slush

* clears the dust off his old forum account * Happy birthday MTA! WOW, 20 years! Lots of memories here. I'm one of the few original contributors from the early days (~2003). I introduced novel techniques for injecting code into GTA (MTA:Blue) through my time experimenting with game hacking (yes, the kind where you see through walls, though as an educational exercise). I "studied" under some of the creators that made counterstrike OGC, namely a guy named PharLap, who was insanely smart. Also, some folks in the #winprog channel on EFNet. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine MTA would bring so much joy to so many. I was initially interested in MTA for selfish reasons: Not too long out of high school, I was drifting away from my friend who would play peer to peer GTA2 with me over dialup. When GTA3 came out, I was severely disappointed: No multiplayer support. I quickly realized keeping up a remote friendship by bonding over games wouldn't be possible. I searched around for "GTA multiplayer" on an early Google. Not much came back, except a couple early mods, one by our friend, IJs. Early MTA used to directly overwrite memory from an entirely outside process. Because of the way that worked, the outside process never had true knowledge of what the game was doing. Gameplay was choppy and crashed quite a bit. However, it was still mostly fun. Working with IJs, Cray, eAi, and others, we started development on a new foundation for the mod based on the premise of injecting code directly into GTA. That foundation was called MTA:Blue. It was actually modeled after some of the naming conventions and structures in Quake (the source was available by this point), except we had additions for hooking various subsystems. I'm sure I have some backup artifacts on old disks somewhere but I'm remote at the moment. I remember the fun problems. There were very hard problems for us to figure out how the game worked, and how internal memory structures worked with zero access to source code (I distinctly remember discussing this often with eAi). It's akin to feeling your way around a room when it's pitch black, using intuition and past knowledge to reason about what likely steps to take to make progress on our goals. Seeing players move around live in game--after contributions from folks like Cray who developed initial "net code" -- were super fun. We also had a prototype for in game voice communication around 2004 or so. Then came the editors, scripting, etc which added fuel to the fire and made MTA truly remarkable. Since MTA was basically GTA itself by this point, I remember needing a GUI. I prototyped CEGUI in, and others piled in to add additional elements. The in-game menu system was born. We added health bars, and all the fancy foundational stuff that made it feel less like a mod and more like just a solid game. Yes cray, I still remember your g4tv interview! Haha. It was cool. EDIT: Speaking of drama, I also remember when Rockstar added DRM to San Andreas that seemed to spell the end of the mod. I remember figuring out a bypass, and the subsequent demo we posted for the forum showing SA was ON. What an exhilarating experience. I remember the drama. A certain developer we had who ran off with our source and open sourced it as their own under a different name (early MTA was not open source). I remember seeing my name in the source files they produced and claimed as their own. Awkward! I'm still amazed that so many people play MTA. While I haven't been actively involved in ages (same as eAi--circa 2007), I actively watch progress and keep tabs. I also idle on discord, so say hi Lots of friends that I know in there. I would love to meet some folks in person at some point in my life over a beer. As others have said, MTA was really a bunch of dorks working remotely at their houses and communicating over IRC. As others have said, working on MTA has definitely impacted my life trajectory. I was hired into a (then) little known cybersecurity company named Rapid7 in 2005 (went public in 2015). I was CTO at another security company, and I currently run https://furl.ai with a bunch of super smart people.

He got a scooter or something and hasn't been seen since.

because people would still think that is an administrator talking to them.

We are aware of most (if not all) of the hacks out there right now. Most of them will be trivial to stop. The next release will incorporate more strict cheat countermeasures. Until then, you'll have to deal with the small number of cheaters there are, or play on a different server. -Derek

you can also do this using a few command line tools like gawk, etc. I have a package on http://center.mtasa.com which I uploaded that uses GNU AWK to modify a map's position data. You could easily change this to modify the respawn data and then run the tool recursively on the directory your maps are in. -Derek

It is a number of issues: 1) We don't want people donating and think we have some obligation to help. This WILL happen, and we don't have the time to put up with it. 2) We don't want arguments within the team. 3) Currently, if we need a piece of software, there are two sources: Get it from a sponsored source (MS Visual C++ 2005 is free for a year, by the way) like a school (I get my copy from my university for free), or get it from the retailer. If it's the second option, we all pitch in to donate money to one of the team members who makes the purchase. 4) We aren't exactly sure of any legal consequences that may exist regarding receiving capital as "donation money" when we are a group which creates software based on reverse engineering another piece of software, which is explicitly forbidden in Rockstar's EULA. 5) We don't like wasting time thinking about these consequences (much like what this whole response is doing) when we could be focusing on getting something out the door. -Derek

Why the hell would any of us want to propigate malware with our software? Like jon said, if you downloaded it from one of our official mirrors then it is NOT a virus. If you can't load single player games in GTA3, try deleting your .dat file in your "My Documents\Grand Theft Auto III" folder, and restart the game. Your sluggish computer issue may be from any number of problems. One of the most common is antivirus software suites. These take up over 50% of system resources in average cases. Systems with lower specs will definately notice a decrease in speed. From a technical perspective, it has to do with the use of certain API such as CreateRemoteThread and VirtualAlloc which makes some of the "stupid" antivirus applications such as the one you're using to give off a false alarm. However, it's pretty simple. If you think it's infected, don't use it. Easy as that, huh? I'm locking this thread now. There are plenty old threads which address this issue. Please use the search button at the top of the forum page. Thanks, -Derek

This is an issue/limitation with the GTA engine. It has issues with playing certain sounds (such as from the hunter's machine gun) while other entities are using that sound. -Derek

For now, if it still is a problem, you can disconnect from the server, press alt+tab to get to your desktop, press ctrl+alt+del to bring up the task manager, click on "gta-sa.exe" and click on "End Process". Hit "End Now" on the dialog if it appears. -Derek

Progress towards creating a deathmatch mod for blue is already underway. It will take some time, but shouldn't take too long. -Derek

We are currently investigating this issue.

What do you expect on dialup?

Voice chat will be added. If you don't want to hear other people you will have that option under your settings. -Derek

1) To run a server, go to the "MTA San Andreas" shortcut group in your start menu -> programs. Click on "MTA Server" 2) You can't put them on someone elses server. The server admin has to put them on the server. 3) You can put them on your own server (mods/race/maps directory) or upload them to another site and have a server admin buddy of yours put them on his. By the way, all this information is readily available in the manual. -Derek

Please note information in the original post I made was relevant in 2003, but not necessarily now. 0.4 was the preliminary version of what is now 1.0. ... And I'm 22 now, not 20. Huhu. -Derek

SCM functions have been deprecated by blue; all controlling is done using C++ now. Soon after the release of the race mod (hopefully) we'll release the SDK which will allow people to control the GTA engine to do things not even possible with the scm. -Derek

Correct. It is kind of redundant to keep posting in our blog about beta testing. We already have enough entries. -Derek

Unfortunately you're going to have to wait longer. In its current state, I would estimate it is nearing release. However, If anything major comes that causes delay, we'll release a video to show our current efforts. -Derek

We [MTA] are a group that creates modifications for the GTA3 series of games (GTA3/GTA:VC/GTA:SA). Blue is the name of our next generation, extraordinary new core which will be the platform new mods by us/others are created on. Think of it as a Software Development Kit (SDK). The inner workings of Blue are kept secret for a number of reasons. However, they involve many hooks. These hooks are placed in strategic areas of the game which allow us direct access to the GTA3 engine. It is a program that interfaces directly into the game. It does this by hooking certain elements in the Windows API and reasearched GTA procedure calls. Indeed, MTA was first nothing more than a trainer. The earlier versions just involved syncing values such as player positions, health, car positions, speed, etc. over a network. These days it does much, much more than that. MTA is attempting a major shift. We are soon going to move from a purely multiplayer mod group to a group which provides an SDK for others to create mods with (multiplayer or single player). We will provide a downloadable SDK (unfinished in it's current state) which people will be able to use to create their own modifications later. Hope this helps a little. -Derek

Make sure you're running the game in ENGLISH (you have to go in regular VC and do this from the menu). -Derek

Not to carry on this subject, but Netscape was/is free. There are more cons with releasing wide betas. I'm not doubting that releasing wide betas would let us find more bugs. What I'm saying is that by releasing unfinished, untested versions of our software we would in effect be digging our own grave. It has to do with social and software engineering aspects. Go ahead and read the article i paraphrased (linked in the original reply). Scroll down to #3. -Derek

Any type of hack will always not be permitted. Trainers and any other type of external memory access is already blocked. When we use the term mods, we refer to the creation of software through our SDK, as well as updating GTA content to match clients on both sides. This thread is misplaced and should have been created in the Blue general forum. 07/29 - Moved from "Other Mods" - Derek

There is a very simple reason for not releasing "bug fix" releases. This is the route Netscape actually took. Netscape was the first company to employ "wide-betas" (releasing pre-releases .01, .02, .03, etc., not unlike GTAT). The programmers at Netscape were basically just releasing untested software every time, and fixes were only made after a large enough amount of its users reported the same problem. This created a wide array of versions and subversions, pre-releases, and FINALs, wich resulted in mass confusion. But perhaps the biggest problem associated with releasing wide-betas is that the users get used to working with buggy software, and hence, the software as a whole is seen as buggy. Hope that finally puts to rest any questions you guys and gals have about the possibility of an MTA wide beta. Cited: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000067.html -Derek

Oh well.. maybe we should just release the test video then eai. -Derek

Multiplayer solitare, of course. Gee, and you say you're on the team -Derek