The Removed Difficulty Levels of GTA San Andreas

[@TJGM]

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[@YesJustTia]

can I request a video Ideas if I'm becoming a Patreon member ☝🏻

[@vincepale]

Gameinformer Issue 134, June 2004, Page 48: ""One of the more significant changes in gameplay experience is the work that has gone into the: game's Al system. Each and every character you see on screen now has a “brain,” and will react to your actions and other events in а much more intelligent fashion. Rest ¦ assured, the sometime dimwitted! reactions of pedestrians in past: editions of GTA is a thing of the past. ; NPC intelligence behavior has now become so varied that voiceover! recording sessions for an average! pedestrian character's dialogue have } gone from a mere ten minutes to an : hour in length. The Al is not limited$ to the behavior of NPCs, either, as} San Andreas will implement dynamic difficulty based on your performance, sometimes easing the challenge! to allow players to advance past: troublesome objectives - a movie Rockstar hopes will allow more} fans to play San Andreas through to completion.""

[@yoblap]

Still learning stuff 20 years later. This game is legendary.

[@FAM3Kane]

Yeah

[@FR4M3Sharma]

A Easter egg was found recently in the original Arcade release of Final Fight. So yeah there's whole lot more stuff that we'll find out later.

[@priboiiiiii5004]

Which easter egg?​@@FR4M3Sharma

[@random-user3682]

yep and it's all thanks to Grove Street Games for leaking those files lol

[@chilbiyito]

​​@@random-user3682I'll always think it was because of incompetence rather than deliberately "leaking" stuff for the fans

[@retabera]

The fact that the devs considered a difficulty level system for this mission, shows they knew it was particularly challenging.

[@HalfDuck]

Coder: Who keeps resetting my difficulty variables 😡 I'll leave a comment in the code to stop them doing that, that should fix it

[@TerminatorZXY]

Well, if your co-workers code says DO NOT TOUCH, you DO NOT TOUCH. We'll never know if he gave up on implementing it because he couldn't get it to work, or the team just genuinely scrapped the idea

[@BirIkiTilkiSiki]

hello! 😁 just to inform you just incase you didn't know.. *you → 🤔* that you will be 𝗧𝗢𝗨𝗖𝗛𝗘𝗗 😈 by approximately 180 men under 50 seconds ⏰ time is ticking!

[@DinosaurBytes]

Throwing out a wild guess, but I'd wager they cut the idea mainly due to how often players load the game. Anecdotally speaking, it seems like a pretty rare occurrence for somebody *not* to reload a save after most mission fails (at least before dating Katie).

[@megatronacepticon]

Makes sense, especially with Wrong Side of the Tracks where if you fail you've either lost ypur weapons from dying or you're way out in the country, so you're probably going to just reload anyway rather than drive all the way back to Smoke's house from the Las Venturas rail bridge.

[@YOEL_44]

Well... there are some bugged variables that don't reset between reloads, these could have been some of those.

[@shadowx2229]

That combined with insane crunch. We'll probably never stop learning new things that got scrapped because there's just so much. Maybe one day if we get a ground up remake they can implement all the things they wanted.

[@Paulinho_66]

@@shadowx2229they could implement things like the beta stuff that we found on ttdisa

[@purplevectorgaming6089]

When I was a child, I never had issues with wrong side of the tracks. It was and still isn't very hard at all. I might fail it once if im not really trying. But smoke's a.i is not that dumb. He kills them all long before you get to the end of the tracks. in fact I never knew how infamous this mission was until a few years ago when I saw a review complaining about this specific mission.

[@olek432olek]

same

[@peconi47]

I never had any issues either, the people who complain about it are just unbelievably bad

[@purplevectorgaming6089]

@peconi47 I think they are just driving way too close to the train without realizing it lol. Thats the only reason why I'd ever fail it if I wasn't really trying. Smoke's a.i physically cannot aim at the gang members if you're too close.

[@peconi47]

@purplevectorgaming6089 exactly, smoke literally has *100% accuracy* and cannot miss if you literally just get a little distance

[@Miniek80]

​@@purplevectorgaming6089true, I was maybe 10 or 11 years old when I played it for first time and after few shorts attempt I realized that I have to stay almost outside of tracks to make Big Smoke more efficient. I had to tell that to my friends in school. I guess if you fail this mission over and over again and blame it for difficulty then you just have sort of low IQ or problems with logical thinking/connecting the dots.

[@SiljCBcnr]

I love this game. Thanks for this incredibly well made and informative video. I had never heard about difficulty settings in San Andreas other than the bike/car-enemy-npc-precision bug. This was so much better to watch than clicking on the 100th "23 facts you never heard about San Andreas - number 9 is a sad one" video

[@NicolasChiribelo]

Regarding difficulty settings done by Rockstar... in GTA V you can skip missions altogether if you fail them enough times.

[@antaka503]

it woul be cool if San Andreas got developed not in 2 years, but 4. Imagine if we could get this amazing game in just 2 years, what about 4?

[@Dave_Albright]

Rockstar is a commercial company and they need the money. Projects must have a deadline

[@MisterniKOK]

Problem is that ps2 was a huge bottleneck, if you watch beta versions of GTA San Andreas, you will see that the game got a lot of removed features because ps2 hardware

[@BrianM_3rd]

What a fantastic channel! Absolutely love stuff like this, I am here ALL DAY for San Andreas engine minutiae. Astonished to learn that I'd apparently already liked other videos of yours previously and hadn't subscribed yet.

[@blakegriplingph]

We should ask Obbe about this soon.

[@BilinmeyenBey]

Hes gonna get a headache from us 😂

[@Puxi]

No, rather ax Aaron Garbuts son. He will put it online for all to see....

[@BobElAventurero]

What a surprise, this is something totally new! and you explained it so well that it is easy to understand 😁

[@spyrow9957]

I already said this under your last video, but after 16 years of playing this game I am still learning new stuff about this game. I did over a dozen playthroughs of this game and maybe 8-9 100% playthroughs, at this point I thought I know everything about San Andreas and I am obviously wrong. Again, thank you for those videos! Btw I gotta say your San Andreas modding guide is probably the best out there, thank you for making that!

[@SeriousDragonify]

This explains why theres replayability button after failing the mission.

[@WorldsWorstBoy]

Wrong side of the tracks is not that difficult honestly

[@GoodOleDFT]

It's not if you have basic knowledge of hitboxes.

[@Manic_Panic]

Yeah the biggest problem is the hitbox of the train. It's not very accurate so Big Smoke usually shoots at the train's hit box instead of the Vagos. You need to be in a specific position on the other side of the tracks for Smoke to shoot correctly and then it's easy, a slight move to the left or right and he will miss every shot. Reducing the collision box would fix this properly.

[@greatone10]

@@Manic_Panic The mission dialogue doesn't help, as Smoke has a couple lines encouraging CJ to get close to the train. When in reality, you want to actually be a fair distance away so Smoke shoots the Vagos and not the train itself.

[@pablo5425]

you just have to keep some distance and keep the bike stable so that smoke can shoot efficiently

[@shaunp253]

The difficulty came from our ignorance and it being an early mission in the game. Once you know not to hug the train, it's simple.

[@DanielXGonzález]

>Make a mod that adds difficulty scaling to all missions >New speedrun category idea: speedrun the game with this mod and intentionally lose in strategic missions where lower enemy health might make the run considerably faster

[@smarttravel3144]

That's an interesting idea, but I feel like most speedrunners just headshot everybody, so I doubt it would make things faster.

[@DanielXGonzález]

​@@smarttravel3144Yeah, good point honestly

[@ShadowWalker-ng1it]

Yes good in theory but since speedruner headshot all the time having to respawn and restart the mission would lead to longer runs

[@PTCreeperKiller]

There really wouldn't be any applicable timesave with that mod, simply because failing a mission implies timeloss (unless purposely failed, like blowing up Ryder's car or something like that). I just don't see a scenario where lower enemy health would be helpful. Lower enemy damage could be useful, but you'd already be in the red splits for that one. In other words, if you don't do it first try, you're not making up time on a repeat attempt.

[@spyrow9957]

I like that Idea

[@pisquickgta]

Nice work man!

[@Jellow128]

Great video mate, earned a new subscriber!

[@QOTSAPT]

10:51 It kind of has on GTA IV, if you fail too many times the missions get easier.

[@Strike86]

8:19 "Inspired by Perfect Dark, Goldeneye, Terminator 2, Time Crisis, Zelda" Is that a note from a Rockstar developer in the original code? Are there any other cool notes like this from 2004?

[@iknowyounot88]

I like the thumbnail. Not necessarily clickbait, but funnily/interestingly exaggerated.

[@AbhikShrestha]

Sanny builder ❤ Really loved that IDE. Coding in that was so fun. Although it wasn't real programming langauge it was still fun

[@vincepale]

Scaling difficult was advertised as a feature in the magazine previews of GTA:SA.

[@TJGM]

Really? Any idea which magazine?

[@vincepale]

@@TJGM Gameinformer, I found the text on some forums, if you google "With the new AI comes dynamic difficulty. This means based on your performance missions will be made to suit your skill level." with the quotation marks, you will find it! Those were the days. Visiting GTAGaming was my muscle memory when I opened the webrowser.

[@TheDiymovies]

Files with over 100k lines…is that due to how items were compiled or did they really work out of a single file? 😱

[@hatsjer]

I have absolutely no coding / programming knowledge, but if I have understood things correctly are they working on individual files, and when they wrap up the project, are they merging the files into fewer larger files.

[@NikkiWrightVGM]

It'd be a laugh if the scaling difficulty for Wrong Side of the Tracks made the hitbox for the train smaller each time so you could actually hit the Vagos :P

[@nsawatchlistbait289]

0:45 thanks GSG

[@OlegSmileSSToRM]

Interesting stuff, good work

[@flametornado491]

Hi TJGM ! Are you aware of Ezeikel's and Junior Djjr's new mod Traffic Lod for GTA SA?

[@ΗΥΡΗΕΝ]

I'm not TJGM but could you send me a link, I've been working on a modded San Andreas for a year now and I might find it useful

[@flametornado491]

@ΗΥΡΗΕΝ The mod hasn't been released yet. It's work in progress. You can get more information about it in the latest Community post of Junior Djjr's KZbin channel.

[@champfrompostal]

​@@flametornado491 yo whaaat i just looked it up and it looks sick!!! imma have to start modding gta sa again ngl

[@ΗΥΡΗΕΝ]

@@flametornado491 Okay thanks I might keep an eye out for it

[@ΗΥΡΗΕΝ]

@@champfrompostal Btw, If you want to start modding, I recommend the modloader from mixmods because it's compatible with loads of other mods from mixmods and it makes the installation super easy.

[@khaledo9996]

Interesting, Midnight Club 3 also has a very similar feature

[@sharpfalcon6196]

Fail a race enough times and it gets easier. The Xbox version has the AI significantly loosened thanks to its smoother controls.

[@Seth22087]

To me it feels a lot like first one, wrong side of the track, was kind of what birthed the idea, other two missions were likely more viability test and they felt this would be way more work to put into the game as big feature so it got scrapped. Variable likely was "broken" to avoid having to change scripts, just to find out what else it can break once removed, so it was easy way out without much change. But I can't get rid of the feeling that wrong side of the track, if it wasn't designed for it, would be easier mission and they kind of forgot to change difficulty after scraping the idea. Because it really was too big difficulty spike. Also makes me wonder if especially third mission was different when they were testing the idea and got changed, hence why only 3 cops are effected by it and originally it had more impact. And with changes, they simply didn't make other cops effected by it. But it was kind of shame they scraped the idea though, there definitely are missions that could have used some kind of difficulty options. Especially my arch nemesis GTA missions of fly toy plane or helicopter... Those were always super terrible for me. Especially with controls on PC with mouse and keyboard only. Like those really make me want to quit, perform exorcism because those missions must be shaped for optimal demonic possession and mentally prepare to hate my life for next few hours or whatever till stars align and I get through them.

[@effen_aey_man]

I used to be good enough to finish wrong side of the tracks before getting out of Los Santos. That was a crazy time. I'll never forget how it felt to finish that mission for the first time and then I never had trouble with it again. The Zero missions though... Fuck those missions.

[@chris_player2995]

20 years later, we still talk about the damn train

[@confusedchap9923]

1:00. Where do u get the source code from? Cos I just use sanny builder. Sany other way?

[@MrSmith717]

Never had a problem with Wrong Side of the Tracks. 🙈 I always just used a wider line, riding on the very outside of the right track and a little bit to the front of the train while keeping the speed.

[@HerpDerp72]

They may have intended to declare the difficulty_s3flag as static, which would have incremented between mission restarts even though it's a local variable

[@RandomPerson-qu4yr]

any one noticed how clean his gta sa is

[@champfrompostal]

yeah that's because some really nice, vanilla-friendly mods are installed on top of it such as RoSA Project Reborn, SkyGFX and Proper Fixes. edit: look up mixmods if you're interested (the site is in brazilian tho so you might have to use a translator extension)

[@dubl33_27]

mods ftw

[@capralmarines4043]

@@dubl33_27 Playing on PS2 emulator with game's resolution scaled to 1440p is the greatest way to play every 3D universe games. It has a much greater atmospheric effects and details overall.

[@balaclavacotidiano4727]

@@capralmarines4043 is there a way of playing like that without the PS2 emulator?

[@CoolyCools]

​@@capralmarines4043you would be missing out on great mods like widescreen fix, skygfx, project2dfx and many more that could actually look better than ps2 upscaled

[@best591]

Thank you for the research but I have a big problem with the sentence "the variable is local, so it's never used" in this context: If you would set this as a global variable it would allocate it's memory forever before and after the mission. Do this for every mission and you would loose 4 Byte x 100 Missions just for those variables (remember, the ps2 only had 32MB RAM and things needed to be optimized back then). So setting it locally when the mission starts makes sense. You would need a function somewhere else in the code that keeps track on how often you failed a currently available mission tho

[@DanielClear2]

I wonder why they didn't decide on just lowering the HPs if they thought that the mission was hard enough to have a difficulty failsafe in the first place.

[@abdou.the.heretic]

People suck.

[@shadowx2229]

They never expected THAT many people to struggle, for sure. I'm sure from playtesters they knew it was one of the more troublesome missions which is why they tried tinkering with the difficulty. but you can only learn so much from a limited pool of testers before a release (especially back then), they probably assumed it was a smaller issue than it actually was.

[@JanoschNr1]

Man I would hated that ... I rather retry it 100 times than having to succeed because the game got easier, let alone in Steep I kept playing 1 ultra hard skydiving part for like 10 Hours trying to get throu the portion and was one of the fiew. Gliding throu the mountains side to side with a narrow gap on time limit was truely not easy but it made the end so much more rewarding.

[@elitef40]

I feel like it would've been much better if they had included a difficulty option. That would most certainly please everyone.

[@JanoschNr1]

@@elitef40 One 💯 percent agree, the option to toggle it would make it so much better for everyone.

[@elitef40]

@@JanoschNr1 I'm glad you agree. Thanks :)

[@spyrow9957]

Do you remember what the name of that challenge in steep was? Steep is such a good game

[@nobodyinparticular9640]

"Thanks to Grove Street Games, we have the source code" Correction: thanks to GSG's *incompetence,* we have the source code, hah.

[@TJGM]

It was likely done on purpose.

[@MrSN99]

Brilliant channel

[@MuscleMMan]

It was a hit game not because the PlayStation 2 sales It is because the game itself has made the mark in our childhood.

[@bodymore23]

This mission is actually easy! The key is not getting to close to the train cause the bullets will hit the train and not the gang members! So stay as far outside of the tracks you can

[@nitrosodium]

I would have needed the difficulty scaling as a kid 😂 but it would be strange: after 3 attempts of being stuck, one would somehow pass it easily and many people wouldn't notice the difficulty itself is scaling down, niot that they suddenly became pros 😅 But i think R* just forgot to fix the resetting, or they'd give The Damn Train vagos "medium" hp, but yeah one thing i'm glad they scrapped

[@pandaprewmaster325]

Wow even rockstar thought the mission was too difficult? Look I ain't gonna beat around the bush wrong side of the tracks is quite easy (unlike the "fly the jet and keep up with another jet so u can jump from ur jet to the other jet" mission. Although easy you can lose control of the bike couple times also you need to reliably keep smoke shooting not the easiest of missions but not absurdly difficult like some other missions like the last drive school mission or the flying school stuff.

[@FemboyTrain]

What happens when you dupe these missions and fail one?

[@RonaldMcDonald-nf9jj]

can you please make a video about how traffic works in GTA? how do the cars know what to do?

[@TJGM]

Honestly not a bad idea, I'll look into it.

[@jogzyg2036]

All we had to do, was not reset the damn flag CJ.

[@matthew-kf6le]

I noticed a bunch of lgb pride flags in the game and some stairs painted with the rainbow. I don't remember it in the original ps2 version. They just have to ruin everything with that bs

[@SunnyShuklathedoctor]

It could be that making the difficulty flag a global could have affected other missions big smoke was on by having those missions be easier by default. It looks like they wanted to make it a global thing but ended up scrapping it. I'm just speculating here.

[@ssssssssssssssssss50]

Don’t think it’s a coincidence only used for this mission

[@tis4657]

Does anybody know a solution to CJ moving on his own intermittently with mouse and keyboard? I can't even pause the game when it goes into this state or do anything else. This is very game breaking and even with all the essential mods I can't seem to shake this problem and it's very frustrating. Any help would be appreciated. And no I do not have a controller plugged into my computer at all so there's no way that's the issue.

[@sonicthomasgamer]

Developer 1: Do not reset variable Developer X: F U *unglobals your variable*

[@scarletcrusader5431]

What cheat menu/trainer do you use for SA?

[@Bw3r]

Can you come back to mod showcase? it's interesting

[@Anton_3112]

Where can i find the code leaked by grove street games?

[@atomicshrimp8780]

Can you make a GTA Vice City modding guide like the San Andreas one

[@v.nd.tt.s8943]

I think they just did it for 3 missions, and then scrapped it, cause that would require to add such flag for every mission, and that's a lot of boilerplate code for 100 missions.

[@reeeee6699]

10:43 understandable

[@Bigger-smoke45]

Am I the only one who had more trouble with just business than with wrong side of the tracks

[@matthew-kf6le]

All you had to do was follow the dam train CJ

[@imranbellaoui]

A mistake that made the mission unique in all gaming community

[@DeadUnknown-lv4mn]

In the Just Business are the enemy's afected by this difficulty in the sewers section only ?

[@spyrow9957]

In the sewer section everyone has like 1hp everytime you do the Mission, even the cars blow up after one bullet. There is no difficulty setting for this mission.

[@WarHelmetCombine]

Funny thing is I found the mission insanely easy.

[@gavinmercer4712]

I can’t believe BS only needed to hit 20 shots

[@duca31]

I don't understand why everyone is talking so much about this mission. and complained that it was too difficult. ok it's a bit harder than the other missions, but I think it's just fine. a little challenge is welcome. as far as I'm concerned, some missions could have been a little harder, for me it's more fun that way. I have the feeling that people don't have patience and quickly get annoyed because something like this bothers them. Gta sa is legendary!

[@Fusion710]

the mission is so easy any time lol just get far enough away for smoke to hit every shot

[@Nunvalde223]

300 hp, bullet sponges be like

[@chilbiyito]

So rockstar already did difficulty = npc firerate before GTA Online?

[@FebruaryWashington]

War Drum Studios being the mvp once more, based They did such a big thing for the community!

[@fretzil]

are you dumb

[@nxmx6ix]

Leaking the codes was the least thing they could do after the "definitive" edition garbage fire.

[@DeaZzZeR]

That means Big Smokes cant atleast hit 5 Shoots on a target nice he can only do 3 atleast

[@MrLisso98]

what mods are u using?

[@shockwaveleopard]

Proper fixes, skygfx

[@lalnablehector1285]

Is it just me that found "Wrong side of the tracks" easy? i have never had any trouble with it, HOWEVER that fucking flight school of Toreno put me off the game for over a year because i swear the plane had less power each time i failed to the point where it wouldn't pull up to even the first checkpoint.

[@XaviAndreu]

Top 🔝

[@nikolaynenov1282]

Everyone who says the train mission is hard just need to git gud. Every playthrough I finish the mission before or little after entering the tunnel 🤷🏼

[@checkmate5336]

San Andreas was Rockstar Magnum Opus. You can't convince me otherwise.

[@slothonastick32]

RDR2 has entered the chat. So has GTA 4 and even 5. I think you nay be confusing nostalgia with groundbreaking or "magnum opus"

[@diapysik]

@@slothonastick32 Red Dead 2 is a good argument, have only played the episodes from 4, and 5 is fun but the campaign is completely overshadowed by the monstrosity that is take-two's microtransaction scheme, and is also lacking because of that. San Andreas had an fun story, a fun campaign, and if you were a nerd playing custom san andreas servers, arguably a more enjoyable multiplayer experience than GTA online. I do not have high hopes for 6 beating that, but they did surprise us with red dead 2 so maybe they'll do it again.

[@lucifer_69960]

It is indeed. There's nothing in other Rockstar open world games that you can't do in GTA SA. I hope GTA 6 overthrows it and becomes the new magnum opus.

[@checkmate5336]

@@slothonastick32 RDR2 and GTA 4 sure. V is mid

[@marcelosoares7148]

What's so good about GTA 4 compared to SA? It got rid of most of the side activities and other mechanics.

[@daniel-vn4ql]

the problem with this. The game is extremely uneven in difficulty. certain missions would have to be unaffected in difficulty. Missions such as wrong side of the tracks. Or they would need to redesign some missions to make them easier on easy mode. wrong side of the tracks to me would be hard mode. considering how early it happens in the game. There is also the question off how would you make the game harder. in hard mode. For missions involving shooting. it would be simple. make people far harder to kill. But for missions that dont involve shooting. the devs would probably have to resort to time limits. we have all played GTA 3. we dont want time limits. and the other way is make it so that traffic drives erratically.

[@cydragon2.099]

could they not have done that and instead have a difficulty setting in the game

[@hafidzalfarizi4723]

THAT"S WHY TAKE THEM TOO LONG TO KILL?

[@Chad_Wick]

there is difficulty settings in gta online

[@Fl27054]

Script of gta san use assembly?

[@AbdellahPlays]

there is a mission in manhunt that has the same exact name and its not easy to do 😂😂😂

[@raptor4937]

Love it

[@Paulinho_66]

San Andreas was the real deal

[@Ricardo7250]

Please stop saying Wrong Side of the Tracks is hard. This mission is easy

[@TJGM]

@@Ricardo7250 Naa man the memes just became a thing for no reason. The mission is easy now, for most of us as kids it was difficult.

[@Ricardo7250]

@TJGM I HAD NO PROBLEM BEATING IT AS A KID. OG LOC CHASE WAS WAY HARDER

[@TJGM]

@@Ricardo7250 Good for you? Clearly many did, hence why the mission became a meme.

[@Ricardo7250]

@@TJGM Or maybe the source of the meme is Big Smoke saying "all you had to do is follow the damn train", which could only become a proper joke if people "agreed" this mission was hard

[@TJGM]

@@Ricardo7250 You literally just proved my point..?

[@freeman8857]

Hi bro could you give me some advice on a gta sa weapons map I want to upload. It's 2580x2580, do you think it's a good idea to upload it on reddit or should I upload it in another site? Mainly so people can download it full scale Luv your videos they're technical, interesting and very informative 👍