GTASA: Liberty City

Revision as of 17:17, 6 April 2009 by gtw>JFFulcrum (Links, links)


GTASA: Liberty City is a modification for PC version of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, which was inspired by famous GTA: Liberty City modification for the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. The main task was the same: recreate original GTA III game in a modern engine, with slightly better graphics and new possibilities like motorbikes, planes and helicopters, swimming and climbing, clothing and so on.

History

First steps

The public development of modification started in August, 2005 by the GTAForums.com user xrk, mainly as simple 'map mod'. All that users received was the Liberty City from GTA III instead of default San Andreas landscape. Installation of modification was difficult and demanded use of Steve-m's Map Cleaner. The city yet did not have completeness, there were no LOD models, missing some of collision data, no paths for peds & traffic, but interest to modification was significant. With help of new developers NathanHenry (map conversion) and AdTec_224 (scenario conversion), modification began to develop quicker.

Beta 3

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 deficiency of tools, such as ped & traffic paths editor. In 2006 developers mostly worked internally, without major public updates.

Beta 4

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 update 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

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 informed about various crashes of modification. During first quarter of 2008 four updates were published, the developers were forced to use SA Limit Adjuster and to drop some of already converted ambient sounds. Besides corrections, the insignificant amount of changes has been brought, including working Subway, finally converted GTA III HUD and some of cars ported. The last Update 4 released at March 07, 2008. After it, no appreciable updates was issued.

Current state

The Liberty City ported with near 100% accuracy. You can drive-thru all three islands, save in Savehouses, use Bomb shops and Pay 'N' Spray garages, fight with original 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 system and remains as a stub underwater part. About third part 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 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) are missing. Present interiors have been taken from GTA San Andreas without changes. The modification can be installed only on 1.0 or 1.01 US or Euro PC versions of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. To install it you must download Beta 5 Version 3 pack, separate patch for it and Beta 5 Version 4 update pack, the last both can be installed only 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.

Future

Currently no one from original team seriously continues development of modification. 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 a missions script language changed, they must be recoded from zero, there are no possibilities for re-usage of original GTA III Radio stations because of a completely changed audio subsystem. Possibly, serious development of updating will not be any more, and the release of Grand Theft Auto IV with the Liberty City reappearance has considerably lowered interest for modification of such kind.

List of developers

All are users of GTAForums.com

  • xrk – mod creator and maintainer till Beta 4
  • NathanHenry – mod maintainer till Beta 5
  • GTAfanattic – current mod maintainer
  • AdTec_224 – first main.scm scripter
  • Monitor57 – converted most of GTA III cars but they have not been included into mod
  • dingleman – water, weather system, menus & hud work
  • bbobik – second main.scm scripter
  • Cursed – vehicles and textures work

External links