Helicopters in GTA III / LCS or better late than never
A long time ago I had a dream to get to the lighthouse in GTA III (and even to a couple of interesting places like a ghost town, an observatory, a stadium, etc.), but the developers made it almost impossible, there was only an airplane from the aircraft Dodo without wings, which was very difficult to fly. Then part of Liberty City Stories for PS2 came out (with almost the same gaming city) - I did not have any prefixes (we lived poorly then) and the game got into my list of games. After many years, I bought a set-top box and went through it, there were no helicopters there either, but I made them myself there and found something else.
Although this game came out a long time ago, I think this article will be interesting to many and may inspire someone to achieve its old goals. Personally, if I have a goal, I will fulfill it anyway, sooner or later. Then the idea to write an article about what happened. Then, for a couple of years, I was drawn into work, but I did not forget about the article, and here it is.
When writing this article, I found another cool thing for the PC version of GTA III, about which there is almost no information on the Russian Internet and got some more pleasant memories from childhood.
')
I did not want to read the passage and just went through Liberty City Stories on the PS2 to the end. Helicopters and airplanes were not there, and the trick with hijacking a helicopter in one of the missions (as I found out later) was no longer available for me, I did not want to re-run again. After searching for cheats \ save \ editors, I realized that for this part on the PS2 there is almost nothing, there is little for the PSP, but I did not want to buy it.
By that time, I had already taught my PS2 to read games over the network, I got it in excellent condition and chipset. As soon as I saw the network port on the console, I felt that something like this should be, and for good reason. It was a separate joy, which only a piece of iron can understand, or someone as thrifty as I - no laser wear and easily switch between games, the console has become almost eternal (although friends and relatives of my joy did not share, well, okay). And also I could enter its memory card file manager (ulaunchelf).
And I decided that I could get a helicopter, and so - I had full confidence that he was in the game. I made several saves in the same garage with different cars (so that there were different IDs) and copied them from the memory card to the USB flash drive (the version of the game downloader that I used then could not even make virtual memory cards).
There was no Internet in the house where I lived, I had to carry a flash drive to work, where another surprise awaited me - there were colons in the names of the save files, FAT32 normally accepts such files, but all of our computers worked under Windows (the file name is “ 1: The Sicilian Gambit "is not accepted), and only the server was on ubunt ... It ended with the fact that I just stuck a USB flash drive into the server and copied / renamed everything on it.
I tried to search by ID from the previous game - Vice City - nothing happened, some were the same, some differed (by an arbitrary value). Oddly enough, I was able to google “GTA LCS Vehicles IDs”, on some page the account had the correct list. You could get it from the game files, but it would be more difficult, and it saved quite a lot of time.
After a couple of screenings, I found that even though there was only one vehicle in the garage each time, it could be saved to different places in the file. For example, by one ID we find 100 values, and after dropping out to addresses in another file, none. I was lucky that at least some of the files matched and recorded the transport ID at the same address, it was confirmed; and also very lucky that the file is not encrypted at all, just in its format. In the end, I found that one of the positions in the garage is located at 0000DCF4, a 4-byte integer:
Changed the value (from 210 to 213 - ID Hunter'a, military helicopter), was glad and went home. I copied the file back to the memory card at home and a bummer was waiting for me - "the save file is damaged." The next day, by some miracle, I managed to find the Vice City save file format, there was not even a chance to find LCS and I thought that although the ID of the car was different, the saves should be about the same (oh, this programmer laziness), it turned out.
It turns out that at the end of the file (at address 00018FFC) there is a simple check - the byte sum of the entire file in the 4-byte field. I wrote a simple script in PHP that summarized the entire file as byte values ​​(just open as a string and the sum of ord () of all characters except the last four), and this confirmed that there is such a sum in the last cell.
I was in a hurry home that evening. As it turned out, the colon in the file name can be replaced with anything and the game will still “understand” it, for example, “1_ The Sicilian Gambit” is also understood by it normally. And the joy knew no bounds when the tail of the helicopter fell out in the opened garage.
For a long time the family could not understand what was wrong with that, from which I had a whole evening smile from ear to ear. In the game, the military helicopter was not used anywhere and did not appear, it was just lying in the game, fully working, with a machine gun and missiles. It was a long joyful evening, I visited the lighthouse and almost wherever I wanted, I saw why helicopters and airplanes were removed (most roofs without textures and collisions) and made a real massacre.
It turned out almost everywhere, except for the ghost town (it was not there, it is only in the third part) and the observatory (in this part of the game there is a low ceiling and there is no way to get there). It was three years ago and then I did not have time for this article.
Now I looked for the information and did not find anything again for the PS2. But I found great news for those who, like me, want to investigate GTA III - it turns out a year ago a group of people released an add-on for the PC version of this game, called “GTA III Aircraft”, in its version “Assisted Installation” you just need to copy all of it files in the folder with the game and it will appear helicopters and airplanes. It is strange that there was really nothing about this mod on the Russian-language Internet. So that the helicopters appeared in several places, you need to find the file CLEO.asi (loader of additional scripts) on the Internet and copy it to the game folder, otherwise the helicopters and airplanes in the game itself will be, but they will not spawn anywhere. After all the actions, the first helicopter can be found on the cliff opposite the lighthouse, under it is the Skimmer watercraft, the rest are scattered around the map.
With this mod I was able to get to the observatory (the ceiling height in the PC version of GTA III is big) and even managed to climb the lighthouse.
As it turned out, the beacon in the third part and in the LCS is not the same thing. If in the LCS around him you can walk and descend the stairs, then in the third part he does not have a collision at all (the interaction framework). It is flat on top and then the player simply runs down it into the water, even on the steps and the base it is impossible to linger. I was expecting more from my childhood dream, I remember how my brother and I attacked the lighthouse on the Dodo airplane with its wings cut off for hours trying to get on it, but we couldn’t get on it (either that airplane was really badly controlled, or a collision was to blame lighthouse).
Anyway, I'm glad that I did what I wanted for a long time, flew wherever possible in this city and wrote this article. And by the way, I do not specifically attach a photo with an observatory or a ghost town, maybe someone will go there himself.
Do you have similar childhood dreams? And someone wants to try to remake the height limit for the console executable file in LCS? It is said that he is hardcovered inside of him ...
UPD: In the PSP version, the beacon is really different (compared to part 3), it has a strange collision - there is only the top and they, but there is no center, you can fly through (in the PS2 version the same thing).
And the observatory with the whole surrounding landscape does not have a conflict either.
I didn’t finish the hack for the PS2 version, there are a lot of options there and there is no longer any desire to do it, I think everything is like in the PSP version, it’s just not clear why the height limit was made much less.
Although this game came out a long time ago, I think this article will be interesting to many and may inspire someone to achieve its old goals. Personally, if I have a goal, I will fulfill it anyway, sooner or later. Then the idea to write an article about what happened. Then, for a couple of years, I was drawn into work, but I did not forget about the article, and here it is.
When writing this article, I found another cool thing for the PC version of GTA III, about which there is almost no information on the Russian Internet and got some more pleasant memories from childhood.
')
I did not want to read the passage and just went through Liberty City Stories on the PS2 to the end. Helicopters and airplanes were not there, and the trick with hijacking a helicopter in one of the missions (as I found out later) was no longer available for me, I did not want to re-run again. After searching for cheats \ save \ editors, I realized that for this part on the PS2 there is almost nothing, there is little for the PSP, but I did not want to buy it.
By that time, I had already taught my PS2 to read games over the network, I got it in excellent condition and chipset. As soon as I saw the network port on the console, I felt that something like this should be, and for good reason. It was a separate joy, which only a piece of iron can understand, or someone as thrifty as I - no laser wear and easily switch between games, the console has become almost eternal (although friends and relatives of my joy did not share, well, okay). And also I could enter its memory card file manager (ulaunchelf).
And I decided that I could get a helicopter, and so - I had full confidence that he was in the game. I made several saves in the same garage with different cars (so that there were different IDs) and copied them from the memory card to the USB flash drive (the version of the game downloader that I used then could not even make virtual memory cards).
There was no Internet in the house where I lived, I had to carry a flash drive to work, where another surprise awaited me - there were colons in the names of the save files, FAT32 normally accepts such files, but all of our computers worked under Windows (the file name is “ 1: The Sicilian Gambit "is not accepted), and only the server was on ubunt ... It ended with the fact that I just stuck a USB flash drive into the server and copied / renamed everything on it.
I tried to search by ID from the previous game - Vice City - nothing happened, some were the same, some differed (by an arbitrary value). Oddly enough, I was able to google “GTA LCS Vehicles IDs”, on some page the account had the correct list. You could get it from the game files, but it would be more difficult, and it saved quite a lot of time.
After a couple of screenings, I found that even though there was only one vehicle in the garage each time, it could be saved to different places in the file. For example, by one ID we find 100 values, and after dropping out to addresses in another file, none. I was lucky that at least some of the files matched and recorded the transport ID at the same address, it was confirmed; and also very lucky that the file is not encrypted at all, just in its format. In the end, I found that one of the positions in the garage is located at 0000DCF4, a 4-byte integer:
Changed the value (from 210 to 213 - ID Hunter'a, military helicopter), was glad and went home. I copied the file back to the memory card at home and a bummer was waiting for me - "the save file is damaged." The next day, by some miracle, I managed to find the Vice City save file format, there was not even a chance to find LCS and I thought that although the ID of the car was different, the saves should be about the same (oh, this programmer laziness), it turned out.
It turns out that at the end of the file (at address 00018FFC) there is a simple check - the byte sum of the entire file in the 4-byte field. I wrote a simple script in PHP that summarized the entire file as byte values ​​(just open as a string and the sum of ord () of all characters except the last four), and this confirmed that there is such a sum in the last cell.
I was in a hurry home that evening. As it turned out, the colon in the file name can be replaced with anything and the game will still “understand” it, for example, “1_ The Sicilian Gambit” is also understood by it normally. And the joy knew no bounds when the tail of the helicopter fell out in the opened garage.
For a long time the family could not understand what was wrong with that, from which I had a whole evening smile from ear to ear. In the game, the military helicopter was not used anywhere and did not appear, it was just lying in the game, fully working, with a machine gun and missiles. It was a long joyful evening, I visited the lighthouse and almost wherever I wanted, I saw why helicopters and airplanes were removed (most roofs without textures and collisions) and made a real massacre.
It turned out almost everywhere, except for the ghost town (it was not there, it is only in the third part) and the observatory (in this part of the game there is a low ceiling and there is no way to get there). It was three years ago and then I did not have time for this article.
Now I looked for the information and did not find anything again for the PS2. But I found great news for those who, like me, want to investigate GTA III - it turns out a year ago a group of people released an add-on for the PC version of this game, called “GTA III Aircraft”, in its version “Assisted Installation” you just need to copy all of it files in the folder with the game and it will appear helicopters and airplanes. It is strange that there was really nothing about this mod on the Russian-language Internet. So that the helicopters appeared in several places, you need to find the file CLEO.asi (loader of additional scripts) on the Internet and copy it to the game folder, otherwise the helicopters and airplanes in the game itself will be, but they will not spawn anywhere. After all the actions, the first helicopter can be found on the cliff opposite the lighthouse, under it is the Skimmer watercraft, the rest are scattered around the map.
With this mod I was able to get to the observatory (the ceiling height in the PC version of GTA III is big) and even managed to climb the lighthouse.
As it turned out, the beacon in the third part and in the LCS is not the same thing. If in the LCS around him you can walk and descend the stairs, then in the third part he does not have a collision at all (the interaction framework). It is flat on top and then the player simply runs down it into the water, even on the steps and the base it is impossible to linger. I was expecting more from my childhood dream, I remember how my brother and I attacked the lighthouse on the Dodo airplane with its wings cut off for hours trying to get on it, but we couldn’t get on it (either that airplane was really badly controlled, or a collision was to blame lighthouse).
Anyway, I'm glad that I did what I wanted for a long time, flew wherever possible in this city and wrote this article. And by the way, I do not specifically attach a photo with an observatory or a ghost town, maybe someone will go there himself.
Do you have similar childhood dreams? And someone wants to try to remake the height limit for the console executable file in LCS? It is said that he is hardcovered inside of him ...
UPD: In the PSP version, the beacon is really different (compared to part 3), it has a strange collision - there is only the top and they, but there is no center, you can fly through (in the PS2 version the same thing).
And the observatory with the whole surrounding landscape does not have a conflict either.
I didn’t finish the hack for the PS2 version, there are a lot of options there and there is no longer any desire to do it, I think everything is like in the PSP version, it’s just not clear why the height limit was made much less.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/366769/
All Articles