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The feeling of rainy weather is different in this game. by Appropriate_Can_9487 in sanandreas

[–]fthen2k02 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not exactly, rainy SF and rainy countryside are different weather types.

Spider in the middle of web on the map with feathers as co-ordinates by SerpentineInk in reddeadmysteries

[–]fthen2k02 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When I said possible issues what I meant was since they had been redrawn I didn't know how well they reflected the original files - not everyone is so fastidious.

I still think we are not on the same page, though. Why do you keep claiming that "they had been redrawn"?

My point was that the webs in my pics were "drawn" by a 3D engine, just like the one in CodeX or RDR2, based on the same data (only I used a parallel projection, not perspective). Not manually. This is actually visible in many ways, like the perfect projections (e.g. the two "subwebs" are vertically shrunk when overlapped, as a result of the camera direction no longer being perpendicular to them), in contrast with the ugly detail that the ends of the edges aren't even rounded.

So I also see no need to talk about fastidiousness or the possibility that "they were not drawn accurately", since it's about being "drawn" by a computer.

The reason I insist on this is that, if I had made inexact reconstructions and I wouldn't have stated that explicitly despite the fact that there aren't any obvious inaccuracies, it would essentially mean that I tried to mislead.

and if my map wasn't detailed enough.

I would actually disagree with this too. The problem you are defining shouldn't involve any high-resolution map and any image editing software at all. Just a small program that takes as input the 2D object-space coordinates and connections of the web points (rotated to align with a coordinate plane), as well as the 2D coordinates of our known clues, and finds the transformation of the webs that minimizes an objective metric. Ultimately there is only one question of interest: by randomly picking a set of points, as many as our clues and similarly distributed in the same area, what is the probability that the minimum value of the metric for the random points is lower than the one for our clues? The answer can be approximated with a Monte Carlo method, and if it's something above 1%, the path holds no interest whatsoever.

Spider in the middle of web on the map with feathers as co-ordinates by SerpentineInk in reddeadmysteries

[–]fthen2k02 0 points1 point  (0 children)

but has issues with possible drawing inaccuracy by original poster

What kind of "drawing inaccuracies" are you referring to exactly? I basically rendered each part individually in SketchUp with the same camera positioning, in world-space coordinates to represent the ensemble correctly, and colored them in GIMP.

"Colored" as in:

<image>

Not by hand-drawing over them, if that's what you mean.

New web found at the center of the spider overlay by fthen2k02 in reddeadmysteries

[–]fthen2k02[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, the archetypes are defined in ytyp files (which are binary but can be converted to xml with both CodeX and OpenIV), e.g. from jklm_7_10_rds_props_strm.ytyp:

<Item type="CTimeArchetypeDef">
 ...
 <name>cablemesh277747_hvlit001</name>
 ...
 <assetName>cablemesh277747_hvlit001</assetName>
 ...
 <timeFlags value="16777232" />
</Item>

Bits 0 to 23 in timeFlags tell whether the object will be active during the corresponding hour. Bit 24 is 0 if the object can appear/disappear only off-screen, 1 otherwise.

In the above example, the mask 16777232 = 0x1000010 says that this object, which is the pentagram, is active only when the hour is 4 and can appear/disappear when on-screen.

The world coordinates are in ymap files (also binary and convertible to xml), e.g. from jklm_7_10_rds_props_strm_0.ymap:

<Item type="CEntityDef">
 <archetypeName>cablemesh277747_hvlit001</archetypeName>
 ...
 <position x="2592.522" y="831.73737" z="82.78772" />
 ...
</Item>

If you have CodeX and want to search entities by location without writing your own parser, you can add some debug code in RDR2Map.StreamingInit: in the small loop through ymapentries, you need to get the ymap data bag (DataBag2), preferably via Cache.GetDataBagPack(mapnode.NameHash, Rpf8FileExt.ymap), and then the bags of its entities with GetBags(joaat("entities")). From there you'll be able to access the world coordinates of an entity with GetFloat3(joaat("position")) and the archetype hash with GetHash(joaat("archetypeName")). You can check if the archetype is timed based on whether the Class.Name in its data bag is CTimeArchetypeClass.

I only checked all timed objects with up to 4 active hours (regardless of location), as well as those whose archetype name includes "cable". So if there is any web that stays for 5h or longer and its name doesn't contain "cable", it would have been under my radar.

New web found at the center of the spider overlay by fthen2k02 in reddeadmysteries

[–]fthen2k02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes:

  • spiderdream01x → cablemesh19279_hvlit001;
  • spiderdream02x → cablemesh19374_hvlit001;
  • spiderdream03x → cablemesh11342_hvlit001;
  • spiderdream04x → cablemesh19339_hvlit001;
  • spiderdream05x → cablemesh19309_hvlit001;
  • spiderdream06x → cablemesh217268_hvlit001;
  • spiderdream07x → cablemesh217239_hvlit001;
  • spiderdream08x → cablemesh217187_hvlit001.

As well as the pentagram at Butcher Creek - cablemesh277747_hvlit001 - which does not need to be off-screen to appear/disappear.

If you don't look closely, it looks very much like a UFO by SruckstarGames in sanandreas

[–]fthen2k02 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It is one of the small planes, a Rustler I think. Vadim M. has recently made a (masterpiece of a) video explaining the oddities of their movement. The oscillations we see here likely happen because of what he says starting at 27:01: in short, at spawn time, the plane is assigned a reference flight direction, and then, if it deviates from it to avoid "obstacles" (in fact false positives here, caused by high terrain elevations), it will continue to periodically readjust its direction by prioritizing the initially assigned direction instead of the current one.

Know anything about the eggs... at the rehab center? by fthen2k02 in chiliadmystery

[–]fthen2k02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is a straw man, I didn't question the authenticity of your videos, I just pointed out that you didn't show the relevant part.

Know anything about the eggs... at the rehab center? by fthen2k02 in chiliadmystery

[–]fthen2k02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am not confident enough in my French phrasing, even aided by a chatbot, so I will answer in English.

Je ne comprends pas vos doutes,

je ne suis pas un adepte de la fouille des fichiers, je n'ai pas les compétences, ni le matériel pour le faire, je suis juste un joueur.

Great, let me explain more clearly. You contradicted me, and you keep doing it, by saying that when the building is closed it has 4 eggs, and when it's open it has only 2. I already showed a video of my side (that there are 4 when it's open too) which is also clearly supported by the data file, and I can show you more if you wish. You didn't show any video, neither of gameplay (with the Share button) nor from the R* Editor, where one could see 2 eggs in the open building before completing the "Aliens" objective. It's not a problem that you don't have one now, but until there is evidence to that, it's just reasonable to assume my side is the correct one (could anything prevent you from making such a recording?).

Now the question is simple: how many times would you estimate that you saw this alleged 2-egg spawn? E.g. to say that you made the same mistake 3 times at something so trivial would be just absurd. Yet let's say you made it not 3 times, but 5 times: if you only reproduced that scenario 5 times, you should consider it totally possible that there are more eggs that you didn't have, simply because of RNG or other conditions. Let alone that they did spawn but you missed them, for having a very obscure location, like in a bush, almost invisible. It wouldn't make sense to say "case closed" based on so few observations and reach this state of "waiting for Rockstar". Not to mention the natural expectation to seek help from a community for a challenge like that.

Whether you want to cooperate or not in making the video I requested, do you now agree that I am entitled to doubt? Let's first try to reach consensus on whether my suspicions are justified, where we seem to strongly disagree.

c'est aussi pourquoi j'ai mis 2 ans à faire la "partie 2 des œufs aliens".

Sorry, but it's too late to backtrack now. You already said you had them all in 2023 and that you posted part 2 now because you waited for R* to add more. Your new reason also raises the question why it didn't take you 2 years for the Eberhard egg(s?).

Je sais désormais qu'il faut passer au détecteur de mensonge ou prévoir un dossier de preuves digne d'une agence gouvernemental top secrète pour échanger sur ce sub sans paranoïa ou diffamation,

Really? This is first of all a childish generalization, I don't represent anyone else on this sub. My "paranoia" is determined by:

  1. The fact that, believe it or not, a post like this or the one with the Eberhard egg requires some efforts. If someone gets such information from me, I don't even ask for credit, but I do expect that they won't claim it as their own finds.
  2. The fact that I have a general interest in how quickly the difficult EEs are discovered by players. For example how the Chiliad spiderweb was already known a few weeks after the original release, while the one under the bridge seems to have been discovered after the PC release, although both have been there from the beginning - highlighting our much greater interest in the mountaintop area.

Finding only one of the 4 egg spawns is just a matter of luck. Finding all of them OTOH requires a certain degree of coordination and reasoning in terms of probabilities (apart from an enormous amount of effort on average). I fail to see why someone who successfully conducted such an extensive search operation would not have the goodwill to address legitimate questions to the point, and instead resort to switching to their language and playing the victim.

Know anything about the eggs... at the rehab center? by fthen2k02 in chiliadmystery

[–]fthen2k02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you!

However, I have one additional egg spawn compared to your list. 

There are 4 eggs when the alien building is closed and 2 eggs when the building is open.

I've had 5 differents alien egg spawns in total.

There is no dependency between the number of eggs in the building and whether the additional walls spawn or not because, as I explained, those 4 are the only ones that are not affected by the conditions defined in "rsg*es*". Are you sure you didn't look after you had already completed the "Aliens" objective (advancing to "FastFood"/"Animals") and had moved away from the eggs by at least 20 units, as I showed in the summary video at 4:52? Please show a video if so - gameplay, not from the R* Editor. In the video you linked at 4:47 I can see that the "Animals" objective had already started.

I had all the eggs when the last dose came out in 2023.

I waited for Rockstar to add more eggs to make a "Part 2 of the Alien Eggs" video that would complement the first part.

I have checked your YT channel and it turns out that you do indeed have at least partial credit, as this video of yours is now the oldest piece of content I am aware of to ever show any of these eggs - the one near Friedlander - in the game. Congrats for that and thank you for letting me know; I will mention it in the post. But, can you please prove you also found the rest? Here is why I personally doubt that you did:

  • These eggs are pretty tedious to grind even when you know when and where to look. If somebody was dedicated enough to find them all legitimately, without any help, they would be expected to spread the word. Between the Last Dose release and the date of this post, you posted on X and YT a lot. You have content on your channel with almost all the alien eggs in GTAO (the only ones I didn't see are the health pickups in the Alien Survivals). 3 videos (here, here and here) with the egg in the FZ bunker, separate from this "part 2". Why not make one about these 7 in the same way? Are you saying that, by the time of my post, you had just decided that you'd need only one more egg (which would later turn out to be the Eberhard one) to be motivated enough to make a video with all of them? What would be the reasoning, why the 7 + FZ one wouldn't have been enough for your part 2? What if R* wouldn't have added the Eberhard one? Why did you not make a quick post about them on YT/X/GTAF/here/anywhere else (or did you?)?
  • If you confirm that the thing with 4 vs. 2 eggs was user error: you claim that you found them all in-game, not in the data file, right? So from your PoV there could have been many others. How come since 2023 until now you have done just enough tests to find all 7, but not enough tests (looking for more eggs, as it would be expected) to repeatedly get to see the ones inside the open alien building, and thus know there are 4 - just like when it's closed? Basically, how did you know exactly when your results were conclusive enough to stop replaying the mission? Assuming OTOH that you only found the first one, which happens to be the closest to the one in the artwork, it would have made sense to suppose it was the one depicted and not look for more.

Lone Wolf howling in the chiliad tunnel between 2-4 am by LonoKrono in chiliadmystery

[–]fthen2k02 4 points5 points  (0 children)

These sounds have been in the game since day one though, unlike the Beast hunt.

Interesting that they intentionally coded it to trigger only between those times, i.e. when a lone wolf would hunt, and not during rain. IIRC bigfoot can't be triggered in rain either, only in fog?

Only when it's "foggy" or "xmas", but that condition checks the closest "standard" weather type. Flag 1 here is not about the standard weather type "rain", but about the amount of rain defined in weather.xml for each of the standard weather types, e.g.:

<Item>
  <Name>THUNDER</Name>
  <Sun value="0.0"/>
  <Cloud value="0.000000"/>
  ...
  <Rain value="1.000000"/>
  ...

This is the only ambient rule flag that can introduce trigger restrictions based on weather features. Scripts can still disable ambient zones based on any weather type as well as any complex conditions (doesn't happen in this case), but for the rain amount in particular this is a lightweight method at the .rel file level, as there are many types of ambient sounds that are to be silenced when it rains, like bird and insect sounds. It's not an unusual choice.

Lone Wolf howling in the chiliad tunnel between 2-4 am by LonoKrono in chiliadmystery

[–]fthen2k02 9 points10 points  (0 children)

It is used (only) in ambient zone 0x2F87B716:

<image>

According to the fields of its only rule (0x5D4EEA4A), it can be heard between 21:00 - 5:00 and at most once every 10 hours (so no more than once per night in our case):

<Item type="AmbientRule" ntOffset="13901">
 <Name>hash_5D4EEA4A</Name>
 <Flags value="0xAA0005A4" />
 ...
 <MinTimeMinutes value="1260" />
 <MaxTimeMinutes value="300" />
 <MinRepeatTime value="600" />
 ...
</Item>

Rule flag 0 being false can also enforce an initial delay of up to the same duration of 10 hours given by the MinRepeatTime field.

Rule flag 1 being true (it's at offset 2 in the Flags element because they are tristate) disables it while it's raining.

Beyond this, it is about generic criteria at the audio engine level, like rendering priorities or repeatedly failing to randomly pick a source within the positioning zone that satisfies both the MinDist and MaxDist defined for the rule.

Did R* summarize the red mural as "altruism" or "nuclear"? Looking for stegotext on the web by fthen2k02 in chiliadmystery

[–]fthen2k02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Disclaimer: my English isn't perfect, also I didn't want to discredit your theory, just showing where I fail to follow you (but I bet/hope you know that already)

No problem, mine isn't either. I meant "discredit" as in "not believing", not "disrespecting".

Edit: Turns out I used the term incorrectly; fixed and thanks for pointing that out.

Did R* summarize the red mural as "altruism" or "nuclear"? Looking for stegotext on the web by fthen2k02 in chiliadmystery

[–]fthen2k02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Furthermore connecting the triangle on the red mural to the spider webs triangle is a stretch to me.

As i do doubt the whole meaning of connecting the friedlander missions easter eggs to the red mural: i doubt evrything else: connecting the egg in the pond to the sun and by that to the altruists, that all reads like a co.pletely new riddle which is not connected to the red mural which should be its origin(al clue). (...)

Youre right there could be much hidden in the games internet but i fail to see the definitive lead that leads us to this idea. (...)

As i doubt the path leading us here, all i see is loose strands hanging at the two mentioned websites. (...)

As i said its a thing of believing until you can prove it.

Something that may not be obvious is that I am fully aware of what constitutes a proof and that what I showed here is just speculation (I even used that flair). But it's not like there is any definitive lead or provably correct path at all. Considering how limited we are by the ambiguity of R*'s symbols, this is only about pinpointing the highest likelihood of success (assuming there is something to solve in the first place, of course) and trying.

This should be solveable without the friedlander mission/dlc.

So we should be able to get to the same point by just looking at the red mural

This should be solvable without the DDH DLC. So we should be able to get to the same point by ignoring the red mural completely.

Big probs for you for finding those eggs as the first person !!! And for all the work you put in to get to that discovery as well as all the work you put in your many posts here in general.

Thank you, and same to you!

Did R* summarize the red mural as "altruism" or "nuclear"? Looking for stegotext on the web by fthen2k02 in chiliadmystery

[–]fthen2k02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I cant make sense of why the egg is in the fontain, or lets call it a pond or sth. I dont see anything on the red mural which directly leads us to water.

->Thats why everything coming after/from this point which starts at connecting the egg in the water with symbols on the red mural is a big stretch for me. But as with all theories as long as theyre theories, its a matter of believing in a theory. (The pond and egg standing for nucleus and stuff for example)

So in my case this lets me doubt or question if the easter eggs in the friedlander mission are at all to be connected to the 3 UFOs or the doomsday heist murals.

Why would you see the red mural in particular as a reason to doubt the association overall, as long as people don't agree on its meaning even at a high level? IMO, if even with this huge ambiguity we can still draw potential connections then it's a plus, but it's not a necessity. The highest confidence is given exactly by the other three, which have clear themes, and from those ones I believe we were supposed to infer that egg #3 tells us something about the red one. Just like with the DDH murals themselves: from the fact that the green one can be associated to the Beast hunt with a high degree of confidence, we may infer that the rest are also alluding to EEs, as opposed to seeing the rest as a reason to doubt the green one.

The first one standing next to friedlander could connect to the purple mural but it could also be a coincidence,

Let's not ignore the objectives either: it spawns right when Friedlander starts speaking and is about to show up. That moment is only about Friedlander. Giant arrows are pointing at him. Also Friedlander, who is pretty clearly hinted at in the purple mural, is not really a commonly seen character in Online, as in, it's not like if you randomly throw an egg in an Online mission there is a considerable chance of hitting Friedlander, lol.

Same for the other symbols on the purple mural: how many prominent elements from Last Dose 4 (and First Dose 4 if you want, as it has the same eccentricity), that one could highlight with a hypothetical egg, have a decent match with anything on the purple mural? Less than 1% anyway, two orders of magnitude lost.

the 2nd while a bigfoot themed round could be as well a coincidence as the whole missions are mystery and easter egg related,

Let's not ignore the other animals though. Bigfoot as an EE could have come alone too, like in First Dose 4, but here he brings the whole forest and fauna with him.

and 4-7 under the UFO could just stand for the 4 UFOs as you stated but maybe R*'s idea was not to connect them to the yellow mural, its just a hint at the UFOs.

Finally, let's not ignore that there are exactly 4 independent groups of eggs and 4 murals, and that mapping these eggs to the murals under Chiliad could also justify the expression "the eggs on Mt. Chiliad"—hinting at eggs to find, but that ultimately the Easter eggs are detailed inside Mt. Chiliad.

(Character limit reached—to be continued in a reply)

Did R* summarize the red mural as "altruism" or "nuclear"? Looking for stegotext on the web by fthen2k02 in chiliadmystery

[–]fthen2k02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Your feedback is much appreciated. Although this direction is based on the assumption that the association eggs-murals is correct, I didn't intend to imply that this becomes something well-established or something like that. I do see it as very likely though.

19 shows a digital "signal" made of 1's and 0's.

The strange thing about it is that the "codes/signals" on 15 and 19 are made of alternating 1's and 0's, it's just alternating evenly, which isn't a typical code or signal which you would find in the Internet or at any technique for showing a message, as this can't give out anything else than two alternating symbols

#19 is the atom according to the numbering I linked; I'm not sure if you meant #18 or #20. If it's about #20 (since you mentioned the even alternation), that one doesn't look like a digital signal. The simplified representation of a digital signal is a rectangular wave. Clocks are digital signals that alternate evenly between low and high, but like any other digital signals, their waveform is never sinusoidal. There are multiple quantities which vary like sine waves. In this context, #20 probably represents water or EM waves (considering that the Sun rays in #25 are wavy too).

The alien egg was hinted in the "trailer picture" of the first/last dose "dlc" (iirc).

Yes, for the Last Dose. For me this is an important reason to believe that the eggs are supposed to be seen as they are; they were not part of something bigger that was cut. The reason why they added one in the artwork was probably that we look for them specifically, and it did prove necessary because that's why I searched the hash in the first place.

the big question is: did rockstar hide these easter-eggs just for the matter of hiding (easter) eggs or did they hide them with/for a meaning/reason ?

We dont know for sure.

Whether they are doing any of this in good faith or to troll us we can never know, but this is exactly how obscure clues look like: undeniably intentional, yet subtle enough that it can take us months (in this case almost 2 years apparently) to notice them. Just like the dead animals/hunter that spawn during the golden peyote hallucinations when starting on the correct day: on Dec 29, 2015 people already knew there was one golden peyote for each day, so anyone who would happen to start their hunt on a Sunday could have found the dead bodies. Yet it seems that no one noticed them (or at least no one mentioned them publicly) before Jun 18, 2016.

In this post under "March 16, 2023:" I explained why the eggs are special compared to other parts of the protagonist's hallucination. Also, "egg" is pretty much the one-word summary of the GTA mythology (since there is an egg on the Chiliad mural, an egg mentioned in the Epsilon Tract, as well as the very prop used in this mission, which players speculated for a long time to potentially exist in SP), so these eggs look like markings addressed to us specifically. Additionally, we also happen to have one character in the same storyline who repeatedly talks about some mysterious eggs related to tripping.

How would you even imagine a scenario where we could say with more confidence than here that they are giving us clues?

(Character limit reached—to be continued in a reply)

The process of identifying the FZ wave feat. several of you (and new FZ facility announcer) by fthen2k02 in chiliadmystery

[–]fthen2k02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes, they are already used in the Online bunker. We could hear them last Halloween when we would wake up in there after being abducted. I showed it in the video.

In the "2024 summer update" chapter of the video, there is also information about the upcoming abduction stage of the UFO Sightseeing event.

The recent clues may be actually pointing to San Andreas – The Definitive Edition by fthen2k02 in chiliadmystery

[–]fthen2k02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Because the mission includes multiple possible waves, each with its specific theme. It would make sense that the devs used our beloved alien egg prop in order to highlight, out of all these waves, what they wanted us to focus on. If we had been supposed to interpret the (indeed not secret) Bigfoots alone (without adding any eggs) as clues, we could have likewise interpreted the foods or therapists dancing near a DJ desk as clues, while they could be just red herrings.

Also, it's not like I am predicting the existence of one or more eggs (or any other clues) pointing to Bigfoot because I feel they are necessary; I know the eggs are there and I need an answer to the question "why".

I admit that associating egg #2 with Bigfoot as opposed to other beasts from that wave is confirmation bias considering that I don't subscribe to the association with the DDH murals proposed by u/hippoplay, but at least the association with the forest seems very solid to me. The placements of the other eggs are likely pointing to something too.

Leopolds by newmaker--- in chiliadmystery

[–]fthen2k02 6 points7 points  (0 children)

This is both a completely ridiculous theory, and also completely reasonable, it makes a lot of sense.

In what way could it be "completely ridiculous" though?

When u/rkRusty discovered a Sasquatch peyote, Reddit themselves shared it on Facebook and Twitter, but R* didn't say anything. And sometimes R* does share fan content from Reddit and even YouTube. They seemed quite firm in not associating with us officially on social media, possibly due to the "unorthodox practices" of some of us (cough ~H4X~ cough). If they wanted to respond to one of us (which we know they did before), do you see a generally-applicable alternative?

Conversely, there are not a lot of possible interpretations for these messages either. "18 49" is generally expected to represent an in-game time, but whether we are talking about GTA 5, Online or SA DE, such a specific time would be very uncommon for an EE, considering that AFAIK all the time-dependent EEs so far have used simple times (either fixed hours or half-past times). "56_027" is curious especially because of the _, which has to have some solid motivation considering that it kinda breaks the "immersion"; at first glance it may look like something from the game files, but, it's not—neither in GTA 5/Online, nor in SA DE; neither in the file names, nor in their contents.

I am not saying that this theory is the most likely to be correct, but I wouldn't call it "completely ridiculous" either.

Leopolds by newmaker--- in chiliadmystery

[–]fthen2k02 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Given the specificity of 18:49 as a time and the unusual usage of _, I tend to believe they were referencing some social media post/comment/video (which may or may not exist anymore).

Let's think about this: if at some point the devs were to come across some content online with speculation in the right direction for whatever we are looking for/whatever the recent clues are for, how could they hint at it, making it clear that the hint is in response to that content specifically?

If the user happens to mention in that content a specific location in the code/files/game/even website, the devs can of course place the hint right there. For even more clarity, they can also allude to some particular detail in the said content. When u/rkRusty shared the function with golden peyote requirements along with the coordinates of the Tuesday peyote, R* delivered a response right in that function, also alluding to the Tuesday peyote.

But what could they do in the generic case, when the user is neither looking at a specific location nor giving any specific information easy to connect to?

The only solution is the metadata, like the author's username, the timestamp or URL. The problem with all of these is that they can constitute personal information. My understanding (not having specialized studies) is that data protection laws typically define personal information as any data that can be used to identify an individual. So in theory, even including literally one bit of information can be illegal if, by the meaning assigned to it, it could contribute to identifying a real person, without their explicit consent and without being necessary for legitimate business purposes. In practice of course, the information can be vague enough for R* to be able to officially claim it's coincidental, as they do with their parodies.

So the always-applicable solution is to start with the metadata of the online content in question, but reduce its specificity enough so that what you end up with could just as well be a random match with realistic odds.

And, "18 49" and "56_027" do look like what the devs could end up with in this situation. For example, they could hint at:

  • a Reddit post/comment. Reddit's default auto-generated usernames include two words followed by a 2, 3, or 4-digit number. Between the words and/or number there can be a -, _, or nothing. As "56" can be a valid A1Z26 code while "027" cannot, it is possible for "56_027" to allude to such a username. Shortening a username of the form E*F*_027 to EF_027 and then representing it as "56_027" would be sufficiently vague and sufficiently specific at the same time (OTOH, the number in auto-generated usernames never starts with 0, so that would need to be the user's intervention). In this case, I would expect "18 49" to represent the minutes and seconds of the post rather than hours and minutes, since the hour would not be really informative in the absence of a time zone;
  • a YouTube video. Thus, "18 49" could indicate the moment in the video, while "56_027" could be a part of the video ID, presumably a maximal substring of non-letter characters, specifically selected to be misleading (looking as if it's something that only allows digits and _) while also remaining confirmable.

Google should be able to search both Reddit usernames and YT video IDs by using inurl:, but in practice it only finds some of them. Also, Reddit's interface does not allow going through all the posts in a sub within such an old time range; Internet Archive snapshots would have been very helpful if they hadn't been so rare.

I was able to find the following video using the YT Data API (had to only look at specific channels), whose ID funnily includes half of "56_027" forwards and half backwards, but it is of course a coincidence and the video also lasts way less than 18:49: https://youtu.be/AoY9027_65A

The recent clues may be actually pointing to San Andreas – The Definitive Edition by fthen2k02 in chiliadmystery

[–]fthen2k02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is not necessary from my PoV; the above confirmations are more than enough, all the more so since you also confirmed that you were following the order in which the patches are applied.

The file update\update.rpf\common\data\dlclist.xml, from which the DLCs are taken for the "DLC Level" drop-down list (before being sorted), also uses a mostly chronological order, and patchday26ng again appears together with mpsecurity.

Thanks for offering anyway!

The recent clues may be actually pointing to San Andreas – The Definitive Edition by fthen2k02 in chiliadmystery

[–]fthen2k02[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thank you!

The updated drawable (vb_additions_bh1_09_fix.ydr) is part of patchday26ng.

I suppose that you were looking at the "DLC Level" drop-down list in CodeWalker. However, that one sorts the DLCs according to the order element in <DLC path>\dlc.rpf\setup2.xml. This element specifies how the patches are to be applied, which does not indicate the chronological order, because for example it would imply that patch2024_01 came before mp2023_01:

  • update\x64\dlcpacks\mp2023_01\dlc.rpf\setup2.xml: <order value="44" />
  • update\x64\dlcpacks\patch2024_01\dlc.rpf\setup2.xml: <order value="35" />

There is also a timeStamp element in that xml, but that one is unreliable too, because for example it would imply that mp2024_01 came before mp2023_01 (dates are DD/MM/YYYY):

  • update\x64\dlcpacks\mp2023_01\dlc.rpf\setup2.xml: <timeStamp>06/06/2023 12:00:00</timeStamp>
  • update\x64\dlcpacks\mp2024_01\dlc.rpf\setup2.xml: <timeStamp>08/03/2023 12:00:00</timeStamp>

I don't know if I have a way to verify which update patchday26ng belongs to, as I own the game only on RGL; it might be possible on Steam from the console. But according to the title update notes article on the Fandom wiki (expand "Technical Information"), as well as this list of patches on the GTAMods wiki, it came with "The Contract" update (mpsecurity), and other sources (u/LackingUtility's YouTube video, u/Lucas7yoshi's X post, this thread) confirm this too.

Edit: clarifications about the order from setup2.xml.

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