eAi

Strange, I have more "important" things to do than fiddle around on these forums.

We think that blue addons are much easier to use than the SCM equivalents (where they exist), mainly because we've got a very nice object orientated interface as well as a better naming system and more error checking than the SCM has. We also have no limits for size etc. eAi

Nickname length is somthing we haven't thought about and isn't exactly a major issue. We might increase it, we might decrease it. We'll see.

Jon, I have a feeling you're the only one who understands Blue Just found the "More" emoticons

MAC addresses are fairly easy to fake. eAi

Yep, quite easy to do.

Yes, you'll be able to use external server browsers if you wish, just as you can with any other multiplayer game. eAi

Nope, just as you can't load TFC and CounterStrike into half-life and get flags and bomb sites. eAi

Nope you can't.

In theory we could take modders to court and sue them for breaching an agreement, in practice, that isn't going to happen any time soon as we're poor. It does have quite a bit of clout with ISPs though. eAi

If people are discussing this they clearly _still_ don't understand addons. Just as Half-life doesn't have "buy areas" or "bomb sites" implemented into them, blue won't have gun shops or garages or jetpacks or anything beyond the basic synchronisation level, just as any other game thats moddable does. If you want a buy area in your mod, code one in an addon, if you want a garage somewhere, code it. We'll try to provide examples and documentation and I'm sure some members of the community will be able to help with problems. The idea isn't to provide each server with a unique game, its to provide developers a structured, stable and flexible system for creating exciting game-modes. If the server admin can then go and fiddle with settings built into the server, it just creates confusion. The addon developer will have as much control as possible over how their game is presented. eAi

True, we can't really go down that route, due to the engine. It may be possible, but it'd really restrict addon developers, as they'd have ot keep all the other possible mods in mind. eAi

I think that the issue here is like any "law". If a law is about to change, it doesn't mean that is has. MTA Blue may support modding, but 0.4.x doesn't. Concequently, anyone who mods 0.4.5 is breaking the EULA. There are no plans to blacklist modder as far as I know. The argument that "I mod just because I want to have fun on my own server" is all very well, until you set up a site releasing your "modded" files to anyone who wants to go and ruin other people's games. I'm not saying that we support any kind of modding in 0.4.x, just that there clearly is a difference between ruining other people's games (even if indirectly) and messing around on your own server... eAi

Cheaters do tend to say "we just want to use X mod, we only do it on our own servers!", so I would supose that blue would prevent this to an extent, though I expect some of them are lying about this, or will find they prefered the "thrill" of pissing people off. You're right about the last point too. We've always tried to make MTA so that it can still be played "when we've gone" or when we stop supporting it. This has been quite hard, but its somthing that is quite important I think... Surely the name registry system could be developed as an extension of the existing script systems that exist for registering names? When someone joins it either says "unregistered name" (and kicks them) or asks for a password (and gives them 10 seconds to enter it, or whatever). Passwords could be given out as suggested, by delaying. Time is money, and as we're not charging money, time will have to do. I supose the system could be over-ridden manually by some admins who could check if users were "valid" (email address perhaps?) and activate it straight away for them. As MTA is currently quite "nucleated" this probably wouldn't be too much of an issue if a few (good) servers implemented a system like this, as all the regular (and good) players would register and they'd get a good game there... Worth an experiment I reckon. eAi

In my experience about 90% of the people with illegal versions of windows xp (and theres a lot of them) have the same key, so that won't work... eAi

Different mods will want to attach people to vehicles in different ways. It would be a waste of our time trying aticipate how everyone wishes to do such things. As we've said before, we'll try to release some sample code that can be implemented and adapted as required. Putting it in as default is beyond what we aim to do with Blue, which is develop an extendable core for creating multiplayer games with GTA, not adding features to GTA. I don't think that we'll see - in the long run - a huge number of minor mods, as we have at the moment - one mod per server in effect, we'll probably end up how half-life has, with a couple of very popular mods. This is because creating a mod for blue, propperly will be much more time consuming than the basic logic checks you can do with MTAMA. I'm not saying you won't be able to quickly duplicate what MTAMA can do, but I'm saying that so much more will be possible. This means that the best mods will probably require a lot of time to be put into them and concequently, they'll be better products and more widely played. We'll also be trying to work out a system for getting mods to users, so they'll be much easy to get at than the current methods... eAi

Stop trying to pick arguments. You have no idea how blue works, so until we release it you can't tell us if what we've stated on the blue info page is incorrect or not. eAi

If anyone else wants to translate the blue page they're welcome to. I'll put them on the mtablue.info site and link to them (and give you credit for the translation). Please don't edit the images though eAi

The main.scm contains the missions for Vice City/GTA3. MTA doesn't have missions, but has lots of other (and generally invisible) stuff (such as creating players, vehicles, races (GTA3) etc.) that it does in the SCM. You can only use one SCM at a time, and we use mta.scm instead of main.scm to make MTA possible. eAi

Choose closer servers. Look for servers on the game-monitor page that are in your country. That should help. eAi

Everyone on the MultiTheftAuto team would like to wish the community a very Happy New Year. We believe that 2005 will be the year that brings MTA to the state everyone wants it to be in, with the release of Blue and San Andreas for PC. We hope everyone else is looking forward to these two events as much as us and will be with us to celebrate them when they happen. Happy New Year!

Probably - we haven't confirmed exactly how the gui will be integrated yet. Somthing we're working on at the moment. eAi

Well addons can create team systems easily, where you choose a team/skin etc. Much more logical than using name tags. eAi

The bus has technically only 4 seats (I think), even though it may appear to have more. This could obviously be faked though if need be. eAi

A Blue mod has almost no limits... Within reason of course. It can't solve the answer to life the universe and everything, but it can keep us amused until someone else does. eAi