eAi

Try installing the "error reporter" from http://ereport.opencoding.net/MTA-ERT-13.zip . When the crash occurs, you should get a new message box that will tell you that you error has been submitted and give you an ID number. Post that ID number here and I'll look into whats causing it. eAi

Yes, we could add this option, I'll put it in now. There are issues with zooming out the map the other way (i.e. seeing a larger area), as the game only loads the map on demand (in pieces). Lag isn't affected by the ammount of map loaded, or not in any significant way. I supose it'd be possible for a mod to change the gta_vc.dat so that only certain sections are loaded. We will probably allow the world limits to be changed on-the-fly which should provide some interesting game modes.eAi

A "boob job" is cometic surgery. Blue is closer to a major operation.eAi

I think its clear from the comments here that now is not the time to be promoting MTA. Just "sit it out" and wait for Blue, which we hope will resolve as many issues as are resolveable (or at least give us the potential to resolve them in the future). We have some ideas in-team for the promotion of Blue and we'll talk about them nearer the release. eAi

Because we don't know the answer. eAi

As a team we believe and hope that blue will really invigorate the community and bring in lots of new players. We are of course aware than VC is an old game and SA is out for PS2, so perhaps we won't get as many players as we would if we were releasing for a newer game (that hasn't had a sequal released), but we'll see. I don't think VC becomes a tottally invalid game once people have Vice City, both have their merits (no, I've not played SA), and Vice City Multiplayer is different from San Andreas Single Player. eAi

I think if anyone wants to update the documentation on the website FAQ, getting started guides etc, they're more than welcome to. If done propperly, I'm sure we'd put them on. On the subject of progress, please don't take that bar too litterally! eAi

We expect that Blue will make MTA much more popular. We'd rather wait for the release of blue before people start spamming forums with links to us, otherwise people are going to get fed up! eAi

The aim of blue is to create a flexible and future-proof core system that can produce a multiplayer for GTA thats worth playing. I didn't say you couldn't free roam spectate in blue, I said that it probably won't be a core option, and it'll be somthing that can be coded into an addon easily. We may provide the code for this so it can just be copied in and used in any mod. eAi

We haven't decided when the SDK will be released, no. eAi

I've never seen an "illegal" bot in any other online game. Maybe I don't play enough (bad) games. We aren't adding free roam to spectators because we've got enough to do with blue without worrying about 0.4. We're adding a few minor features to 0.4, but thats about it. eAi

I think that point is arguable. With single player, the bigger the better is true, because theres structure to hold it all together. Theres missions "go to X and do Y" is more fun in a large and varied enviroment. With online play, in a way smaller is better. Look at FY maps in Counter-Strike, often they're pretty tiny and fast. I think thats probably why spawn wars occur in MTA, because people in MTA naturally gravitate towards where the most action is happening, and thats pretty reliably going to be a spawn point. GTA3:MTA works better in a way as the islands are smaller... they're still too big really, but it causes much more interested game-play (in my opinion, of course). Anyway, as I've said in other posts, blue will allow much more flexibility in limititations (of map size) and structure. eAi

I think (and hope) that once blue is released we'll see a lot of experiments with different game modes. Some will probably turn out to be fun, others will turn out to be rubbish. In the end, I doubt that plain DM will survive, as a certain ammount of structure (even if its just the option to buy weapons at the begining of a round) will probably be more popular. I've read lots of comments here and on other forums where people want more structure, and I think thats where Blue will excel. I agree that GTA isn't really an FPS and in a way, thats the beauty of it. I don't think that if Rockstar made an online version of GTA they'd go for Deathmatch over the entire map, for the reasons stated above. They might go for "kill all you can in 2 minutes" mode or somthing like that though. The only reason Deathmatch probably evolved in MTA is that we never got around to making other game modes and deathmatch is undeniably the easiest to produce for any game. Tried-and-tested game modes such as CTF will i'm sure be ported to MTA:blue in many forms (with vehicles, with lots of flags, just with boats etc) and I'm sure that CTF in GTA will work well with the right combinations of limits and structure (maybe just using a small corner of the map). All in all, as a team we're pretty excited to see whats created using blue... for the first time, the future of mta isn't all in our hands, its in the community's as well. eAi

We haven't decided this, but it'll either be that you "switch" between mods in-game (like the original Half-Life did) and then only see servers for that mod, or you'll just get the server list which will only show servers for the mods you've got installed, as JonChappell said. Neither method is confirmed, and it may (of course) change. eAi

I'm not sure what you're talking about j0keR... "Memory addresses" and netcode are not at all reliant on each other. We could write an amazing netcode with no "memory addresses", and find thousands of "memory addresses" with no netcode... The netcode in 0.4 is all our own work, and to be honest, thats pretty obvious from the way it plays. If we were to get netcode from a 3rd party, we'd get some decent netcode. eAi

Look on the main page and click MTA Servers on the navigation menu... eAi

That would be possible to do, by just testing how far away the player is and if they're less than a certain distance, removing their marker (and vice versa). eAi

I don't think so, no. The next release is essentially a maintenance release, not new features (appart from GTA3). eAi

There are no versions of MTA that are worth playing that work on windows 98. With the release of Blue, this may change, but that has yet to be decided. eAi

A lot of the UK is under 81. eAi

You're assuming that bot users will be able to have an effect on Blue... Freeroam will be somthing an addon developer could implement fairly easily. eAi

Windows 3.1 was 16 bit... It says that because its having issues with the part of windows that allows 16 bit programs to run. eAi

My autoexec.nt file (XP Pro) contains the following (useful) stuff: @echo off lh %SystemRoot%\system32\mscdexnt.exe lh %SystemRoot%\system32\redir lh %SystemRoot%\system32\dosx SET BLASTER=A220 I5 D1 P330 T3 eAi

We'll have a progress update when we're ready. No promises as to when, but whatever or whenever it is, it'll be good eAi

Maps are different.... GTA3 may fit in VC, and VC may fit in SA, but not vice-versa. eAi