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Interview with IJs - the founder of MTA


jhxp

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Special memory from WEB archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20031121153231/http://mtavc.com/history.php

 

Quote

9 February 2003

A teenager is looking for a trainer for his favourite game GTA3 on google. He comes across the GTA3 admin console. He also downloads the source code since this trainer was open-source. In here he finds the memory address for the previous car and learns how it's location is determent. He syncs the previous car with some net code to the car of someone else and the first GTA3 multiplayer game was created.

News spreads fast and to prove to the world this was not another hoax he releases his game called GTA3:AM (GTA3: Alternative Multiplayer). This was later renamed to GTA3:MTA 0.1.

News starts to spread and IJsVogel is searching for people who want to help him. Some web space here, some programmers there and the initial team was formed. Debugging started, a website was being build and more and more people got interested. So much interested that the initial forum the mod was located on had to reject the project due to the high traffic.

11 February 2003

A site is launched. People know have a place to get to know MTA. More and more people are coming and want to test this. Still many do not believe it is possible.

28 February 2003

GTA3:MTA 0.2 is released. Nothing new to game play but a lot of bug fixes and a new lay-out. It was no longer an extension to the Admin Console but a program on it self.

The team keeps on growing and this is needed since new features need to be build in. People want to walk around, shoot each other and hold big races. 0.3 is announced but progress goes slow. The release date could not be made.

07 March 2003

A second design for the site has been released. It was grey, it was good at that time, very functional and more organized than before.

Development on 0.3b continues. Ideas get reworked but the problems stay. Two more release dates have passed and the software was still not finished. The community was getting mad and were giving up hope. And then out of nothing came 0.3b, no date was given in advance. It had a big potential and a big problem : lag like hell.

Despite these problems, the team did not give up and continued work. 0.3.5 was announced with an improved net code.

In this period Rockstar North released GTA:VC and people started to ask for a mod for Vice. The problem is that however GTA3 and VC look similar, there were big differences which made it difficult to build a mod for VC.

18 June 2003

The YAMM team has decided to join the MTA team. Together they had the ability to do more work, and to do it faster. A decision was made to switch to Vice City and to leave Visual Basic behind and go to C++.

After the rewrite of the code, putting in a lot of new things and changing to Vice City, MTA:VC 0.1 was announced. While the team wanted to keep it a secret, the community was asking more and more for it. When GTA3t switched to Vice there was no way we could hide it anymore.

Just like with 0.3b there were a lot of problems and the community had to wait for a stable release. GTAt may have been the first to release for VC, it had a whole lot of problems and limitations.

A problem occurred with the site. The site was hacked and the webmaster was asked to make a more secure system. After repeated requests nothing happened and someone else on the team provided a new and more secure news system. The webmaster (not happy) requested to put his system back up and he would improve it. Since he had a chance before and he did not do it, the team decided not to go with his request.

After this a struggle began over the rights of the site whish was lost by our previous webmaster, but a new design was being build and after a couple of weeks completed.

01 August 2003

MTA:VC is released. And the community is happy. The game was stable and the net code problems from 0.3b were solved. The options for the game was limited and no player animations were available. But the mod became a success.

With the ever growing success of MTA more and more people came with request for all kinds of things. Not wanting to rush the team decided to keep the course they had been going so far. New members were still joining the team, and more and more features became available.

20 September 2003

MTA:VC 0.2 is released, with a whole bunch of new features. More and more people are joining the online experience and the press is starting to notice as well.

Work continues on future versions and the team decides to make a new version for GTA3. There is still a huge demand and the GTA3 community has not received a decent client so far.

10 October 2003

MTA is on TV. G4TV is the first show in the world to air footage of MTA and to do a telephone interview at the same time (it was pre-recorded). This shows MTA is getting mature and it is entering the big league.

26 October 2003

MTA introduces the first "gamemode". For the first time servers can be set up for a specific type of gameplay. It is not the long awaited "Capture The Whoopie" but just some decent stunts

What mat we expect for the future? Only time will tell. But we can say this: The mod is going to be available for GTA3 and VC, much requested GameSpy support will finally be added, game modes are still being worked on and there will be so much more. The day we hit the 1000 gamers marker will be a day of big celebration. And that day will come!

 

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Hey guys. Well i translated your interview with owner: https://efo-team.ru/modules.php?name=News&file=view&news_id=1621 . I see here very rare screenshots from early stages. Maybe MTA Team can upload on their sites all devs and beta-tests screenshots and videos? Rare artifacts in the from of the first videos are partially lost. I think you should look at keeping the story alive. B|

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