GTASA: Liberty City: Difference between revisions

Beta 3 released at December 13, 2005. It contained great set of changes, including added water, [[Portland El]] train system, parked cars, weapons & pickups and first missions (although only [[Paramedic]] was reliable in that time). Hundreds of people have downloaded it, new developers have joined the project, including ''Monitor57'' who started GTA III cars conversion and ''dingleman'' who started creation of Hi-res textures pack and new weather & water effects. Several moderate updates quickly have followed. Although the main conception of total conversion for GTA III porting was defined, developers has faced to the first problems with shortage of time IRL and lack of tools, such as ped & traffic paths editor. In 2006 developers mostly worked internally, without major public updates.

When ''xrk'' in April, 2007 has partially left the project, ''NathanHenry'' became main modification maintainer. Beta 4 released at May 6, 2007. It included LOD models, new lighting system, usable [[Camera]] and [[Parachute]], some ped&traffic paths, interiors and [[Claude]] player model. It also came with the installer and did not require preliminary use of Map Cleaner. In August, 2007 new developer ''GTAfanattic'' have joined project team, with numerous fixes and conversions provided.  In December, 2007 large updates was released, with improved player model, GTA III-styled radar, 99% completed ped&traffic paths, fixed train system and first part of GTA III cars converted. Later ''GTAfanattic'' has replaced ''NathanHenry'' on post of modification maintainer.  

Beta 5 released at January 3, 2008. From changes are noted new weather system, return of seabed, GTA III car handling & colors, working save garages and [[Pay 'N' Spray]], gangs and gang vehicles, GTA III weapons and several missions, including all of [[Marty Chonks]] payphone missions. This time the project team encountered first large problems with game stability, about half of users have reported about various crashes with modification. During first quarter of 2008 four updates were issued, the developers were forced to use SA Limit Adjuster and drop some of already converted ambient sounds. Besides corrections, the insignificant amount of changes has been brought, including working [[Subway]], finally converted GTA III [[Heads-Up Display|HUD]] and some of cars ported. The last Update 4 released at March 07, 2008. After it, no appreciable updates was issued.

The [[Liberty City in GTA III Era|Liberty City]] ported with near 100% accuracy. You can drive on all three islands , save in [[Safehouses]], use [[8-Ball Autos|Bomb shops]] and [[Pay 'N' Spray]] garages, fight with original GTA III [[Gangs in GTA III|gangs]] patrolling the streets, move by [[Portland El]] and [[Subway]] train systems. Some little lacks still present, such as wrong traffic direction in some places, minor errors in collision data and remains as a stub underwater part. About half of original GTA III cars present in last version of modification. Missions scenario still in early stages, the only missions available are [[Marty Chonks]] payphone missions, [[Paramedic]] mission in [[Portland]] and the [[Gripped!]]. Some of [[Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas|GTA San Andreas]] features present, including planes and motorbikes, although there are no applications to use them (and planes have too limited flight level), other (like clothing and food) are missing. Present interiors have been taken from [[Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas|GTA San Andreas]] without changes. The modification can be installed only on US or Euro 1.0 [[PC]] versions of [[Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas]]. To install it you must download Beta 5 Version 3 pack (installer version), separate patch for it and Beta 5 Version 4 update pack, the last both can only be installed manually. As alternate, Beta 5 Combo Pack were released. Currently is hard to find a working download links for modification, search official GTAForums.com thread to find them.

No one from original team seriously continues development of modification at now. Some developers (''Monitor57'' and ''bbobik'') even switched for their own forks of mod. Original tasks now seems to be unreachable, for example, missions cannot be simply ported because of mission script language changes, they must be recoded from zero, there are no possibilities for re-use of original GTA III [[Radio Stations in GTA III|Radio stations]] because of a completely changed audio subsystem. Possibly, serious development of modification will not be any more, and the [[Grand Theft Auto IV]] release with reappearance of [[Liberty City in GTA IV|Liberty City]] has considerably lowered interest for modification of such kind.

*[http://www.gtasa–lc.cjb.net/ Official web-site] (now down)

*[http://libertycity.awardspace.com/index.php Official forum] (also down)