[OrionSR]

Care and Feeding of a San Andreas Impound Garage

This is an initial report of the information needed to use the underground Impound Garages at the Police Department Headquarters of Los Santos, San Fierro, and Las Venturas. The impound garage zones are small save garage like zones deep within the underground impound lot. The lot activity such as gates, guards, garage door, and police inside are all controlled by a script. This is a separate function in the same area; the impound script in the impound lot is decoration for the impound garage.

• Getting busted or wasted is not a factor.

Cars are normally entered into the impound garage during missions. If the player’s two most recent vehicles are within zones of various Clear Area commands issued by the mission then they will be moved to the nearest impound garage. So basically: if the game eats your car at the start of a mission, you can go get it back from the impound garage.

I’ve only identified a few missions that provide easy access to Clear Area commands. I’m sure there are many more, this is just what I had available during my initial tests.

• Triathlons: Clears the entire map
• Bike School and Boat School: Large area around the school
• Pimping: Small area around the Idlewood Broadway spawn (I think)
• Quarry: Very large area around the Hunter Quarry
• Car Park: Independent levels of the Emerald Isle Parking Garage

Impounding Side Missions

• Pimping - radius 30.0 around Idlewood Broadway spawn
• Lowrider Game - radius 200.0 around Unity? (untested)
• Export Ship - radius 9.0 imp, 20.0 exp, not the exported vehicle
• Trucking - radius 30.0/50/100 (different subroutines) at the RS Haul Asset (untested)
• Driving School - radius 300.0
• Quarry - radius 1000.0 around quarry asset
• Boat School - radius 1000.0 around Boat School (does not work on PS2)
• Bike School - radius 300.0 around school
• Flight School - radius 300/500 (untested)
• Triathlons - radius 1000001.0 around... doesn't matter

Other Impounders

• Emerald Isle Car Park (change floors or leave building)

If CJ enters and parks an Admiral and then a Cabbie next to the Broadway in Idlewood and triggers the Pimping mission, the Cabbie will be sent to the Impound as CJ’s 2nd most recent car; the Broadway is most recent. If CJ destroys a special vehicle, and then jacks a bike and races to the triathlon before the wreck can disappear, then the bike and favorite vehicle will be placed in the nearest impound garage.

Vehicles can also be placed directly into the impound garage zone at the impound lot. There is no need to enter the vehicle to identify it with the player. When the impound garage “door” closes the garage contents will be saved and repositioned randomly when the “door” opens again. The “garage door” seen blocking the entrance to the impound lot is a different object. The impound garage zone’s “door” would behave in a similar fashion to a save garage door if the impound garage zone was placed around a small garage with an active door. Controlling this unseen door is critical for proper recovery of vehicles.

Vehicles or destroyed wrecks entered into the impound garage will be repaired and will retain any special properties or installed modifications – just like any other save garage. An impound garage can hold 3 vehicles. Additional vehicles added to the garage will replace the current contents. Replacement seems to be somewhat random – more testing is required.

Getting vehicles out of the impound garages without losing the contents of the garage is problematic. There are some unusual properties to the impound garages that must be controlled.

The impound garage doors have a very large X, Y radius trigger. In each impound lot, CJ pretty much needs to be at the far end of the room in order to be out of range of the door so it can close. The range appears to be the same when on foot or in a vehicle. However, the impound garages also have a very narrow Z radius trigger. CJ can drive all over the streets around the impound garages and the doors will never open until he begins the descent into the impound lot.

Impound Garages desperately want to eat your vehicles. Allowing the invisible door to open or close when CJ is not looking at the garage zone will very likely cause some or all of the vehicles to disappear. This action is fairly reliable. I’m fairly certain the garages are intended to operate this way – sort of. The main problem is that the impounded vehicles get discarded as CJ approaches the garage zone instead of only as he leaves. My current hypothesis is that there is an inner discard radius. If the door is open, CJ is outside of the discard radius, and he looks away from the vehicles for more than a few seconds, then they will vanish. Retrieving an impounded vehicle requires keeping the vehicle in view whenever CJ is inside of this discard ring (area between door circumference and discard circumference, and uh… I doubt the ring is round).

This is fairly easy in Las Venturas. This garage has an extra deep level and a recessed corner for the impound zone. It is possible to drive down the far wall into the lower area and never open the door. Turn and face the recessed area as you approach and the contents should be intact. Move any junk cars out of the zone, and if there is anything you want to keep be sure to watch it as you retrace your steps out of the lower level.

Los Santos is a little more problematic. There is a random car spawn inside the garage zone, so if you let the door open and close you’ll lose something. I have had fairly good success hugging the inside wall and maintain a view in the direction of the vehicles.

San Fierro has a particularly difficult impound lot to manage. The impound zone is behind the vehicle as CJ descends into the impound lot. The door opens during the descent and closes again at the bottom – I can’t seem to enter and keep it open or closed. There are two random spawns inside of the garage zone that will replace some of the contents of the garage if they spawn. Also, bikes entered into the SF impound garage will be spawned between the ceiling of the impound lot and the parking lot above.

Despite a voracious appetite for cars and bikes, the impound garages apparently don’t have a taste for some vehicles. The Vortex will consistently maintain its position even when other vehicles vanish. The Seasparrow doesn’t usually disappear unless I start cramming even larger vehicles into the garage. My guess is that the unusual vehicles frequently sited in forums are the vehicles least likely to be eaten if not watched. What did you find in your impound garage?

This concludes my initial report on Impound Garage operation. It is my hope that other players can use this information to access their impound garages to confirm or deny my observations and this will lead to a more complete understanding of the Impound Garages of San Andreas.

Added:

A few numbers to go with the generalizations above.

• The impound zone XY radius opens at about 58 units from the zone.
• The impound zone closes when CJ is about 64 units from the zone.
• The discard radius appears to begin about 32 units away from the impound spawned vehicles - not the zone.
• The discard timer appears to be exactly 2 seconds. Look away longer and they will vanish.

Vehicles resistant to being discarded:

• Aircraft
• Vortex
• Ambulance
• Firetruck SA

This post has been edited by OrionSR on Monday, Jan 24 2011, 01:11

[OrionSR]

I still have a lot of questions about the impound garages:

Which vehicles are less likely to be discarded when not watched?
Which missions enter vehicles into the garages?
Are there any special vehicles that can be collected with this method?
Besides Clear Area (0395) and Clear Cars from Cube (03BA), are there other methods to impound vehicles?
How can the SF and LS Impound Zones or impound scripts be modified to avoid the random spawns?
Are the impounded cars less likely to be eaten if entered briefly before leaving the garage? (yes)
Can anything be done to keep the door open or closed while entering the SF Impound Lot?
I had an impounded Dune pop suddenly into view when CJ bumped into it - uh... what's up with that?

This post has been edited by OrionSR on Wednesday, Dec 26 2007, 08:42

[!!GameCH33TA!!]

Yea, so thats random. I dont really understand this at all. Is this only for PC users? Nothing for PS2?
How long do the vehicles stay there until they disappear or are 'eaten'?

[Bad~Boy#17]

I'm impressed

QUOTE (orionSR)

Can anything be done to keep the door open or closed while entering the SF Impound Lot?

Park a police car there

[monkeyman237]

Wow, that must have taken ages to write, you have such patience. Good stuff.

[pomor]

QUOTE (OrionSR @ Dec 26 2007, 06:42)

Care and Feeding of a San Andreas Impound Garage Vehicles or destroyed wrecks entered into the impound garage will be repaired and will retain any special properties or installed modifications - just like any other save garage.

Thats extremally intersting, but how did you pushed destroyed wreck into the impoud? Impoud's doors will open only if you are sitting in the police vehicle. I wonder if it be more doable to push the husk of a plane (namely Hydra ) to the impound then to a ordinary garage.

[The Night Fox]

Good guide

[OrionSR]

QUOTE (!!GameCH33TA!! @ Dec 26 2007, 05:03)

Yea, so thats random. I dont really understand this at all. Is this only for PC users? Nothing for PS2? How long do the vehicles stay there until they disappear or are 'eaten'?

I strongly suspect that Impound Garages work the same way for PS2, but this is untested at the moment. The main difference in my notes above is that I don't think the Car Park script works at Emerald Isle on PS2. It didn't on my original version(wrong). Are there cars in the multi-story Emerald Isle garage on your version? If so, every time you change levels, or hop out the window on the 4th floor, the cars will be cleared, and CJ's cars get get impounded. BTW, If it works, try spinning in circles right outside the window on the 4th floor to spawn random vehicles until one you like appears.

QUOTE (pomor @ Dec 26 2007, 10:03)

Thats extremally intersting, but how did you pushed destroyed wreck into the impoud? Impoud's doors will open only if you are sitting in the police vehicle. I wonder if it be more doable to push the husk of a plane (namely Hydra ) to the impound then to a ordinary garage.

I didn't put the destroyed wreck in the impound, that's the beauty of the special impound type garages. All I need to do is figure out how to get the game to tow the vehicle to the impound for me. For these tests, and keep in mind that this report is based on controlled experiments with a custom script adjusted to make testing easier, I was trying to test the limits of what could be impounded. The limit seems to be anything on the map - or still present in memory. Wrecks tend to disappear faster than abandoned vehicles, but if it's still in memory, and in range of the Clear Area command (triathlons clear everything, boat school and probably driving school cover 2/3rds of the map), then it gets sent to the nearest impound garage. The main trick is getting it out again.

QUOTE (Bad~Boy#17 @ Dec 26 2007, 05:49)

I'm impressed   QUOTE (orionSR) Can anything be done to keep the door open or closed while entering the SF Impound Lot? Park a police car there

A police car might hold the door to the impound lot open, but that door isn't connected with the impound garage zone. All it does is block access to the impound lot unless CJ is in a police car - unless he walks or drives a bike through the small door next to the impound lot door. The impound lot door opens for anything going out. The impound lot door is scripted. If I change the script so it spawns the door, gate, and police inside when CJ is 500 feet above the impound lot, then all this is missing when CJ arrives to check the impound garage zone (rather than disable the script I just stopped it from triggering - it's a safer edit). The conclusion of this test was that the impound script doesn't eat the cars. The behavior of the impound garage zone was exactly the same without all the decorations from the impound lot script.

Here's an interesting observation I made last night: The only vehicles that are eaten when CJ looks away are the vehicles spawned by the impound zone when the zone/door opens. Random spawns within the zone, vehicles placed or spawned in the impound zone, or impounded vehicles that CJ has entered don't disappear.

The discard radius appears to be about half the impound zone's X/Y door radius. Sorry, I still haven't made any measurements on the radii, but in each impound lot there is just enough distance to see the door open and close (sorry), see the cars appear and disappear from the far side of the room.

This post has been edited by OrionSR on Saturday, Jan 22 2011, 23:29

[Spuds725]

Do special or "customized" cars retain their poperties... or Nitrous if equipped??? Are they the same car or just the same type of car is my question??

Great info... I heard (ages ago) of the impounds taking your car when you got busted... so I made an extremely recognizable car (very customized) and never got it to appear there... That was the extent of my testing...

[OrionSR]

QUOTE (Spuds725 @ Dec 26 2007, 21:17)

Do special or "customized" cars retain their poperties... or Nitrous if equipped??? Are they the same car or just the same type of car is my question?? Great info... I heard (ages ago) of the impounds taking your car when you got busted... so I made an extremely recognizable car (very customized) and never got it to appear there... That was the extent of my testing...

Yes. One of my 1st tests was to impound a vehicle with custom wheels and nitrous. These features were still present after impounding. The save file records of the impounded vehicles indicate that this is every bit as much the "same car" and any other car you put into a save garage. You will probably lose special properties like heavy vehicle, custom plates, extra vehicle health, or anything else that is reset by a save garage. However, I must admit to only limited testing. I'd feel a lot more comfortable with some of these conclusions if they were confirmed by other experienced players.

I too had made an initial investigation of the impound garage, but like most players I didn't watch the impound zone so I only found an occasional aircraft or something that wasn't practical to remove from an underground garage guarded by police, so I gave up on the idea. But a recent mod by DeeZire (Things To Do In San Andreas) restored the missing impound mission so I figured there must be something to this whole impound thing and took a look through my old saves until I could identify saved vehicles in the impound lots, then searched the save until I found them. Changing the model and color confirmed I had the correct vehicle record. So I manually copied the impounded car records to a new save, loaded, warped to the impound garages, and there they were. With that kind of evidence that I had cars saved in the impound garage I was pretty encouraged to figure out how to get them out.

[Spuds725]

Thanks for the info .... we could probably use Demarest to figure out the ins and outs of this about now

[AceOfDeath666]

why does the Hydra spawn in the garages?

[OrionSR]

QUOTE (AceOfDeath666 @ Dec 27 2007, 16:00)

why does the Hydra spawn in the garages?

The aircraft don't vanish the way most other vehicles do, so I would suspect people might notice them in the impound garages frequently, especially if they were not careful to keep the zone "in view" while descending into the impound lot and let the rest of the vehicle disappear. Also, large vehicles occasionally displace other vehicles in the garage.

How the Hydra got in there in the 1st place I'm not so sure. My 1st guess would be that a Hydra was used shortly before starting a flight school lesson and so it ended up in the LV impound, but I haven't checked this mission yet. Or maybe a Hydra was used for fast transport to the boat school and CJ bailed out and destroyed the Hydra, but started the lessons before the wreck could disappear so it was impounded at the SF impound. To be honest, I'm not really sure which vehicles tend to end up in the impound lots during missions. I was able to identify a few side missions that impound vehicles on the save I was working with, but I just figured this out a few days ago, and haven't had a chance to check the impound garages during normal game play.

I ran a few more tests on the Dune. Maybe it's only at LV, but the dumb thing always spawn in as invisible and won't appear until CJ bumps it. Actually, shooting it might help, I didn't try. The other thing I noticed is that all the boats were invisible - again, this was in LV. CJ could hop in and start the boats and he'd disappear until he exited. But when I checked on the SF impound lot for the chain game today, I found 2 Marquis visible in the impound. So... more weirdness to track down I guess.

I checked quite a few vehicles hoping to find something useful that wouldn't vanish too quickly - like the Vortex. The best vehicle I could find was the firetruck; the SA version with the hose, not the ladder version. The Ambulance also didn't vanish when CJ didn't watch it. Other than that, just aircraft. I didn't try everything but I came pretty close. I definitely covered all the vehicle classes and couldn't find a reliable pattern. I also tried everything unusual, and everything I like, just to be sure. No luck.

[pomor]

I cannot make it work
Obviously I did something wrong. I was trying it with some distinct , easy noticeable cars, like Tornado with custom paintjob or Hotring Racer. When I park one close to the Brodway in LS and start the Pimping Mission it will disappear, but then I head directly to the impound and there was never the car I was trying to transfer there. Where it should exactly appear? Shall I cancel the Pimping mission or not? (tried both).

[OrionSR]

QUOTE (pomor @ Dec 28 2007, 11:39)

I cannot make it work Obviously I did something wrong. I was trying it with some distinct , easy noticeable cars, like Tornado with custom paintjob or Hotring Racer. When I park one close to the Brodway in LS and start the Pimping Mission  it will disappear,  but then I head directly to the impound and there was never the car I was trying to transfer there. Where it should exactly appear? Shall I cancel the Pimping mission or not? (tried both).

Here's is a screenshot of the LS impound zone with 3 vehicles. This image shows where the vehicles spawn in the LS impound zone, and the random spawn that tends to confuse things. I sketched a rough zone boundary. Basically, it's everything on the other side of that pillar on the right.


The image below shows the basic structure of the LS impound lot. The impound zone is marked on the left, but the vehicles are not visible as CJ is outside of the door radius. I also marked a rough boundary for the door open and close radii, and the discard radius. I didn't extend the radii too far to the right as the line seems to be more curved than I expected.


When you enter the impound lot using the ramp marked on the right side of the image, the impound zone will be located to CJ right. Hold look-right until CJ is at the bottom of the ramp and has started the 1st turn. By then the impound zone will still be roughly "in view", but I still tend to aim my camera a bit to the right as I approach the final turn towards the impound zone. This is when I tend to flirt with that 2 second grace period. Flicking the camera in the direction of the zone once per second seems to do the trick. It's not too difficult to stay close enough to the impound zone that the door does not close and that random spawn doesn't replace one of the impounded vehicles.

The Broadway will impound the vehicles near it's spawn point right away. There is no need to cancel the mission, but it won't hurt either. While you are figuring out the discard and door radii, I would suggest impounding an Ambulance, a Tornado or other car that won't spawn randomly, and the Firetruck used for the Firefighter mission, in that order. The Ambulance shouldn't disappear, but it might be replaced by the random spawn since it went in 1st. The Tornado will vanish if you don't keep an eye on it, so that's the main test. The FDSA Firetruck should be there either way, so you'll have confirmation the impound is working.

Also consider experimenting with the garage with the vehicles in the impound lot. Often it's quicker to put vehicles directly in the zone than to run around impounding them with missions. The vehicles will have the same properties either way after the garage has cleared and spawned them once. One note however: the police vehicles are scripted and may not be stored by the impound zone. I suspect this is similar to the reason mission vehicles can't be save or repaired in a garage until they are destroyed.

This post has been edited by OrionSR on Friday, Dec 28 2007, 21:30

[GTA Phreak]

Great job on demystifying the impound garage

[Ryan]

Dang you've been busy the last few days Orion. I best get over to Panada Town and check this out.

[pomor]

Now, that was a great piece of the explanation.
Yeah, it works every time with firetruck and ambulance, and I managed to repair the car, I have driven to the impound manually.
But others, modded lowrides and unique cars, still are eluding me.
Everytime they got discarded before I have the chance to see them. Well, back to the testing

[OrionSR]

It seems like you've got everything working except the part about keeping the garage zone in view while descending into the lot and approaching the impound zone. In this case, "in view" means aiming the camera in the general direction of the impound zone. You won't be able to see the vehicles through the wall, but the vehicles don't seem to be able to tell the difference and will remain in place as you approach.

Trust me, I understand your frustration. Most of the time that I spent investigating the impound garages was invested in wresting with the discard radius. For my 1st successful test of the Keep in View strategy I marked the impound zone with my map marker, equipped an SMG, and manually targeted the impound zone while CJ strafed through the impound lot getting shot at by the scripted cops - success, finally! Sort of, the getting shot part sucks. Then I tried entering with a Police Vehicle so the stars wouldn't trigger during the experiment. I drove really slow, and adjusted my analog stick to keep the impound zone in view. That also worked, but getting the cop car and fighting with the camera is a bit of a hassle - should be easy with mouse look.

The next successful test was on a bike. This time I held look-right as CJ drove down the ramp. By the time CJ is at the bottom of the ramp the zone is a bit too far behind him on the right, but making the 1st turn while holing look-right sweeps the camera across the zone again. Now the zone is sort of in view on the right, but still blocked by the wall - drive forward and look down the last section to finally see the vehicles. Turn and watch the vehicles during the final approach.

Now I've got a really good feel for the layout of the impound lots, and the timing involved with keeping an eye on the vehicles. As soon as CJ passes the small door with his bike I hold look right to the bottom of the ramp. Let go for 1/2 a second to get my barrings, and hold look right and make the turn. Zip to the end of the next section while taking a curved path that pulls the camera in the direction of the impound zone, and... there they are. With all this practice I've pretty much got the LS and LV impounds nailed. I think others will have just as much success if I can figure out how to explain it properly, so please let me know if there are key details of my explanation that should be moved up to the 1st post.

[AceOfDeath666]

've discovered that u can get into the SF garage and kill every cop WITHOUT any Stars
1.kill the guard at the top of the hill w/ a knife
2. kill the guard by the Garage door with a Silenced 9mm
3. kill the farther gate guard
4. kill the othere guards inside w/o any other guards knowledge