jhxp

Hello everyone! Winter is just around the corner, and so is the Holiday Season. Would it not be great if you could start them with a fresh "A Year in Recap" post to read, just like the usual? And surprise, surprise - we have you covered! We have prepared a brief summary of the past year with all the important stuff that happened in 2023 from an MTA fan's perspective. And there is more than just that, so be sure to read the entire post! Screenshots were courtesy of Nebla. 2023 in Recap There were a few important highlights for us this year. At the very beginning of the year, we had unbanned (almost) everyone who had ever received a global MTA ban. A risky move, you might have thought? As it turned out, we were actually quite pleased in how it fared in the end. Next, we had celebrated Multi Theft Auto's 20th Anniversary on 9th of February. Aside from the lengthy feature post with some media, many of our community members also shared their memories with MTA in the celebratory forum post. You all are also welcome to chip in and post your experiences there. Few days after that, I interviewed IJs - Multi Theft Auto's founder - about his experiences with the project. Feel free to check it out if you have not done so already, as it also featured screenshots from our other projects. One day in April, we had encountered minor disturbances with our perception, but all is fine now. Yllufepoh... Later on, we had opened a beta testing phase for our next major release. After the testing was over, we had released Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas 1.6 in June. This is still our current stable release, which works best on Windows 10 and Windows 11 operating systems. It is not just us who had their anniversaries - SAES, a long-time MTA clan/gang were also celebrating the 20th Anniversary of their community. We are happy to see such long-time communities that have been around for almost as long as MTA itself, and we will be always looking forward to give them the spotlight. This year had also seen some developments regarding the next game in the Grand Theft Auto series. Rockstar Games was celebrating the 25th anniversary of the creation of their studio, for which they published the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto VI in December. The game is planned to launch in 2025 on PlayStation and XBox platforms. The PC version was not announced at this time, but it is possible that it will come out some time after console releases as usual. We also had some developments of our own. We had improved the Discord integration with MTA:SA client - this was made available for testing in our nightly builds. And recently, we have started featuring your media on our social media outlets, as a part of our Community Spotlights program. Want to be featured too? See one of the announcements on our Discord. A bunch of interesting MTA:SA-related YouTube videos from this year Current player counts and version fragmentation statistics Type Amount of players Date / Time Recent peak number of concurrent unique players 32,611 players 2023.12.10 (at 18.43 GMT) Highest recorded number of concurrent unique players 52,098 players 2020.04.02 (at 18.00 GMT) Recent number of daily unique players 119,707 players 2023.12.03 (Sunday) Highest recorded number of daily unique players 185,818 players 2018.02.03 (Saturday) Recent number of monthly unique players 552,402 players November, 2023 Highest recorded number of monthly unique players 805,903 players January, 2018 The numbers are lower than in the last year, but there are still many MTA players out there. According to Steam Statistics, the number of players is more or less similar to games like PayDay 2, ARK: Survival Evolved or Garry's Mod. MTA:SA version or series Percentage of players using that version or series as of 23rd of December, 2023 1.6.0 96.5% 1.5.9 2.8% 1.5.8 0.1% 1.5.7 (and older) 0.5% 1.4.x + 1.3.x 0.1% Also as of 23rd of December, 2023: 76,250 members have joined our Discord server, we have got 13,826 followers on X/Twitter, 58k users follow our Facebook fanpage, and our Steam Community group has 43,115 members. Status update Not much to report at the moment. Projects like ours depend on the volunteer work and community contributions, so things can get slower at times. We are always looking for new staff members for the project, be it developers, moderators, content creators or managers. If you would like to contribute or test your skills, feel free to reach out to us on our Discord or via forum PMs. We have a bunch of things kept on our backlogs too, so we might consider re-visiting them in the upcoming year. --- We hope that you all will enjoy the Holiday Season and wish you all the best in 2024! -- MTA Team Credits for the content submissions: Dutchman101, Haxardous, Nebla, xLive.

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.

I remember my own first encounter with the mod. It was also back in 2003, although few months later in the summer. MTA:VC 0.2 was a hot thing back then and I had just learned about it from a gaming magazine. Sure enough, it picked up my interest, but I was only able to play it myself later, at an internet café. While being limited, it was also impressive - I have found the freedom of the gameplay fascinating. You could do whatever you wanted ingame, and so could other players. You could play along with others, or try mowing them all down with your guns. You could get in a car, drive around and watch the mayhem from afar, or challenge other players to see, who is the best driver. Got ran over by another player? Just respawn and hunt them down, or ask your friends to get ingame and get your revenge together. And it all had that cool GTA wackiness and style that I loved. My VCP recruitment fight with Ransom! January, 2004. I sticked around and kept playing. Few months later, I was spotted by Ransom, who recruited me to my first MTA clan - VCP (Vice City Police). It did not end there - I have had a chance to participate in the MTA 0.5 beta tests, then got invited to the newly-formed dedicated QA Team for MTA:SA, led by l2ebel. From there, I worked my way and got to co-lead the QA Team. I also became the MTA Moderator later on and held various roles in the project over the years. This experience has actually landed me a career in Software Testing, which is still my occupation. Yet, nearly 20 years later from back when I started, I am still here, preparing this article for you. I could go on and on, but this was just my story - each of you have an MTA story of your own. Multi Theft Auto is made of such stories, and of course made by the people who starred in them.

Dear Multi Theft Auto players and supporters! Today is the 20 Year Anniversary of Multi Theft Auto! On the February 9th 2003, a rudimentary GTA3 multiplayer prototype was released by our founder, IJsVogel. It did not take long for contributors to join the effort and turn it into a real multiplayer mod. The mod IJsVogel created was originally named “GTA3: Alternative Multiplayer”, but soon after it became “GTA3: Multi Theft Auto”. The Multi Theft Auto (MTA) name became the identity of all following projects. As new GTA games were released, new projects were created for GTA3, GTAVC, GTASA and GTAIV. Respectively, the main project names are: GTA3:MTA, MTA:VC, MTA:SA, MTA:IV. The development during GTA3 showed what the team was capable of with enough learning and reverse engineering. At this time, game modes were made for deathmatch and vehicle stunts. These game modes were hard-coded into the mod and could not be altered. It was not perfect, but it was an amazing accomplish for the time. Not only was it the first multiplayer for GTA, but it was an unprecedented undertaking. An early version of GTA3:MTA 0.2 (client and server). Some time in the first half of 2003. The working experience on GTA3 laid the framework for the second project, MTA:VC. It did not take long after GTA: Vice City for the 1st version of MTA:VC to release. The MTA Team succeeded in creating the basic multiplayer functionality much quicker through past-experience. At this point, MTA was well-known and there were mentions on gaming websites, magazines and even a TV interview on the gaming channel G4TV. Even Rockstar Games developers, the creators of GTA, contacted the MTA Team from time to time. The MTA:VC mod still offered a hard-coded deathmatch and vehicle stunting game mode that could not be altered. However, it had better synchronization and supported many new features. When GTA:SA came out, the contributors to the project were much more seasoned and mature. The 3rd project, MTA:SA, was much more ambitious. Although the first release was restricted to racing in vehicles, it was a proof of concept for a vastly superior framework that empowered users to make their own content. An editor was produced to allow in-game editing for the first time. When the full-featured product began development, a constantly evolving Lua-based scripting system accompanied it. This allowed the user to manipulate game code and modify various settings, elements and added features to create unique servers and game modes. Some added features include: voice chat, custom GUIs, web browser components. The MTA Team had the foresight to release this modification to the public as Open-Source code to attract future developers and embraced many new tools of game development that have become commonplace today such as installers, bug reporting, nightly builds, wiki documentation, anti-cheat, and Steam version support to name a few. MTA:SA 1.1 public tests. August, 2011. The release of GTA:IV did result in the beginning stages of MTA:IV, but once Rockstar released their official multiplayer, many of MTA’s most seasoned developers and contributors were ready to move on with their professional lives. Providing the same level of quality to GTA:IV would have been an extreme undertaking. It was decided that the best course of action would be to discontinue further projects and continue making MTA:SA better. The MTA:SA project still receives Open-Source contributions and still retains a consistent player base that is large enough to make developers of new games jealous! Thank You We would like to thank everyone who helped and participated over the years: developers, community/clan leaders, moderators, patch contributors, helpers, donators, testers, translators, scripters, mappers, server hosts/owners, streamers, players and fans. There were hundreds of thousands of such people over the years and they all had their place here. Many people have come and gone. Some are still very young and some are quite old now! Some of us have even developed life careers from our experiences working on this modification. We had the honor of befriending a lot of wonderful people in various stages of the project and many were just as enthusiastic about MTA as we were. Multi Theft Auto would not be here right now, had it not been for their hard work, interest and dedication. No seats? No problem. Screenshot from MTA:SA 1.0.5, taken by Zango. August, 2011. The social aspect has always been strong in MTA. No one knows what the future will bring, but there are things that will remain regardless of anything - and that is the time you all have spent here and your memories. Feel free to share your MTA stories in the comments! Feel free to say hi to us in Discord as well! Thank you all past and present MTA staff members, players and fans for sticking with us! Happy Birthday, Multi Theft Auto! Onwards to the next 20 years or more! -MTA Team

Hello everyone! The holiday season is well under way, so there is one thing left to do before we say goodbye to the year - and that is to check out our "A Year in Recap" post! Like the last time, we have prepared a brief summary of the year for you. We have gathered recollections of some of the most important news and events that happened in 2022 from an MTA fan's perspective. We have also included a couple more things that might be interesting to you, so be sure to read the full post! 2022 in Recap This was a more quiet year for us, but otherwise a lot has happened in the GTA community: In early February, Rockstar Games have confirmed on their Newswire, that the next game in the GTA series is in development, although without disclosing any other details. The last game in the series - Grand Theft Auto V - was first released in 2013, so it has been quite a wait since then. In April, we have published first server builds for the ARM architecture. Botder has worked hard on this feature, which allows you to run the MTA:SA server on your Raspberry Pi-s or other similar devices without too much hassle. These builds come in many flavours (ARMv7 arm32 & ARMv8 arm64; Windows & Linux) and should work just fine. Your mileage may vary though, as they are still considered to be experimental. If you want to give them a shot, you can find them on the nightly page or the Linux page. Be sure to report any problems you run into - either on our GitHub or Discord. Staying on the server topic, we have released a small security update for the MTA:SA server in May. This update fixed a vulnerability, that could be exploited to crash the server process. Also in May, a sad news has come, as Ray Liotta, the actor who voiced Tommy Vercetti (the iconic protagonist of GTA: Vice City, who is also present on the MTA:SA's logo and icon) has passed away. He has also starred in several movies, such as an Oscar-winner and all-time classic "Goodfellas", which served as one of the inspirations for Vice City and other GTA titles. Rest in peace, Ray. In, what some have described as the biggest leak in the history of gaming, a bunch of never seen before footage from the next GTA game have been leaked online in September. The videos have confirmed some of the speculations that fans and game journalists had in regards of the game - eg. its possible setting; but also shown some new details - eg. a pair of new protagonists or possible features. Thourough the year, we have been also working on improving our infrastructure and Discord server with various tweaks here and there. While you may not notice these changes at first, they help us provide you the best MTA experience. A bunch of interesting MTA:SA-related YouTube videos from this year Current player counts and version fragmentation statistics Type Amount of players Date / Time Recent peak number of concurrent unique players 34,295 players 2022.12.23 (at 18.43 GMT) Highest recorded number of concurrent unique players 52,098 players 2020.04.02 (at 18.00 GMT) Recent number of daily unique players 135,876 players 2022.12.18 (Sunday) Highest recorded number of daily unique players 185,818 players 2018.02.03 (Saturday) Recent number of monthly unique players 584,532 players November, 2022 Highest recorded number of monthly unique players 805,903 players January, 2018 MTA:SA version or series Percentage of players using that version or series as of 24th of December, 2022 1.5.9 99.1% 1.5.8 0.2% 1.5.7 0.4% 1.5.6 (and older) 0.2% 1.4.x + 1.3.x 0.1% The numbers are slightly smaller than in the last year, but we are still good on that front. As of 25th of December, 2022: 58,440 members have joined our Discord server - went up from the ~40.000 in the last year we have got 13,748 followers on Twitter and 59k followers on Facebook and our Steam Community group has 29,345 members Status update And here is the part that we omitted last year, but we actually have things to say this time! A while has passed since the last MTA:SA release. Patrik & other developers did some work towards the next one, but it still needs some fine-tuning. We are also still looking for the best way to approach it, as we would like this release to be the first one in the 1.6 series and we expect some compatibility-breaking changes to be included in it. We will let you know once we have it sorted. Continuing on the development side of things, one of our community members, Merlin, has been working on cleaning up and refactoring some of the Project's source code. Thank you - clean code is important, so we really appreciate your contributions on that front! Community-wise, it has been a good time for our players. Our AC team led by Dutchman101 have been cracking down on paid cheats. Thanks to their efforts in the recent months, the cheating problem should be now less noticeable than ever. Last, but not least - we will be celebrating Multi Theft Auto's 20th Anniversary next year. Yes, you have read it correctly - we have been running the MTA project for two decades now. Many staff and community members have come and gone since then. Some of them still follow the Project, some no longer do. We have made so many releases during that time, and there are also so many memories and stories that go along with them. Stay tuned for more details about the Anniversary! And for just 20 Claudecoins, you can get yourself an early access to the... nah, we are still keeping it free Happy holidays and we wish you all the best in 2023! -- MTA Team Credits for the content submissions: Dutchman101, Nebla, patrik, -ffs-PLASMA, srslyyyy.

Hi people! Same drill as usual. The year is nearing to an end, so here is a freshly baked summary post for you. Read on and learn about all the interesting things that happened in the MTA community in 2021. 2021 in Recap Early this year, we have restructured our Moderation team a bit by adding the Specializations divisions (such as: Management, Tech and Infrastructure, Social Media). The aim of this was to refine extra talents of our Moderators and put them to a better use. As one of the results of that, the Management division has introduced a new way for more-involved-but-not-quite-there-yet MTA supporters to contribute - a Helper role. Curious about what it is? Check out the post by Tut. At the end of July, our developer and designer, Patrik, has revived the live streaming idea a bit and played some MTA:SA on our Twitch channel. He focused on visiting various servers ran by the community. In case you have missed it, you can check the stream capture here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2KcspT0F0A There were a few recurring requests that you guys have kept asking us about over the years. One of them was to release the mobile version of MTA:SA - apologies, but unfortunately that is still not going to happen ?. But another request was to make it possible to buy some official MTA merchandise. And guess what - we have listened to you on that one! Patrik has prepared some neat designs and we have put them for sale - although please keep in mind, we do not make any profits of these sales. Want to see the goods? Check them out here: https://multitheftauto.myspreadshop.net/all Not that long ago, in early October, we have released Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas 1.5.9. This release was focused on wrapping up the contributions made to the mod so far and put them in a single package for your convenience. Same month, Rockstar Games has announced an upcoming release of "Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy - The Definitive Edition", a remake/remaster of the original 3D era GTA trilogy (GTA3, GTA:VC and GTA:SA). Not only was it a sudden announcement, but also the release was coming really soon. The remastered games were released, but received mixed reactions from gamers and reviewers. Technical-wise, they are a feat, as games were remade in a different and well-established game engine and are available for multiple platforms. Sadly, the same could not be said about the actual quality of these games as it was inconsistent. Hopefully, the improvements planned by Rockstar will bring them up to the quality they deserve. It is important to note that MTA mods (GTA3:MTA, MTA:VC and MTA:SA) do not work with the remastered games from the GTA: The Trilogy. We currently have no plans of making them compatible, as it would require an insane amount of effort, considering the technical differences between the original games and their remastered equivalents. Lately, our Development and Infrastructure divisions have been working on improving the reliability and performance of our web services. You may have noticed that for instance, our forums have been running faster - it is all a result of CiBeR's hard work. One of our distinguished community members, Haxardous, has prepared a list of interesting MTA:SA servers. If you are looking for a new MTA:SA server to play on, then you might want to check out one of his recommendations. You can find them here. ModDB has recently featured all of the mods that won the "Mod of the Year" award in the last 20 years. We had won this award ten years ago, so naturally we are on the list too! A bunch of interesting MTA:SA-related YouTube videos from this year [DM] NikotiN ft. Lost ft. Driver ft. SKooD - Enormous Cataclysm - video by CHRS / map by Nikotin, Lost, Driver and SKooD MTA-SA: Welcome to San Andreas Trailer (WTSA) #1 by ヌルぽ / Nurupo #MTA:SA: ~ TACTICS / STEALTH by notzz & the_bestteam Grafuroam drift handling update by Unity SHORT ONE | NON-STOP MTA DAYZ by BuczU YouTube in Car - Interactive Dashboard (MTA:SA) by Chemical Creations MTASA Dangerous Experiments by Toliak Purple Current player counts and version fragmentation statistics Type Amount of players Date / Time Recent peak number of concurrent unique players 37 487 players 2021.12.19 (at 19.13 GMT) Highest recorded number of concurrent unique players 52 098 players 2020.04.02 (at 18.00 GMT) Recent number of daily unique players 148 783 players 2021.12.19 (Sunday) Highest recorded number of daily unique players 185 818 players 2018.02.03 (Saturday) Recent number of monthly unique players 626 613 players November, 2021 Highest recorded number of monthly unique players 805 903 players January, 2018 MTA:SA version or series Percentage of players using that version or series as of 25th of December, 2021 1.6.0 (alpha; custom) 0.2% 1.5.9 97.6% 1.5.8 1.9% 1.5.7 (and older) 0.2% 1.4.x + 1.3.x 0.1% Still looking good. On a side note, our community on Discord keeps growing. We went from 20k users last year to nearly 40k this year. Our presence on social media (Twitter, YouTube, Twitch, Facebook and Reddit) is improving too - thanks to work done by Patrik and the Social Media division. --- Enjoy the holidays and hope to see you back in the next year! -- MTA Team

Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas 1.5.9 is released! Happy autumn! We've been working hard and today we're proud to announce the release of MTA:SA 1.5.9. You will receive an automatic update soon, but if you don't have MTA installed, you can get it from the home page. Statistics This is the 26th 1.x.x release 355 days 49 new functions 16 new events 0 deprecations 77+ bug fixes and changes 334 commits (see comparison) 189 new open GitHub issues (see list) 81 resolved GitHub issues (see list) 135 closed GitHub issues (see list) 71 new open GitHub pull requests (see list) 207 merged GitHub pull requests (see list) 53 closed GitHub pull requests (see list) 38 contributors of which 11 are new (see list) 94+ total contributors (see list) 13 vendor updates Download This release is (mostly) backwards compatible with the older 1.5.x releases (1.5.8, 1.5.7, all the way to 1.5). If you're a server owner, please take note of the Changes in 1.5.9 wiki page, more specifically the Backwards Incompatible Changes. You may need to update your scripts for 1.5.9. Servers: binaries are available. Don't forget to update your default resources. WANT TO DOWNLOAD THE MOD? CLICK HERE (Win7/Win8/Win10) Twitch We hosted a community livestream event at the end of July which was very nice! We hung out and played MTA with you on various servers. You can watch a recording of the livestream on our YouTube channel at https://youtu.be/n2KcspT0F0A. We wish to do more of these livestreams soon! Merch We launched a 100% non-profit merch store on Spreadshirt earlier this year! If you feel like getting some of that official MTA swag, check out the merch store here: https://multitheftauto.myspreadshop.net/all and wear that MTA gang drip at school or work. Check out https://streamlabs.com/mtaqa/merch for merch! AMX (SAMP) amx is a software package that allows the execution of unmodified San Andreas: Multiplayer 0.3.7 gamemodes, filterscripts and plugins on Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas 1.5.8 and higher servers. It is open source, and a prebuilt binary for Windows is available for testing purposes right now. The AMX team hopes that more people get involved with the development on GitHub as they need some help! Check out our GitHub repo for more information on how to use your SAMP scripts in MTA! 1.5.9 Highlights This release includes many additions, improvements, and fixes: You can now use the new onPlayerResourceStart server-side event to trigger when client is ready! Thanks to @Lpsd You can now detect element interior or dimension change through two new client and server-side events onElementInteriorChange and onElementDimensionChange – should reduce some of your code! Thanks to @Patrick and @Strix You can now edit element bone behavior through 7 new bone manipulation functions! Great for some dynamic animations. Get started at setElementBonePosition and setElementBoneRotation. Thanks to @Saml1er More vehicle customisation options! You can now edit vehicle dummy positions per vehicle. See setVehicleDummyPosition. Thanks to @botder More audio customisation with sound effect parameters! See setSoundEffectParameter. Thanks to @Strix and @Sarrum More client download transfer box customisation options! See for example onClientTransferBoxProgressChange. Thanks to @botder and @CrosRoad95 You can now allocate custom objects and vehicles through engineRequestModel. One of the most sought after features in a long time. Thanks to @TheNormalnij You can now use scalable vector graphics (SVG) in MTA! See svgCreate for more info. Thanks to @Lpsd You can now use peds and vehicles as the camera target. Thanks to @TheNormalnij A lot more features for scripters to build even more immersive experiences with! Many synchronization improvements! Many varying size fixes, quality of life improvements, updates and security enhancements! Many default resource fixes, refactors and upgrades, including webmap working once again! We have also improved the detection of world objects in map editor (editor_main resource), so you can select many more objects that you couldn't before - such as bushes, fences and many more! You can now also remove world objects inside interiors. This should help mappers a lot. If you are a scripter, you really should wanna dig in to these improvements! Show off your creations on our #showroom channel on our Discord server and have a chance at getting your work featured on our social media pages. Read the 1.5.9 release notes for a complete set of changes and more information about the improvements listed below. Watch or star our GitHub repository to keep on top of all the things we're working on. Important future script changes This will be the last 1.5 update and in the next version of MTA there will be numerous backwards incompatible changes and refactors that may affect old code. We will try to focus on making migration from 1.5.9 to the next version smooth for everyone. From 1.6 onwards we will be making at least the following changes: callRemote callbacks currently set the error code to nil when there is no error. In 1.6, to be consistent with fetchRemote, the error code reported will be 0. See GitHub #294. Since July 2016 if you provide an invalid string like "randomstring" when a function expects a number, the string will be treated as 0 and raise a script warning. In 1.6 this will be an error. You will still be able to provide strings containing numbers (e.g. "100" and "12.34"), this change only affects invalid strings. See GitHub #1043. When providing a width and height of (0, 0) to createBrowser or guiCreateBrowser you will encounter a script error instead of a warning. The warning was introduced Feb 2019. See GitHub #1069. Some functions expect only unsigned integers (positive numbers), and since Jan 2016 providing negative numbers would be a warning. This will now be an error. See GitHub #1070. Since Aug 2015, we replaced the custom mtalocal:// URL scheme with http://mta/resourceName/blah.html. This mtalocal:// URL scheme will now be removed. See GitHub #1071. This list is incomplete and we may introduce more changes later. What's next? Our eyes are now on the next version of MTA, which will break backwards compatibility in many ways as we work to refactor MTA's codebase. We are looking to host more community livestreams in the future, especially when we get further into the development of the next version of MTA. Stay tuned for more info most likely starting next year! We are also still working on our community 2.0 website with an internal goal of having phase 1 of development finished by August 2022. Latest news on this is that we've had major advancements on our stack which has been long overdue. We have also continued design on both backend and frontend. We will keep you updated should any news on this project surface. Multi Theft Auto depends on community input and contributions. To keep a project like MTA going we need LOTS of people. You can help in the following areas: Testing and bug reporting Whenever you encounter a bug or recognise a need for improvement, we can't fix it until you tell us your problem! We're continually working on new features and fixes for MTA, and this always needs testing. Join our Nightly release stream and make sure you keep in touch with on Discord and report issues on GitHub. Programming If you know C++ you may be interested in helping improve Multi Theft Auto's client. Working on open-source software may seem scary, but the best way is to try! Read GitHub's open source guide, and then find an itch to scratch, or scratch your own! Documentation Documentation is important, but also time consuming. If you enjoy writing and have some knowledge of English, or you would like to translate the English version to your native language, you’re very welcome to do so. Just head over to our wiki, create an account, and start editing! Support Do you like people? Can you give calm and thought-out responses to users needing help? Then you can spend some time providing support to those who need it. Many answers can be found on our wiki, so make sure to take some time to read it. Then, either join our chat or forums (linked below), or simply help us sort out issues and answer questions on the GitHub repository. Translation Want to translate MTA to your own language? Awesome! Visit us on Pootle. As soon as your translation is approved, it will be pushed to our repository for use in future releases. Donations Keeping the MTA downloads, master server and websites alive costs money! If you want to help us sustain our financial expenses, please donate! Show your creativity! We are actively looking for new creations on our #showroom channel on Discord, as well as #mtasa on Twitter for content we would like to repost on our social media pages and pin on our annual recap forum post. Follow us on our social media channels: Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, Reddit, LinkedIn. Thank you! Thank you to the following community members for their donations this year: @Arran, @Azukie, @Dmi7ry, @IIYAMA, Malone, Berni, @NoHear, lupinek, @Flatliner_, @Sarrum, Shine, @Trumavarium Thank you very much to the following community members for their work towards this release: @botder, @myonlake, @Pirulax, @TheNormalnij, @sbx320, @Dutchman101, @Strix, @qaisjp, @Zango, @Sarrum, @Lpsd, @Jusonex, @Woovie, @cleopatra, @Saml1er, @Patrick, @TEDERIs, @ccw, @fastman92, @Allerek, drop-club, @CrosRoad95, @iDannz, @JeViCo, @STR6, se16n, @FileEX, delinx, emre1702, @Disinterpreter, @LosFaul, @NanoBob, @pieT, PauloKim1246, ecastro98, @Luxy.c, Unde-R, TeteX1, @The_GTA, @leetIbrahim, @mertcan4555, @Lvrent, @Inder00, @Arran, @iDannz, @xLive, jlillis, ricksterhd123, @srslyyyy, @androksi, Yamsha75, @AfuSensi, Dark-Dragon, umithyo, brenodanyel, Mkl21, 1lyncon, Dante383, @turret001, Dezash, @Deihim007, @0xCiBeR and many others who contributed to our Wiki and helped out with issues. (If your name is missing or you want to change your entry above, please let us know on Discord!) You could be on this list! We're always on the lookout for new contributors. Contribute on GitHub, and chat with us on Discord. We have channels for scripting, general support (bugs), mod development, and many more! And one more thank you to every member of the MTA staff who helps support this forum and Discord. Without your efforts, this project would not be nearly as successful as it is now. Also a big thank you to the new MTA helpers team who support our users on this forum and Discord! Finally, please give a ? to our newest staff members @androksi, @Pirulax, @Sarrum and @xLive; newest contributors colistro123, @Pirulax and @TheNormalnij, as well as our newest addition to the MTA team @myonlake! Have a good autumn! — MTA Team

Hi. We hope that all of you are safe and healthy. The year of 2020 is finally coming to an end, so here is our traditional "A year in Recap" post for you. Below you can find the summary of what has happened during this year and a handful of other things that might be interesting to you. ?️ 2020 in Recap Surely, it is hard to mention this year without mentioning the COVID-19 pandemic. Many lives were lost and millions of people had to deal (and still cope) with the consequences of the disease. The pandemic had locked many of us down in our homes and forced us to change our lifestyles. These were the times when MTA:SA had seen the biggest number of players ever recorded. The achieved popularity growth still seems to be present even today, when you compare this year's numbers to the ones from a year before. April has marked the third anniversary of the opening of our Discord and a lot of things have changed since then. We have introduced more regional channels and made it easier to contact our team if you had an important matter to discuss. We have also made it easier for new users to check and accept our Discord Rules in their language. Our server has over 15.000 members nowadays (even after a little miss-click on the Purge users button during the year ?) and we are still working towards getting even more members. Some work has been done on reviving the AMX Compatibility Layer module. It can be used for running the existing PAWN gamemodes, filterscripts and plugins in MTA:SA. There is a public beta build for the Windows server if you would like to try it out. The module is open source - so you are more than welcome to contribute to it too. We have released Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas 1.5.8 in October. The changes in this release were mostly community contributions, improvements and bugfixes. It took us more time than usual to publish it, as nearly 407 days have passed since the last release. We hope that it was a polished enough build to be worthy of the wait. Aside of that, we have been experimenting with doing some MTA:SA related streaming on our Twitch channel for a while. Woovie has done an excellent job on these streams and covered a bunch of topics, such as the community servers and gamemodes reviews, Lua scripting and doing code reviews and QA. If you have not seen them, we have put some of them on our YouTube channel. Our Forums were overhauled this year. In addition to that, one of our community members has recently made a brief post about how the Forums have changed over the years. It is nice to see that there are people out there who are interested in the historical side of things too. ?️ A bunch of interesting MTA:SA-related YouTube videos from this year [DM] Disaster ft. BriaN - ABZU by Gerc & others Bullet physics in mta, progress by CrosRoad95 MASSACRE | NON-STOP MTA DAYZ by supraaa & others MTA Racing Tutorials || PART 3 || Useful ways for San Andreas racing. by Vilgefortz & others MTA: SAAW Star Wars - Kamino map pre-Alpha rare leaked footage by Einheit-101 MTA: Lumiverse: Atlas - Server - Dashboard (In-Depth Analysis) by lumiverse Rabbit hunt script for MTASA with extra map & skin mod by "Press start to begin" / True_Killuminati ! Epilepsy warning ! [DM] NeiT Vol.9 - Image Distortion by RRecords & others ? Current player counts and version fragmentation statistics Type Amount of players Date / Time Recent peak number of concurrent unique players 38 696 players 2020.12.19 (at 18.00 GMT) Highest recorded number of concurrent unique players 52 098 players 2020.04.02 (at 18.00 GMT) Recent number of daily unique players 153 033 players 2020.12.20 (Sunday) Highest recorded number of daily unique players 185 818 players 2018.02.03 (Saturday) Recent number of monthly unique players 647 317 players November, 2020 Highest recorded number of monthly unique players 805 903 players January, 2018 The numbers are slightly bigger than in the last year. Some of the records were not beaten, but were a really close call. For example, nearly 800 000 unique players had played this year in April! And our recent concurrent unique players peaks are bigger than our last year's records for that. How does this compare to modern games, you may ask? You can check it yourself by visiting the Steam Stats page. Powerhouses like GTA V, CS:GO, PUBG and Cyberpunk 2077 have much higher peak players numbers, but we are surely close to some of the other well-known games - for instance Civilization VI, Terraria, Euro Truck Simulator 2 or Garry's Mod. We are even surpassing the recent player counts of games, such as Left 4 Dead 2, Europa Universalis IV or Borderlands 3 (at least on Steam). MTA:SA version or series Percentage of players using that version or series as of 23rd of December, 2020 1.6.0 (alpha; custom) 0.1% 1.5.8 98% 1.5.7 1.7% 1.5.6 (and older) 0.1% 1.4.x + 1.3.x 0.1% The latest versions are the most popular ones so the version fragmentation is not much of a problem. ? Status updates In terms of the mod development, we have been mostly monitoring the situation after the recent release for now. We have also received some nice contributions from the community developers, like the work done by fastman92 to improve MTA:SA's compatibility with fastman92 limit adjuster. Patrik has been putting a lot of effort into designing the new Community site - we would love to see those designs replace the old site one day. Team-wise, we are in process of doing major inner changes in order to improve the transparency and the quality of our work. These changes will be hard to notice at first, as they are strictly related to our Team's organization and policies (they will especially affect the Moderators Team). After a while though, you might be able to see their effects for yourself as well. That's it for now. ? ? Happy Holidays and best wishes to all of you! Let's hope that 2021 will be better than 2020. ?️ ? -- MTA Team

Hi, you should try to contribute more on Discord and Forums first with the tools you already have at your disposal. By doing so you can show us what are you capable of.

Hello. 2019 is nearing to an end, so here is our traditional "A year in Recap" post for you. Below you can find the summary of what has happened this year - along with the current status of an entry (where applicable) and other things that might be interesting to you. ? 2019 in Recap Late January, we have refreshed our Forum Rules - we gave them a new look and rephrased a bunch of paragraphs to make them more clear and easier to follow. In May, we have decided to drop support for Windows XP and Vista in our future releases. These operating systems are no longer supported by Microsoft and only a handful of our players still use them. We have advised our players to upgrade their PCs to newer Windows versions. While Windows 7 support will be soon ended by Microsoft as well, we still intend to support it in MTA:SA for a while. In July, we have opened an User Guides section on our forums, which aims to provide our users with quality guides and tutorials for various MTA-related topics. We are still looking into improving this concept. On 31st of August, we have released Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas 1.5.7. This release was focused on performance improvements, minor scripting additions and bugfixes. It is still the current release and, as mentioned above, is the last main release for Windows XP and Vista. On the same day, we have asked you guys to help us re-design our community website. The work on the new community is currently on hold however. Later in September, Rockstar Games has released GTA: San Andreas for free on their launcher app (for a limited time). We have added support for it in MTA:SA shortly after. 26th of October marked the 15th anniversary of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas original release on PS2. While it was not the game we started with, it was the game that allowed us to make MTA the successful mod it is today. ? A bunch of interesting MTA:SA-related YouTube videos from this year MTA SA: SAPDFR Online Gameplay 171 (Flaming in the Cold) - server SAPDFR.org, video by Armor23OnPatrol [DM] NeiT ft. Gteatero ft. nX_ - Demons Skills 3 - video by GercszTV FBX replace per element feature - concept and video by CrosRoad95 [MTA SA] Let's play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - server ex-zone.ru, video by TEDERIs MTA:SA - Legend Mercy Tactics - video by TheGam3r23 MTA:SA Hydra Stunts 2019 [SW]Supa Innovation - video by SupaHotFire ? Current player counts and version fragmentation statistics Type Amount of players Date / Time Recent peak number of concurrent unique players 31808 players 2019.12.15 (at 17.30 GMT) Highest recorded number of concurrent unique players 34653 players 2018.02.03 (at 17.30 GMT) Recent number of daily unique players 132450 players 2019.12.21 (Saturday) Highest recorded number of daily unique players 185818 players 2018.02.03 (Saturday) Recent number of monthly unique players 531728 players November, 2019 Highest recorded number of monthly unique players 805903 players January, 2018 Player counts were lower than the ones from last year, but they're still large. Again, it's great to see that so many players are still interested in GTA:SA even though it's over 15 years old now! MTA:SA Version or series Percentage of players using that version or series as of 22nd of December, 2019 1.6.0 (old-alpha) 0.1% 1.5.7 97.80% 1.5.6 1.20% 1.5.5 (and older) 0.70% 1.4.x 0.1% 1.3.x 0.1% The latest stable version is the most popular one - and that's good. ? Status updates Not much to say at the moment. Things have slowed down a bit, but we are working towards the next release. That's it for now. Happy Holidays and best wishes to all of you in 2020! ?? -- MTA Team

Hi, the requirements for becoming a Moderator are listed in our Forum Rules in section H: Please contribute more to the forums first.

Updated.

Please use code tag <> and mark your code as Lua next time. Also make sure to post in the correct section.

Please use code tag <> and mark your code as Lua next time. Also make sure to post in the correct section.

Hi there. The Winter Holidays are here, so as usual we have got a new recap and status update post for you. Here is the summary of what has happened this year. ? 2018 in Recap We made efforts towards the new release through the first half of the year, so there was not much to talk about. There was an incompatibility issue with the 360 Total Security software which we advised you about and later in the year, there was a similar issue with McAfee. Late July, we have asked you about your thoughts about refreshing the community.multitheftauto.com portal. We have received some interesting feedback from you and we are still thinking about ways of implementing it, while considering our current resources. Also in July, we have migrated our bug tracking services to GitHub Issues, making it easier to track specific issues and link them to GitHub commits and pull requests. This has also allowed us to clean up our bug tracker - the old system had nearly 8000 tracked issues, some of which were 13 years old or so. On 7th of September, we have released Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas 1.5.6. This release added support for custom IFP animations among other things, like fixing the input and FPS lag reported by some of our users. Then a few days later, we have advised you to upgrade your MTA:SA servers to the latest version due to a server crash exploit that was discovered. There were some additional issues with this hotfix that were spotted later, but they have been all fixed within few days. If you have not yet upgraded your servers though, we still urge you to do so. ? A bunch of interesting MTA:SA-related YouTube videos from this year nX_ Vol.18 - CodeNX™ - 첫 장 - video by ElCrowMvs / map by nX [GTA:DM] Wonder - Interstellar - by Wonder MTA [MTA] Vice City - Map Preview #1 (JStreamer v3) - by Liberty City Roleplay Multi Theft Auto - Tactics - by LoG4nTG Multi Theft Auto - MTA CIT / GTA SA - San Andreas Police Department's 7th Anniversary (Dance Show) - video by PeteyFTW / server: CIT Multi Theft Auto San Andreas Fail + Funny moments #1 - by Mr. Green Gaming Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas - MTA DD - Map: Orgazm Cross - video by Game Master / map by Orgazm MTA:SA Fast And Furious Paradise Trailer ! - by SDRIFTER Abdlmounaim ? Current player counts and version fragmentation statistics Type Amount of players Date / Time Recent peak number of concurrent unique players 30625 players 2018.12.16 (at 16.30 GMT) Highest recorded number of concurrent unique players 34653 players 2018.02.03 (at 17.30 GMT) Recent number of daily unique players 150390 players 2018.12.01 (Saturday) Highest recorded number of daily unique players 185818 players 2018.02.03 (Saturday) Recent number of monthly unique players 605834 players November, 2018 Highest recorded number of monthly unique players 805903 players January, 2018 Player counts were just slightly lower than last year, but we have also had some nice peak values at the beginning of the year. Good to see that there is still an interest in old but great games. MTA:SA Version or series Percentage of players using that version or series as of 24th of December, 2018 1.6.0 (alpha) 0.05% 1.5.6 97.20% 1.5.5 2.00% 1.5.4 (and older) 0.40% 1.4.x 0.20% 1.3.x 0.15% Similar to last year, two of our most recent releases are used by over 99% of our player base. It means that there is little fragmentation between our releases and that players in general upgrade to the newest release once it is available. Also, there seems to be some interest in the newest alpha version as well - that is nice too. ? Status updates Community-wise, our Discord has expanded this year - currently we have got 10 language-specific sections available for you there, as well as the active as usual English ones. We have also opened a new forum section recently to keep appeals for global game bans in one place. Over the next few weeks we intend to refresh our forum rules to better suit the current forum needs. As for mod's development, we will continue working on the next release. We are thinking of integrating a new version of the client installer to reduce amount of issues encountered when installing MTA:SA (as well as to make it easier to investigate the remaining ones). We will also consider adding new features provided by our community members, such as editing collisions and adjusting surface properties by CrosRoad95. That's it for now. ?❄Happy Holidays and all the best to you in 2019! ? -- MTA Team