[OrionSR]

<Purple Palomino>

I messed around with the Palomino save a little.

I rolled the clock back an hour - loads at 16:30, goal is 21:00. It starts to get a bit dark for the final jump, but I like the colors so much at 21:00 that I didn't want to start any sooner. Hopefully you'll agree.

Biker CJ is now armed with a Pool Cue, and is equipped with Brass Knuckles. I think the other weapons are the same. How do you like the Desert Eagle? Everyone in the chain game seem to prefer the silenced pistol, but I like the Desert Eagle as my primary Give Me That Bike weapon.

I changed the colors on the Engineless NRG to the darkest purple I could find. They don't give us much to work with, but I think it looks pretty good with the colors of the evening sky. Oh yeah, be careful about tweaking the Engineless NRG with the garage editor feature the Control Center. The last time I tried it I got the engine back. Now I make it the current vehicle before changing the color.

I zeroed out the jumping stats with the save game editor. So I am making some progress.

But I got confused when the name I chose didn't fit in the space before the zeros. Based on your Badlands Endurance save name, I should be able to get Skipping Palomino to fit, but I wasn't sure what to do with the characters that currently occupy those bytes. So I gave up for the day and didn't get as far as trying to calculate a check sum.

<Alternate Katie Jumps>

So I had an idea about Katie Jumps, and tweaked one of your save files a little. See what you think about this idea.

Added: If you discard the idea included in the save above, then either of the Katie Jumps saves you posted should be fine. I only tried the engineless version today, but I suspect the normal NRG would be more appropriate for this challenge.

For the Lombard (Carlton Heights?) jump, I'm just barely making it with the route I'm using, but check out the path I used in my Hippy Shocker video. Scoring the jump on a Freeway was certainly difficult. Here' I'll cue it up for you. Oh, and thanks for the tips on the Stadium jump, I'm having much better luck now.

I'm fairly certain that saving resets the eating counter. CJ can go for weeks without food if you save often enough.

I'm not entirely happy with the Skipping name. Perhaps Insane Palomino would be a better choice. As far as the triple insane jumps, one is a unique jump I threw in later in the route that doesn't cross the river, and the 4th is the jump onto the pier, but I'm moving away from that in hope of getting a screenshot of something more dramatic. There is a flow to this event that makes it even more fun, but you'll need to work the bugs out of your route.







This post has been edited by OrionSR on Wednesday, Jul 25 2007, 09:37

[rubregg]

Oops, I had just edited my last posting (removed now), seems I missed a page break and your reply.

Try this file for Badlands Endurance.

Midnight start and the best weather / light conditions I could get. I tried 'clear blue' and 'scorching hot' - they looked scenic but you can't really see your way too well at all, it's just too dark. The way it was in the last midnight save was actually the best I found and this time it'll stay roughly the same for a very long time. Race starts with 'very dull, colourless, hazy 2' (vdch 2) and stays within various other vdch x, with a few patches of 'blue, partly cloudy' around Los Santos. Back to vdch 2 on approaching Palomino Creek, where I then waited until 14:00 with no apparent change in weather. Sunrise looks nice in an unspectacular way and no rain or fog in sight. This one might be ready for release, if you're alright with it.

Thanks for the tips, I'll try them out on your new file.

As for save game names, yup, it's not completely clear to me what those other bytes are. In some files they appear sooner, in other files there's more filler 00s. If there's just 00s, you can overwrite them. If there's other stuff too, I don't know. Worth a try and see what happens...

Update
I tried both your files. I like the colour you picked for the engineless NRG in Skipping Palomino, so that file would be finished too. Let me know which name you prefer and I'll rename it. The thing you did to the Katie Jumps file is cool, but unfortunately shows the biggest drawback of the save game editor, that you can only set the armour to 100. I like that you get to the action quicker, but I'm missing the racing bit from LS to SF. But maybe we can include that in some other challenge. What do you think, should we put a grove green NRG into Doherty garage and set it up like this?

Yes, your route into the Lombard St. jump seems better than the one I used. I'm still not sure how to connect my jumps. The extra one I put in goes well as a lead-in to the supermarket jump, but I never really know where to fit in the 2 downtown jumps.


Update
Found 14 jumps in Skipping Palomino after all, but there's *no* way I can do them all within the time limit, so I have to figure out which ones to drop. Updated the map at the link I pmed you earlier. Sky is fine, save file is fine, only thing that isn't fine is the time limit you gave us... ...nah, just need more practice. Cool challenge!

This post has been edited by rubregg on Wednesday, Jul 25 2007, 17:06

[OrionSR]

The goals for the Skipping Palomino Rally are still up for evaluation. Let me know if you think anything needs to be changed. I'm still stuck on the name. I keep thinking of things like Winged Palomino, or something with Pegasus in the title, anything with an equestrian twist to it, but I'm not hitting on anything that really gets at the heart of the challenge. Sorry, I'm anxious to finalize our current saves as well. I'll try to put a little more thought into it today.

NRG Efficient
Energy Conservation
Palomino Rapids
Palomino Downs
Skip the Palomino

Thanks for the update for Badlands Endurance. I'll give it a shot and let you know if I find anything of concern, but I strongly suspect that one is done. This save looks really good. The moon is much more visible during most of the race. The potential problem is that without any money at the start of the race, the hookers won't get in the car, so the Pro Driver achievement is a wash. But that was a pretty lame idea anyway. Were we going to try to find a save for this event without the gangs?

Katie Jumps - descriptive, but not a very creative name. Any suggestions? Maybe Katie's Bones (as in Jumping Katie's Bones - does that translate well to a reference for... Coffee?). Having less than full armor where it loads didn't end up making much of a difference. CJ was always taking a few hits upon loading, so I was snagging an armor on the way north to top it off, and would be just as likely to do the same even if it started at 150. Or perhaps just skip it. Full armor isn't needed unless things go horribly wrong, and then I'm not going to make it as far as the airport anyway. Saving without full armor seems a little strange to me. Still, I really like getting the quick start on this challenge. The new starting point saves 2 minutes of travel at the beginning of each attempt. Given two saves with almost identical setups, except for the starting point and time, which file do you think you would be most likely to load when you wanted to break your current record? When you decide on a preference, make that the final save for the rally. Anyway, I feel sort of bad for making such a major change after you put so much effort into the other saves. Again, whatever you decide will be fine by me.

Sorry, I nodded off while composing, and probably missed you for the day.

This post has been edited by OrionSR on Thursday, Jul 26 2007, 05:10

[rubregg]

Actually, so far I like "Skipping Palomino" best of all the names. And "Katie Jumps" is very good I think, short and descriptive. I'd be happy with both.

I had the idea of releasing a map of all (or just some of) the jumps with the "Skipping Palomino" (no routes, just possible jumps), so players get a little help in figuring out the challenge. What do you think of that? I still can't say too much about the goals yet because most of my efforts went into actually finding the jumps so far. Still have to decide on my route and then get onto the timing thing...

Oh, seems I forgot about the idea with the hookers in Badlands Endurance. I can try to make the same file again, with some cash. I never really followed on that idea - won't a passenger increase the weight, so you'll be slower and the jumps get more difficult? But that's the idea, I guess...

As for 'Katie Jumps' -

QUOTE

Given two saves with almost identical setups, except for the starting point and time, which file do you think you would be most likely to load when you wanted to break your current record?

Ok, if I look at it this way, I'd certainly load the save that starts at Doherty. Also it's a sweet "whooaah-wtf" effect when you first load it, at least it was for me. Let's put the 'grove green' NRG there and use that one then. Don't worry, no actual work on the save files was 'lost' - especially not if we end up having nice weather. Also I'm thinking about using the engineless NRG for Katie Jumps too. It's such a special bike and you went through so much trouble to spawn them... We could ride to Doherty & park it there and then make a save like yours?

(I followed up on your hotkey idea in the Control Center and spawned myself 100ish NRGs yesterday, sure as hell all had their engines. And sorry for forgetting to warn you about editing the engineless NRG while it's in the garage, seems we made the same experience there... )

[OrionSR]

Okay, lets go back to the Skipping Palomino idea. FYI, the name is supposed to conjure images of the advanced dressage movement called Tempi - or more specifically, One-Tempi. I had to look this up, and it took a while to find. My ex-wife was really into horses so I picked up a few things vicariously.

The basics (sort of): IIRC, a horse prefers to have the left foot forward when cantering to the left, and will change to the other foot when turning right. Switching is called a flying lead change, and continually changing leads every stride is called One-Tempi; it looks an awful lot like the horse is skipping. Since this is an advanced skill of one of the most technical styles of riding, it seemed appropriate for the challenge. Oh, and palomino is a color of horse - cream colored with a light mane and tail.

Skipping Palomino seems appropriate, and I can't find a good way to work in the Tempi name. Tempi Creek, One-Tempi Palomino, Palomino Tempi, all seem a little forced. Skipping is a synonym for jumping, so I guess it all fits. And how many GTA players are going to get the Tempi reference anyway? The only alternative I can think of is to take the dressage movement reference a step higher and go with Airs Above the Ground - a fighting style for horses where they jump, kick, rear, and lunge as part of a battle strategy. If you've ever seen a Lipizzan show then you know what I'm talking about.

One last comment on horses: A few years ago, there was a beer commercial with a very clever line from an old-timer sitting in the corner of a dusty Saloon that looked like it came straight out of an old Western movie. "A hundred years from now, only little girls will ride horses." For some reason this still strikes me as particularly funny.

From Horses to Whores: Forget the Pro Driver achievement, it's not that big of a deal. The time limit is so tight that I'm not going to waste 15 seconds trying to get one in the car - again. I did get the pigtailed blond into the car on an earlier save, and could only see her on the Dillimore slomo cam. However, she seemed to think the garage was secluded enough for a little action. Besides, there aren't that many peds at midnight, so finding one took quite a few tries.

Great. That's the reaction I was hoping for with the alternate starting point for Katie Jumps (keep the name). I figured you'd be able to come up with a suitable plan quickly enough to manage the situation. If you decide to tweak the file with the other bike, don't make the mistake I did and fiddle with the weapon skill. The message pop-up is really annoying. Or, tweak everything before heading off to SF with the bike. Or, maybe tweak the pilot skill after saving so the players get notice that the airport gate will open for access to those jumps.

One thing I noticed on the map of the Katie Jumps save is that there are a couple of patches in SF that aren't grayed out, and there is no path in to explain it. It looks like you were using a teleport tool. I know that you were, but it looks kind of odd. Moving the engineless NRG would solve this problem. Perhaps circumnavigating the island would provide better detail for players.

Stick a cop bike or PCJ in the Johnson garage and try the spawning trick there. Maybe I got lucky, or maybe the high detail map in that area enables the glitch. But I did read a few reports of people finding an engineless NRG at the docks, so I don't know. It's probably random.

Back to Palomino: I suspect some hints about the jumps would be a good idea for the Palomino Rally. It took you a couple of days to make the survey, how many people will want to put in that much effort? And even with a map, it will probably take a while to figure out how to land them properly, so it's not that much of a spoiler.

This post has been edited by OrionSR on Thursday, Jul 26 2007, 07:05

[rubregg]

Just had a few more tries between work and dozing off, so for tonight I'm only saying this: Yay!

11 creek jumps, 3 Triple Insanes, 3 uniques (incl. the last at the yacht harbour), but no splashing sound this time.



[Edit: fixed dead link to screenshot]

This post has been edited by rubregg on Friday, Oct 5 2007, 19:41

[OrionSR]

QUOTE (rubregg @ Jul 26 2007, 16:10)

Just had a few more tries between work and dozing off, so for tonight I'm only saying this: Yay! 11 creek jumps, 3 Triple Insanes, 3 uniques (incl. the last at the yacht harbour), but no splashing sound this time.

Sweet! You even got the colors I was hoping for in the screenshot. Well done. See, I told you that time limit was realistic. However, I neglected to point out that going for the triples tends to slow things down a lot. When I'm going for speed runs, or trying to include extra jumps, I try to land my jumps as cleanly as possible.

Katie Jumps: I'm finding it difficult to plan a good route between the northern jumps. The random roadblocks get especially bad if CJ spends too much time near Katie's house, so I frequently find I need to return to that area to clean up some jumps and trying to work that into a good plan. I've developed multiple routes between the jumps, and try to connect them as best I can. I had enough time to get 13 jumps on one run, but the gate didn't open so I had to rework that save. I've made it as far as the auto dealer's pay'n'spray without painting, and could have made another jump or two without exploding, but the bike wouldn't have survived into the airport. Even without much damage from bullets or collisions, the impacts from the jumps eventually wear it down.

Have you given any thought to archiving the saves we've been working on? If we develop a glitch along the way it would be nice to revert to one of the earlier saves instead of starting over, and the SnP llinks won't last forever.

<NRG-500 - Katie Jumps Alt Start with Engineless NRG and Medic Uniform>

I made another attempt at setting up an alt start for Katie Jumps. I just moved the bike on the engineless save you posted and rolled back the clock (and tweaked the weapons a little). I tried it a few times, getting to Katie's before 12:00 is a bit tricky, but it can be done with a few seconds to spare. I think Scorcher weather is in place on this save as well - purple sky and mountain. I'm not sure I like this weather as much as another choice, but the main thing is that it didn't rain clear through til morning. I'm still not sure how persistent the weather is, the Control Center keeps messing with stuff when I don't want it to.

Oh, got a new shortcut key - spawn a Dinghy. I suck at this cheating crap, but I'm starting to figure it out.

This post has been edited by OrionSR on Friday, Jul 27 2007, 11:29

[rubregg]

uh-oh - I *so* did not get *any* reference to horses. But that's possibly because all I know about them is that they have 4 legs and people ride them Well, I've lived in cities all my life and haven't had a horse-loving girlfriend yet... Interesting stuff there, thanks for the input.

Yes, the control center... I've grown to like it too, in the same sense as I now understand why these things are called 'trainer'. It helped me so much in practicing my jumps for Skipping Palomino and I think I used it a lot more these last couple of days than in the two years before that altogether. So I programmed teleport locations to the lead-ins to all my jumps and gave them hotkeys. Another hotkey to spawn an NRG plus a damageproof CJ - and that's how I parcticed all those jumps. Very, very helpful.

You mentioned the control center doing weird things to your game - you may have hit default hotkeys by mistake, it happened to me a lot too. I only recently found out that you can deactivate/activate hotkeys. So I deactivated *all* of them (there's quite a few default ones) and only activated the ones I put in. This seems to have helped a lot.

Since you asked, yes, I actually archived all of those save games, at least the important stages. It would be too bad to lose all the work. Since I was figuring out things like weather along the way, I even kept some notes. I know the gtasnp files won't stay forever, but once we got finalized saves and ask Samutz nicely, he might make them permanent.

Now for the races:

Badlands Endurance
Ah, right, the no-gangs idea. Yes, maybe should get back to that...


Katie Jumps

Ok, so a Doherty start it is then. The time is fine, I could just so make it to Katie's house before 12:00 too. We can keep the extra award for getting there before 12:00. I'm not so sure about the weather though. 'Scorching Hot' isn't going too well for me, the shadowy bits (e.g. backyard alleys) are far too dark. Maybe that's because I'm going on really low graphics settings (I have to, on my pc)? Maybe we can try a different starting weather. Like I said before, the starting weather didn't seem to affect the coming of rain or fog in my tries.

As for weapons, like I said before I'd like to stick closer to the original file. Not for personal reasons but for the tie-in to the chain game, where the original file came from.

Did we have any medal standards for this one yet? 10 jumps for gold, 9 for silver and 8 for bronze? Extra awards: get to Katie's before 12:00 / keep the green bike intact / that jump in Chinatown. Plus Triple Insanes maybe?


Skipping Palomino

Even now that I managed to do it a couple of times, I still think this one is pretty hard. So we agree on publishing a map with jumps, good (I'll get into that later). I'm still not sure about the timing and the medal standards. Consider this - if we leave the timing but start an hour earlier, what sky do you think the contestants will see more, orange/on time or purple/coming late? Also most players will probably have better light for their last one or two jumps this way. I do admit I just like the orange sky better - you seemed to be pretty sure about going for the purple sky though, so in that case we would have a final save?

As for medal standards, what about 11 jumps gold / 9 silver / 7 bronze, with sticking to the 4:30 time limit? Bringing bronze and silver a bit closer and all...? As in, let's not put people off it by seeing the medal standards alone?

Or, going back to my suggestion of starting one hour earlier, we could connect racing time and jumps, something like:
gold = 11 jumps / 4:30
silver = 9 jumps / 4:30 OR 11 jumps / 5:00
bronze = 7 jumps / 4:30 OR 9 jumps / 5:00 OR 11 jumps / 5:30

Probably too complicated...

Anyway, 12 jumps could be platinum, 13 platinum plus, etc... But are 13 or more actually technically achievable within the time limit? Let's keep all your suggested extra awards. I like the 'Survivor' idea

[OrionSR]

Moved from previous message since I change it after you posted.

With a little practice, getting to Katie's by 12:00 wasn't that difficult after all. To make it more of a challenge, perhaps add arriving with Full Armor before 12:00 part of the requirement. It can be done, but it's quite a race. Also, I manage 13 jumps completed with 14 found. The ped bridge toward the stadium is still giving me problems. The lean forward trick doesn't appear to work very well with a passenger. I missed it on that run, skipped it and did the other stadium jump, both airport jumps, and had time to circle back and fail that ped bridge jump again before Katie ran off. Still had the Grove Green bike in fairly good repair and hadn't used the garage - no time to spare. What do you think about going with B8/S10/G12/P14 for the medals?

I tried tweaking the engineless alt start for Katie Jumps with Blue, partly cloudy 2, but it kept reverting to scorching. I'm wondering if these saves are stuck that way. My other thought was about zeroing out the money - but I can't decide. Maximizing the cash by completing more jumps, or putting on fancier stunts, might make an interesting addition for this challenge. It also occurs to me that this file might make a useful practice/challenge save for snapshots, NRG-Challenge, and Hippy Shopper.

I was wondering about using teleporting to access the jumps. Maybe I should resist the temptation. I don't want to get too dependent on these tools. But my though is, can we share the teleport configurations?

I'm not sure what to think about the goals for Palomino. I like the idea of having a single time limit for all the standards, and including more jumps to earn a higher medal. That would almost be necessary considering how quickly it gets dark starting at 20:00, but it doesn't really get too purple until it's almost 21:00. There is something about the darkening sky that adds an urgency to the end of the race and provides a 1 minute warning that the time limit is drawing near.

Perhaps a 5:00 time limit, so bump the clock back another 00:30, would be a good idea. I was trying for a reasonable time limit that would provide for a mistake or two, perhaps resulting from triple insane jumps, or allow time to throw in some extra perks along the way. I'm stuck on this one. You've brought up the insane time limit on a number of occasions, and I don't want to be unreasonable on this, but I think 11 jumps can be completed in 4 minutes, so I'm not sure that 5 minutes would qualify as a gold standard. I'd certainly be willing to try out some different start times to see how they look and feel.

Sorry, didn't pay attention to you comment about keeping the time limit at 4:30. So... I guess try out 2 more saves and compare the three; loads at: 16:30, 16:00, and 15:30.



This post has been edited by OrionSR on Friday, Jul 27 2007, 12:39

[rubregg]

Skipping Palomino

Forget my moaning about the time limit. I had a few more practice tries yesterday (couldn't post before I went to sleep, the forum seemed down) and yes, I now think it's fine. On my cleanest run, with 11 jumps and no Triple Insanes, I managed to make it by 20:35. Yes, you do need some practice, but once you got the hang of the route, it's doable.

It hardly allows for mistakes though. On a clean run it's ok, but if you fall off just once, you're already in trouble. That's what made me think of the overtime idea in the first place.

New idea: Start at 16:00, finish at 21:00 and make the medals:
- gold: 11 jumps with 2 triple insanes
- silver: 9 jumps with 1 triple insane
- bronze: 7 jumps

Or, alternately, 1 triple insane for gold and 1 double insane for silver, but I like the above better.

Now for 2 technicalities:
The way the NRG is parked in the garage I get *really* odd camera behaviour exiting the garage. So I tried a position a little bit closer to the wall, this works a lot better for me.

The other thing is of minor importance, but maybe we shouldn't have the mission marker for the Wu Zi Mu race in this event? That would mean going on in the storyline (until the Catalina marker at Fern Ridge is gone too)...

Hey, I've got some time left before work, so I'll quickly get on this and update this with a savefile a little bit later.

In the meantime, here's an idea for an additional 'extra award': Roofie (finishing screenshot within the time limit while on that roof)


Katie Jumps

Yes, that lean-forward trick for the jump over the freeway doesn't seem to work all the time. It's probably a timing thing. Sometimes I use it at other jumps too, and sometimes it catapults me really up high where as other times nothing happens.

With your suggested medal standards, I can just so do bronze sort-of consistently and made silver once so far. But I haven't had so much practice yet, so let me get back on this later.

This post has been edited by rubregg on Saturday, Jul 28 2007, 08:36

[OrionSR]

Katie Jumps

I'm kind of holding off on working on this event at the moment. I had a pretty good run and think I might be able to ace all 14 jumps, but I'd like to wait until I had something a little closer to a final save. I'm not sure what to do about the weather. It seems stuck, but I only made a couple of attempts to tweak it to anything other than scorching. Is the weather related to the in-game days? What do you think about going back to zero cash for the alt start on Katie Jumps? It would pretty much force 1 jump before painting, but that isn't such a big deal anymore. I suppose it would be too annoying if you got a flat and couldn't even get started.

Skipping Palomino

What do think about losing the SMG for this event? Weapons aren't needed, and it might look cool if CJ was riding without a machine gun showing.

I played around with some of the recent jump discoveries this evening. I wanted an excuse to include some of the new jumps so I invented a challenge for myself. Jump the river 11 times but don't cross any bridges. The other rules still apply, but some additional time appears to be required. Best I could manage was 5:45. Part of the trick was avoiding a 12th crossing, but I'm not sure it saved me any time. I was trying out an early start, but didn't give it a fair shot. I kept trying to include more stuff instead of finish quickly.

Then I settled in for another settle in for some speed runs with the standard 16:30 load time. I combined some of the shortcuts you brought to my attention, some of the new stuff I came across recently, and took a guess at what would be the fastest combination of jumps. I got a screenshot that is nice and orange.



I added up the points from 25 jumps and an extra half point for the extra directions. Total possible points was 30.5. I'm thinking of combining the N/NE direction on North of Bridge to NNE and rounding it out at an even 30.

I agree. The extra mission icons are a distraction for this event. I noticed the weird camera thing as well, but appreciated being able to jump-mount the bike through the opening garage door. I'm still stuck on the medals. It seems to me that people will shoot for 11 jumps, and then work on time, or possibly stunts, after they find their favorite route. What would be metal standard that would mark the natural progression.

Badland Endurance

I'm fairly happy with this save. But a final save is waiting on a solution to the gangs.

This post has been edited by OrionSR on Saturday, Jul 28 2007, 09:42

[rubregg]

Was just going to update when I spotted your posting. So here:

Update: I tried, but couldn't get the weather right. Damn weather... So let's stick with your file, you got the weather exactly the way we want it. Try this file here for the altered bike position, it's your file with the bike slightly moved.

Skipping Palomino (alternate bike position)

Losing the smg for skipping palomino is fine, I had the same thought... Let's also lose the brass knuckles. For jumping events I sometimes set the fat stat to 10% - superstitious about making CJ lighter helps for the jumps.

Got to rush to work now and will be away for the rest of the day...

[OrionSR]

Skipping Palomino (using alt bike position - looks fine)

Added:
<Skipping Palomino - new bike position - no knuckles or uzis>
<Skipping Palomino - new bike position - no knuckles or usis>

I spent a little more time trying to push the limits of this event while my skills are still sharp.

14 Jumps - standard 4:30 time limit. I have a non-crossing route with 15 jumps, but I can't see any way to fit the extra jump within the time limit.



11 Jumps Without Crossing Bridges (6:00 time limit)



I'm thinking about going back to a simpler medal standard for this event. What do you think about holding the jump count at 11?

Platinum: 3:30 (20:00)
Gold: 4:30 (21:00)
Silver: 6:00 (22:30)
Bronze: 7:30 (00:00)

Any stunts, additional jumps, bridge restrictions, splashing, etc. can be part of the achievements. This would make it easy to set a standard like, "earn a silver medal without crossing any bridges."

Roofie Achievement

You mean something like this?


This image is an example and is not being submitted for the award.


Added: Scorched Earth

<Katie Jumps - Blue, Partly cloudy 2>
<Katie Jumps - Blue, Partly cloudy 2>

I messed around with the Katie Jumps save a little more. I took a tour of the island and un-grayed the map. I was hoping that killing some time might change the weather, but it didn't seem to help. So I tried starting side-missions, BMX, and Firetruck didn't help, but after exiting from a failure in 8-Track the current weather had finally changed to Blue, Partly cloudy 1, so I ran off to save. Then I forced Blue, Partly cloudy 2 using the little check box, saved, and tweaked the starting position and armor. I think I've got a working Katie Jumps save with sticky Blue, Partly cloudy weather.

Hopefully this method for fixing the weather will pan out. Identify the desired weather using the control center. If the weather is currently stuck, then un-stick it with 8-Track or other missions that do the same thing. Select the desired weather, check the box, and save. Un-check the box so it doesn't mess up anything else you are working on.

With that in mind, it might be possible to stick the Scorching Hot 1 weather back on that save you had tweaked for Skipping Palomino without the mission icons along the route.

Possible Achievement: Silver Bullet - load the Badlands Endurance save and complete Skipping Palomino with the Black Bullet and a Silver Medal time (6:00)

And another thought along the lines of the Roofie achievement. Another good place to pose is on top of the billboards in the area.


This post has been edited by OrionSR on Sunday, Jul 29 2007, 05:04

[OrionSR]

Desert Starter Saves


I'm thinking about desert rallies and was trying out some different saves. I'm just testing ideas with these saves, there's no event or anything to go with them yet.

<Toreno's Ranch>

Based on the NRG-500 Chain-Game save we've been toying with for Katie Jumps. I completed Dirt Track to rename the save so my temp files would be less likely to get confused. Loads at the Ranch in Tierra Robada. Usually the Monster, Black Sanchez, and maybe the Washington will spawn upon loading. This location is right on top of a road with light traffic.

<Fort Carson>

Based on the 100% Chain Game save from round 16. I was just fiddling with things to see how the different options work. I'm not too happy with this save, but thought perhaps you should take a look at it. It might come in handy, but seems just a little too weird. Do you think something like this might be useful on an End of the Line save that wasn't 100%?

Checksum

I've devoloped a slightly different method for calculating the new checksums - sort of. It's exactly the same process with the order off operations switched a little.

(old checksum - sum of old string) + sum of new string = new checksum

I'm tracking the string sums since they tend to get reused, so it should save me the trouble of adding them up again. So far I've got:

Badlands Endurance - 6CE
Skipping Palomino - 6A4
Katie Jumps - 41D

NRG-500 - 1A9
Against All Odds(+) - 6C9 (included some stray characters)
Dirt Track - 3A8
End of the Line - 4D5

Fort Carson - 421
Toreno's Ranch - 51D

[rubregg]

Skipping Palomino

Hmm, actually I've got used to and grown to like the 'fixed time - variable no. of jumps' idea you initially suggested.

So what, you're doing 14 jumps within 4:30 now?? You're insane, mate Also, I'll have to figure out how you got up that roof of yours, nice one

Weather Editing

I was also going to suggest to temporarily increase the 'game speed' to make the weather change quicker, until you get to the conditions you want. Haven't had a chance yet to properly try it out though.


Checksums

QUOTE (OrionSR)

(old checksum - sum of old string) + sum of new string = new checksum

Well, that's exactly what I'm doing, just shove the brackets and rearrange the sum.

Thanks for the summary of strings. May I add:

Against All Odds (no extra characters) - 5AA
The Green Sabre - 53F
Redsands Westking - 6A0


I'll be out for most of the day & at work tonight, but I'll now have a look at your files.

This post has been edited by rubregg on Sunday, Jul 29 2007, 11:56

[OrionSR]

Game Save Names

<San Andreas Save Name Calculator v1.1>

I'm using the Excel spreadsheet linked above to help me change the checksums for the name changes. The functions used will probably require the Analysis ToolPak add-in (Tools menu, Add-Ins...). The current process involves entering the old string, new string, and old checksum, and then copying or clearing the cells with functions to account for different length strings. The spreadsheet will extract each character, convert it to decimal, and calculate the new checksum. It also shows the bytes in hex for reference, but the hex stringsums are not used in any calculations.

Update:

<Badlands Endurance - no Catalina, no gangs>

I think I found a solution to the gangs shooting up the Bullet in Badlands Endurance. Then I finished off the Catalina missions to get her off the hill, but left the Wu Zi Mu race available. Cash is now $20 - the minimum required before a hooker will get in the car. I think I got all the stats reset correctly. This save will default to Small Town Bank. This is the natural weather on this save, and I think it looks as good as could be expected. Oh, and I changed his clothes.

This post has been edited by OrionSR on Monday, Jul 30 2007, 08:30

[rubregg]

Your suggestion about the weather seems to work. Have a look at this file:

<Skipping Palomino (no mission markers)>

It's not perfect - the marker for the trucking missions is still there. If we want that one gone too, I'd have to play the complete SF storyline too to unlock LV and get rid of the trucking missions... But we *might* have to do that anyway, I'm thinking of the gang-less Badlands Endurance. Or do you have an idea how we could get rid of the gangs with the tools at hand...?? Update: Yay, more cross-posting .... so how did you get rid of the gangs then?

I found some odd behaviour of your last Katie Jumps file - I cannot use the fast-food stalls, no red marker appears. Not for all of them, but for most, and it's not even consistent (over reloads) which ones that are.

I'll have a look at your spreadsheet - I'll have to see if it all works though, because I don't have Excel, I'm using Open Office. I bet you cannot save to 'open document' format in Excel, right? I was also thinking of automating the renaming process. Shame that it's far too long ago since I did my last real programming, I currently don't even have any compilers around... The logic would be rather easy I guess. Ah well, not that big a deal, as long as we can do it at all...

This post has been edited by rubregg on Monday, Jul 30 2007, 08:41

[OrionSR]

Palomino Mission Markers: The trucking mission only shows when CJ is close, so that's no different than a pay'n'spray or burgershot. The only marker on the map is The Truth, and that icon is so far away that it might be a good reference marker for jump angles or something.

Katie Jump red circles: That's disappointing, but it shouldn't be difficult to unstick the weather from the other save and try again.

<Katie Jumps - revert>

Update: I tried tweaking the Katie Jumps save again and got the same problem with the vendors. So instead I loaded the 1st save I posted with the Engineless NRG and started over again. The vendors and other red circles appear to be functioning properly. The natural weather pattern is being used, it seems like it should do nicely. There's a brief bit of fog before dawn, but otherwise cycles between hazy and a few different Blue partly cloudy variations.

Badlands Endurance: Can't guess? I used the save editor to enable gang wars and then took over all of the territories before turning them off again. There are lots of grove homies roaming the streets of LS now. This seems like a rather brutal fix. It might work for this event, but I'm not sure about reusing it too much or progressing the plot.

Excel vs Open Office Spreadsheet: Let me know how well the Excel file translates. If it gives you trouble I'll take a whack at in on the Linux partition on my laptop. Update: OpenOffice seems to handle the spreadsheet without any trouble at all.

The relevant functions are:

mid - extract characters from a string
code - char to dec
(char - dec to char)
hex2dec
dec2hex

This post has been edited by OrionSR on Monday, Jul 30 2007, 21:07

[rubregg]

Yeah, your excel spreadsheet loads well in open office, no problems there. Nice one, well done! Unfortunately I was just starting to look at it when I got called into work (on my day off) because someone called in sick. Just home and about to drop into bed now, but tomorrow I *will* have the day off. Hearhear, linux partition on the laptop... (my desktop runs on linux; mainly server functions; opensuse 10.2)

Oh, and I think it should be possible to share teleport locations or shortcuts from the control center. If you 'save to config file' they'll be written to a .dat file in the program folder.

GTASALocs.dat -- teleport locations
GTASAConfig.dat -- shortcuts

[OrionSR]

<Desert Tour>

I was considering options for desert rallies and I'm making some progress on an interesting idea. The Desert Tour is a summary of those efforts. I have a few more ideas I want to try out, but I'm still in the experimental stage so everything is taking a long time to figure out.

Please load the save and take the tour, it doesn't take long. Access and explore around the Fort Carson safe and Toreno's Ranch House. Be sure to check out the top of the hill to the north of the ranch.

You too, JAJ. I've got some questions for you about this stuff.

This post has been edited by OrionSR on Tuesday, Jul 31 2007, 15:57