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Hello everyone! We have prepared a special gift for you to celebrate Multi Theft Auto's 20th Anniversary! Here is an exclusive interview with IJs (also known as IJsVogel), the founder and first developer of the Multi Theft Auto project. Read on to see his thoughts on the project in retrospective. Note: more details about Multi Theft Auto's history and timeline can be found on our Wiki article. What had prompted you to create the very first multiplayer mod for GTA3 - a game that did not offer such a feature out of the box? Wow, it has already been 20 years.. I remember the reasoning behind it very vividly! As I grew up in the 90s I was lucky enough to be surrounded by PCs, early internet and PC games from the very beginning (of myself). I was a very fanatical player of Grand Theft Auto 1 and 2, especially so because these games had a multiplayer mode that I could play at home with my brothers. Then, finally in 2002 when GTA3 came out for PC, I was 13 at the time and completely astounded at the possibilities of this 3D open world version of my favourite game for the first couple of months. After a while, it sinked in that this game was missing any ability at all to play with others, which put a huge dent into my appreciation for the game... At the time, I never really played the storylines of games because it didn't quite fit my youthly attention span (my older brother always left the savegames for me to play) and was usually more into the multiplayer and modding aspects anyway. Two completely coincidental things then sparked the start of an attempt at multiplayer. First, a fake French screenshot was being sent around forums, showing a multiplayer mod for GTA3. This raised my hopes tremendously and I was looking forward to testing this so much. When it turned out to be another hoax, my hopes were in shambles and I began thinking about hacking something together to do it anyway. A screenshot of a fake multiplayer mod in GTA3. Surfaced in July, 2002. Secondly, some coders had just released a trainer/cheat tool for GTA3 including its source code in Visual Basic 5 or 6, which was the only language I knew at that time as I was only 14 by then. I started hacking around with the tool to make a synchronized trainer tool, and figured I might as well synchronize car positions, and a very crude attempt at multiplayer was born and it was dubbed GTA3: Alternative Multiplayer (GTA3AM). It was amazing to see it work, it seemed such a stupidly simple hack! This was the first effective prototype of Multi Theft Auto. A not-so-fake GTA3AM 0.1 Client window, win9x style! February, 2003. Were there other people who shared your idea and wanted to contribute? Was it easy to find them? The initial GTA3AM was posted on a well-known Dutch tech forum, and this raised some attention from people over there. It wasn't so much a conscious decision to find people, people really wanted to contribute and we gathered on IRC, with some people helping out with the website, server donations and coding. This grew organically as the users grew. The first months or so was mostly Dutch techies helping out, including a well-known provider sponsoring our hosting, and after the first year or so the team became very diverse, international and well skilled. I am still very grateful for each and every contributor to this project from the very start and later, also because I was still very young at the time, and the project would not have been able to thrive on my contributions alone. I have had the fortune to meet and work together with some of the most skilled people I've met in my entire life, as well as people who simply loved playing around with our creations. Work on ambitious projects like this typically involves solving tough and unusual problems. What was the most significant one that you and the team had to deal with during your time in MTA? And perhaps, maybe there was a really peculiar problem that you also would like to share? MTA has been an amazing learning curve for me, and I believe many other contributors in its 20 year lifetime, to acquire a very special mix of skills. We have had tremendous fun and also frustration engineering the hell out of all sorts of things, and trying to tie worlds together over a network. There are countless things that were tackled and pioneered (even if only personally) in this project, so it is hard to pinpoint out a single thing. I think one of the most groundbreaking efforts of this project however was to restructure the entire project and release it as open-source to the world. As part of that we spent much effort to restructure everything using git (this upset quite a few developers at the time) and published it in 2009 or so on GitHub when it was still in its infant stage (GitHub even mentioned us on their blog at the time). A bit messy in MTA:SA Racemod internal tests. Some time in the second half of 2005. If you had a chance to start this project again, would it be closed-source as it initially was, or would you prefer it to be open-source like it is now? It would certainly be open-sourced again, probably as early as possible. The facilities for open source projects are much, much better now than 20 years ago as well. The move to GTA:SA kind of left the multiplayer mods for GTA3 and GTA:VC in the dark. While there were some alternative mods developed for these games, they did not really leave a lasting impact in the long run. Have you or the rest of the team ever considered bringing back the support for GTA3 or VC after MTA:SA DM 1.0 was released? I do not think there was ever a strong will to revive the GTA3 or GTA:VC versions, because GTA:SA by all means had a better and more capable engine. Perhaps in today's open source world, where contributors are easy to find, it could have had a better chance. My personal opinion (or fantasy) at the time was to "just" build our own game behind it instead, but that obviously never took off. Development build of MTA:VC Blue. Some time in the second half of 2004. What in your opinion are the strongest points of Multi Theft Auto (be it the original 0.x series or MTA:SA)? What do you think the project especially succeeded in? The critical mass of players and contributors, that never seems to die out, and it keeps surprising me. The incredibly challenging technical issues we have had to solve (and still do), sometimes from the ground up. This makes for a very exciting sandbox to work in as a developer or hacker. And in contrast, do you feel there are any shortcomings in MTA? I think one of the missed opportunities in MTA is that we could have developed a bigger framework or other products on top of all the codebase we had written. A bit messy again, this time during MTA:SA DM internal tests. December, 2007. Thinking back, are there any things in the project that you think you would have done differently nowadays? I would have loved to have set up a much more professional collaboration with the entire team that were around at the time the project was open sourced around 2010, using all the knowledge we had all acquired in the process of making MTA:SA 1.0 when it was still very hot. With the knowledge on startups that I have now, I realize that had I been 5 or 10 years older, I might have had some better idea on how to take it to a level to possibly develop our own game(s) or framework on top of it. But alas, for MTA's sake it turned out good either way! The MTA Community is very large these days and scattered across all continents, but that was not always the case. What was the community like back in your time? As with most (modding) projects you usually start out with a very niche audience. For MTA, this was a direct result of me posting on a Dutch tech forum and as a result, the initial contributors in the first months were mostly (if not all) Dutch and Belgian. With the GTA series obviously being a hit in the Western world, more people wanted to contribute (and play). Nearly all of them came from the US, UK, Central and West Europe and the Nordic countries, with a few notable exceptions. I think this pretty much mirrored the demographics of the GTA series themselves. Let's race! Beta tests of MTA:SA DM. December, 2007. I have noticed that you have been involved with various tech projects after retiring from MTA. What are you up to currently? Was your experience from working on MTA useful in these projects? Among some other startup adventures in the past years, I currently lead an audio software company called KoalaDSP that develops virtual audio plugins, instruments, effects and algorithms for a bunch of very big companies out there. We started this company around two years ago in Amsterdam after some previous endeavours, and with around 10+ people working on some crazy software being used in music and home studios around the world. But Multi Theft Auto has given me a lifetime passion for video game development, and after many years or scribbles and notes, I have finally found the time and people around me to developing my second (..after MTA) game idea using 90s retro graphics and voxels. I feel quite strongly that my experience with Multi Theft Auto has been a unique and once-in-a-lifetime gift of skill, much adventure and lasting connections with others. I can't quite pinpoint it, but it feels special. I hope that also still holds to this day for any contributors out there. A long-running project like MTA also means a lot of memories. Do you have any fond or interesting memories from your time working on the project that you would wish to share? I have so many memories of my time during MTA, it is hard to pick out something! Apart from the early memories of all the excitement, healthy stress and testing with all these people during the very, very early days, there is something I remember from a bit later: There was a pretty far-fetched and secret clandestine plan from some of our developers to put a live editor into one of the first MTA:SA releases. Like often with our features, it was really a coding challenge, a show of skill. Are you skilled enough to build this crazy thing? They figured that, in order for the community to enjoy using our mod, they needed an engaging way to create content. So they started building a complete editor inside the game. It required a tremendous amount of work, but they kept to it, others started contributing, and it ended up as one of the key features of the entire release! Some say that editor served as an inspiration to other mods, possibly other games afterwards. Internal tests of the cancelled MTA: Orange. April, 2010. To wrap things up, is there anything that you would like to say to current MTA Team members and/or to MTA fans? Thanks for putting your enthusiasm (and many wasted hours of gaming!!) into this amazing project. Props to all the contributors, past, present and future. MTA, the way it's meant to be played! Interviewed by jhxp.

Work smarter with Renderware Previewer:

This dude always come back with better version of his server's, the server is based on cops and criminals which brings out fun for us as a community players. There's so much activities you can do as both classes, and even a special groups. Also, scripts are unique and well designed. As for the FPS, server is not laggy at all, you will get a good FPS! I don't regret joining in, you guys should join too!

What a ride down memory lane (and yes this is the original Cray... I have long since lost my original login/email to these forums, but rest assured that I have been a lurker ever since). It's great to see jhxp, eAi, Ransom and so many others continuing to progress this far past anything I had dreamed of in the early days pushing code out, spinning up a server on my basement server and getting some folks in IRC to help me test. Amazing. Keep up the great work! I forgot to say that I still cringe at my interview. Don't worry, I am much more comfortable speaking infront of crowds as a 40 year old

These skins are only for displaying purposes atm, both Gwen blue & orange are already into MTA -- this might change in the future as I have invested a lot of time into them, some are pre-made like serpent & gwen, as I managed to import what can be imported, they might feel different than the original versions and missing some components. Glossy Seprent Minecraft goldsrc Windows98 Gwen Blue Gwen Orange

The basics of retexturing:

MTADiag не может обнаружить MTA, что логично для клиентов на базе MTA. Тогда выполните одну из команд: Win+R, ввести cmd и нажать OK, затем скопировать в командную строку tasklist /v > "%userprofile%\desktop\tasks.txt" и Enter — после выполнения команды на рабочем столе появится файл tasks.txt со списком запущенных в данный момент процессов. Загрузите его на https://pastebin.multitheftauto.com/, затем разместите ссылку здесь.

Some recent stuff:

Stop playing with yourself! ?

⋅︎ T h e m e ⋅︎ - P a c i f i c A b y s s - Download 16:9 / 4:3 Installation e n j o y 1.2 WIP... 1.1 Remastered (29-12-2022) 1.0 Release (11-11-2021)

Lua tutorial for absolute beginners This tutorial can also be viewed on GitHub This tutorial aims to teach the Lua scripting language to those with 0 previous experience with programming / scripting. This guide will start with explaining some Lua concepts, and will later on move to explaining MTA:SA specific concepts. Table of contents: Lua Scripts Variables Data types Operators If statements Functions Return values scopes & locals For loops Tables Iterators (pairs/ipairs) Callbacks Anonymous functions MTA Server & Resources Server vs client MTA functions & wiki Elements (userdata) Command handlers Event handlers predefined globals server <-> client communication Now what? Lua This part of the tutorial discusses Lua itself. No MTA-specific concepts will be discussed here. Scripts The Lua scripting language is a language which is interpreted by a "Lua interpreter". MTA:SA's resources use such an interpreter to run Lua code. For the beginning of this tutorial you can use the online Lua interpreter available on https://www.Lua.org/demo.html. Any code in the Lua part of the tutorial can be run on this website. Lua is written in "plain text". This means it exists of regular characters like any other text you are writing. To edit Lua files you will require a text editor. You could use Notepad, but there are many far better alternatives. My personal favourite is Visual Studio Code, but there are many other good options, to name a few: Atom, sublime text, notepad++ Lua files are usually saved with the .Lua file extension Variables The first concept we're going to discuss is variables. Variables allow you to store a value in your code. For example: x = 10 print(x) print(x) will output the value of the x variable. We will get into what exactly print is later in the tutorial. Variables can have any name you want, as long as you follow some specific rules. variable names must start with a letter (lower or upper case), or an underscore (_) variable names may contain letters (lower and upper case), numbers and underscores. x = 10 y = 20 z = 30 print(x) print(y) print(z) The convention in Lua is to name your variables in "camelCase". This means if a variable exists of multiple words you start every word with a capital letter, except for the first one. camelCaseVariable = 5 Data types So far we've seen variables used to store numeric values, but there are many different types of data Lua can handle. These are: number Any numeric value string A piece of text, a string is surrounded by " or '. For example "Hello world" or 'Hello world' boolean A boolean is a data type that has only 2 options, true and false. nil nil is a value indicating nothing. It's the absence of a value. (Not the be confused with 0) table Tables will be discussed later in the tutorial userdata Userdata will be discussed later in the tutorial function Functions will be discussed later in the tutorial thread Threads are out of scope for this tutorial and won't be discussed So we can use these different data types, and store them in variables: numberVariable = 10 stringVariable = "Hello world" booleanVariable = true nilVariable = nil Operators Operators are symbols in Lua which can be used to do "things" with variables. Here's a list of operators and an example for each: + operator Adds two values together x = 10 + 10 print(x) y = 20 print(y) z = x + y print(z) - operator Subtracts a value from another value x = 10 - 10 print(x) * operator Multiplies two values x = 10 * 10 print(x) / operator Divides a value by another value x = 10 / 10 print(x) % operator This is the "modulo" operator. This will divide a value by another, and return the leftover. x = 10 % 4 print(x) The result of this is 2 and operator The and operator will return true if both variables are "truthy". Otherwise it returns false (A "truthy" value is anything except for false and nil) x = true and false print(x) y = true and true print(y) or operator The and operator will return true if one of the variables are "truthy". Otherwise it returns false x = true or false print(x) y = false or false print(y) == operator The == (equals) operator will return true if both of the variables are the same. Otherwise it returns false x = "hey there" == "hello there" print(x) y = 150 == 150 print(y) ~= operator The ~= (does not equal) operator will return true if both variables are not the same. Otherwise it returns false x = "hey there" ~= "hello there" print(x) y = 150 ~= 150 print(y) > operator The > (greater than) operator will return true if the first value is greater than the second value. Otherwise it returns false x = 10 > 5 print(x) y = 10 > 15 print(y) y = 10 > 10 print(y) >= operator The >= (greater than or equals) operator will return true if the first value is greater than, or equal to, the second value. Otherwise it returns false x = 10 > 5 print(x) y = 10 > 15 print(y) y = 10 > 10 print(y) < operator The < (less than) operator will return true if the first value is less than the second value. Otherwise it returns false x = 10 < 5 print(x) y = 10 < 15 print(y) y = 10 < 10 print(y) <= operator The <= (less than or equals) operator will return true if the first value is less than, or equal to, the second value. Otherwise it returns false x = 10 < 5 print(x) y = 10 < 15 print(y) y = 10 < 10 print(y) .. operator The .. (string concatanation) operator allows you to add two strings together. x = "Hello" z = "World!" combined = x .. " " .. z print(combined) If statements An if statement allows your code to decide to do something, or not. Depending on a value. Often times if statements are used in combination with some of the above operators. An if statement is written as : if <expression> then <code> end x = 10 if x > 5 then print("X is higher than 5") end Any code between then and end will only be executed when the expression is true. You might also have noticed that the code between the then and end is moved over a bit to the right. This is called "indentation". Whenever we open a new scope (scopes will be discussed later in the tutorial) we move our code to the right. This is usually done by either a tab or several spaces . Many code editors will convert a tab to spaces. Else Within an if statement, you can also add an else block. The code in such a block will be executed when the code in the if block is not executed. x = 10 if x > 5 then print("X is higher than 5") else print("X is not higher than 5") end Elseif If you want to do multiple if statements, you can use an elseif: x = 15 if x > 10 then print("X is higher than 10") end if x > 5 then print("X is higher than 5") end x = 15 if x > 10 then print("X is higher than 10") elseif x > 5 then print("X is higher than 5") end The difference between the first example and the second is that if x is higher than 10 in the first example both lines "X is higher than 10" and "X is higher than 5" will be output. Whilst in the second example only "X is higher than 10" will be output. And if statement must always start with an if, can contain multiple elseifs, and may only have one else. name = "NanoBob" if name == "NanoBob" then print("Hello world!") elseif name == "Brophy" then print("Black 123") elseif name == "Tombaa" then print("Stupid") else print("I have no idea") end Functions Functions allow you to write less code, by reusing pieces of code. The syntax to create a function is function <name>(<parameters>) <code> end function foo() print("Hello world #1") print("Hello world #2") end In order to execute code in the function, you "call" the function. You do this by writing the function name followed by (). function foo() print("Hello world #1") print("Hello world #2") end foo() foo() foo() Functions also allow you to send a variable to the function, for it to do something with. This is what's called a function parameter. Function parameters are defined in the brackets () after the function name. function foo(x) print(x) end foo(10) foo("50") You may notice that this looks a lot like the print() we have been using. This is because print is a built-in Lua function. Return values A function not only can execute code, it can also give something back to where it was called. This is called a return value. In order to return something from a function you use the return keyword. function foo() return 10 end x = foo() print(x) print(foo()) Just like in an if statement, all code within a function is indented. Now let's combine everything we have learnt so far: function foo(x) if x > 10 then return "X is higher than 10" elseif x > 5 then return "X is higher than 5" else return "X is not higher than 5" end end y = foo(15) print(y) print(foo(10)) print(foo(0)) Scopes & locals We quickly encountered scopes before, and said we indent our code whenever we enter a new scope. But scopes allow you to do more than that. Most importantly, "local" variables. A local variable is only available in the scope it was defined in (or scopes that were created from within that scope) You can create a new scope using a do block (functions and if statements also have their own scope). do local x = 5 print(x) end print(x) do local x = 5 do local y = 10 print(x) print(y) end print(y) end For loops (For) loops are ways in scripting / programming to have code executed multiple times, without having to write the same thing multiple times. An example of such a loop: for i = 1, 10 do print(i) end The first part : i = 1, 10 defines a variable called i. Which start at 1. This will be incremented by 1, until it reaches 10. The code within the loop then can use this variable. You can also increment with a different number than 1 (including negative numbers) using this construct. for i = 20, 0, -2 do print(i) end This code sample will start with i at 20, and keep adding -2 (thus subtracting 2), until it reaches 0 Tables Tables are a datatype in Lua which allows for lists of things. Here's an example: x = { [1] = 100, [2] = 200, [3] = 300 } print(x[1]) print(x[2]) print(x[3]) Tables consist of key/value pairs. In the example above the key 1, has the value 100, 2 has the value 200, and 3 has the value 300. You can get the value in a table, by putting the key in between square brackets []. Like in print(x[1]). x = { 100, 200, 300 } print(x[1]) print(x[2]) print(x[3]) You can choose to not include the keys in a table. Doing so will automatically add numbers as keys, starting at 1. So the above example would be the exact same as the first example. Table keys and values can be of any data type, including other tables. This allows you to create (very) complex table structures. t = { [1] = { 100, 200, 300 }, ["x"] = 100, [true] = "something" } print(t["x"]) print(t[true]) print(t[1][1]) print(t[1][2]) print(t[1][3]) When using a string as the key in a table, you can leave out the square brackets and the quotes. This goes for both when defining the table, and for indexing it (getting a value from it). For example t = { x = 100, y = 200, z = 300 } print(t.x) print(t.y) print(t.z) A table's values can be modified / set after creating the table as well. t = {} t[1] = 10 t[2] = 20 t[3] = 30 t["x"] = "banana" t[true] = false t.x = "banana" When using tables you will often want to add something to the "end" of a table. This is most common when you are using tables with numeric keys. In order to do this you can use a # to get the amount of items currently in the table. t = { 10, 20, 30 } t[#t + 1] = 40 This will store the value 40 on the key 4 , because #t is 3. Iterators (pairs/ipairs) Iterators are a mechanism that allow you to make a loop, which goes over a set of values. Writing your own iterators won't be discussed in this tutorial. But there are two functions which are often used to create an iterator to iterate over a table. These are pairs and ipairs. t = { 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 } for key, value in ipairs(t) do print(key, value) end The difference between pairs and ipairs is the order in which the key/value pairs are iterated over, and which of the key/value pairs are iterated over. Where ipairs will always use numeric keys, starting at 1, and going up by 1 every time, until there is no entry in the table. This also means it won't iterate over anything key that is not numeric. t = { ["x"] = 5, [1] = 10, [2] = 20, [3] = 30, [5] = 50, } for key, value in ipairs(t) do print(key, value) end A pairs loop will iterate over any value in a table, but the order is not guaranteed. Meaning that between different runs of the script the order could be different. t = { ["x"] = 5, [1] = 10, [2] = 20, [3] = 30, [5] = 50, } for key, value in pairs(t) do print(key, value) end Callbacks Callbacks are when you pass a function as an argument to another function. To have the function you passed be called later on. This is used often within MTA. An example of a Lua function which uses a callback is table.sort. table.sort will sort a tables values, by default these values are sorted numerically. But you can use a callback to change this behaviour. values = { 5, 4, 3, 6, 8, 1, 2, 9, 7 } function sortFunction(a, b) return b > a end function reverseSortFunction(a, b) return a > b end table.sort(values, sortFunction) print("Sorted: ") for _, v in ipairs(values) do print(v) end table.sort(values, reverseSortFunction) print("\nReverse sorted: ") for _, v in ipairs(values) do print(v) end In the first call to table.sort (table.sort(values, sortFunction)) you can see the sortFunction function is passed as second argument to the function. Note that we don't write sortFunction() here (notice the brackets difference) because that would call the sortFunction function, and pass its return value to table.sort. table.sort will then call this function when it compares two different values, this function should return true or false depending on whether its second argument (b in this case) is larger than it's first argument (a), in the context of sorting. Anonymous functions It is also possible to use an "anonymous function" when passing a callback to a function. values = { 5, 4, 3, 6, 8, 1, 2, 9, 7 } table.sort(values, function(a, b) return b > a end) print("Sorted: ") for _, v in ipairs(values) do print(v) end table.sort(values, function(a, b) return a > b end) print("\nReverse sorted: ") for _, v in ipairs(values) do print(v) end MTA This part of the tutorial discusses MTA specific constructs. Code in this part of the tutorial won't run in the online Lua interpreter. You will need to set up a (local) server for this. Server & Resources By default when installing MTA:SA a server is installed as well. This server is located in the "server" directory of your MTA directory. This is usually at C:\Program Files (x86)\MTA San Andreas 1.5\server. This directory contains an MTA server.exe file, running this file will start a server. Scripts on a server are grouped by resources, a single resource can consist of multiple script files and other assets such as images, sounds, fonts, mods and more. Resources are placed in your mods\deathmatch\resources folder in your server folder. A resource is always in its own directory. A resource must always have a single meta.xml file. This file tells the server (among others) what script files to load. A typical meta.xml file looks like this: <meta> <script src="vehicleSystem.Lua" type="server"/> <script src="vehicleMods.Lua" type="client"/> </meta> You will need an entry for every .Lua file you want to have executed on the server. You can start a resource by typing start <resource name> in the server console (the window that opened when you started MTA Server.exe). The resource name is the name of the directory your meta.xml is in. (This may not have spaces). Starting a resource will start running the Lua scripts, if you've changed your scripts you will need to restart the resource for the changes to take effect. (restart <resource name>). Server vs client Lua code can be executed in one of two places. The server, or the client. Server sided scripts are executed on the actual machine that is running the MTA server.exe process. Client sided scripts are executed on the computer of every player that connects to your server. Server sided and client sided scripts have a distinct difference in responsibility and possibility. Some functions for example are only available on the client, whilst others are available only on the server (and many on both). Note: Some of these functions which are available both server sided and client sided are different on server and client MTA functions & wiki In plain Lua there's not much you can do to affect a game engine like MTA:SA. This is why MTA:SA offers a (large) list of functions available for you to use in your scripts which interact with the actual GTA world. You can find a list of all of these, what they do and how to use them on the MTA wiki. Server sided functions Client sided functions shared functions An example of such a function is createObject(). This function will create a physical object in the game. The wiki page contains information on how to use it (what arguments it expects, and in what order). And often shows an example of how to use it. createObject(1337, 0, 0, 3) Elements (userdata) At the start of this tutorial we quickly mentioned userdata data types. These are data types configurable by the implementation of Lua. In this case, MTA. MTA uses userdata to represent "elements". Many things in MTA are elements, like objects, markers, peds, players, user interfaces, vehicles, etc. On the MTA wiki you will notice many functions either return elements, or require an element as arguments. A list of different types of elements can be found on the MTA wiki. Elements also have a hierarchical structure to them. Elements can have a "parent", and multiple "children". This will result in a tree of elements, the element at the top of this tree (and thus the grandparent of all elements) is called the root element. Command handlers Often times in MTA you want certain things to happen when a player enters a command. This is done using command handlers, command handlers use a callback, which we previously discussed. The wiki contains a page for the addCommandHandler() function. For this example we will be using the server side version. function handler(player, command, argument) outputChatBox("You entered " .. command) if argument ~= nil then outputChatBox("You used the argument " .. argument, player) end end addCommandHandler("banana", handler) This example also uses the outputChatBox() function, this will output a piece of text to the chat.(in this case, only for the player who executed the command) The callback function passed to addCommandHandler will be called every time a player uses the /banana command ingame. Event handlers Besides having your script do things when a user executes a command you likely want the game to respond to many different types of things that happen in the game. Like players taking damage, coming close to something, etc. These things are called events. Whenever an event is triggered you can run a piece of Lua code. You do this using event handlers. Event handlers are created using the addEventHandler(). The first argument to the addEventHandler() function is the string name of the event. These can be found on the MTA wiki as well. Server sided events Client sided events An event is always triggered for a specific element, for example "onPlayerWasted" is triggered on the player that was wasted (killed). You can attach an event handler to a single element to only have your callback function be called when the event is triggered on that specific element. But you could also use the root element here and your function will be called for every element the event is triggered on. function handlePlayerDeath() outputChatBox("You died!!", source) end addEventHandler("onPlayerWasted", getRootElement(), handlePlayerDeath) The getRootElement() function used in this example returns the root element discussed earlier. You can also see source is used in this code snippet, we'll talk about that some more in the next section. predefined globals MTA has some predifined global variables for you to use in your script. A list of them can be found on the wiki. Here's a couple notable ones and what they're used for root The root element, same as the return value of getRootElement()) source The element an event handler was called on. An event's wiki page always describes what the event source will be for the event. localPlayer The player element for the player whose client the script is running on. (Thus only available client sided) client Will be discussed in the next section server <-> client communication As stated earlier in this tutorial scripts can run either on the server, or one of the connected clients. However often times you would want to trigger something on the server from a client, or the other way around. An example of this would be when the user clicks the login button on a GUI (Graphical user interface) the server should try to log that person in, and send him back whether or not this was successful. This can be done using events. MTA allows you to create and trigger your own events, and these events can be triggered from server to client (and the other way around). You can do this using the addEvent() function. Once an event has been added (and marked as remotely triggerable by passing true as second argument to addEvent()) you can call it from server/client. You do this using [triggerClientEvent()]https://wiki.multitheftauto.com/wiki/TriggerClientEvent() and triggerServerEvent() respectively. Server sided: function handlePlayerLogin(username, password) outputChatBox("You tried to log in with the username " .. username, client) end addEvent("LuaTutorial.Login", true) addEventHandler("LuaTutorial.Login", root, handlePlayerLogin) Client sided: function pretendLogin() triggerServerEvent("LuaTutorial.Login", localPlayer, "username", "password") end pretendLogin() This example will trigger the "LuaTutorial.Login" event from the client sided script. And passes the "username" and "password" arguments to the event. The server then handles this event in the handlePlayerLogin() function, which in our case just outputs something to the chatbox. In this example you can see the previously mentioned client global variable. This variable is set to the player element corresponding to the client the event was triggered from. (And is thus only usable when used in an event handler which has been triggered from a client). Now what? With this information you should be able to start scripting, and making things in MTA! If you didn't understand it all in one go, or you have any more questions there is no shame in that! You can find myself and many others willing to help you with your scripting questions in the #scripting channel on the MTA discord. Another good source for programming / scripting related questions is stack overflow.

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