20 Years of the Multi Theft Auto Project

[UkKon]

I used to play mta:vc back in 2004. I typed in the website name out of curiosity and couldn’t believe it’s even more popular than before and people are still playing mta. This brings back good memories, who here remembers the old clans like UVA, VCP, U.K., to name a few. The stunt servers as well lol we used to make little videos and post them on our websites before YouTube came about. Good :Oing times man. 

[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.

 

Edited December 26, 2023 by slush

[OldPopsy]

* squints myopically at the screen *

* adjusts the spectacles *

* pokes the screen with his cane *

20 years?  Has it really been 20 years?  Holy crap... This thing is older than my son!  I don't even know who might recall me from those high rolling days of MTA, but back then, I was [VCA] Loendal...  I suppose I still am, in a way.  I've also been [RTB]RAW and eventually [NoV]Pops before dropping out of the scene.  Perhaps one of those might ring a bell?  No? Shotgun, Tec9 and a hockey mask? Heh, those were the days!

 

Happy Birthday to MTA; I haven't played for years at this point, but it's amazing to see this project is still around and kicking.  It says up there that there are currently 19,000 people playing.. Those are numbers even long running MMO's can't hold a candle to.  Congratulations, and a toast to your continued success!

 

I also offer this as both a proof of who I am, and also a glimpse into the world of MTA back in the beginning... I think this was MTA .3 or something like that..

 

Yes, the music may be crap to most ears, but it was 16 years ago, dammit! ;)