As Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas celebrated its 20th anniversary last month, another milestone was also being celebrated within the GTA community: the incredible journey of a modder known simply as 'Silent,' who has spent the last decade fixing hundreds of bugs across the classic GTA trilogy, and whose gargantuan work has just gone open source.
What started as a passion project in 2013 quickly evolved into something of a phenomenon in the PC gaming world. SilentPatch, a series of unofficial modifications from the modder, has somewhat become the gold standard for how game fixes should be implemented.
When it comes to GTA, Silent has already created 67 fixes for GTA III, 66 for Vice City, and 165 for San Andreas. Also, as a tribute to San Andreas' 20th anniversary, Silent released their biggest update yet, making the entire project open source under the MIT license.
This latest release was the culmination of 10 months of intensive development and testing, featuring not only new fixes but also improvements to existing ones. However, these fixes will not work for GTA's embattled and controversial "The Definitive Edition".
That said, the update does tackle some of the trilogy's most notorious issues. San Andreas players will notice that CJ's clothes now properly react to wind physics while riding motorcycles, and his animations perfectly sync with quad bike handlebars. Vehicle enthusiasts will also appreciate the refined headlight behavior during different weather conditions and the elimination of the infamous multiple explosion glitch that would cause cars to explode repeatedly.
