Channel Update - August 2024 - Made a lot of progress

Hello there! I hope you are doing well today.

GTA SA - Why planes crash [WIP name]

I am still preparing the script, but not because I was doing nothing since the last channel update, but because this video becomes more and more complex than before.

This is what the script looked like when I decided to tear it off from the video covering interesting facts and then abandoned it. Just some pages.

One month ago it looked like this. As I said in the previous post, it received a huge boost, but still it wasn't ready.

 So what does it look like now? Well, it became this huge and it is still under the development.

Oh boy, I think, we went crazy with Fire_Head with this one. He improved his debug tools, so they became more complex. He made a lot of visualizations to better understand the feature and to use them in the video.

We can now track the flyby spawning conditions and what the game is doing behind the scenes. This is how we understood why these planes spawn where they aren't supposed to.

What I like the most is that he made it possible to save randomly generated flybys and load them when we want. We called it the "replay" option.

This option is a must have for me. I can literally go around the map, generate random flybys and save the problematic ones in the memory. I also can repeat them as many times as I want and when I want. This is how we analyzed what went wrong and why the plane crashed. Very easy to film the footage if you know where to expect the plane and what to expect.

I also can change the plane's model in the replays to understand how the other plane would act under the same conditions. And it does make a difference, but more on that in the video.

I am very grateful to Fire_Head for making these tools for me. I am also very sorry to him for constantly yapping that I want this and that. But hey, the results are magnificent. Now I can show step by step how the planes act and where the bugs are.

So what can I say about this flyby feature now? Sadly, very poorly executed. There are dozens of bugs and oversights, which overall makes these planes crash more often than they should. But there is a huge problem with that.

As you already know, the creator of this feature was Obbe Vermeij. I have freaking no idea what narrative I should stick to while covering these problems. I do not want people to blame Obbe. He does not deserve that. But at the same time we see that it wasn't properly debugged in the past. Stupid dilemma.

As Obbe many times has said, they were always very low on memory. This is why right now we decided to stick with that. It makes perfect sense why every single check or scanning made for this feature is so limited and basic. As for the bugs and oversights... well, wasn't a priority task back then, I guess.

But then Fire_Head and I decided to remove some delays in the AI and break the respawn timer to see how it would affect the performance on the real PlayStation 2. FH even coded his own FPS counter and replaced it with the money counter. The only problem was, we didn't have PS2.

This is why I was seeking people on Twitter with modded PS2 to test it.

A few people agreed to do it, but to be honest I still haven't made a conclusion. It seems 1 plane doesn't make a difference while 5 do. On the other hand, 5 planes bombarding the terrain with collision checks are unreal conditions. Perhaps, the performance wasn't the issue here. We need more time to analyze it.

The more we look into this feature, the more bugs and issues we find, and they keep coming. The problem I was dealing with this month was how to stitch it all together. I perfectly remember one moment, when I rewrote some paragraphs like 10 times just because I didn't know how I should connect the issues with one another. I mean, should I start with that or with that? The issues are all connected with one another, but at the same time they all differ. Perhaps, this is the most complicated script I have ever written. Just need more time.

I still want to ask Obbe some questions, but they are not prepared yet. I have an idea to pay tribute to him by calling these planes "Obbe's plane". Not sure if it is a good idea though. I will ask him for his opinion/permission first. But what do you think about it? Disrespectful or a funny reference?

Still a lot of work to do and we are still not giving up.

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Thank you for watching and supporting me. I hope to see you soon!