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Topic on Talk:Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Multiple shameless deletions commited by user Mirth

6
Deton24 (talkcontribs)

...and one by Blackbird. I'll start with the latter https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Grand_Theft_Auto:_San_Andreas&diff=887272&oldid=887006 "Leave DEP alone. You're making things worse."
What exactly made you writing this statement? What exact experiences do you have with DEP being disabled in games? Have you ever encountered any issue related to DEP being disabled in particular game?
The system automatically detects, if application, even if it's 32 bit (64 bit cannot use this feature) requires DEP to be always enabled, so there is no problem with any incompatibilities. GTA SA itself even lived to see ASI mod which exclusively disabled DEP since issues connected with DEP in this game are commonly known, though not popular. Possibly more frequent on Windows 10.
Personally, it took me no less than two days on debugging, research and testing to find out what exactly was the culprit of the crash and was extremely happy when it got finally fixed. I even created separate thread on GTAForums with currently a thousand of views to make a reference, but the entry was deleted by Blackbird without any convincing explanation anyway.
Problem with DEP in old games in Windows 10 is more frequent. Similar issue with one thousand of views I posted here: https://raymanpc.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=27571 Problem wasn't isolated to my machine, and according to my research, more people had the issue in the past.
As for the featured mods and possible clearing of the section. https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/w/index.php?title=Grand_Theft_Auto:_San_Andreas&diff=936277&oldid=935485 I completely understand your concerns about the page to make it the clear as possible but I cannot reconcile with such numerous alterations. There have been deleted 34 big field boxes of the text covering 11000 characters (!) - mods, bug fixes, workarounds etc. I'll try to explain why every single one was necessary, and a solution to keep the page clear.
"Vsync IS NOT a frame limiter. And different fps caps don't make sense. You are just diluting the gameplay as it was intended for limited gain." That was originally a workaround made by other user long time ago. There is no sense in denying that in simplification enabling V-Sync also limits the amount of frames, and the fix was a generally correct solution in GTA San Andreas which doesn't allow limiting frames to more than 25/30 with SilentPatch when you don't want to use any 3rd party software like MSI Afterburner for frame limiting to 60 FPS. Usually we mention in articles about any solutions of frame limiting in such cases, but even the most important sentence "Several issues are fixed by limiting the game at 60 FPS (instead of turning off the frame limiter)" also disappeared, and neibouring "By limiting the game to 60 FPS (instead of turning off) and using Framerate Vigilante, it's possible to achieve a good playable gameplay." doesn't fully reflect precise explanation on the issue. Good gameplay is vague term. It goes about fixing gameplay issues, not just good gameplay. Only few can think out what OP had in mind since the previous corresponding sentence was deleted.
I don't know if you really into GTA San Andreas modding, but here you go: - MixSets - its capabilities are so extensive that it barely can be covered properly in featured section. It's not really important though, so I'd create separate section "Others" and move it there. - streammemfix1.0 - It took me few months till I found what exact ASI mod fixes flickering issue with texture mods, and luckily even crashes after overloading RAM which were very cumbersome. Reproducing the issue and testing every single version of available streaming mods was absolute time-consuming task. I feel absolutely no respect for someone's work here, though you maybe not into GTASA modding, and don't know how precious is any gathered piece of information on GTA crashes and how they correlate with mods. - SA_DX 2.0, V Graphics ENB - only in two clips they gathered correspondly both 2 mln of viewers for insane graphics of GTASA. With no doubt, they're two the most popular ENB mods for GTASA, which as the tool, has evolved over the years, and the results as the particular mods can be admired for no more than a year, so they still relatively fresh. - V Graphics Update 2 and RenderX can be moved to "others" section. But keeping new popular GTA SA graphical mods up to date even deserves separate section with no doubt, as GTA SA is still an object of worship and gameplays of such mods gathers millions of viewers, eager for also more technical information on modding which PCGamingWiki provides. Successful, crashless modding of GTASA is still time-consuming, and relatively not easy task for beginners. - The same goes for any other texture mods. Why ROSA project was left, but SAUR was deleted? GTASA received even AI upscaled complete tex mod quite recently. What is wrong in giving the people a choice? - About the choice of particular minor texture mods - it's simply a choice made frequently by few of the most popular YouTubers in videos with substantial amount of views. Because the choice among YouTubers frequently repeats in different videos, why not to gather them all to not limiting such great work of someone's research to subscribers of specific channels or random viewers? SA modding is really an art in matter of its still-living community which give it a lot of attention. Minor mods can be used with complete mods, minor can be usually used together. There are also specific settings for mods priorities, so too much information is not a problem for properly informed person in GTA SA modding. - Information on memory2048.cs script can be moved to "others" section, since it is deprecated, but still very popular, that's why it should left, and because it's precisely described why to check other solutions. It is also frequently referenced and very well known. - Similar with FPSUnlock, Open Limit Adjuster, Corona limit adjuster, LodLimit.cs (it was important to gather two information nearby - name of the file, and name of the particular mod since it was frequently referenced during using different mods and while troubleshooting. Sometimes it's hard to recognize about which particular mod people speak). They should be moved to other section, but left for reference. - FPS__.cs was thoroughly tested personally by me, and can be successfully used in scenarios when streammemfix is not necessary. It gives better results than commonly know 2048.cs. It's discovery was followed by extensive research on FPS boost in demanding scenarios with ENB and tex mods. - Insanity Sound pack is very popular, and possibly the best of its kind for this day. I think the more important than its existing in featured mod section, is the given information, that it causes crashes in specific scenarios.
There are very high chances that anyone visiting GTA SA wiki, will be also interested in crashless GTA SA, extensive modding and a lot of such information provided will spare many of time for beginners. GTA SA page exclusively deserves such detailed attention because dozens of people fails in joining a lot of mods together. GTA SA was for few months in a row the most popular PCgGamingWiki page when statistics were available. It is being cached by Google, and easily caught by search engine when a lot of keywords are attached. You've just deleted dozens of them, making also difficult to find certain information by people who were told that they were on the page, but were deleted.
I appeal to you to consult in discussion page such enormous edits in the future, because it literally makes me wanna do voodoo doll rituals on all culprits of every single act of vandalism on this holy page. Numerous hours, days, weeks even, on testing all of this stuff, providing bug reports, incompatibilities, only for it being deleted. That's absolutely disgusting practice and even clearance purposes don't justify such pure acts of vandalism or censorship.
This month there will be taken certain actions to keep all the information provided in linked edits, but keeping the page clear, readable, and with featured mods section shorter and more ordered. This game deserves it on this board in the very first special place. In case of any further doubts on spoken future edits, please continue answering this thread.
Thank you

Mirh (talkcontribs)

Look, we all have been there spending weeks trying to fix the game. I could write a wall of text just as long as yours about my christmas holidays in 2010 or whatever was the year, ruined by trying to understand what kind of executable, scripts, patches and whatnot combination could make the game enjoyable (fun fact: it turned out half of my problems were due to the frame limiter being off).

I'm not sure if widescreen patches were even a thing back then.

Said this, the problem is this. This is the longest game page by far. And this *after* as much corner cutting as I deemed possible (may god forgive me the hackjob I did with timing-related issues)

Then you can praise the good qualities of your extra mods as much as you want, if this was any other game perhaps the bar for entry could be lower. And I don't deny some sections couldn't be outdated. Idk I'm "out of the scene" since some years.

But standing at 60K characters long, anything more you add is just diluting the attention the average reader can spend on the article.

p.s. uh, and if you want to discuss the merits of each mod, then just do that. Nobody is against "betterness".

Anonymous (talkcontribs)

denton24, I think you'd really benefit from talking this out the official PCGamingWiki Discord: https://discord.gg/YX9Jsc

(If that link expires, try this one: https://discord.gg/KDfrTZ8 )

We have an Articles channel there where you can get real-time feedback on any edits you'd like to make instead of having to rely on edit comments from other editors or staff and discussions pages, which tend to be slower by their very nature.

Deton24 (talkcontribs)

Thank you very much for your input.

I'm already on a Discord group, and will use it in sudden need of contact to any editor. i think it wasn't not necessary in this case.

Thanks Mirh. I was talking about giving the people a choice by extending the modding section. I don't find it diluting if it's properly organized and described. Previously it could be rightly misunderstood why some of the mods have been posted and it's a chance to fix it. As I said, some of them will be there just for reference purposes, and will be properly described. Expanding the modding section is somehow the answer to my own problems and just sharing gathered experiences with getting beautiful milodded GTA San Andreas. I see no point in limiting people to few originally posted featured mods since GTA SA modding scene is still so living, and causes other bunch of problems than in 2010 since now even wrong widescreen can cause incompatibilities. I just didn't want to make a revolution in modding section from the beginning, but it seems like it would be better solution to just write about it here, and eventually do it before. But it's something new on Pcgamingwiki, and even in this state, GTA SA page modding section is the biggest among all. So long.

Theclaw135 (talkcontribs)

The fault is all on Rockstar, if you ask me. GTA SA is a shoddy port on so many levels it needs its own dictionary to begin to comprehend.

Mirh (talkcontribs)

It's not the port to be wrong (well, not anymore than the little amount skygfx is fixing). It's the entire whole bloody renderware engine, at least in the flavor R* choose for GTA3-era games, that is the worst thing on the market since morrowind was released.

And yes, it has a lot of issues. But I don't think that has to mean the article is difficult to navigate. We have the menu at the beginning, and fixes are explained as smoothly as possible.


Said this, the mod section is still a mess. And it hasn't to answer to anybody's own problems. I could count 60 (SIXTY!) featured mods or tools before my edit that reduced them to a still-record-breaking 35.

"This mod is very big and appreciated in the community, though it may ruin a vanilla experience and it's incompatible with this other huge addition" is a thing. "This mod changes the textures of two houses, and its author is unknown with only a random yandex link, and its description seems so pulled out of an advertisement depliant that you wonder if who wrote it even knows the content" is another. I mean, why even stopping here? Why not listing the modding tools for every tile type and the texture packs for every single in-game object?

I stopped short of removing the deprecated section just because I cannot in fairness be bothered to actually check it is totally outdated and superfluous.