didn't return.

Edited May 14, 2020 by Foreman

[OrionSR]

7 hours ago, Foreman said:

This testing really didn't give a much hope for this kind of multizone system anyway

Yeah. It sounds like it wouldn't work even with and increased number of zones. I'm a bit disappointed, this seemed like an interesting idea. I appreciate your reports. They've been a good read and the extra testing is liable to help out the next person messing with their zones.