Silent Patch + Downgraders (SA)

This guide will cover how to downgrade your game, explain what is Silent Patch and how to apply it, how to get controller support, as well as possibly other things in the future. It's an adaption of -3xA'Lu©κy's Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas Steam thread.

For the respective GTA III and GTA VC Steam guides, please use the following 2 links:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=641839127 - GTA III
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=641848214 - GTA VC


Credit goes to Silent and Jack Thompson, because they made the Silent Patch and Downgraders respectively

And thanks to my friend -3xA'Lu©κy for letting me adapt his thread into a guide

What is Silent Patch?

Silent Patch is an unofficial patch that fixes all the remaining issues with this game whilst bringing back features that were only found in the console releases as well. In my opinion: it's now a necessity for any player and ultimately gives you the best San Andreas experience possible. It works best with any PC version except for the "NewSteam" version. A changelog for it can be found in the "SILENT PATCH CHANGELOG:" section of this guide.

How do I install Silent Patch?

To install it: simply go to link 1, expand the box below the "Silent Patch" heading and click the "Download" button, and then expand the box below the "Silent’s ASI Loader " heading and click the "Download" button there as well. After that, unzip Silent Patch and then drag and drop the "SilentPatchSA.asi" and "SilentPatchSA.ini" files into your game's main folder. Lastly, unzip Silent's ASI Loader this time and then drag and drop the "vorbisHooked.dll" and "vorbisFile.dll" files into your game's main folder. Once all that's done you can optionally apply the Fixed Vehicles pack from link 3, which is nice to have and works great alongside Silent Patch. Instructions for it can be found in the "FIXED VEHICLES PACK INSTALLATION" section of this guide.

1. https://cookieplmonster.github.io/mods/gta-sa/#silentpatch
2. http://gtaforums.com/topic/725635-wipsagta-san-andreas-fixed-vanilla-vehicles/ (not 100% complete at this time)

Should I downgrade?

That’s entirely up to you. San Andreas had previously only received one official patch (patch 1.01) and it limited modding severely. This was due to the "Hot Coffee mod" which controversially restored partially-cut content that wasn't supposed to be available to players. On November 7 2014, the Steam release was exclusively updated with another official patch (labelled by modders as NewSteam r1). On December 9 2014, the Steam release was updated with yet another official patch (NewSteam r2).

Rather than tell you what version is the best, I’ll simply list the pros and cons of each version with the following table:

	Version 1.0 (original release)	Version 1.01 (patched original release)	Version 2.0 (DVD re-release with 1.01 patch)	Version 3.0 (Steam release)	NewSteam r1	NewSteam r2
Controller support	no (unless you grab Silent or Deji's GInput mod)	no	no	no	yes (x360/x1 controller support)	yes (x360/x1 controller support)
Full soundtrack	yes	yes	yes	yes	no (18 songs were removed)	no (18 songs were removed)
Fully moddable	yes	no	no	no	partially moddable	partially moddable
Most resolutions supported	no (16:9 is not supported but Silent Patch and widescreen mods will correct this)	yes	yes	no (16:9 is not supported but Silent Patch and widescreen mods will correct this)	no (5:4 and 16:9 is not supported but Silent Patch and widescreen mods will correct this)	no (5:4 is not supported but Silent Patch and widescreen mods will correct this)

Downgrader 3.0 or 1.0?

Not all of Silent Patch's functions will work unless you downgrade to either version 3.0 or 1.0. 3.0 will revert your game to how it was before the NewSteam patches (this means the game will be less moddable and not all of Silent Patch's features will work) while 1.0 allows for the user to auto-install essential mods from within the downgrader program itself and will downgrade your game completely (there's even a button that will allow for you to install these mods without downgrading). Only use one downgrader!!
NOTE: after downgrading you will have TWO .exe files in your game's main folder. gta-sa.exe is named like the normal Steam shortcut (so you can launch the game from the Steam library and the game will launch from here with no issues) whilst gta_sa.exe is the name of the shortcut the non-Steam version of GTA SA always had (and is there in case you need it or for mods that require a gta_sa.exe file be present). It honestly shouldn't really matter which .exe you launch the game from but if you want the Steam overlay, launch the game from the Steam library.

3.0 downgrader links (choose and use only one):
http://dl1.rockstarnexus.com/gta/sa/SA_12-9-14_Steam_3.0_DG.exe (675 MB)
https://gzwn.net/gta/sa/SA_12-9-14_Steam_DG.exe (675 MB)
{LINK ENTFERNT}http://www.mediafire.com/download/i60lc800xqsad6b/SA_12-9-14_Steam_DG.exe (675 MB)
https://mega.co.nz/#!y1lWnaAA!wz2IdYvQD7ex3qBxPJ0cd63DB4MMoB_I7kFG04Rqviw (675 MB)

1.0 downgrader links - also works for v2 copies of this game (choose and use only one):
https://services.rockstarnexus.com/sadowngrade/SADowngrade_1-3-1_Full.exe (522 MB)
https://services.rockstarnexus.com/sadowngrade/latest.exe (2.1 MB - downloads downgrader files for you)

Controller support?

Both methods of controller support require you using the 1.0 downgrader first (directly above). Once your game is downgraded, you'll need to grab "Silent's ASI Loader" from link 1 (if you haven't already) and put its contents into your game's main folder and then make a choice between links 1a and 1b. I personally recommend link 1a as it's more recent and seems to do a better job.

1. https://cookieplmonster.github.io/mods/gta-sa/#asiloader (expand the box below the "Silent's ASI Loader" heading and click the "Download button")
1a. https://cookieplmonster.github.io/mods/gta-sa/#ginput - Silent's GInput (expand the box below the "Ginput" heading and click the "Download" button)
1b. http://gtag.gtagaming.com/mods/107-ginput/ - Deji's GInput

Some extra information on savegames and frame limiter bugs!

• Usually savegames only work on the version of the game that they were made on. If you made a save on v 2.0/3.0, don't expect it to work on a v 1.0 installation of San Andreas. It's best to start a new game if you can (especially if you weren't that far into the game) but if you really want to continue your save game, you can upload your save on here and this website does all the work for you (do note it only converts v2 saves to v1 and v1 saves to v2):
http://hmvartak.freeiz.com/SCMConverter/conv.htm

• GTA III, GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas should all have the in-game frame limiter (Options --> Display Setup --> Advanced) enabled, otherwise you'll run into odd bugs. In addition to physics-related bugs and cars aceelerating/braking incredibly fast that you'll experience in GTA III and GTA: Vice City, you'll also notice CJ can't swim underwater and exercise minigames are far too difficult in San Andreas with the frame limiter disabled. So do yourself a favour and enable the frame limiter. Normally the frame limiter locks GTA III and GTA Vice City to 30 FPS whilst San Andreas is locked to 25 FPS, but with Silent Patch applied San Andreas properly locks at 30 FPS.

Windowed Mode

This section is going to teach you how to play Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas using Windowed mode. Windowed mode allows you to record videos more easily, reduces lag, and can prevent the game from freezing your entire computer.

You need a ASI Loader to make the mod work - if you already got it, there's no need to install the content from Link 1.

Download the files from Link 1 and drop them into your game's main folder. Now the process is very easy. All you have to do is download the file from link 2 and dragging and dropping the .asi file into your game's main folder. Uninstalling is just a matter of deleting the III.VC.SA.WindowedMode.asi from your game's main folder (the file you just dragged and dropped to enable windowed mode).

1. http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=21709
2. https://github.com/ThirteenAG/III.VC.SA.WindowedMode/releases/download/v1.0/III.VC.SA.WindowedMode.zip

Windowed mode controls:
* Alt-Enter: Toggle between borderless-fullscreen and windowed mode
* Ctrl-Enter/Shift-Enter: Toggle border/menu
* If border is activated, you can resize the window with the mouse

Thanks for ThirteenAG for making the Windowed mod!
ThirteenAG's site: http://thirteenag.github.io/wfp

Widescreen Fix

When you use widescreen in your game, the HUD is stretched and certain aspects of the game are not adjusted for higher resolutions. In this part of the guide we're going to fix that.

All you have to do is download the content from link 1 and extract the content inside the "rel" folder (That is located at the file you downloaded) into your game's main folder, after that download the file from link 2 and paste the "scripts" and "vorbisFile.dll" into your game's main folder.

1. http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=25380
2. https://github.com/ThirteenAG/WidescreenFixesPack/releases/download/gtasa/GTASA.WidescreenFix.zip

FIXED VEHICLES PACK INSTALLATION

Download "Mod Loader v0.2.4" from link 1, unzip the link 1 file and then drag and drop the .asi file and "modloader" folder into your game's main folder. Then open the newly-created modloader folder and create 1 folder for each mod (you can call each folder whatever you want), and paste the contents of a mod into its respective folder. It's that simple!

Examples:
- mod 1's contents go into ... \GTA San Andreas\modloader\mod 1\
- mod 2's contents go into ... \GTA San Andreas\modloader\mod 2\

1. http://www.gtagarage.com/mods/show.php?id=25377

SILENT PATCH CHANGELOG:

•14ms frame delay has been removed. As a result, game now locks properly on 30 FPS instead of 25 FPS
•More precise frame limiter, reducing lag spikes a bit when playing with Frame Limiter on
•Game timers now tick in a more accurate manner, making them not freeze if framerate exceeds 1000 frames per second; in other words, this fixes occasional freezes on fadeouts if playing with Frame Limiter off
•Mouse should not lock up randomly when exiting the menu on newer systems anymore
•Mouse vertical axis sensitivity now matches horizontal axis sensitivity
•Mouse vertical axis does not lock during camera fadeins now
•NUM5 is now bindable (like in 1.01)
•16:9 resolutions are now selectable (like in 1.01)
•If the settings file is absent, the game will now default to your desktop resolution instead of 800x600x32
•DirectPlay dependency has been removed - this should improve compatibility with Windows 8 and newer
•Path to the GTA San Andreas User Files directory is now obtained differently, increasing compatibility and future-proofing the games more
•A heap corruption in one place is now fixed (did not affect gameplay but could potentially make the game crash)
•EAX/NVIDIA splashes are now removed (can be toggled on/off; OFF by default)
•Subtitle and Radio text sizes can now be toggled between the original release and updated Steam version (defaults to Steam sizes)
•Area name colour now matches the gang colour of the gang that owns that territory (Los Santos only) (can be toggled on/off; DISABLED by default)
•Wet road reflections render properly again (just like with Road Reflections Fix)
•Fixed sun lens flare effect not appearing with AMD/Intel graphics cards
•Fixed an issue introducing graphical artifacts from ped animations with high RAM usage - so called "streaming memory bug"
•Fixed a bug causing cheat-spawned melee weapons to be forcibly replaced by other melee weapons upon walking into a pickup
•Helicopter rotors and plane propellers now work correctly. They now have a blurring effect present in VC and PS2 version of SA. This fix can be disabled separately for each file via the INI file
•Hunter interior does not dissapear when viewed through the glass door panel
•Dual rear wheels now show up properly (Yosemite, Tanker etc.)
•Weapons are now visible when viewed through a vehicle window
•Holding a weapon will not cause some objects to be incorrectly lit anymore
•Blown up vehicles are now correctly coloured and no longer shine (like in 1.01 and Steam versions)
•Dirty cars are now able to get clean (like in 1.01)
•Each car has an unique numberplate now
•Custom numberplates now show up correctly in all cases
•Custom numberplates are now also allowed on bikes
•Numberplates are now bilinear filtered, resulting in a smoother look
•Vehicle lights do not get dark after being being initially lit anymore (like on PS2)
•Detached vehicle parts will now remain the same colour as the vehicle they came from
•Detached vehicle parts now render from both sides
•Some car panels now swing after car's explosion (like they were meant to be but the code forcibly fixed them immediately after damaging)
•Moonphases now show up correctly, like on PS2 version (only when playing in 32-bit colour mode)
•Toggling car lights on does not make windows invisible when viewed from inside anymore
•Illumination value from timecyc.dat now accepts any float value in 0.0-2.0 ranges, not just 0.0, 1.0 and 2.0
•In addition, if illumination value is absent from the timecycle (like on a stock PC timecycle), the game will now default to 1.0
•Lights now get casted on vehicles and peds properly - previously, they'd dissapear under some conditions
•In addition, when playing on Visual FX Quality higher than low, the game will now cast up to 6 lights on each model both indoors and outdoors (on Low details, game's stock behaviour has been kept - allowing up to 4 lights per model outdoors and 6 indoors)
•Introduced several fixes for rendering objects with an alpha channel, including an experimental two-pass rendering mode (see SilentPatchSA.ini for more details; can be toggled on/off, DISABLED by default). Two-pass can be selected to use Silent's code or aap's code - the latter aims towards emulating the PS2 alpha test
•Muzzle flash looks better now
•Muzzle flash will now show up when firing the last bullet from the clip
•Coronas' don't have a Z test forced all the time now - as a result, sunglare now matches original PS2 version
•Night Vertex Colours are now handled by a shader - as a result, transistion from day to night vertex colours is now smooth, just like on PS2 version
•With User Tracks automatic scan enabled, MP3 playback will now work properly if QuickTime is not installed
•User Tracks now supports the FLAC codec (Only 8/16/24bits, Mono/Stereo and up to 48Khz)
•PCM WAVE has been expanded to also accept additional profiles (Now 8/16/24bits, Mono/Stereo and up to 48Khz)
•PCM WAVE files with an ID3-TAG will now also work with the game
•Temple and Queens are now correctly called on the police scanner
•Travelling far away from the map will no longer trigger the extra gang territories glitch, nor will it corrupt the Taxi Driver submission
•Gym glitch ("You have worked out enough..." showing infinitely) has been fixed (can be toggled on/off; ENABLED by default)
•Saving in Madd Dogg's mansion will no longer trigger the missing basketball glitch (can be toggled on/off; ENABLED by default)
•Fixed an occasional softlock in Mountain Cloud Boys - the player will not freeze after arriving to the meeting anymore (can be toggled on/off; ENABLED by default)
•Possible softlock in Sweet's Girl initial cutscene fixed (can be toggled on/off; ENABLED by default)
•Quadruple Stunt Bonus now works correctly (can be toggled on/off; ENABLED by default)
•Script sprites now have bilinear filtering applied
•Car generator counters now work properly for generators with fixed amount of spawns
•Impound garages now function correctly, allowing the player to recover his last vehicle after it had vanished after a mission start
•In addition, impound garages will now store player's car when he's busted
•Streamed entity list has been expanded a bit, so now the game world shouldn't flash when looking down with high Draw Distance settings anymore
•Mouse rotates an airborne car only with Steer with Mouse option enabled
•Towtruck tow hitch does not get bugged after it has been fixed anymore
•Plane doors don't corrupt after the plane has been fixed anymore
•Fixing a plane will now reset its moving props to an undamaged state
•Several vehicle components (most notably, Rumpo's front bumper and Bandito's moving prop) will not get glitched after the vehicle has been fixed anymore
•Weapons and a jetpack now cast proper shadows
•Crosshair doesn't mess up weapon icon when on a jetpack anymore
•Free resprays will not carry on a New Game now
•Fixed ambulance and firetruck dispatch timers - they reset on New Game now
•Previously present only on PS2, 'Cars drive on water' cheat is now toggleable - its string is SEAROADER
•Randomizer error causing peds not to spawn in some areas has been fixed
•Randomizer error causing ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥s to be quiet during solicit has been fixed
•Text boxes now can show together with a Mission Passed text
•Fixed a 1.01 only tiny memory leak which occured every time the player switched a radio station
•Fixed an occasional crash when Alt+Tabbing back to the game while standing next to a mirror
•Mirror reflection doesn't break with Anti-Aliasing enabled anymore
•With Visual FX Quality set to Very High, mirror reflection quality has been bumped
•Anti-Aliasing option has been altered - instead of listing 1, 2, 3 options (which in fact are 2x/2x/4x MSAA), the game will now show proper MSAA values from 2x up to 16x (depending on max MSAA level supported by the graphics card)
•Colliding with another car will now damage proper parts on both cars - previously, both cars got damaged the same way

SILENT PATCH CHANGELOG (CONTINUED):

•Fixed a crash on car explosions - most likely to happen when playing with a multimonitor setup
•Fixed a crash when entering advanced display options on a dual monitor machine after: starting game on primary monitor in maximum resolution, exiting, starting again in maximum resolution on secondary monitor. Secondary monitor maximum resolution had to be greater than maximum resolution of primary monitor.
•Fixed an occasional crash occuring when standing next to escalators
•Slightly reduced stencil shadows memory overhead
•Fixed an AI issue where enemies became too accurate after the player has been in the car earlier
•IMGs bigger than 4GB are now handled properly
•Alt+F4 now works properly
•Steam version has proper aspect ratios now
•IMG size checks have been removed from the Steam version
•Steam version of the game will not reject 1.0/1.01 saves anymore (still, a compatible SCM is needed for the save to work)
•Several vehicles now have extra animated components: Phoenix hood scoops, Sweeper brushes, Newsvan antenna, radars on several boats, extra flaps on Stuntplane and Beagle
•Animated engine components on Bandito, BF Injection and Hotknife will not animate if the engine is off
•Fixed a crash occuring when the vending machine was continuously used for an extended period of time
•`FILE_FLAG_NO_BUFFERING` flag has been removed from IMG reading functions - speeding up streaming
•Fixed a streaming related deadlock, which could occasionally result in game being stuck on black screen when entering or exiting interiors (this is the issue people used to fix by setting CPU affinity to one core)
•Metric-to-imperial conversion constants have been replaced with more accurate ones
•Fixed a glitch where random cars would end up being impounded to garage, replacing player's vehicles
•Very long loading times will now loop loading screens, as opposed to fading to white
•Sun reflections on peds and vehicles now change direction depending on time of day, like in III and VC (can be toggled on/off; DISABLED by default)
•Dancing minigame timings have been improved, now they do not lose accuracy over time depending on PC's uptime
•Car generators placed in interiors are now placed correctly - this 'unhides' two vehicles in Madd Dogg's mansion, which were always there but they were not visible
•Bombs in cars stored in garages now save properly
•Fixed an issue which would cause games to freeze if III/VC/SA were running at the same time
•Streaming has been greatly improved during Supply Lines mission (or more general, any time when using an RC vehicle) - it now behaves as expected, as opposed to displaying LODs way too quickly
•Health triangle displaying when aiming at peds is now properly orientated (it's now upside down) for peds player can recruit
•Setting a BMX on fire will not set CJ on fire anymore
•Keyboard input latency decreased by one frame
•Made the game select metric/imperial units basing on system locale settings. This can be overridden from the INI file
•Fixed a bug where paintjobs would vanish from cars stored in garage if they were stored without looking at them
•Light coronas now rotate as camera gets closer to them
•Fires now properly light up the ground underneath them
•Corrected moon phases have been made to work with a widescreen fix
•A glitch that allowed vehicles without any extras to spawn (i.e. engineless bikes) has now been addressed
•When looking left/right/behind with the in-car camera, PC players using the mouse could attempt to move it up and down. This has now been restricted to match control parity with other input devices
•Fixed parachute animations
•“Keep weapons after wasted” and “keep weapons after busted” are now reset when you start a New Game
•extra6 can now be picked by the game when a random extra is to be picked

Thanks

Thanks goes to:

- Silent for his Silent Patch and GInput. He can be found on Steam and gtaforums.
- Aztecas_5, StrafeBolt, Wesser and nyolc8 for their gtaforums-hosted Fixed Vehicles pack.
- Jack Thompson/gamerzworld for his 3.0 and 1.0 downgrader. He can be found on Steam and gtaforums.
- Deji for his GInput. He can be found on gtaforums.
- ThirteenAG for his screen fixes and mods.
- The rest of the modding community for keeping San Andreas alive all this time.

[Motor-Runner]

links are dead

[deligrad]

The widescreen fix doesn't seem to work for me.

[🔮🎆💎Darth Hulka💎🎆]

No worky

[Skidge]

Yeah the downgrader is dead now. You're better of using a different one and installing the other mods separately.

[Switaly]

Downgrader unusable

"Unable to reach RockstarNexus services"

[Cpt. Moist Panties]

nicely written guide and thoroughly detailed.

[lakshay093]

Thanks for making this guide. It was helpful and the game now works as it was supposed to.

[MrKoalaBeer]

game doesnt even launch after putting in asl and silent

[Himeros]

The game stops responding so many times during gameplay it's annoying. Also no autosave option makes it unbearable.

[GitGud]

I screwed up my copy of san andreas. I've uninstalled, am downgrading right now but it seems it's frozen -stuck in scanning. It's unbelievably insane that I have to pseudo program just to play a game that came out in 2005. Thank Rockstar for making a game that's worse than heroin, than completely giving up on the game, but then re release gta 5 for over 10 years....thanks.