New SA runner here! Any advices?
5 years ago
United States

Sup guys i'm Michael from Ohio and i just developed a huge passion, SA speedrunning, i'm practicing with daily any% segment runs but i do have major problems and i get really desperate/mad sometimes... First guys is it actually possible for a beginner like me to get a sub 5 run? I'm actually doing my best to improve my time and skills but sometimes i give up on trying to do some complicated strats i've seen on other runners streams.

The sliding glitch: i know how to do it but only with the frame limiter on, some people say that they usually run the game with the fl on, but i can see that their streams are perfectly fluid, no lags, no shitty quality, no dropped frames, nothing, how can y'all do that with the frame limiter?? This might be a stupid question but for me when i enable the fl i get a shitty ass/unplayable gameplay, and yet i do have a decent pc with good specs (paid 1200$ for it) but i still can't run the game normally with the fl.

San fierro duping set ups: this one is just unbearable i really get mad because of that shit, i always miss the phone call in the stadium, always get rejected by that chick coz i need to work out lmfao, what can i do to improve that, coz i hate the Jizzy mission more than anything in this world...

Los Santos: i've never completed it, the worst segment in my opinion...

Life's a beach: that mf always gets out of the car and lets me down, even talking about it rn makes me mad, what do i do?

Help me folks.

Watch tutorials, read forums and especially! RULES of this game. Have fun.

Michael_Wilson likes this
East Riding of Yorkshire, England

First of all, you must have the frame limiter on when you're doing speedruns. The run isn't considered for the leaderboards unless it's completely vanilla game with the frame limiter left on. The game runs at around 25 fps with this setup, which is easily playable. If you're dropping below that 25 threshold, then you have other problems not related to the game. It is much harder to slide with uncapped fps, hence why you are struggling.

SF duping - "missing the phone call" in the stadium is a little vague, so not sure how to help there. The lady turns you down because you don't have a certain amount of sex appeal, for this strat you need to select a good haircut at the start of the game (jheri curl is the best) and have a nice car, saving a replay at the Wu Zi Mu mission in badlands and playing it before jizzy skip will help you spawn nice cars on the road more frequently.

Life's a beach - he will get out of the car after a certain amount of time, you either need to kill him before he exits (the fast way) or wait for him to re-enter again and then shoot him (the slow way)

KZ_FREW has a nice tutorial on running this game that will answer most of your questions, and how to fix the mistakes you are making - https://www.speedrun.com/gtasa/guide/pbkmo

Also if you didn't know there's a community discord which will get you help much faster than these forums, you can find it here - https://discord.gg/7gCbWuq

Edited by the author 5 years ago
Michael_Wilson and Vargo like this
Norfolk Island

To get the lady to date with you, get the Jheri Curl haircut at the mission Ryder and steal that golf vehicle that spawns near where you find the girl before talking to her

Michael_Wilson likes this
United States

@English_Ben thank you so much fella for your amazing advices!! For the frame limiter i'm struggling coz the gameplay looks like trash when i put it on, i can still play but i don't enjoy it at all, i'm pretty sure it is way below 25fps, therefore i can't record the gameplay coz it'll be a huge disaster considering how complicated it is for me to record without a capture card. That's why idk what to do right now, if you have any other solutions to this problem i'd like to know that from you!

For the stadium set up i usually don't get the phone call in the marker which is really annoying coz i have to wait 30 seconds for the mini game to end. In fact i do know that phone calls can be triggered once every 15 seconds but i still manage to miss it in the damn marker lol.

For life's a beach i think i'm just not fast enough to hit the disban key and shoot the mf before he tries to get out, idk the proper way to do it.

Yeah i did watch KZ Frew's tutorial thousands of times but i still struggle with some strats! But man i really appreciate that you took the time to explain some things to me! Thank you so much English_Ben

United States

@Lucas thank you so much for the advice fam now i know what to do! I usually go for the beard but now it has to change lol! Thanks a lot fam!

Lucas likes this
United States

@thriving i actually watch KZ_Frew's tutorial every day but i still have a lot to learn you know, but dude i can't have fun with this frame limiter LOL

Argentina

My biggest advice is to practice a lot, especially the parts you dislike about the run or the ones that you find difficult. Personally, I really like splitting the run into chunks and practice them separately so I can get good at the parts that give me trouble.

I like to split the run into 6 parts (LS, Badlands, SF, Desert, LV and RTLS), have a save for each one and practice them individually.

If you're struggling with a specific part of a section like one of the dupes or a hard mission, have a save just before that part and practice it individually.

If you're looking to change some strats, watch the top Any% runs and try to see the strats that these runners use (most of them aren't included in a Youtube tutorial so you will have to try and figure out how they're doing those strats).

About the frame limiter, it's really annoying to play at 25 FPS but the only thing I can tell you about this is to play a lot so you get used to it. It usually feels like you're dropping frames even if you have a good PC but that's just because everyone's used to playing games at 30/60 FPS so 25 FPS feels "laggy". When watching a stream or a recording, even with the frame limiter on, it kinda "looks" 30 FPS. That's pretty much thanks to the recording and the rendering programs having techniques to make the recording smoother. I have recorded some individual segments with OBS Studio and although it feels "laggy" when playing, it's really smooth in the recording.

The San Fierro dupe is another thing that you want to practice until you manage to do it consistently. You will even get all the timings incorporated to you after doing it several times. I can't help you with the Katie strat because I don't use that in my runs so I have no knowledge about it.

Also to disband your homie in Life's a Beach, you should spam F on the door and as soon as the homie opens the passenger door, hold H until CJ says the disband phrase ("I'll see you later homie" or something like that). There you can either shoot him when he is on the passenger side or wait a few seconds and he will get out of the van, enter again in the driver side and stay there.

Good luck in your runs!

Michael_Wilson likes this
United States

@Bartoloxxd thank you sooo much brother for you amazing advices!! It really helps me out to figure out how to start some training sessions on each segment of the run, it feels really good to get advices from pros so thank you so so much man i didn't know that the gameplay feels smooth even with 25 fps when recording with a software, that might help me to record my runs! Good luck for your runs too brother!

United States

@Shadow_Dog i think i've already read that one, Josh did explain some things, he actually gave me some tips on YT coz i commented on one of his videos, he was really helpful

United States

@Nagenowa thank you so much for this really important info! Btw i do play with the frame limiter now andi'm getting used to it pretty easily! I also record on OBS so the gameplay looks really smooth when i record, and really man i didn't know the pause buffering is faster when it's off! Thank you so much pal!

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