ACIDman

Do you select the 1.1 version in the MTA Client? And, did you have the graphics bugs while using 1.0? If not - reinstall the game and do not apply the 1.1 patch, live it as it is.

Well, his signature doesn't contain any banners unlike yours.

Sort of. But when you have a whole bunch of posts on one page, and all people have those banners with links, it looks like an advertisement board with rare posts in it. I often get confused when I try to figure out whether what I see is a signature or the actual post.. All in all, I'm against the banners. Links are soso, as long as they don't take more space than your post (it looks more than stange when the post consits of one line of text and there're 10 lines of links afterwards).

I don't like those huge banners, signitures which represent personal collections of links etc. Avatar is quite enough, and there's no need to put those wallpapers in signitures (I don't think those server stats are useful either).

Hehe. It's ok to be intoxicated . Ok, so I'd like to hear some comments. I decided to change the logo (bikes in particular) to some "action picture" from the game. I'm not currently at home, so I can't do it right now but I have an idea of what that picture should look like. + also I think it'd be wiser to use the 640x40 banner since we'll have affiliates and that doesn't look great with the vertical 40x600 banner.

Ok, here's the first version which is far from final, but is something I've done during the short time this evening. http://members.shaw.ca/acidman/temp/mta I've put a taxi because it's sort of a "regular" car, its model is quite detailed and I like the look of it . I'm thinking about putting the latest news to the left of the taxi, affiliates - below the menu on the left. Login form/personal stuff (when logged in) - on the right, and a 120x600 banner below it. Comments will be appreciated.

Ok, here's the first version which is far from final, but is something I've done during the short time this evening. http://members.shaw.ca/acidman/temp/mta Comments are appreciated. I've a taxi because it's sort of a "regular" car, its model is quite detailed and I like the look of it . I'm thinking about putting the latest news to the left of the taxi, affiliates - below the menu on the left. Login form/personal stuff (when logged in) - on the right, and a 120x600 banner below it. By the way, shall I open a seperate thread for template competition? Hmm.. Why not. I hope there're others who make templates as well

The situation with Half-Life is differen.t It's like with Diablo - they I guess didn't really know when it's going to come out . Rockstar, on the other hand, is a responsible company , and both GTA3 and Vice City came out on time. It's kind of hard to talk about what you don't know , but still.

What I didn't like in GTA3 was small number of cars (comparing to Vice City of course) and smaaall map. I hope they'll make the map of San Andreas even bigger than Vice City and add more cars (especially those "middle class" ones, not just like supercars; I really enjoy a REAL city, with all of those poor and slow cars. I'd be really great to have bicycles there, and twice as many or even more bikes than Vice City does).

I'll make a template. Just give me a couple of days (need to find some free time first).

Why names? Let's use file's checksum! And it won't be 10 gb in any case, a few megs at most (10 gbs! 10,000,000,000 bytes (rounded)). You could also make week updates, so there will be different files and server will upload only those it doesn't have. But still - it's not really worth it. Let those loosers use what they want but just ban them from public servers. The choice now is either to write a complicated trainer-check engine or just make sure there's an admin. What I'd do is when admin wants to leave he asks someone from the server he knows to be admin. That's it. It just should be someone he trusts. Admin can always change the password later.

Don't know about you, but I really liked that Vice City is in 80s. Liberty city became extremely boring for me, and haven't installed any of those modern car modes on my Vice City simply because they don't fit and they aren't as good as those that are already in the game. + I liked the music. All in all, I'd be fun to play in let's say 60s-70s. But I'm pretty sure San Andreas will take place in today's Sun Francisco, not in the past.

Not so fast . Sometimes I wonder what it'd be like to work in Rockstar or other game companies. Good reason - cool, GTA, and no one knows anything about it, its plot or how it will look like, and I know and even played the alpha! On the other hand - you already know all the plot, scripts, have textured the models, know probable bugs. It's like you know all the games' "internal organs", how it's built, and others will enjoy it from the beginning, believing the game, live it, when for you it's just a piece of code and bunch of models and textures. Nah.. I don't wanna work there, or at least work on GTA. ------- About Mafia - quite possible. But I respect Mafia's realism, since it is what I look for in the games - freedom, cars, shooting and realism.

I totally love GTA but.. Gee.. I can't believe you try to convince others that Mafia sucked. The graphics - was on the level. But what I liked most was: * REAL police system - when you killled the cop who saw you with the gun, you didn't have a tail simply because there's no way he could call or tell others. That is just like in real life - you kill a cop - no one will now, if no one is around; * Mafia introduced tires hitting and glass breaking, which GTA didn't have; * Mafia has spikes strips and other cop things * You can shoot out of the window, and that means you can aim (which isn't always handy though); * A lot more action elements than in both GTA's (you can crouch, roll etc.); * In general, Mafia is far more real than GTA. Grand Theft Auto itself is an arcade, just like most Need For Speed's, and Mafia has a really high level of realism which includes all of above + realistic cars (Gee, I was really amazed when I found out that you actually get to start a vehicle), damage system, real-acting pedestrians, the fact that you have to drive properly (without going on when the light is red) etc. etc. Let's face it. Mafia has really set up the level for Vice City, and even though I liked both games really much, I liked Mafia a bit more because of its GREAT realism, interesting plot, environment and TRAFFIC THAT DOESN'T DISAPPEAR. It's stupid to yell "SUCKS ASS" because it surely doesn't. And, for those who didn't know, Mafia too was published by Take Two Interactive. Like I said - I really liked both games (I remember waiting for GTA 3 and Vice City), and I still enjoy Vice City, thanks to guys from MTA crew. ------ About the new engine - hmm.. for Vice City they said that they "totally rebuilt the engine". Well, I would say so, really. They sure introduced bikes and coppers, added this glass and tires stuff, but that was it. It took them a long time to create GTA3's engine, and they will use it in San Andreas and the next one. And Vice City itself isn't GTA 4, and neither will San Andreas. What's going to happen next - no one knows. I truly hope they will continue making versions for PC. I'm almost sure they will, and it's stupid to make those petitions, they don't make a difference really. Games are developed for PC first, in most cases, and it's just a matter of converting it for concoles. Most likely, they just wanted fans to wait, and let PS players buy the game first. I'm almost sure Take Two has a contract with Sony, and 90% of PS players buy games (unlike us, PC users ), so it's more profitable for them to sell the game to those who will buy, make those who don't have PS buy one (I almost wanted to do so when Vice City came out in october; other GTA fans who don't have PS probably had the same thought, and there're A LOT of GTA fans out there), make PC users jealous, and then, when all the PS players aren't that "hungry" anymore, let the starving PC users buy the game with the same or even more success as did PS owners. Everyone wins and everyone is happy! It's like with movies - they ALREADY have it done, but they just wait for a good time to release. Have you seen a lot of great movies come out at the same time from let's say Warner Brothers? Of course not, that isn't wise at all. They want to get every penny from all the movies, without loosing the audience that will have a choice to go to either that or another movie.

It will work, but the main question is - IS IT WORTH IT? Cheaters will stay who they are, most likely. What would help is admin but there's not always one.

Like I said - often updated trainer-lists. It's just a matter of adding new filenames (all new trainers appear publically, so people WILL now about them). And once in a while servers will download new trainer lists automatically (let's say, once in 12 hours or in a day) thus preventing users from using cheats and trainers.

I hope it will have all what Mafia does (REAL police system for instance). But from what I've heard, San Andreas will still be based on GTA3 engine (which also means that MTA Crew won't have to change the Core much in order to make MTA:SA 0.1+ work). But the game AFTER San Andreas will have a totally new engine.

How about another way of anti-hacking - sort of trojan thing. Server owners will download often updated trainer-lists (or since most of the servers are always on, server apps will check and download new trainer lists automatically), and players' machines will send lists of application currently running on their computers once in, for instance, 5 minutes. Once server finds an app that matches with its trainer lists, it bans player/gives player a warning. I dont think it's going to take that much of the server CPU time or traffic. You could also make the server send fresh trainer list to the client's machine, and there MTA client will check for trainers loaded in client's memory.

I first thought too that money would be great, but after meeting with plenty of cheaters and lamers who don't even get out of their cars and just try to drive over you, or hide somewhere, earning money for being alive isn't such a good idea. I would just put like 1-3 more guns on the map, no more than that.

Same thing - with the MS mouse. The wheel moves and I too changed a few weapons a time. Now I got used to it a bit, but still - sometimes in a rush I switch to let's say bat instead of the shotgun.

Too much sarcasm I suppose. Isn't this a sort of suggestions topic? Or you people just want a bigger number in the post counter?

What's the point of syncronizing planes? ... Although it'dbe great to syncronize time. And also make it a bit slower maybe, for more realism. Well, I wasn't. Snow sure isn't quite useful but rain - sure!

Still, the installer will have to install a mod, replacing something in the game files. The current MTA 0.3.1 and all the previous ones don't change any files or gamecode. I don't think it'd be that hard to introduce snow since all of people will have this mod installed (installer of 0.4 will simply do its job, and everyone will have the snow mode). It also should make sort of a backup, so if next versions will have another mods in them, the original state of gamefiles can be restored.

Well, all of the mentioned above weren't 'included' in the game itself, although night and rain were. In order to have snow and everything else I think the installer of MTA will have to install modes for the game (=change game files).

Same here. VC runs just a bit slower (probably, 10 FPS slower maximum) on Win 2000 than on XP. And same with MTA.