Excellent video mate! It was sent to me by dozens of people and was really eye opening. I guess if you play the game for thousands of hours, even in single player, you will eventually run into one of these scripted abrupt lane changes that just happen to coincide with your passing. You should check out tow trucks and how they interact with these markers, as they are definitely very broken. I have witnessed them phasing into the ground, numerous times, to change lanes. It seemed targetted at the time but I accept your explanation that it was not so and it was just coincidence.
By the amount of people I saw mentioning you, I figured it was a matter of time. But yes, some vehicle types are especially buggy. The same way trucks natively do not yield for emergency sirens for some odd reason, as discussed in the video. I guess its just good old RNG ruining runs mixed with Rockstar's spaghetti coding
The often reason for crashes is also that: 1)NPCs dont use turn lights. 2) They make unreasonable and unrealistic sharp turns when changing lanes or going down the street.
i think turn lights are visual only, in GTA IV they prob activated them once a npc enters right/left lane, i think it's still in V just isn't acivated most of the time
DarkViper has a video clip from a speed run where a truck slid sideways across 4 lanes of traffic and hit him... this was on a straight stretch of highway and in single player.
Most often it happens in story mode if you are going only straight for some time.. I'm guessing they wanted to make it so that your driving never feels "stale", rather it being more dynamic that way... Sadly it often just ends up being frustrating cause those random NPC swirls just feel way too unnatural and break immersion imo
@@nightwolf9951 The entire video is dedicated to explaining that's not the case?? They're unnatural because they're programmed simply, not because they're reacting to anything you did
14:50 I could never enjoy following traffic in GTA 5 as I did in GTA 4 because of this. You are constantly put in a situation where every single light is red and no traffic advances.
If you really played GTA Online for several years and paid some attention, you should be very familiar with a certain NPC pattern that happens on junctions (in downtown most often). If a player is speeding through a red light, there's about a 70%-80% chance a very fast NPC will spawn on the street that had green and fly through the junction. Not only will it brake hard immediately when it clears the junction, it will also slow down if the player slows down, intentionally timing it to get t-boned. Even if you spot this a$$hole early, he's quite difficult to avoid. This behavior is perfectly reproducible, I confirmed it with my friends and this is the hill I'm willing to die on
I think those guys are a result of the AI breaking off its nodes out of panic, they see the collision as the last second and it stops them just driving normally, ironically causing a crash.
@@Shoxic666 but they always turn INTO you instead of AWAY from you..and its the SAME everytime..and been happening for a decade+ lol its in the code surely
Every single time, seems even more so on a motorcycle. I've had this situation happen so many times and even when braking or avoiding, it's programmed to match your speed to force you into a collision. Seems to be based on some sort of time of when your last collision was.
its funny when you realize thats scripted events with NPCs in cars have been added, removed and re-added again. for someone thats been around the modding part of it too, yes there are physical scripts for these "kamikaze" npcs
It is 100% scripted. There's a lot of video examples on whatever57010's channel. All this video is about is traffic pathing which is irrelevant. The problem of NPCs crashing with you isn't related to pathing, it's something like an event that is triggered, which causes an NPC to ignore current pathing and instead go towards the Player.
I remember running the import/export business back in the day in online, and even in missions with absolutely 0 enemies, no gun shots, and im driving at least somewhat cautiously (not pissing off NPCs), the NPCs would still swerve into me, switch lanes to block paths, and pass through intersections right as I'm going through them to block me. It drove me to genuine insanity.
Yeah I use to play on friend only servers back in the day grinding and I always had npcs driving right into me even when I slow down some would take a wide u-turn to bump into me 😂
As for the “i couldnt find any cases of this happening in singleplayer”, theres a clip of dark viper getting cut off by an npc that literally teleported in front of him, only for that same npc to run him over immediately after the first crash
@@MrJeffschefke I know right? It's not like he addresses every major point people bring up and also shows his work and backs it up by showing the source code.
@@StalwartTirith I must of missed where he goes over the actual sorce code involved here... The sorce code for this game is out there.. I didnt see any real proof here that it cant be in the game it could be a seperate scripted action. But your more then welcome to not agree with me.
@@MrJeffschefke Not agree? You've literally been proving wrong in the video you're writing a reply under. AI "teleporting" (they spawn, not teleport) is again, bad rendering and desync. This isn't a V issue either, other games with traffic AI have objects that will render in front of players.
@@Whooler6by So what is the time stamp where he shows the actual code that "proves me wrong" ? Do you think its Desync or did we go over the full code and show theres nothing in it? Or did we just cover a few "how it works" and could of missed something in the actual source?
One thing about peer-to-peer networking in GTA Online - All the traffic/NPCs are "OWNED" by players. Their state is not managed by a server (as there isn't none, it's P2P) - Usually ownership of NPC's is dictated by proximity, but sometimes "ownership" can stick between players, which means traffic you're moving beside along, could actually be "owned" by a player 300-400 meters away from you, and since AI traffic is simulated by the owning entity, the player that's far away from you might not have all the information/state that's surrounding you, and therefore making the AI act unpredictably. Could be a big factor.
Never thought of this, great point. But it happens even more in solo lobby. As I see it there are 3 big factors equally annoying - the path finding ai mess, p2p and the mystery code that I’m 100% convinced exists that makes the ai ram you on purpose at high speeds
@@pascal2085 Even if they don't, perfect syncing between multiple "servers" (because that's effectively what each client is in a peer-to-peer network) is really hard, especially if the data links between those servers aren't the greatest. The owner of that traffic probably doesn't have perfect knowledge of your position at all times. So their car AI has just as hard of a time figuring out what to do around you as you would if cars were randomly glitching around as they drive down the street. I mean, how would you react if suddenly that car in the next lane is right in front of you, then, a split second later, is right behind you?
I’ve been driving around Los Santos trying different things with traffic and something that I’ve been realizing is that if u drive through the city at max speed with any car and honk your horn most cars that would normally swerve into you they don’t and I’ve had less crashes, it doesn’t work all over the city but in most roads it does
To add to this, if you just hold your horn down constantly the NPCs seem to return to their normal behavior of not noticing you, if anything holding it down will aggrevate them. I find using the horn is useful when you keep pressing it, like you have to recently have pressed it in the NPCs vicinity to get them to avoid you.
I have had to do this honking as well just in order to have more realistic and humane traffic that isnt coded to ruin the game. But clicking honk all the time ruins immersion too
Yup, I've 100% noticed that when I honk like a madman (in single player OR online) I experience far fewer kamikaze NPCs pile driving me into the nearest solid object. Use that horn lads.
I genuinely believe it's coded intentionally for you to get frustrated and give up making money legit and spend money on shark cards, that's probably the intention for it anyway.
the problem is that it DOES happens in story mode... i got banned from online 7 years ago, and have played through story twice and this shit still constantly happens
The programmed the ai to turn into you if you are going to fast ….. back in the day PlayStation could handle the frame rates and the map and ai wouldn’t load in as well if you were going to fast . So they programmed the ai to make you crash. This guy is reading the code when most of us have spent thousands of hours in the game to understand the behavior.
This literally happens delivering cars from my vinewood auto shop. There's a few intersections to the west, where you can see these cars coming at Mach 1. And it leaves the profit at the same number everytime, 24,414 or something like that. Its 100% coded.
@@TheJakebriscoe Except you don't understand it, because you aren't looking at the code. The code quite literally tells you WHY the AI are dogshit at being traffic. You're just making assumptions with "trust me bro" as a source.
As for the cop thing, we expect the cop to do it, we don't expect a random civilian to. Really like your explanation of the nodes and stuff. What do you know, the rockstar game known for some of its crazy bugs is programmed to do weird crap.
Dude I spent days with rockstar support troubleshooting survival mode and then the fix was doing the tutorials in the lobby in freemode like I was syncing up with a new character, before I did all of that the game asked me if I liked to redo my character appearance but I wasnt a new character but level 98. I believe after seeing this method of troubleshooting from rockstar support there is some truth that they are in lobbies watching us lol
I don’t mind that the traffic simulation isn’t perfect, but when a car spawns facing the wrong direction and then abruptly corrects itself with an unrealistic rotation, it really breaks the immersion.
Or when I started to walk across an empty street and a car spawned and immediately plowed into me at 80mph the second I touched the road. I literally have a video of it, too.
I think there's something you're missing; that separate scripts can override the basic pathing. For example, there are scripted buses and trucks that will cross an intersection when you approach at high speed. You can tell they are scripted because their speed increases or decreases to match yours so that you are guaranteed to arrive in the intersection at the same time. Once they cross the intersection, they resume their normal slow speed. It's not just about making lane changes into you. BTW I never play Online, only SP and I run into this stuff all the time. In the Vinewood Hills back roads, oncoming traffic will match up with the car in front of you to block both lanes right as you arrive and need to pass the car in front. Every single time. Not even "often", I mean I challenge you to find an instance of it not happening.
This has the result of having me use a bike everywhere. When you drive on the wrong side of the road between traffic or on sidewalks, the code doesn't know how to act.
The programmed the ai to turn into you if you are going to fast ….. back in the day PlayStation could handle the frame rates and the map and ai wouldn’t load in as well if you were going to fast . So they programmed the ai to make you crash. This giy breaks down the code and most of us have put thousands of of hours in the game to understand the behavior
That better be sarcasm, since this video is obviously flawed, but maybe the guy just didn't find the "crash into player at all cost flags" in THE CODE. I had countless moments of traffic going into "intercept mode" in invite only sessions, with no shooting whatsoever. I don't record my gameplay but i'll never forget when in online a parked (and completely empty car) thrusted itself across two lanes into me, was that a bug? Maybe the empty part, the interception was clearly scripted.
Looking at the comments there's 2 consistent points about NPC traffic that people think weren't addressed: -Speed matching at intersections, where a large vehicle (bus, truck, etc) crossing perpendicular to you will match your speed to try and force a T-bone collision. -NPC's are more likely to drive erratically around you and intentionally try to hit you during missions and when you're driving expensive vehicles.
We know Rockstar programs pedestrians to comment on you having an expensive car, how hard is it to believe there's a part of that system that makes npc drivers act more erratic around expensive cars?
I remember this happening way back in Vice City. I think it's all about optimization. Far away cars make less decisions save on computing, and closer car make more decisions, to feel more immersive. Also many times it's cars reacting to gunshots and explosions.
correct. I had to scrap a few mins off the clip but one of the points is in fact NPCs being in "auto drive" when away and when they get close they suddenly go "manual", which tends to be a rough awakening for most NPCs
Yeah, there's this little intersection close by the hotel where NPCs in bigger cars, if they're driving erratically (not snapped to the path), they'll go too wide and crash head on into a wall. And because their next node is a little further down the road, they never try and reverse out of there.
Back in the 360 days, only the Bati RR could out ride the rubber banding, where NPC'S would seemingly cut you off. If you dodged them and maintained speed online, the game entered the low poly version until a lag induced bike crash or the rubber banding caught up. I have had the NPC vehicles literally teleport into me. We suspected even then at launch that this was deliberate.
I rode the bati religiously in the ps3 days simply because it was too fast and broke the game. You're also small enough that the npcs miss you when they swerve. I used to try to see how quickly I could get to low poly speeds
Programmer here: I suspect you already know all this, but for anyone else that’s curious… YES, XML is text. But it’s structured text. The brilliant part is that it can be “ingested” (deserialized) by a program and become an in-memory object at runtime-time. Its properties can be edited in notepad (if you have a death wish) and DON’T HAVE TO BE RECOMPILED, which is the great part. Though it’s also why loading can take so long. Making an in-memory object into human-readable text is super convenient for developers and modders alike.
You missed the whole point. Please test this while doing vehicle cargo missions, you'll see how they just bump you, then go back to their regular path.
@mekacrab No, he explains why cars change lanes erratically, which is because of poor path design decisions mostly, but those cars try to dodge you if they notice you (which just happens when you're in front of them). The traffic in those specific missions actively goes towards you, no matter if they see you or not, heck you could even be completelly still in a sidewalk, and they would still bump you.
@@mekacrab if you didn't notice the obviously different behaviour of NPC during I/E missions i envy you, *because i swear on my left nut* they change lanes more often than not. Once you're out of the mission NPC return to normal free session behaviour. *Something* definitely changes once you enter a state of I/E missions, and it's a hill i will die on.
The programmed the ai to turn into you if you are going to fast ….. back in the day PlayStation could handle the frame rates and the map and ai wouldn’t load in as well if you were going to fast . So they programmed the ai to make you crash. This guy reads the code when most of us have spent 1000s of hours understanding the behavior
Now what about the AI speeding up drastically or slamming on the brakes as you’re approaching an intersection? A very common thing I see is when approaching an intersection, a crossing NPC will speed up or slow down to seemingly block your path. It’s obviously not them detecting a threat since they only see forward threats and not side or behind.
The programmed the ai to turn into you if you are going to fast ….. back in the day PlayStation could handle the frame rates and the map and ai wouldn’t load in as well if you were going to fast . So they programmed the ai to make you crash. This guy is reading the code when most of us have spent thousands of hours in the game to understand the behavior.
That is indeed more or less scripted, to make driving and dodging traffic more dynamic. Midnight Club (also made by Rockstar) had intersections exactly like these where cars would impede you or scripted events would spawn in scenarios to hinder your speed.
This happens with the Banshee when doing the bike mission for the agency at lsia. Same with the two blue Sultans that chase you when you're doing a vehicle Warehouse export. It's like they have nitrous, and are programmed to close the gap. Its insane.
Cars suddenly swerving into oncoming traffic directly into you. Happens on that stretch of road near Madrazos ranch. This invisible obstacle kind of sounds like rockstars way of making NPCs crash into you. A random obstacle just so happens to glitch at the exact spot that would cause a collision? Sounds suss
One thing that is blatant though is the rubberbanding speeds some of these NPCs have. The node system explains why NPCs carelessly careen in front of you or into you, but it doesn't explain when NPCs literally change their speed when going through a junction to always get in your way. You can literally see them slow down or speed up based on your speed to try and get you into a T-bone.
My dude you definetely need to play more singleplayer XD I've never been much of online playing, be whatever game, I just like my singleplayer adventures and GTA is another one of them, and boy oh boy, ever since the PS3 release, the PS4 and on PC, this behaviour is a classic. Always when wandering around Vinewood Hills, everytime you catch one of those curves uphill and there's a car heading down, they will ALWAYS launch at you, it's a guarantee
As someone who played this chronically i SWEAR it happend after the ill gotten gains par 1 dlc where you had to move cars the npcs were always stupid but after that "update" they consistently switch lanes to get in your way you can even se it by going one way then switching the npcs will switch lanes twice just to get in your way
obviously the chaotic traffic yeah also i bet that gta 6 is gonna have way more dynamic traffic, like when you knock down the traffic lights the cars actually have no idea what to do
And whats the thing with the traffic intersections? If you drive fast through them, on red light, some other vehicle speeds in from the right. Just in the speed you are. (it happes very often) I have to brake every time, to not crash into them. It must be scripted 🤔
@@2boid irl, when a traffic light is malfunctioning (before a signaller gets there), you treat it as an all way stop sign. but i doubt rs will go that far.
@orientalanon and ignores how NPCs will match your speed to crash you at interesections, ignores that NPCs will be more aggressive when driving a high value car or in delivery missions, ignores that it happens in SP
@@orientalanon yea unfortunately any decently edited video will make the masses convinced that this is how the game works. Hopefully a bigger more successful UA-camr calls out this video for false information, as this is what it needs since all the evidence sucks
20:15 This happens all the time in missions even without any shooting. It is almost like the AI takes your controller inputs and purposely spawn/drive to hit you with precise accuracy. You can prove it easily when you are chased by someone and the traffic goes crazy. Then brake, accelerate, brake, accelerate, drive on the sidewalk or even against the traffic slowly. You will see the AI will fix themselves and drive normally.
This has nothing to do with the problems described by players. You can absolutely go to a private session (or do the sharding session trick if that still works) and try to deliver a vehicle from the import/export garage. Even when the guys that shoot you up (for no reason, thanks rockstar) haven't spawned, NPCs are gonna pull that bullshit no matter which road you take.
@@altaiir8228 There are even personality flags for drivers to say how aggressive they are, which is how much they will break traffic rules and do road rage stuff. Video author does not know what he is talking about.
Former competitive gta 5 racer ( ik sounds cringe but there is a real community and its huge ) from 2016-2021 the NPC’s weren’t too much that way when I first started but the racing community I was in actually was able to point out that the NPC’s started acting THIS WAY AFTER THE UPDATE WHERE YOU HAVE TO STEAL THE CARS AND BRING THEM BACK UNDAMAGED FOR A HIGHER PRICE
@@Justinbadger4 Although it probably is faulty map design that causes NPCs to act out, there has to be some sort of intention behind it. Like for example; literally numerous times I have been driving past a red light and an npc will move their car in-front of my path and complete a full stop in front of me, like they were coded to stop my momentum
But how do you explain "NPC driver agression" that modders found in the code, and some mod-menus can modify its value, and if you crank it up, cars whenever oncoming or same-direction as you, will attempt swirl to crash into you? There are situations where there is no node or junction or parking space that would justify a random swirl to the sidewhere you are stationary, and some NPCs randomly will swirl to hit you even if it takes them off of the road and there is no other players or agressive NPCs around.
Source? A quick search didn't show anything like that. Where did the modders find the code? What's the website where they posted it and talked about it?
Yeah he left out a lot of things to stand out as a "factual research". You can see the Dark viper Speedruns where the NPCs phase through terrain to hit him
the best way for an npc to avoid a crash with a player is to not react, but they're clearly designed to react in some way, and thus designed to crash this is my perception of it before watching the vid, I'll edit after Edit: brain hurt
I feel like a flat earther here, no matter how much evidence you confront me with I will always believe that the npc are built to frustrate you into buying shark cards. Because this only happens to me during a sell mission, when I’m trying to make money.
Something I often forget myself is that... Not every part of "design" has to be explicitly written by someone. Code is one way of scripting something, but emergent behaviors can be just as easily exploited with full intention when left as is. Of course, if you spot a section lacking a bit of chaos during play testing, then that's a good place to balance out by injecting an inconspicuous double lane change. No one will be able to tell if it was intentional or just an overworked intern, but sure as hell will be paranoid after that. Of course, if you find yourself on the flip side where your perfectly well-intentioned, stochastic traffic simulation turns out to only accurate to LA traffic and your stakeholders are pissed, it can be useful to recall the magic words: "It's not a bug. It's a feature."
"they're reacting to things that spawn in for about 10 milliseconds" but you never explain why it spawns there for only 10 milliseconds, what it is, or why it happens so frequently.
Sorta. They're pretty much programmed to do their own thing regardless of what the player is doing. It's just that at high speeds we're injecting ourselves into the middle of merges or scenarios automatically playing out. If we drove slower then these merges and scenarios would be finished by the time we stroll up to them.
@@voodoo2006This exactly. Chances are, if you're speeding, rear ending a car who was changing lanes or hitting one coming out of a parking spot etc are the most likely ways you'll end your joyride. You know, the same scenarios where you'd crash in a GTA game.
This was informative. I'm played GTA 5 for the first time in about 4 years and honestly I was shocked how bad the driving can get (I guess I never paid much attention to it when I was just racing through the game). I now understand why the NPCs will sometimes keep backing into stuff and making strange maneuvers though, now that I know about those invisible nodes. They're just trying to get to the next 'magnet.'
Your own test doesn't work because you drove nice and slow. Try doing that again except in a "high value" vehicle (expensive cars or mission vehicles) and drive faster and watch certain NPCs ahead of you matching your steering inputs 1:1 so that you crash into them. There is no reason for some guy with a minivan to mimic my swerving through traffic to cut me off, unless of course he was programmed to do so.
@@Shoxic666So... you'll drive slower so you don't crash(or at least reduce the chances), but run the increasingly high chance of getting spotted and/or shot by pursuing NPCs? That's kinda counter-productive
That Pedestrian to the left of the screen at 16:52 is HILARIOUS, he doesn't even avoid the trashcan but rather bumps into it and glitches out in a spastic motion.
I'm not convinced. This happens in solo (private) sessions ALL THE TIME. Also, you are completely ignoring the cases of a car driving across your path. Not swirving or lane changing, but driving across an intersection with abnormal speed, sometimes abnormal trajectory, obviously specifically to ram you. No missions, no shooting, just diving. This happens when your speed is above some threshold. Props for your research, it was very interesting to learn what's under the hood. But your research is not quite complete.
@@dyIanVII The evidence presented in the video does not explain why this would happen, or address this scenario at all. This guy doesn't have the source code and cannot actually look at everything involved in V's traffic AI. He's just using Codewalker. Furthermore, the same thing was scripted into Midnight Club (I can literally show you the code for that, I removed it for myself) and the MC devs worked on GTAV after the MC series ended.
@@dyIanVIIgoing at speed through four way junctions you’ll notice that there’s always a car programmed to match your speed so you T-Bone it. That being said, they’re likely “scenarios” like he explained.
What the players are saying: When I'm doing something important that requires vehicle integrity which will effect my score, NPCs seem like theyre deliberately crashing into me. What Malcolm tested: I drove around randomly for a couple of hours and nobody purposely crashed into me.
I went looking for single-player examples and found 10 within 20 minutes, and they were all equally as bad as online examples. NPCs completely sideways on the wrong side of the road, swerving across several lanes in the wrong direction, and straight up u turns into the player with the NPC going the wrong way. You can admit you're wrong. The video isn't a full day old yet.
As a truck driver, I can tell you with 100% certainty, that these NPC's are not just in GTA5. They are all over the real world. And they all actively try to get themselves and others on the road killed for what seems no reason at all.
I've seen a video where someone was LITERALLY sitting still and the npcs briefly swerve in front of them before they correct their path Okay i can see the intersection ones being pure coincidence because the traffic ai code sucks,but they literally SWERVE onto an oncoming lane,may only happen online but holy shit
Ive been thinking about this topic recently a lot. Yesterday, was on my phone texting while sitting in my car, on the side of the road, not in npcs path, and yet, they still loved to crash onto me. Idk how on earth its possible its just the codes
He also overlooked the NPC’s jacking the handbrake and swirving towards you instead of logically away from the danger before they spin out. This typically happens on like highways or freeways but then other times they don’t react at all? It’s very strange but shows at least that there is some code for “driver panic” or whatever you want to call it where 99% of the time they swerve in your direction or literally just steer straight across the road directly towards you. Completely coded event has to be so I’d be interested in what the code says in regards to where the car should swerve because as mentioned before it does the complete opposite to logic.
@ gotta reply a second time, I wish he went into the codes exactly when the swerving happens because then you would be able to tell whats actually causes it. Im not sure if you can do this though, maybe some day I will since im learning coding currently
I have a clip of this saved on my phone. Pulled up to a red light and I hear tires screeching only for some NPC to power slide in front of me and stare at me through his open window, then he peeled off. I was like wtf was that 😂 it was on an atleast 4 lane street, maybe even 6 lanes.
I always loved how LA is known for having heavy traffic but GTA V hardly has any traffic, there's even times when the streets are completely empty and I have to wait for a vehicle to show up.
This all started with the import export update where you ultimatly get less money when crashing the car so yea its 100% intentional this wasnt like this earlier than this
I would say it has existed before hand, at least the intersection interaction where an NPC will purposely try and match your speed to wreck you. But ever since import / export update, it has ten folded like you've said.
@@dyIanVII it definetly got way worse with that update before it i can only recall npcs driving into me like 3 times max and that was in the span of about 500 hours
@@IamMortui Yes, i think the traffic cars try to go into your path where the navigation system is guiding you. So i think it could be prevented by diactivate the navigation system in the game and everybody would be fine. I mean rockstar is making money if we fail in this missions and some people are buying shark cards because they are frustrated xD.
very insightful as a computer science student! Gives me some ideas to use in my own projects! I’d love to see more videos like this breaking down certain game mechanics
This isn't just in Online; happens to me all the time when I play Story Mode. Not only that, they always purposefully put a car into the opposite lane whenever you're trying to pass a car in front of you. There will be absolutely no traffic on a country road. There'll be a car in front of you. As soon as you pull to the left to go around them, without fail, a car will spawn out of nowhere in the opposite lane so that you have to straddle the center line to get between them.
I don't play online, I only play single player. this happens all the time, they move right into you on highways. it's not as bad as it was on San Andreas where they were literally belligerent and malicious (I believe the code actually made them act like it)
This erractic traffic behaviour was added with the first update iirc after the Import / Export update to impact the players earnings whilst doing the content, there was a throwaway line in the patch notes at the time, also fun fact, there's a flag in the physics called "crash enhancer" or something like that, it's sole purpose is to make crashes between players larger and more over the top, this is why you can't have door to door racing without a horrendous accident.
There is by no exaggeration nothing whatsoever you could tell me to make me believe you. God himself could descend and tell me the NPCs aren't doing this intentionally, and I would backtalk his ass immediately.
I saw a video on Reddit where someone was part in the median between both sides of the highway and all of the cars were driving normally, but when they got close, they would slightly swerve towards the player vehicle, not enough to hit them or appear erratic, but enough that it would definitely make a difference if you were splitting lanes
When delivering a car to the Dock from the chop shop, an npc drive to the middle of the road at the last intersection. Whatever side you try to pass, the npc will turn in to you
The best way to get a perfect delivery is to be patient and drive slower than the NPCs. It gives you the perfect opportunity to see strange driving before it happens, unintentional or not.
I did notice while playing that if you drive normally and stop for traffic lights, the driver behind you doesnt expect you to be stopped there, and asigning that spot to themselves will push you out of the way to get into their spot, but in doing so will upset themselves with the crash and will speed away ignoring the lights to get away from the crash scene, making it look like they crashed intentionally like a hit and run
I play on PS5. I cruise around the city. I can assure you that NPC’s do merge into you or actively look to crash into you. I’ve been through many intersections and have had vehicles in adjacent sides of the intersection set themselves up and try and drive into me.
Something else I want to point out are the traffic lights. For some reason when you enter an intersection with traffic lights, about 99% of the time you have a red light. I thought to myself "Well, maybe I'm just unlucky", but then I started to look at the traffic lights to the sides (the ones that should be on green) and MANY times they were also on red. I don't know how it really works, but for some reason when you're going down a certain street, the game will give you a red light in your intersections ahead.
I've actually tried following traffic rules out of boredom. I can sit at a red light for what feels like a full two or three minutes and then it turns green for about five to ten seconds and then goes back to red for two minutes. Of course if I circled around and came at the intersection from another direction this would change so that the lights in the direction I'm facing are almost always red.
There are missions where NPCs will be FULLY scripted. You can crash into them and they won't move an inch. An example would be Fame or Shame mission. But the vast majority of Online missions is just NPCs being awful, reckless drivers. We share the pain
my main take away from driving in los santos, is that cars speed up when they are in an intersection, they speed up when making a turn, they make a sharp turns too, which is counter intuitive
So fun fact, they coded this into the game post release for GTA online specifically. In story mode there’s rare occasions that they change lanes chaotically. I have an old version of GTA on disc and haven’t updated the game since release.
What would be your theory as to why it was added into online? Mine is the increase to shark card sales, due to people getting frustrated with all the time and money they lose during the exotic car transfer missions.
@ the import export missions with cars, your earnings are a direct correlation to vehicle damage. The cars drive more erratically in those missions than they do online free mode or in story mode
Thanks for the in depth look at it. I know my GTA Traffic pretty good by now, it's nice to have my suspicions about the Path findings layed out blank, neat!
Im sorry but anyone thats been playing GTA long enough knows this NPC ramming you problem is absolutely built into the game. The AI is way to good at doing normal things to not be scripted. If you can get NPCS to race their cars you can absolutely get them to NOT ram into you every second. The point of "NPCs spawn in for maybe around 10ms" Okay so why are random NPCS/Entities spawning im at random times, and always somehow hindering the player? Seems like a scripted in problem.
I can't help but feel gaslit here... He did not look into the "game code", he looked at configuration files in the game's assets which happen to be represented as XML. The actual game code is what eventually gets compiled into your GTA5.exe and if there was a way to decompile that into readable code, we would find actual proof of this behavior being intentional. At some point, coincidences are not coincidences but a pattern.
Hopefully this means GTA 6's drivers wont be like this, but there is one more i'd like you to investigate. When you run a junction at speed, and there's a car also driving through it. Is it adjusting it's speed to put you on a collision course? I've had this happen in multiple GTA games, if you slow down, it slows down, if you swerve, it speeds up, ect.
Fivem modder here, forgot to mention a few things including the coded fear levels and it's effect on the flee native calls and how sirens confuses the hell out of them, think I can explain police coding
Thank you for making this video. I know nothing about coding or anything but I found this video very informative, entertaining and understandable. You, my friend, have earned yourself a subscriber!❤
Yeah, not only am I convinced the NPCs swerve into you intentionally, but also traffic lights turn red before you drive through creating cross traffic you have to dodge. It feels like 9 out of 10 lights you drive through are red.
Seems like the odds coincide with the fact that red lights stay on for 40 seconds and green lights stay only for 5. 1/9 chance for it to be a green light at any time you're passing.
Soooo, how much is Rock* paying you for this? Cuz I can tell you from the 12+ years I've been playing that if I'm simply driving around, with no special mission or cargo, no matter the vehicle I have there's no issues. I can split lanes, drive through intersections, and weave through heavy traffic with ease. *BUT*, if I'm delivering a specced out car or something that damage will decrease my payout you can be guaranteed I'll have at least several NPCs swerve into my lane. I know the AI will have them panic if there's shooting or cops on me and it'll get crazy but even just cruising along with nothing going on it happens.
I play a lot in single-player, and this behavior is very common. It’s not on purpose; it’s actually a limitation of the traffic system, which was programmed not to look back.
They ar timed to perfectly TBone you or swerve INTO you Happens the same way ALL the time. Youll see cars at abnormal speeds coming at just te perfectly matched speed to hit you. In ANY normal situation wherte a car comes at you, you would steer AWAY from oncoming cars and the NPCs in GTA turn INTO you unnatuarlly.. its %100 programmed and on purpose.
Now compare driving in GTA online like you did with a nightclub mission or the one where you steal a fancy car and bring it to your garage for money. They will hit you way more than driving normally.
Idk man when I'm driving a car to a delivery location and an noc is going down the wrong side of the road and turns into me when I try to go around doesn't feel like an accident to me
@@TheAverageGamer1 Because it isn't lol. Even if there is no disturbances at the time, they should follow their path right? Total BS this video is. Why would they go off of their path suddenly out of nowhere when you're in collision range.
@@TheAverageGamer1 Well if they're on the wrong side of the road they either spawned on the wrong side because of desync (or slided on the wrong side) or they are panicking but you would know if they were panicking so let's assume they weren't. Car deliveries are in GTA Online so a lot of this weird stuff is because of the server that messes up the spawns and/or the behavior of some NPCs.
@JANICKGMO_ You are suffering from a lack of basic observation. Trucks will accelerate way faster than they normally can out of junctions in order to hit you, and will slow down as you brake to make it harder to avoid.
I don't know about this video. There's plenty of videos out there showing that the npcs do just drive into you. Hell you can hop onto the game for just 1 hour and you'll probably get hit like this. You could be on a two way street no turning lanes, no intersections. You'll see a car in front of you, so you get in the oncoming lane to pass them. According to this video, the npc has no clue the player is there, there's also nothing in front of the npc to try to avoid, so theoretically there is just no reason the npc should swerve into the oncoming lane when you pass them right? Well, they do it anyway. There's absolutely no way this isn't intentional
That’s my GTAF account @ 0:58 😂 EDIT: Back then, people thought it was a conspiracy and the mods would get pissed if you mentioned it because for some reason they get mad when you criticize gta5. Over the years, it was proven and now they blame it on the hardware. Which is reasonable I guess but it’s been rereleased on 2 different generations. It’s gotta be on purpose
If you drive in a straight line without touching the joystick, they will crash into you. If you constantly, gently steer left/right, they won't crash into you. Try it
Excellent video mate! It was sent to me by dozens of people and was really eye opening. I guess if you play the game for thousands of hours, even in single player, you will eventually run into one of these scripted abrupt lane changes that just happen to coincide with your passing. You should check out tow trucks and how they interact with these markers, as they are definitely very broken. I have witnessed them phasing into the ground, numerous times, to change lanes. It seemed targetted at the time but I accept your explanation that it was not so and it was just coincidence.
By the amount of people I saw mentioning you, I figured it was a matter of time. But yes, some vehicle types are especially buggy. The same way trucks natively do not yield for emergency sirens for some odd reason, as discussed in the video. I guess its just good old RNG ruining runs mixed with Rockstar's spaghetti coding
The gta guy himself
Hey poo poo buddy hey hey
I was wondering why you had never mentioned something about this in rambles.
Micheal went to witness protection
The often reason for crashes is also that:
1)NPCs dont use turn lights.
2) They make unreasonable and unrealistic sharp turns when changing lanes or going down the street.
i think turn lights are visual only, in GTA IV they prob activated them once a npc enters right/left lane, i think it's still in V just isn't acivated most of the time
They use turn lights, but it's very rare.
also they dont have proper reflections in their wing mirrors lmao
I don't think that NPCs using turn lights will be enough for a player to dodge them while going at almost warp speed...
@@PiniutLEGIT They only use turn signals on scripted turns.
Random unrealistic lane shifts not included
So... NPCs don't do it because they see you coming, they do it because they *don't* see you coming.
✅
Yes.
Nah they definitely swerve into you at least on missions
It’s possible that gta online’s system isn’t exactly the same and he’s just viewing what the single player has
@@XDMIIIIIIIIInever had on crash into me in the 11yrs the games has been out lol. Just don’t hit them it’s simple
DarkViper has a video clip from a speed run where a truck slid sideways across 4 lanes of traffic and hit him... this was on a straight stretch of highway and in single player.
Yep. Was a tow truck. I believe he was heading westbound and had just crossed the bridge over the highway just south of the casino.
IIRC it literally clipped into the ground to do it
Most often it happens in story mode if you are going only straight for some time.. I'm guessing they wanted to make it so that your driving never feels "stale", rather it being more dynamic that way... Sadly it often just ends up being frustrating cause those random NPC swirls just feel way too unnatural and break immersion imo
@@nightwolf9951 The entire video is dedicated to explaining that's not the case?? They're unnatural because they're programmed simply, not because they're reacting to anything you did
anyone have a link?
14:50 I could never enjoy following traffic in GTA 5 as I did in GTA 4 because of this. You are constantly put in a situation where every single light is red and no traffic advances.
Classic New York traffic experience
Hahaha so true 😂😂 I gotta honk sometimes so they move it actually works for me tbh
I feel like you and DarkViperAU need to talk.
Right? There's more than enough footage of him proving it
Yess
Yes
darkviper is a stuck up buffoon
Yo imagine gtaguessr between these 2
"Oh yeah i recognise this street because of the slip node that causes traffic to cut lanes" 😅
If you really played GTA Online for several years and paid some attention, you should be very familiar with a certain NPC pattern that happens on junctions (in downtown most often). If a player is speeding through a red light, there's about a 70%-80% chance a very fast NPC will spawn on the street that had green and fly through the junction. Not only will it brake hard immediately when it clears the junction, it will also slow down if the player slows down, intentionally timing it to get t-boned. Even if you spot this a$$hole early, he's quite difficult to avoid.
This behavior is perfectly reproducible, I confirmed it with my friends and this is the hill I'm willing to die on
Exactly my point. the T-Bne bombers AND the "turn into you b/c im scared" NPCs have ruined the fun and realism.. its SO stupid and R* should fix it.
I think those guys are a result of the AI breaking off its nodes out of panic, they see the collision as the last second and it stops them just driving normally, ironically causing a crash.
@@Shoxic666 but they always turn INTO you instead of AWAY from you..and its the SAME everytime..and been happening for a decade+ lol its in the code surely
Every single time, seems even more so on a motorcycle. I've had this situation happen so many times and even when braking or avoiding, it's programmed to match your speed to force you into a collision. Seems to be based on some sort of time of when your last collision was.
Also happens in SP. Usually big buses or trucks. Dead obvious that it's scripted because of how they match your speed and position.
its funny when you realize thats scripted events with NPCs in cars have been added, removed and re-added again. for someone thats been around the modding part of it too, yes there are physical scripts for these "kamikaze" npcs
Seems intended for police vehicles.
Could you post a video showing those scripts?
Are you talking about the npcs that swerve then dissappear from inside the vehicle?
Hyper volatile, all black, car of any type, has entered the chat.
It is 100% scripted. There's a lot of video examples on whatever57010's channel.
All this video is about is traffic pathing which is irrelevant. The problem of NPCs crashing with you isn't related to pathing, it's something like an event that is triggered, which causes an NPC to ignore current pathing and instead go towards the Player.
I remember running the import/export business back in the day in online, and even in missions with absolutely 0 enemies, no gun shots, and im driving at least somewhat cautiously (not pissing off NPCs), the NPCs would still swerve into me, switch lanes to block paths, and pass through intersections right as I'm going through them to block me. It drove me to genuine insanity.
😂
Yeah I use to play on friend only servers back in the day grinding and I always had npcs driving right into me even when I slow down some would take a wide u-turn to bump into me 😂
Yeah i remember noticing none of that would happen before the import /export DLC
i'm saying it's like the NPC's go "no wait i decided I want to go this way" at the last inconvenient second to ruin your mood
I think im going to download the gta and just do the import mission and post it on yt with results...
As for the “i couldnt find any cases of this happening in singleplayer”, theres a clip of dark viper getting cut off by an npc that literally teleported in front of him, only for that same npc to run him over immediately after the first crash
Seriously makes me wonder how much research this guy did, I sware every knows his struggles with NPCs 🤣
@@MrJeffschefke I know right? It's not like he addresses every major point people bring up and also shows his work and backs it up by showing the source code.
@@StalwartTirith I must of missed where he goes over the actual sorce code involved here... The sorce code for this game is out there.. I didnt see any real proof here that it cant be in the game it could be a seperate scripted action.
But your more then welcome to not agree with me.
@@MrJeffschefke Not agree? You've literally been proving wrong in the video you're writing a reply under. AI "teleporting" (they spawn, not teleport) is again, bad rendering and desync. This isn't a V issue either, other games with traffic AI have objects that will render in front of players.
@@Whooler6by So what is the time stamp where he shows the actual code that "proves me wrong" ? Do you think its Desync or did we go over the full code and show theres nothing in it? Or did we just cover a few "how it works" and could of missed something in the actual source?
One thing about peer-to-peer networking in GTA Online - All the traffic/NPCs are "OWNED" by players. Their state is not managed by a server (as there isn't none, it's P2P) - Usually ownership of NPC's is dictated by proximity, but sometimes "ownership" can stick between players, which means traffic you're moving beside along, could actually be "owned" by a player 300-400 meters away from you, and since AI traffic is simulated by the owning entity, the player that's far away from you might not have all the information/state that's surrounding you, and therefore making the AI act unpredictably.
Could be a big factor.
Never thought of this, great point. But it happens even more in solo lobby. As I see it there are 3 big factors equally annoying - the path finding ai mess, p2p and the mystery code that I’m 100% convinced exists that makes the ai ram you on purpose at high speeds
I would assume that the "Owner" dumbs down far away NPCs to save cpu performance.
@@pascal2085 Even if they don't, perfect syncing between multiple "servers" (because that's effectively what each client is in a peer-to-peer network) is really hard, especially if the data links between those servers aren't the greatest. The owner of that traffic probably doesn't have perfect knowledge of your position at all times. So their car AI has just as hard of a time figuring out what to do around you as you would if cars were randomly glitching around as they drive down the street. I mean, how would you react if suddenly that car in the next lane is right in front of you, then, a split second later, is right behind you?
I’ve been driving around Los Santos trying different things with traffic and something that I’ve been realizing is that if u drive through the city at max speed with any car and honk your horn most cars that would normally swerve into you they don’t and I’ve had less crashes, it doesn’t work all over the city but in most roads it does
yes!!!
To add to this, if you just hold your horn down constantly the NPCs seem to return to their normal behavior of not noticing you, if anything holding it down will aggrevate them.
I find using the horn is useful when you keep pressing it, like you have to recently have pressed it in the NPCs vicinity to get them to avoid you.
I have had to do this honking as well just in order to have more realistic and humane traffic that isnt coded to ruin the game. But clicking honk all the time ruins immersion too
Driving at night with all lights turned off seems to make you even more "invisible" to them as well, not nearly as many scripted events
Yup, I've 100% noticed that when I honk like a madman (in single player OR online) I experience far fewer kamikaze NPCs pile driving me into the nearest solid object. Use that horn lads.
Rockstar intentionally coded the cars to drive into you ❌
Rockstar does a terrible job at optimizing 12 year old code for modern hardware ✅
I genuinely believe it's coded intentionally for you to get frustrated and give up making money legit and spend money on shark cards, that's probably the intention for it anyway.
@@koji5705nope
the problem is that it DOES happens in story mode... i got banned from online 7 years ago, and have played through story twice and this shit still constantly happens
@@Rootiga if so thats even more screwed up
No, that's not correct either...
You conveniently left something out. Speed matching on junctions to force you to T-bone them. I'd love to see your take on that.
If stuff like that happened when you were free riding instead of only when in a scripted event would help the cringe.
The programmed the ai to turn into you if you are going to fast ….. back in the day PlayStation could handle the frame rates and the map and ai wouldn’t load in as well if you were going to fast . So they programmed the ai to make you crash. This guy is reading the code when most of us have spent thousands of hours in the game to understand the behavior.
This literally happens delivering cars from my vinewood auto shop. There's a few intersections to the west, where you can see these cars coming at Mach 1. And it leaves the profit at the same number everytime, 24,414 or something like that. Its 100% coded.
@@TheJakebriscoe Except you don't understand it, because you aren't looking at the code. The code quite literally tells you WHY the AI are dogshit at being traffic. You're just making assumptions with "trust me bro" as a source.
Thank u! Idk why tf R* wont just fix this bs!!
As for the cop thing, we expect the cop to do it, we don't expect a random civilian to.
Really like your explanation of the nodes and stuff. What do you know, the rockstar game known for some of its crazy bugs is programmed to do weird crap.
it's the rockstar employees spying on us...
Now that i could believe
Dude I spent days with rockstar support troubleshooting survival mode and then the fix was doing the tutorials in the lobby in freemode like I was syncing up with a new character, before I did all of that the game asked me if I liked to redo my character appearance but I wasnt a new character but level 98. I believe after seeing this method of troubleshooting from rockstar support there is some truth that they are in lobbies watching us lol
In online there are random traffic vehicles occasionally that I can lock on to with homing misses which gives this credibility
so true.boutya dropna truth bomb
theyre linked with spectrum and darrpa
Yes the classic rockstar did it. show us on the dolls where rockstar touched you
I don’t mind that the traffic simulation isn’t perfect, but when a car spawns facing the wrong direction and then abruptly corrects itself with an unrealistic rotation, it really breaks the immersion.
Or when I started to walk across an empty street and a car spawned and immediately plowed into me at 80mph the second I touched the road. I literally have a video of it, too.
2013 game btw but yeah I get that
@@nothughmahnpost it
Why are you worried about immersion? It's GTA not Dragon Age.
So people don't mind traffic being Nazis in games?
As a map modder and maker, this is a great in-depth analysis, helpful for anyone wanting to add traffic to their map. Great job explaining
@@policedriver its surprising how little talk there is about stuff like this tbh
Except he's wrong about NPC behavior.
@@mattmcintyre7083yeah this was a clickbait to explain mechanics not investigating the myth
I think there's something you're missing; that separate scripts can override the basic pathing. For example, there are scripted buses and trucks that will cross an intersection when you approach at high speed. You can tell they are scripted because their speed increases or decreases to match yours so that you are guaranteed to arrive in the intersection at the same time. Once they cross the intersection, they resume their normal slow speed. It's not just about making lane changes into you. BTW I never play Online, only SP and I run into this stuff all the time. In the Vinewood Hills back roads, oncoming traffic will match up with the car in front of you to block both lanes right as you arrive and need to pass the car in front. Every single time. Not even "often", I mean I challenge you to find an instance of it not happening.
Stuff like this is very obvious to see
This has the result of having me use a bike everywhere. When you drive on the wrong side of the road between traffic or on sidewalks, the code doesn't know how to act.
The programmed the ai to turn into you if you are going to fast ….. back in the day PlayStation could handle the frame rates and the map and ai wouldn’t load in as well if you were going to fast . So they programmed the ai to make you crash. This giy breaks down the code and most of us have put thousands of of hours in the game to understand the behavior
This was so informative... Cool video man 👍
The man himself
That better be sarcasm, since this video is obviously flawed, but maybe the guy just didn't find the "crash into player at all cost flags" in THE CODE. I had countless moments of traffic going into "intercept mode" in invite only sessions, with no shooting whatsoever. I don't record my gameplay but i'll never forget when in online a parked (and completely empty car) thrusted itself across two lanes into me, was that a bug? Maybe the empty part, the interception was clearly scripted.
Looking at the comments there's 2 consistent points about NPC traffic that people think weren't addressed:
-Speed matching at intersections, where a large vehicle (bus, truck, etc) crossing perpendicular to you will match your speed to try and force a T-bone collision.
-NPC's are more likely to drive erratically around you and intentionally try to hit you during missions and when you're driving expensive vehicles.
We know Rockstar programs pedestrians to comment on you having an expensive car, how hard is it to believe there's a part of that system that makes npc drivers act more erratic around expensive cars?
I remember this happening way back in Vice City. I think it's all about optimization. Far away cars make less decisions save on computing, and closer car make more decisions, to feel more immersive. Also many times it's cars reacting to gunshots and explosions.
In San Andreas their moves were linked to the framerate as well as the speed you were going. The fastest you drove, the faster they'd make decisions!
correct. I had to scrap a few mins off the clip but one of the points is in fact NPCs being in "auto drive" when away and when they get close they suddenly go "manual", which tends to be a rough awakening for most NPCs
this! GTA SA tied everything to FPS. many mission became unplayable in modern rigs without a patch mod.
@@ObviousMalcolm_PLUS yeah that makes sense, great video!
Yeah, there's this little intersection close by the hotel where NPCs in bigger cars, if they're driving erratically (not snapped to the path), they'll go too wide and crash head on into a wall. And because their next node is a little further down the road, they never try and reverse out of there.
Back in the 360 days, only the Bati RR could out ride the rubber banding, where NPC'S would seemingly cut you off. If you dodged them and maintained speed online, the game entered the low poly version until a lag induced bike crash or the rubber banding caught up. I have had the NPC vehicles literally teleport into me. We suspected even then at launch that this was deliberate.
I rode the bati religiously in the ps3 days simply because it was too fast and broke the game. You're also small enough that the npcs miss you when they swerve. I used to try to see how quickly I could get to low poly speeds
Programmer here: I suspect you already know all this, but for anyone else that’s curious… YES, XML is text. But it’s structured text. The brilliant part is that it can be “ingested” (deserialized) by a program and become an in-memory object at runtime-time. Its properties can be edited in notepad (if you have a death wish) and DON’T HAVE TO BE RECOMPILED, which is the great part. Though it’s also why loading can take so long. Making an in-memory object into human-readable text is super convenient for developers and modders alike.
You missed the whole point.
Please test this while doing vehicle cargo missions, you'll see how they just bump you, then go back to their regular path.
@mekacrab No, he explains why cars change lanes erratically, which is because of poor path design decisions mostly, but those cars try to dodge you if they notice you (which just happens when you're in front of them).
The traffic in those specific missions actively goes towards you, no matter if they see you or not, heck you could even be completelly still in a sidewalk, and they would still bump you.
@@mekacrab if you didn't notice the obviously different behaviour of NPC during I/E missions i envy you, *because i swear on my left nut* they change lanes more often than not. Once you're out of the mission NPC return to normal free session behaviour. *Something* definitely changes once you enter a state of I/E missions, and it's a hill i will die on.
@@mekacrabYou clearly don’t play the game to understand what they are referring to lol
ITS MORE ABOUT JUNCTIONS!!!! WHEN YOU BOMB IT AN NPC WILL SPEED UP OR SLOW DOWN TO PERFECTLY INTERCEPT YOU AT AN INTERSECTION
The programmed the ai to turn into you if you are going to fast ….. back in the day PlayStation could handle the frame rates and the map and ai wouldn’t load in as well if you were going to fast . So they programmed the ai to make you crash. This guy reads the code when most of us have spent 1000s of hours understanding the behavior
Now what about the AI speeding up drastically or slamming on the brakes as you’re approaching an intersection? A very common thing I see is when approaching an intersection, a crossing NPC will speed up or slow down to seemingly block your path. It’s obviously not them detecting a threat since they only see forward threats and not side or behind.
The programmed the ai to turn into you if you are going to fast ….. back in the day PlayStation could handle the frame rates and the map and ai wouldn’t load in as well if you were going to fast . So they programmed the ai to make you crash. This guy is reading the code when most of us have spent thousands of hours in the game to understand the behavior.
@@TheJakebriscoe Shit comment
That is indeed more or less scripted, to make driving and dodging traffic more dynamic. Midnight Club (also made by Rockstar) had intersections exactly like these where cars would impede you or scripted events would spawn in scenarios to hinder your speed.
This happens with the Banshee when doing the bike mission for the agency at lsia. Same with the two blue Sultans that chase you when you're doing a vehicle Warehouse export. It's like they have nitrous, and are programmed to close the gap. Its insane.
Cars suddenly swerving into oncoming traffic directly into you. Happens on that stretch of road near Madrazos ranch. This invisible obstacle kind of sounds like rockstars way of making NPCs crash into you. A random obstacle just so happens to glitch at the exact spot that would cause a collision? Sounds suss
One thing that is blatant though is the rubberbanding speeds some of these NPCs have. The node system explains why NPCs carelessly careen in front of you or into you, but it doesn't explain when NPCs literally change their speed when going through a junction to always get in your way. You can literally see them slow down or speed up based on your speed to try and get you into a T-bone.
Literally? Like literally, literally?
My dude you definetely need to play more singleplayer XD I've never been much of online playing, be whatever game, I just like my singleplayer adventures and GTA is another one of them, and boy oh boy, ever since the PS3 release, the PS4 and on PC, this behaviour is a classic. Always when wandering around Vinewood Hills, everytime you catch one of those curves uphill and there's a car heading down, they will ALWAYS launch at you, it's a guarantee
As someone who played this chronically i SWEAR it happend after the ill gotten gains par 1 dlc where you had to move cars the npcs were always stupid but after that "update" they consistently switch lanes to get in your way you can even se it by going one way then switching the npcs will switch lanes twice just to get in your way
The real question is: is chaotic traffic still better than a predictable traffic, as seen in Watch Dogs 2?
obviously the chaotic traffic yeah
also i bet that gta 6 is gonna have way more dynamic traffic, like when you knock down the traffic lights the cars actually have no idea what to do
Playing WD2 rn, it's a great game but the traffic is extremely boring.
And whats the thing with the traffic intersections? If you drive fast through them, on red light, some other vehicle speeds in from the right. Just in the speed you are. (it happes very often)
I have to brake every time, to not crash into them. It must be scripted 🤔
@@2boid irl, when a traffic light is malfunctioning (before a signaller gets there), you treat it as an all way stop sign. but i doubt rs will go that far.
@@Subreon would be pretty cool to see, and idk i have a feeling rockstar will go pretty far with these types of details
Saying it’s a predominantly online issue is false. It happens just as much in single player too
Dude used random clips from a gta online subreddit as evidence lmao he's cooked
I thought he was actually playing the game himself to test it but I guess not the random intercepting is constant in both online and single player
@@kylefd2Moreover the problem is that he's saying these clips proves his point. When in actuality the clips he showed proves the exact opposite
@orientalanon and ignores how NPCs will match your speed to crash you at interesections, ignores that NPCs will be more aggressive when driving a high value car or in delivery missions, ignores that it happens in SP
@@orientalanon yea unfortunately any decently edited video will make the masses convinced that this is how the game works. Hopefully a bigger more successful UA-camr calls out this video for false information, as this is what it needs since all the evidence sucks
20:15 This happens all the time in missions even without any shooting. It is almost like the AI takes your controller inputs and purposely spawn/drive to hit you with precise accuracy. You can prove it easily when you are chased by someone and the traffic goes crazy. Then brake, accelerate, brake, accelerate, drive on the sidewalk or even against the traffic slowly. You will see the AI will fix themselves and drive normally.
This has nothing to do with the problems described by players. You can absolutely go to a private session (or do the sharding session trick if that still works) and try to deliver a vehicle from the import/export garage. Even when the guys that shoot you up (for no reason, thanks rockstar) haven't spawned, NPCs are gonna pull that bullshit no matter which road you take.
Exactly, this guy doesn't know what is talking about
@@altaiir8228 There are even personality flags for drivers to say how aggressive they are, which is how much they will break traffic rules and do road rage stuff. Video author does not know what he is talking about.
@@MyAmazingUsername You clearly didn't watch the video.
@@altaiir8228 You clearly didn't watch the video.
@@Whooler6by I coded GTA mods instead. I know a lot more about this than the video author.
Former competitive gta 5 racer ( ik sounds cringe but there is a real community and its huge ) from 2016-2021 the NPC’s weren’t too much that way when I first started but the racing community I was in actually was able to point out that the NPC’s started acting THIS WAY AFTER THE UPDATE WHERE YOU HAVE TO STEAL THE CARS AND BRING THEM BACK UNDAMAGED FOR A HIGHER PRICE
competitive racing in gtaV? makes absolutly sense...
NPCs will literally drive onto oncoming traffic to hit you. Its either intentional or the code is falling apart, no in-between
NPCs literally swerve onto oncoming traffic to hit the player was likely intentional since it's been like that since the game released in 2013.
@@automation7295 Oh great so Rockstar has made our lives miserable since the beginning, great
he covers exactly what you said at 23:03, I don't wanna debunk your validity, but I do want to mention, that he did mention it in the video
@@Justinbadger4 Although it probably is faulty map design that causes NPCs to act out, there has to be some sort of intention behind it. Like for example; literally numerous times I have been driving past a red light and an npc will move their car in-front of my path and complete a full stop in front of me, like they were coded to stop my momentum
Npcs also do this on RDR2, its absolutely intentional
But how do you explain "NPC driver agression" that modders found in the code, and some mod-menus can modify its value, and if you crank it up, cars whenever oncoming or same-direction as you, will attempt swirl to crash into you? There are situations where there is no node or junction or parking space that would justify a random swirl to the sidewhere you are stationary, and some NPCs randomly will swirl to hit you even if it takes them off of the road and there is no other players or agressive NPCs around.
There are missions where they need to crash into you
@@Aura_9275exactly so it’s a thing in the game and he just ignored it
Source? A quick search didn't show anything like that. Where did the modders find the code? What's the website where they posted it and talked about it?
@@floppingfish5621 He conveniently ignored a lot of shit lmao
Yeah he left out a lot of things to stand out as a "factual research". You can see the Dark viper Speedruns where the NPCs phase through terrain to hit him
the best way for an npc to avoid a crash with a player is to not react, but they're clearly designed to react in some way, and thus designed to crash
this is my perception of it before watching the vid, I'll edit after
Edit: brain hurt
I feel like a flat earther here, no matter how much evidence you confront me with I will always believe that the npc are built to frustrate you into buying shark cards. Because this only happens to me during a sell mission, when I’m trying to make money.
Something I often forget myself is that... Not every part of "design" has to be explicitly written by someone. Code is one way of scripting something, but emergent behaviors can be just as easily exploited with full intention when left as is. Of course, if you spot a section lacking a bit of chaos during play testing, then that's a good place to balance out by injecting an inconspicuous double lane change. No one will be able to tell if it was intentional or just an overworked intern, but sure as hell will be paranoid after that.
Of course, if you find yourself on the flip side where your perfectly well-intentioned, stochastic traffic simulation turns out to only accurate to LA traffic and your stakeholders are pissed, it can be useful to recall the magic words: "It's not a bug. It's a feature."
"they're reacting to things that spawn in for about 10 milliseconds" but you never explain why it spawns there for only 10 milliseconds, what it is, or why it happens so frequently.
cars
This whole video essay was written by a third grader
The real question to ask is why the actual California traffic is genuinely this bad.
I think the question you posed serves well in answering itself, given the constraints of where it takes place.
So basically there is not line of code that says "Be a dick" but they are basically coded to get in your way constantly. Very interesting video.
Sorta. They're pretty much programmed to do their own thing regardless of what the player is doing. It's just that at high speeds we're injecting ourselves into the middle of merges or scenarios automatically playing out. If we drove slower then these merges and scenarios would be finished by the time we stroll up to them.
I just dont understand how people expect not to crash often when youre driving at 200 kmh+ in hypercars in a populated metropolitan
@@voodoo2006This exactly.
Chances are, if you're speeding, rear ending a car who was changing lanes or hitting one coming out of a parking spot etc are the most likely ways you'll end your joyride.
You know, the same scenarios where you'd crash in a GTA game.
@@voodoo2006 and in a city where nobody has turn signals
@@mekacrab Some do have turn signals but it's rare to see
This was informative. I'm played GTA 5 for the first time in about 4 years and honestly I was shocked how bad the driving can get (I guess I never paid much attention to it when I was just racing through the game). I now understand why the NPCs will sometimes keep backing into stuff and making strange maneuvers though, now that I know about those invisible nodes. They're just trying to get to the next 'magnet.'
1:18 the man himself
Your own test doesn't work because you drove nice and slow. Try doing that again except in a "high value" vehicle (expensive cars or mission vehicles) and drive faster and watch certain NPCs ahead of you matching your steering inputs 1:1 so that you crash into them. There is no reason for some guy with a minivan to mimic my swerving through traffic to cut me off, unless of course he was programmed to do so.
lol
idiot
"Drive faster" he addressed that several times lmao. Drive slower and you'll crash less.
@@Shoxic666So... you'll drive slower so you don't crash(or at least reduce the chances), but run the increasingly high chance of getting spotted and/or shot by pursuing NPCs?
That's kinda counter-productive
@ 🧢
I’m not being mean but @13:50 the phrase is actually “To your hearts content” not contempt lol, but it definitely works for GTA5’s spaghetti flags
Can you lend a nigga a french fry?
Been waiting for an indepth look at gta 5s traffic
10 years of modding GTA 5 and I have never seen a video explain the GTA 5 NPC traffic in this detail, until now. Well done.
That Pedestrian to the left of the screen at 16:52 is HILARIOUS, he doesn't even avoid the trashcan but rather bumps into it and glitches out in a spastic motion.
I'm not convinced. This happens in solo (private) sessions ALL THE TIME. Also, you are completely ignoring the cases of a car driving across your path. Not swirving or lane changing, but driving across an intersection with abnormal speed, sometimes abnormal trajectory, obviously specifically to ram you. No missions, no shooting, just diving. This happens when your speed is above some threshold.
Props for your research, it was very interesting to learn what's under the hood. But your research is not quite complete.
'your research isn't quite complete because I saw something and my conclusion I leaped to > your factual evidence'
@@dyIanVII The evidence presented in the video does not explain why this would happen, or address this scenario at all. This guy doesn't have the source code and cannot actually look at everything involved in V's traffic AI. He's just using Codewalker.
Furthermore, the same thing was scripted into Midnight Club (I can literally show you the code for that, I removed it for myself) and the MC devs worked on GTAV after the MC series ended.
@@dyIanVIIgoing at speed through four way junctions you’ll notice that there’s always a car programmed to match your speed so you T-Bone it. That being said, they’re likely “scenarios” like he explained.
@@mcbamm5683 Any evidence of this happening that can be found online ? I didn't find something, although I didn't search very hard.
Exactly, anyone who played midnight club would recognize the behavior
What the players are saying: When I'm doing something important that requires vehicle integrity which will effect my score, NPCs seem like theyre deliberately crashing into me.
What Malcolm tested: I drove around randomly for a couple of hours and nobody purposely crashed into me.
I went looking for single-player examples and found 10 within 20 minutes, and they were all equally as bad as online examples. NPCs completely sideways on the wrong side of the road, swerving across several lanes in the wrong direction, and straight up u turns into the player with the NPC going the wrong way. You can admit you're wrong. The video isn't a full day old yet.
Exactly this. It only happens when you are in a high value car and with fast speeds
As a truck driver, I can tell you with 100% certainty, that these NPC's are not just in GTA5. They are all over the real world. And they all actively try to get themselves and others on the road killed for what seems no reason at all.
I've seen a video where someone was LITERALLY sitting still and the npcs briefly swerve in front of them before they correct their path
Okay i can see the intersection ones being pure coincidence because the traffic ai code sucks,but they literally SWERVE onto an oncoming lane,may only happen online but holy shit
Ive been thinking about this topic recently a lot. Yesterday, was on my phone texting while sitting in my car, on the side of the road, not in npcs path, and yet, they still loved to crash onto me. Idk how on earth its possible its just the codes
He also overlooked the NPC’s jacking the handbrake and swirving towards you instead of logically away from the danger before they spin out. This typically happens on like highways or freeways but then other times they don’t react at all? It’s very strange but shows at least that there is some code for “driver panic” or whatever you want to call it where 99% of the time they swerve in your direction or literally just steer straight across the road directly towards you. Completely coded event has to be so I’d be interested in what the code says in regards to where the car should swerve because as mentioned before it does the complete opposite to logic.
@ gotta reply a second time, I wish he went into the codes exactly when the swerving happens because then you would be able to tell whats actually causes it. Im not sure if you can do this though, maybe some day I will since im learning coding currently
I have a clip of this saved on my phone. Pulled up to a red light and I hear tires screeching only for some NPC to power slide in front of me and stare at me through his open window, then he peeled off. I was like wtf was that 😂 it was on an atleast 4 lane street, maybe even 6 lanes.
GW profile pic noticed ;)
I always loved how LA is known for having heavy traffic but GTA V hardly has any traffic, there's even times when the streets are completely empty and I have to wait for a vehicle to show up.
Yea im replaying gta 4 and same. Streets be empty and its like its ny. Should be packed
@@anthonym138play it on PC and jack up the population density to 100. You’ll be sitting in traffic the whole time.
@anthonym138 oddly, I remember San Andreas having more traffic
@@anthonym138 set the traffic density to 100 and you’ll be stuck in traffic in GTA IV
You can change the Traffic density however you like. With PC atleast.
This all started with the import export update where you ultimatly get less money when crashing the car so yea its 100% intentional this wasnt like this earlier than this
I would say it has existed before hand, at least the intersection interaction where an NPC will purposely try and match your speed to wreck you. But ever since import / export update, it has ten folded like you've said.
No it didn't lmao, and it isn't intentional - this exact video provs it.
@@dyIanVII it definetly got way worse with that update before it i can only recall npcs driving into me like 3 times max and that was in the span of about 500 hours
@@dyIanVII + he just yaps
@@IamMortui Yes, i think the traffic cars try to go into your path where the navigation system is guiding you. So i think it could be prevented by diactivate the navigation system in the game and everybody would be fine. I mean rockstar is making money if we fail in this missions and some people are buying shark cards because they are frustrated xD.
very insightful as a computer science student! Gives me some ideas to use in my own projects!
I’d love to see more videos like this breaking down certain game mechanics
This isn't just in Online; happens to me all the time when I play Story Mode.
Not only that, they always purposefully put a car into the opposite lane whenever you're trying to pass a car in front of you.
There will be absolutely no traffic on a country road. There'll be a car in front of you. As soon as you pull to the left to go around them, without fail, a car will spawn out of nowhere in the opposite lane so that you have to straddle the center line to get between them.
Whether is true or not. I didn’t need a video to tell me that NPCs are coded to crash. Thats how bad they are
I don't play online, I only play single player. this happens all the time, they move right into you on highways. it's not as bad as it was on San Andreas where they were literally belligerent and malicious (I believe the code actually made them act like it)
Well put together video 🫡
Came to watch for a couple seconds and got pulled in to watching the entire video. Very interesting and great job 👍🏾
This erractic traffic behaviour was added with the first update iirc after the Import / Export update to impact the players earnings whilst doing the content, there was a throwaway line in the patch notes at the time, also fun fact, there's a flag in the physics called "crash enhancer" or something like that, it's sole purpose is to make crashes between players larger and more over the top, this is why you can't have door to door racing without a horrendous accident.
0:15 or doing OHKO run
?
You clearly ain't knowledgeable of the one and only Dark Viper AU@@LumpKingDLO
the horrors
So basically it's poorly coded which we already knew.
There is by no exaggeration nothing whatsoever you could tell me to make me believe you. God himself could descend and tell me the NPCs aren't doing this intentionally, and I would backtalk his ass immediately.
I saw a video on Reddit where someone was part in the median between both sides of the highway and all of the cars were driving normally, but when they got close, they would slightly swerve towards the player vehicle, not enough to hit them or appear erratic, but enough that it would definitely make a difference if you were splitting lanes
great video with comprehensive analysis bro
When delivering a car to the Dock from the chop shop, an npc drive to the middle of the road at the last intersection. Whatever side you try to pass, the npc will turn in to you
I’ve never had that happen to me, just get better at staying as far away as possible from the npc cars.
The best way to get a perfect delivery is to be patient and drive slower than the NPCs. It gives you the perfect opportunity to see strange driving before it happens, unintentional or not.
Bro wasn’t cooking with this one
how come they swerve into me while on driving on a sidewalk, they ain't no nodes on a sidewalk, fr they have to hit you on purpose
I did notice while playing that if you drive normally and stop for traffic lights, the driver behind you doesnt expect you to be stopped there, and asigning that spot to themselves will push you out of the way to get into their spot, but in doing so will upset themselves with the crash and will speed away ignoring the lights to get away from the crash scene, making it look like they crashed intentionally like a hit and run
I play on PS5. I cruise around the city. I can assure you that NPC’s do merge into you or actively look to crash into you. I’ve been through many intersections and have had vehicles in adjacent sides of the intersection set themselves up and try and drive into me.
Interesting to see what rockstar can do with gta vi ai driving
Something else I want to point out are the traffic lights.
For some reason when you enter an intersection with traffic lights, about 99% of the time you have a red light.
I thought to myself "Well, maybe I'm just unlucky", but then I started to look at the traffic lights to the sides (the ones that should be on green) and MANY times they were also on red.
I don't know how it really works, but for some reason when you're going down a certain street, the game will give you a red light in your intersections ahead.
I've actually tried following traffic rules out of boredom. I can sit at a red light for what feels like a full two or three minutes and then it turns green for about five to ten seconds and then goes back to red for two minutes. Of course if I circled around and came at the intersection from another direction this would change so that the lights in the direction I'm facing are almost always red.
There's always that one mission in GTA where NPCs intentionally swerve into you failing the mission!!
There are missions where NPCs will be FULLY scripted. You can crash into them and they won't move an inch. An example would be Fame or Shame mission. But the vast majority of Online missions is just NPCs being awful, reckless drivers. We share the pain
outro music synced up perfectly in game, subscribed
13:50 - just an fyi, the proper phrase is "to your hearts conTENT" (aka satisfaction), not contempt, but great video 👍
my main take away from driving in los santos, is that cars speed up when they are in an intersection, they speed up when making a turn, they make a sharp turns too, which is counter intuitive
Yes, this is something they do a lot between junction nodes, you are correct
@ObviousMalcolm_PLUS yeah, quite realistic ngl
yoooo cappie
@noobiumbaconate the man the myth himself
So fun fact, they coded this into the game post release for GTA online specifically. In story mode there’s rare occasions that they change lanes chaotically. I have an old version of GTA on disc and haven’t updated the game since release.
What would be your theory as to why it was added into online?
Mine is the increase to shark card sales, due to people getting frustrated with all the time and money they lose during the exotic car transfer missions.
@@indanow6932 Answered your own question. Delay people's profit generation so they are annoyed into buying shark cards
@ the import export missions with cars, your earnings are a direct correlation to vehicle damage. The cars drive more erratically in those missions than they do online free mode or in story mode
@@indanow6932 they do it so the terrain and stuff can load in if you go a long time without crashing everything starts getting laggy
Funny how everyone that peddles this nonsense theory always has zero proof
Thanks for the in depth look at it. I know my GTA Traffic pretty good by now, it's nice to have my suspicions about the Path findings layed out blank, neat!
Im sorry but anyone thats been playing GTA long enough knows this NPC ramming you problem is absolutely built into the game. The AI is way to good at doing normal things to not be scripted. If you can get NPCS to race their cars you can absolutely get them to NOT ram into you every second.
The point of "NPCs spawn in for maybe around 10ms" Okay so why are random NPCS/Entities spawning im at random times, and always somehow hindering the player? Seems like a scripted in problem.
That was a very intriguing look behind the scenes. Thank you.
I can't help but feel gaslit here...
He did not look into the "game code", he looked at configuration files in the game's assets which happen to be represented as XML.
The actual game code is what eventually gets compiled into your GTA5.exe and if there was a way to decompile that into readable code, we would find actual proof of this behavior being intentional.
At some point, coincidences are not coincidences but a pattern.
I want him to watch the videos of the cars levitating and quite literally launching themselves at the player and see him explain those 😂
Hopefully this means GTA 6's drivers wont be like this, but there is one more i'd like you to investigate. When you run a junction at speed, and there's a car also driving through it. Is it adjusting it's speed to put you on a collision course?
I've had this happen in multiple GTA games, if you slow down, it slows down, if you swerve, it speeds up, ect.
Fivem modder here, forgot to mention a few things including the coded fear levels and it's effect on the flee native calls and how sirens confuses the hell out of them, think I can explain police coding
Thank you for making this video.
I know nothing about coding or anything but I found this video very informative, entertaining and understandable.
You, my friend, have earned yourself a subscriber!❤
Yeah, not only am I convinced the NPCs swerve into you intentionally, but also traffic lights turn red before you drive through creating cross traffic you have to dodge. It feels like 9 out of 10 lights you drive through are red.
Seems like the odds coincide with the fact that red lights stay on for 40 seconds and green lights stay only for 5. 1/9 chance for it to be a green light at any time you're passing.
Soooo, how much is Rock* paying you for this? Cuz I can tell you from the 12+ years I've been playing that if I'm simply driving around, with no special mission or cargo, no matter the vehicle I have there's no issues. I can split lanes, drive through intersections, and weave through heavy traffic with ease.
*BUT*, if I'm delivering a specced out car or something that damage will decrease my payout you can be guaranteed I'll have at least several NPCs swerve into my lane. I know the AI will have them panic if there's shooting or cops on me and it'll get crazy but even just cruising along with nothing going on it happens.
As someone who's been playing since 11 years (GTA is 11 years old not 12) i can confidently say you got skill issue.
@JANICKGMO_ anything else need correcting?
@@JANICKGMO_ Nope? We good? You trollin somewhere else? Got other posts to talk sht and correct on?
I play a lot in single-player, and this behavior is very common. It’s not on purpose; it’s actually a limitation of the traffic system, which was programmed not to look back.
They ar timed to perfectly TBone you or swerve INTO you Happens the same way ALL the time. Youll see cars at abnormal speeds coming at just te perfectly matched speed to hit you. In ANY normal situation wherte a car comes at you, you would steer AWAY from oncoming cars and the NPCs in GTA turn INTO you unnatuarlly.. its %100 programmed and on purpose.
Now compare driving in GTA online like you did with a nightclub mission or the one where you steal a fancy car and bring it to your garage for money. They will hit you way more than driving normally.
Ok, so they don't target you, they're just hella weird and aggressive all the time, lol
Pretty much yes. Their code runs on prayers
AKA accidentally on purpose
Idk man when I'm driving a car to a delivery location and an noc is going down the wrong side of the road and turns into me when I try to go around doesn't feel like an accident to me
@@TheAverageGamer1 Because it isn't lol. Even if there is no disturbances at the time, they should follow their path right? Total BS this video is. Why would they go off of their path suddenly out of nowhere when you're in collision range.
@@TheAverageGamer1 Well if they're on the wrong side of the road they either spawned on the wrong side because of desync (or slided on the wrong side) or they are panicking but you would know if they were panicking so let's assume they weren't.
Car deliveries are in GTA Online so a lot of this weird stuff is because of the server that messes up the spawns and/or the behavior of some NPCs.
I play this game 10 hours a day. The pattern of npcs is always the same. They do turn into you deliberately it's so obvious.
It's so obvious that this guy must be gaslighting.
i used to play this game 10hrs a day, you are suffering from skill issue.
@JANICKGMO_ You are suffering from a lack of basic observation. Trucks will accelerate way faster than they normally can out of junctions in order to hit you, and will slow down as you brake to make it harder to avoid.
@ferrumignis yes as I said in my previous comment. I know their pattern.
@@JANICKGMO_ nothing wrong with my skills. Made 2.5 billion. Thank you.
I don't know about this video. There's plenty of videos out there showing that the npcs do just drive into you. Hell you can hop onto the game for just 1 hour and you'll probably get hit like this. You could be on a two way street no turning lanes, no intersections. You'll see a car in front of you, so you get in the oncoming lane to pass them. According to this video, the npc has no clue the player is there, there's also nothing in front of the npc to try to avoid, so theoretically there is just no reason the npc should swerve into the oncoming lane when you pass them right? Well, they do it anyway. There's absolutely no way this isn't intentional
The fact you made in a depth in detail 27 min video on a explanation of why my blood pressure is so damn high over all these years. fkn goat 🥺🫡
Okjay, props to you for this, cause i know i aint the only one who ben asking this for YEARS!
That’s my GTAF account @ 0:58 😂
EDIT: Back then, people thought it was a conspiracy and the mods would get pissed if you mentioned it because for some reason they get mad when you criticize gta5. Over the years, it was proven and now they blame it on the hardware. Which is reasonable I guess but it’s been rereleased on 2 different generations. It’s gotta be on purpose
If you drive in a straight line without touching the joystick, they will crash into you.
If you constantly, gently steer left/right, they won't crash into you.
Try it
Stop yapping.
@@JANICKGMO_stop typing