vcs duping has been found by user powdinet on 22nd february (memes)

a ghetto video of the easy setup to dupe is here

it's much easier than LCS's duping, and essentially consistent if you dont fuck up the timing. It's similar to san andreas in that taking the same mission twice and passing will skip the next mission. We're unsure on what can be skipped and what cant be yet apparently

current confirmed working dupes in any%:

taking "unfriendly competition" twice and passing skips High Wire (WR goldsplit is 9:45)

taking "So Long Schlong" twice and passing skips "In the Air Tonight" (WR Goldsplit is 6:04)

taking "nice package" twice skips "Balls" (WR goldsplit is 2:52)

taking "turn on, tune in, bug out" twice skips taking the fall

taking "colonels coke" twice skips kill phil

current known 100% dupes

2x ambulance causes semi-skip (every other level is skipped, ie: 1->3->5->7->9->11)
2x air rescue does the same
2x fire copter does the same I think but it doesn't have a level indicator so it's hard to say
vigilante skip that takes like 10 seconds: - crashes on completion

oh, and there's documentation of which dupes work here
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Nx8oqAXSgTry1Bkdr0gzj3ayMhEndjX0ctuOv-n2Qnw/edit#gid=1318681715

hopefully those testing will update with what they couldnt get to work (not as a definitive 'dont try this anymore', but so we can narrow down what seems 'simple' to do

Congrats Powdinet! Now please don't find hit-or-miss dupes. BibleThump

Too late OneHand

http://pastebin.com/Jf1dqDgX

Pretty late, but there are the results of things i've tested. I'll post some videos as well later on.

I'm so fast on posting these let's plays ResidentSleeper

So I messed around with business side-mission duping, because in the VCS various duping test file I didn't saw anything about these missions being testet. So I tried it out and for now have found some interesting semi-useful stuff.

Prostitution: (Not tested on legit hardware) Can't be duped. [for now] If you start second instance of Prostitution your vehicle gets automatically destroyed every time, even if you move it out of the way.

Protection Racket: (Crashes/softlocks on PSP couple of levels in) Can be duped. Everything goes as normal, only you get 2 jobs for the price of one. Only, problem is that (out of 2 tries) it softlocks couple of jobs into the side-mission - enemies don't spawn yet their markers appear. If you have grenades with you or you kill the clerk, you can end the side-mission. Also if you restart it, it starts from the last job, so this might be useful if you go zoomy and dont get softlocked (?)

Loan Shark: (Works on PSP) Can be duped. Both instances need to be started without going outside (probably similar to Protection Racket). The hardest part about this is trying to wiggle out the cars that spawned into each other and situations when nearby gang members try to attack you, I suggest armor for this. Also might be useful if done fast and getting lucky with the cars. The best way to wiggle out a car that has a bike stuck inside of it is to try and do a donut and eventually the truck will pop out and you will be able to drive away.

Drug Running: (Works on PS2) Tested by Powdinet. Level 1 and Level 3 can be duped. Also if you get a bad spawn on second instance you can cancel and start a new one (If I understood that correctly, will be tested on PSP aswell)

Robbery: (Works on PSP)
So I tested out Robbery business missions:
Level 1 - can be duped, only thing is there is some minor unusual slowdown while doing the mission, but nothing noticable and was like 1 - 2 sec, so might my hardware issues, tested on psp
Level 3 - if you dont save and reload after dupe, the framerate becomes Advance-esque, so thats a problem, if you save and reload, when you get to the briefcase and pick it up, the game crashes, both on emu and psp (not useful)
Level 4 - can be duped, but is prone to a bit more slowdown during the mission than Level 1, but nothing serious, tested on psp
Level 5 - even with save and reload the framerate turns to hot garbage, so cant be duped, atleast its not RTA useful and it probably crashes on the briefcase pickup
If needed, I can make a vid, but the set up is the same, start one instance, wait while the rampage runs out in the Empire, start next mission, get out and do the level as intended.

• Ideas for hundo route: * So the best route for using the dupes would be either dupe Level 1 and do rest as intended or dupe level 1, do level 3, than route in something between this and than come back to robbery, dupe level 4 and do level 6.
While doing level 3, once you pick up the briefcase, if on om0, we could try to get one rampage near the stadium, so when we are at the Empire and start level 4, the rampage is close to running out and we could make duping of level 4 a bit more optimal.

A working Vigilante dupe: (Works on PSP only)
Posting this so it is documented somewhere. Not sure if it is faster, but if you go zoomy and have to get a missing balloon or something inbetween, this can be optimal for hundo.

So the main thing to keep in mind here is to not go over level 15 because you wont get awarded the completion percentage. So what you do (shown in the video below) you get to level 12 optimally (not level 14) cancel Vigilante, while the vigilante is canceled immediately cancel it again so that the second instance gets cancelled and than start Vigilante and do the last 5 levels normally.

The car is not destroyed, this is how it works:
The game assigns a "handle" to each object it spawns. It can use that handle to interact with it etc, most importantly in this case it can check if the vehicle is wrecked.

The mission thread stores the gang car handle into a variable - say gang_car. It then keeps checking
IF IS_CAR_DEAD gang_car

There are two kinds of variables: global variables that can be used in the entire mission script (for all missions etc) and local variables that can only be used by the thread they belong to - like the pimping thread in this case. gang_car is a local variable. Local variables that belong to missions are set to 0 when a mission starts. That is bad because when it then checks
IF IS_CAR_DEAD gang_car
since gang_car is 0 that means
IF IS_CAR_DEAD 0
and a vehicle with the handle 0 does not exist. Non-existent vehicles count as wrecked.

So what happens is: you start Pimping once. Then you start it again, that starts another Pimping thread and sets all local variables to 0. The "old" Pimping thread fails due to IS_CAR_DEAD 0, the "new" one is fine because it creates a gang car and uses the handle of that car.

The solution is to convert one kind of thread (say Vigilante) into a pimping thread. To do so, start Pimping during Vigilante. The Pimping thread starts normally, the Vigilante thread now runs Pimping code (is "converted" into a Pimping thread). If you are lucky, it starts executing code before or at the part where it sets gang_car to the gang car's handle. If you are unlucky, it starts executing code later than that (skips it) and ends up executing IF IS_CAR_DEAD 0 - rip. Most likely, though, it crashes right at the start due to an invalid opcode. "Lucky" as in - the effect of "converting" one mission to the other is not luck based but you need to combine the right missions and that requires experimentation until you get lucky.

Thanks for the information, looks like I will have to experiment a bit and see if it is possible.

Couple of unrelated things I messed around with and wanted to post:

Taxi + cop - not sure if this is useful, works similar to the dupe below

Firefighter + cop - if you it this way, or the other way around (cop + ff): when the timer ends out you still keep the cop or firefighter side mission + you can start 2 instances of vigilante for example (or firefighter, but not sure if that would be very useful as you can skip ff pretty fast already). This might make vigilante duping more stable (?) as it gives you 2 levels per 1 completion but I never got around of doing all of the 15 levels, because i got wrecked pretty hard most of the time

Trying to chain this later with paramedic/air rescue/air ff crashes the game.

Has anyone had any success of duping on a PSP emulator of this game (PPSSPP, etc)? Every time I tried the emulator crashes.

It will crash for most of the times for emulator and legit hardware except for the ones that are posted in either bubbles or redlofs testing results and couple of the side missions/activities

Okay, I got it working!
I tried a different method and manage to successfully complete it.

EDIT: After playing around with it I decided to try and do paramedic duping.
Has anyone had issues completing the duped paramedic missions? Because lvl 7 is too ridiculous for me.

Have any of these dupes been incoperatd into any runs? it would be really interesting to see what's possible for this game.

I'm pretty sure Redlof's any% run uses mission dupes.

A late response @shred but Paramedic and Air Rescue is impossible to pull of while duped. Getting to level 7 Paramedic is impressive by itself.

Cleaning House dupe steps:

1) Deathwarp after Soldier
2) Rampage om=0 and start Cleaning House, start Cleaning House again after rampage runs out
3) Go to Phil's and skip cutscene, I didn't do a lot of testing on my cutscene skip placement but when I did the same timing (seen in video), the truck didn't instaflip
4) Finish mission and you'll end up in street clothes (skipping "Conduct Unbecoming")

A lot of luck maybe involved with this mission, cars flipping etc... so test before just blinding doing it. Said to save 30 seconds.[Tested by anti, saved 30 seconds]

Marty mission chain into O, Brothel dupe steps:

1) You want to start Fear the Repo with rampage so it will go om=0
2) Play until you're on the way to the TV van and pick up the rampage on the way
3) Finish mission and pick up Waking Up the Neighbors before the rampage ends
4) Blow up first van
5) Pick up rampage
6) Blow up second and third van with rampage weapon
7) Pick up the mission again before rampage ends
8 ) Repeat 4-7 until you start O, Brothel, Where Art Thou?
9) Dupe this mission
10) Finish mission as normal
11) Re-enter Brothel and finish mission again

This skips Got Protection?, When Funday Comes and Takin' Out the White Trash and said to save around 1 minute when done correctly.[Tested by anti, doesn't save any time over doing the missions normally]

Hose the hoes mission chaining steps:

1) After finishing Jive Drive, get the nearby police bike and rampage start om=0
2) Start Hose the Hoes when 1 minute is left on the rampage timer
3) Drive to firetruck and get in
4) Drive to rampage near Brothel that is on fire and pick up molotov rampage when the first rampage runs out
5) The fire will be put out and just finish the mission
6) Repeat 2-5 until the 4th time doing the mission (enter the marker as fast as you want, the rampage will run out sometime after putting out the fires without the rampage)
7) On the 4th time doing the mission, you don't need to get the molotov rampage this time, just put out the fire with the truck (I enter a building in the video for safety)
8 ) You MUST finish the mission om=0 so if the rampage hasn't run out yet, wait for that and then finish the mission
9) Start the mission normally this time and finish normally.

This skips all of Umberto Robina's missions (Nice Package, Balls, Papi Don't Screech and Havana Good Time) and is said to save about 4 minutes.[citation needed]

2× 'Vigilante' (PS2)

'Playground On The Park' instapass (PS2 only) [found by Powdinet]
It will always pass 'Playground On The Park' even if you start 'Playground On The Point'. (These 2 missions share the same mission script.)

'Hyman Memorial O.D.T.' instapass (PS2 only) [found by Powdinet]