Silencer131

Hi all, First of all, nice work on MTA 0.4, developers. Nice to have some more cars with cop lights and sirenes. Also, it's nice that the aiming is a lot more accurate now. Just making clear: I didnt have VC or MTA 0.x installed anymore, so I had to do a clean and fresh Vice City 1.0 and then MTA 0.4 install. First I got the annoying exception crash bug on launch but I remembered how to fix it (look here: http://forum.mtavc.com/viewtopic.php?t=3842). Two errors I found so far: 1) random crashes while playing (same as it was in the old MTAs), hard to tell when it happens. 2) I can confirm what the initial poster described: the game froze on the first time you select a char (only choic was to hit reboot button). First time not meaning everytime you start up MTA but the first time you started up MTA 0.4 after you installed it. Also, it seems MTA 0.4 slows down (graphical lag, not bandwith lag) once in a while, haven't experienced that on MTA 0.3, not sure if that is a bug or normal due to new code. That results in bumping into something but besides that it's playable (AMD XP 2800+ with ATI Radeon 9600 Pro and a lot of system RAM) for me. Oh, by the way, is it intended that you got whore skins if you play Secret Service sometimes or is that a bug?

Wow, see the good side of losing: you dont get accused. I was able (for the first time) to kill a mexican and a robber with the cop shotgun. One of them called me a cheater! He said he shot at me so many times and I guess he couldnt believe that you can sometimes die in a multiplayer game (what's up with some people who cant ever accept to ever loose once?). The funny thing was that I hit VERY often this time and they hit me once or not at all. Seems the aiming and sync issue decides a lot about whether you're the winner or looser. edit: today I experienced the skin bug again (you choose for example the cop skin but you got the mexican skin on the other computers), I thought that was fixed already?

Which doesnt force you to just discuss that. This board thread should be a discussion about the general balancing of MTA, no matter in what way.

I guess I gotta go on trying then. I just tried it and I always lost against mexican and robber (seems most people pick these characters), guess I am out of luck. Any hints how to kill properly with the cop shotgun?

All right, I did as it was suggested here and read the mentioned board thread. By aiming as it was described I was able to kill a lot more often (though that robber still gives me a hard time with his gun) than ever before. Now I would rather think the weapon selection is slightely unbalanced, however, if you hardly hit anything it is rather a targeting issue in MTA. Slightly unbalanced because the cop's shotgun seems to miss most of the times when I used it (and if it hits, it doesnt do much damage, probably due to the spreaded bullets). Yes, I know, you said in reality cops are underpowered (or something similar you said) but if this game was about reality then there wouldnt be flamethrowers laying around in town. It is just about balancing. Why not change the cop at least? Maybe by taking away the armor and adding a more effective gun than the useless shotgun or so, there are many ways to improve it, I guess.

Exactly that is what I tried to create here: a good discussion about the balancing, getting the developers involved and that way simply asking them "is the weapon balance ok, think it over, isnt it unfair?" if the answer is "yeah everything is fine" (as we read here) then I'll be fine. I will still play the cop at all times, but this time with the feeling "according to the developers, MTA balancing is all right". Though I can't stand that everyone goes for mexican and everyone is driving to the airport to find any action within the city (usually followed by bored mexicans shooting themselves at the spawn point). I will avoid mass jumping though, that is just sooo lame IMO. In any case, thanks for thinking this over, developers, I really wanted to be sure about this. It would be interesting to go on with the discussion, of course. update: I read the posting you suggested (about how to hit people correctly). Maybe you're right and it's not the weapons causing the problem but rather the issue with the server/client sync and aiming story. I guess as a cop I should also avoid the shotgun to limit issues while playing.

Let's just hope a developer reads this.

Thanks, poll is up. What I don't understand is the answer you wanted me to add. If I understood you correctly then everyone could simply choose the best weapons of each class? Wouldnt everyone take the strongest of each weapons then? Or did you mean to limit the selection to one weapon of your choice?

No, I didnt delete it. How do I make a new one without creating a new thread? What choice did you want to add?

Where did the poll go, moderators? What do the devs say to the balancing issue? It is not just "the other guy is better" if I kill so many with the mexican and its... M60 (minigun, M60, whatever, you get the idea, dont you?).

Hi, Even with the new version coming up I somehow really lost fun playing MTA VC. The reason? I think MTA's game balancing is totally unbalanced. The Mexican has the minigun, a big pistol AND a chainsaw; each a strong weapon for every kind of distance while the cop only has some staff, pistol and a shotgun (which spreads its shot, while the minigun focuses mainly on one spot). Okay, he got a bullet proof but that is no real match for the weaponry of the Mexican. I guess that is why so many choose it. The few choosing the cop or some other character is just because we got attached to it but this doesnt solve the problem since sooner or later you really got enough of this unbalanced combat. Playing the mexican isnt fun either (did that many times) since the game gets too easy then (I was able to kill 4 out of 5 guys usually without dieing in between). Instead of upgrading the cop with more weapons the Mexican should be downgraded by either changing a few weapons or totally take them away. The minigun should not be chooseable by any character. Just like the flamethrower it should be hidden somewhere in town so everyone has theoretically the chance to find and use it but not start with it.

Not to forget those cheaters that suddenly activate some kind of afterburner on their car and they get out of sight within 2 seconds... I felt like chasing Knight Rider when going after the cheater in a police car.

Keep also in mind that the mexican is way too overpowered while the cop is quite underpowered (the little armor does not make it up to the weapon equipment the mexican starts with... you have hardly any chance to kill someone as cop)... I hope the mod will be more balanced in the next version, having a minigun and a chainsaw is way too much. The minigun should be hidden somewhere but not start with it when spawning.

bump (hope a dev reads it, maybe he can reply here a quick confirm?)

He is absolutely right!!! I just downloaded the MTA Installer file and I don't get CRCs anymore! The zip file must be somehow broken! I hope the developers read this!

I got the same problem (the CRC check failure). So I deleted the mta.ini as well as Vice City. Then I reinstalled the whole game and did not change ANY file (and no update either). I deleted the MTA directory, copied the new MTA files into it again, hit the start game button and got the same error message. CRC check seems to be wrong somehow because it fails even with a clean version. You should think about releasing a hotfix to disable CRC (or leave the choice to the user whether to use it or not) until you identified the problem.

Cops vs Robbers mode! This was once mentioned before but the idea wasn't really outlined. If the MTA team wanted a simple Cops vs Robbers mode they could do it as it was done in Midtown Madness: The robbers get a dot on the radar (the money bag) which they have to reach before the cops do (which usually happens because they start closer to it). Now if the police gets it first they have to take it to the police HQ (of course, the robbers can feel free to bump the cops off the street to get the bag back once the police car with the bag died). If the robbers get it, well, guess what, yeah the chase begins, police cars chase the robbers all over the place (if you have enough cop players ) and have to kill the car (or the robber if he exits the car) with the moneybag before the robbers can take the bag to the robber hideout. That would be the basic mode. You could make this a lot more interesting, of course. How about that robbers have to drive to a building first and do a robbery assault (the place is randomly picked by the computer)? Maybe similar to VC where you can get into the mall and if you got a gun equipped the alarm rings off (which adds quite a portion of excitement I think) and once that happens the cops get the robber on radar (as said, only once the alarm went off, not earlier). Then they really have to hurry to reach the cops in time. I can imagine that a lot of variations could still be added to this. edit: just thought of one more for example the police only gets a dot for the place the robbery took place at. Then, one (or more) cop player(s) enter a police helicopter(s), take off and fly there, then he follows the robbers and as long as he is in close range (that close that he can see the robber cars) the rest of the police gets a dot on the radars and they know where the robbers are. If the heli gets out of range or dies, the police only has the dot which would show the last known location of the robbers and have to do a manual search in the area until a new helicopter arrives. That would just be possible variation. At first, a basic Cop vs Robbers mode would be preferred, I think. Both modes require synchronized cop car lights, however, or you will have cops chasing you with cop car lights turned off (in 0.1 cop car lights are not synchronized, means if a player turns it on you don't see nor hear it on your PC).

That crap is called machine code and it's supposed to be that way. As one of the MTA guys said, you had to decode it first.

Well I doubt they will post stuff like that (I guess this belongs to the "secrets" of MTA) and I can understand that. I'm glad about the info that was already given since that is what I wanted to know. If you want to know that kind of stuff you just asked for then maybe you should consider joining the MTA taem.

Hey thanks a lot for all! You know, you maybe should really put your text you posted here into some form and put it into "about" on the main page, people are curious about stuff like that.

Hey thank you very much first of all, that is a lot of the information I wanted to hear. So in other words you cannot just change things but you can also add them, like the multiplayer mode, that is impressive. I can imagine to add stuff like new guns or missions but a complete multiplayer code... unimaginable (for me only of course ), really well done, guys! But then I don't understand this... you said the file was encoded (as probably every exe file and such are too)... it is possible to crack the code and get a readable file? And I always thought a compiler encoded a file in a way that you can never get it back into the source code (readable) language? At least that is what I learned somewhere in the past.

Yeah, I asked that a few times, too already but never really gota satisfying answer. It would be a really good idea if the MTA team put up a link on the main site which tells visitors how it was possible at all to create a multiplayer mod without any official support and without hardly any multiplayer code in the game. "About MTA" does not really say much at all unfortunately. Believe it or not, but people are interested in stuff like that.

Oh so there is no AI police in MTA? I didn't know, I somehow thought it was the same as GTA just with multiplayer. So the AI police is completely left out for now, right? Okay, then how about this: instead of letting the admin increas wanted level for players (senseless without AI police), he (or some chosen server moderators) should be able to get themselves an FBI car and drive to where the player is and arrest/bust him or so and then he gotta start all over with a penalty of x amount of min before he can continue playing. Maybe another nice way instead of directly kicking by admin?? In any way it could increase the game atmopshere somehow (admin takin part in the "world" as FBI or so)...? But before that is done (requires lots of programming I guess) the cops vs robbers game mode should get a higher priority than what I just suggested. Petebog's idae sounded good too - I guess we gotta come up with those ideas again when/if AI police is included.

Cool, sounds good so far, thanks for telling. Ideas for now? Hm giving the robbers good weapons or so and give the cops more possibilities (calling FBI or even allow 1/8 of cop side to be FBI or so). Anyways, so far it sounds really great! Oh yeah the planned feature to get several players into one car would especially rock for this game mode. Imagine driving a cop car with your buddies in the back seats! God, I would just love patroling the area with my cool cop car. Oh, and how about to give the admin some more cop abilities? It would be sure a funny feature to enable the admin to raise the wanted level for a player manually (a nice way to say he should stop his wrong behavior before kicking). Not for this game mode (wouldn't make much sense), I mean in general so that a not behaving player gets real busy by AI police and can't continue his behavior.

Hey just used the search engine and found this one - I had a similar idea about this. What do the developers say to this? Wouldn't this be a nice game mode for a future release? Some dev comments would be really nice.