Frequently Asked Questions

Before contacting me, please check below if your question has already been answered.

Collision File Editor II

I’m trying to install a vehicle modification in SA, but when I open `vehicles.col` only the airtrain shows up. What do I need to do with the collision model?

San Andreas doesn’t use vehicles.col anymore, all vehicle collision models are now embedded directly in their respective .dff files.

The mod you are trying to install probably came with a .dff and a .col file. Instead of following the installation instructions for VC and adding the collision model to vehicles.col, you open the .col file in CollEditor II, right-click on the collision model’s name in the list on the left, from the popup menu choose “Export > Attach to DFF…”, and in the appearing file dialog you select the vehicle’s .dff file that came with the mod. You can use that updated .dff now to replace the old vehicle model in the .img archive.

SA Map Cleaner

Why does my game crash with a cleaned map?

I’m not sure there really exists a logical explanation for these things. For some people it works right after cleaning the map, for others it crashes. The game seems to have problems with an empty objects list. The general solution is to add a few custom objects until it doesn’t crash anymore. If you cleaned the map to install a total conversion mod, you usually don’t have to worry about this, just continue installing the mod, and the game should work fine. You can read more about this in the SA Map Cleaner troubleshooting topic.

Map Cleaner 0.4 crashes, what can I do?

A few people are reporting error messages like “Access violation at address 00402387 in module ‘MapCleaner.exe’. Read of address BF4A4918” or “Invalid pointer operation”. The cause of these problems is not yet known, and since they can’t be recreated the potential bug is hard to find. You can download SA Map Cleaner 0.4 Beta 2 and check Enable Debug Logging, which will create a log file called MapCleaner.log. This file lists every step the program made, and if it crashed the last entries should give you a hint at what might be wrong with your installation. Keep in mind that you should use the cleaner only with unmodified installations of the first retail version of the game (v1.0).

Alternatively, you can test the release candidate of SA Map Cleaner 0.5.

VC Limit Adjuster

Limit Adjuster can’t find its target data, what is wrong?

If it gives you a “Data not found!” message, you’re probably using the Australian version, which Limit Adjuster doesn’t support. The only solution to this problem is to get a different .exe, favorably the American one.

Where is the Limit Adjuster for GTA3 or San Andreas?

Not here. Contrary to what you might have heard, I never made any.

However, a feature-rich SA Limit Adjuster is currently under development by Sacky.

Tools for Console Games

While I’ve been partially supporting console versions of the GTA games in the past, like with PS2 TXD Viewer, RWA or older versions of the Map Viewer, I have to decline requests to maintain or extend those tools, or develop entirely new ones.

These were primarily created to learn more about the games that weren’t released for PC at that time. Unlike the file formats of the PC versions, which are well understood and documented by now, the PS2 (and XBOX) formats are much more complicated and there has never been much interest to decode them fully. The benefit of the required time and work investment is just too low, and not having the means to do any testing doesn’t make things more attractive either.

Gaming Questions

Don’t ask me anything related to playing the games. I don’t have any cheats or walkthroughs and won’t help you with missions. Use Google or check forums and gaming sites.