Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas/Game Mechanics and Glitches/Phonecalls

Phonecalls are triggered after certain events (often finishing a certain mission).

There are two different kinds of phonecalls:

• High-priorty calls have a recall delay of 20s before Badlands and 15s after finishing the mission Badlands. These calls are usually ones that unlock missions (Most Threads).
• Low-priority calls have a recall delay of 60s. These calls include e.g. the Catalina troll calls after CJ parts ways with her (MOB_RAN Thread).

The delay counts from the last time the game considered you busy, this includes being on a mission, receiving a phonecall, cancelling a ringing phone. So for example a high-priority call might come 15s after you finished the last mission or 15s after you last cancelled a call. Even though you can't receive phonecalls when you have a wanted level, it doesn't count towards the delay, so you can receive a phonecall directly after you loose your wanted stars.

Answering/Cancelling phonecalls

The ringing phone counts as a small mission, setting $ONMISISON=1, which means you can't start any missions. Once the call is finished (either because you cancelled it or you accepted and finished it), it will set $ONMISSION=0 again.

You can cancel calls by shooting or getting into a vehicle, which will set $ONMISSION=0 after about 1.6 seconds (timed from between the "Press TAB to answer phone" dialog disappearing to mission markers re-appearing on the map, counted frames on video). So the effective delay after you cancelled a phonecall will be 16.6/21.6/61.6 seconds after you performed the action to cancel (e.g. shooting).

Holding Calls

Holding Action (default TAB) will hold a ringing phonecall until you let go of Action. This way you can keep it ringing even when going into an interior (even though it might not actually be audibly ringing anymore). You can also use weapons while doing this, which would normally cancel the call. You can't actually answer it in an interior, but you can carry it through one and then answer it in an environment where you can, e.g. outdoors or in a cutscene.

You can also hold phonecalls in vehicles by keeping AltFire pressed as long as you are in a vehicle. You have to keep Action pressed as long as you are on foot, including the get in/out animations, but not if you are completely in a vehicle. So you should press Action and AltFire during the get in/out animations and can then let go of one of them accordingly. It might be safer to bind Action/AltFire to one key though, which is possible because one is for on foot and the other for vehicles. This way you only need to keep one button pressed during the entire time you want to hold a phonecall, including driving vehicles.

List of Calls

The following threads, which are started/stopped as the game progresses, are used to check for different groups of phonecalls (check delay in ms):

• MOB_LA1 (90)
• MOB_CAT (120)
• MOB_SF (150)
• MOB_VEG (180)
• MOB_LA2 (250)
• MOB_RAN (1000)
• MOB_GF (150)

Each thread checks independantly every x ms (as noted in the list above) if the recall time has passed and the prerequisites for calls are met. This means that if calls from different threads are available, calls can come in a somewhat random order, although calls from threads that are checked with a smaller delay probably have a higher chance of getting in first.

In the table the number behind the thread name (e.g. MOB_RAN(3)) is the order the calls are checked in that thread, which means you receive calls with a smaller number first if several are available. It doesn't necessarily mean that the calls will actually come in that order, since that depends on which ones are unlocked.

The mission name behind a given prerequisite shows the mission that the game expects to have been be passed.

This list is not necessarily complete (the MOB_GF thread hasn't been added yet). The prerequisites and results info of a call may not be entirely complete (which would basicially require posting the code in here), but the relevant stuff should mostly be in there.