orappa

I found that the GTA 3 cars didn't seem to grip the road as well as those in VC. I found that sometimes I'd skid from side to side, and the crapper cars tended to be fairly easy to overturn. Although, now I come to think about it, that could have had something to do with input lag. Or maybe I'm just crap at driving.

Yep, I agree. And even the non-n00bs don't want to make life too difficult. I really disliked the run game, alt+tab, start game method of playing GTA 3: MTA. And yeah, Gamespy support will provide yet another way of starting the game. I know some people prefer its user-friendliness to ASE's. And has the team considered setting up a public master?

Presumably you'd know about the child because when you're driving, you tend to look in the direction of travel. Therefore, you'd see the child and wouldn't need to hear him / her.

I don't know why everyone makes a fuss about not having pedestrians and traffic in MTA. I find it useful because my car tends to stay in one piece because AI-controlled morons don't pull out in front of me (although, admittedly, this wouldn't happen if I drove at the speed limit and stopped at traffic lights). Also, you tend to be able to get up to speed more with no cars. As for the pedestrians, they wouldn't really serve a purpose other than cannon fodder. It would be far better to use that extra bandwidth and processing power for extra player slots. Also, I reckon that 26 is enough for something like Quake 3 with a small, enclosed map, but with the sheer map scale of GTA 3 or VC, I'd say that 40 or even 64 would be better.

It's the way it rounds the numbers. 59% is easier to read than 58.99998%

I can't see it being a problem, as the engine can support multiple pedestrian skins.

Nah, I never disable error reporting. My theory is that if I keep reporting errors, after the 3 millionth one they might "look into it".

Oh, when it crashes on mine, I Alt + Tab back to the MTA client. I can then see the error message in the taskbar and can click on it. I click Ok on the box and VC exits and comes up with the Microsoft error reporting thingy, which I usually send anyway, even though it makes no difference. After that, I'm free to click Start Game again and it works perfectly.

Oh, they were talking about lag over a LAN. Anyway, what I particularly like about MTA is that it doesn't judder your screen painfully if you have a slow connection (because it's not server side), so it's still possible to play.

Yeah, I installed mine again the other day, played it for a bit just to relive the old memories... and bam! I was hooked again and played it for hours. I personally prefer the graphical style of GTA 3 over Vice City. I'm also the kind of person who can't understand why people find "square" cars attractive... But when it comes to gameplay, I think the tweaks that Rockstar made in VC really paid off.

What is the error message that is returned?

I heard that it's set in the '70s. Reason: There's a "'70's-style font" in the logo. But in all honesty, anyone's guess is good because no-one knows anything about it other than the name.

Sorry, no peds in MTA because of performance reasons, I gather.

What's left to discuss?

Perhaps this button would help:

Rockstar wouldn't do it because they don't have a crappy download network that everyone's forced to use (fortunately). However, I have heard that Atari are looking into creating something similar to Steam, so perhaps Take 2 will follow suit. There's no point in option 1 - that's so that people can say "Oh look! Option 2's better value", and therefore they'll pay more in order to get Option 2 (which'll probably be more expensive than equivalent games). I agree with Option 3 as a waste of money, btw. The people I feel sorry for are those who pre-ordered HL2. How do they know which version they're getting? My advice: NEVER pre-order games, especially those hyped into oblivion by marketing gurus.

You can't say "oh, we can't have this - people could cheat", otherwise nothing would ever be implemented. It's a fact of life that there's always some lamer out there hell-bent on disrupting all you've worked hard for.

I'm considering going to see this film due to the number of people going on about how good it is. What put me off initially was that the advertising was quite poor, and I had already made up my mind that the film was crap due to the this. But I suppose they spent the majority of the budget on the film, and not the marketing (unlike other films I could mention).

I don't like to ever mention GTA London Anyway, Massively Multiplayer games are ok (MTA could well be in the future), it's the "pay £40 for the game and then £9.99 a month thereafter to hunt rats" RPG part that I don't like.

The main problem with HL2 is that they've prolonged the release for so long. Valve keep showing off the "revolutionary" features of the Source engine, but all of those realistic physics and stuff were impressive 6 months ago, not now with the release of next gen games like Far Cry coming before Half-Life 2. And if Doom 3 and Vampire The Masquerade: Bloodlines (using the Source engine) come out before it, well, what's it got to show us? The fact that so many games have tried to copy the Half-Life formula means that the basic formula impresses no-one anymore. Anyway, back on topic... The fact that the GTA games are based on real life means that there is endless scope for improvement. I'm sure all of you can think of at least 50 things you'd like to see incorporated. I was a little disappointed by VC because it wasn't much of a step upwards (if you think of the massive differences between GTA 1, GTA 2 and GTA 3), and I hope that Rockstar can fully realise its potential.

Since none of the things you have listed under facts are actually concrete facts, they should probably all go under the rumours section (the fact that 50 Cent was asked doesn't mean he actually did it). Anyway, I've learned that companies are unwilling to release details too long before the game's release, to control hype and also to prevent competitors from copying them.

It will come out on PS2 first. It would be extremely stupid of Rockstar (and no excuses given the loophole in their contract ) not to cash in on these extra markets. People will be unwilling to buy a PS2 just to play one game with next-gen consoles on the horizon.

Yeah, I could easily access these forums directly, but I always go to them via the main site so that I can see the progress bar. Yeah, I know, I'm sad But at least by not specifying release dates, the team don't let us down by not keeping them like so many other companies. (And yes, I'm talking about you, Valve )

If you can't find any information, how do you know it's fantastic??

I don't think MS have set a specific release date (they're now saying "when it's done" to absolutely everything), but it is in "preview" currently, and you can download the technical preview if you so wish. http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodte ... eview.mspx