Steve's GTA Page

The Map Cleaner is released as a public beta now. It is used to automatically remove the game objects from the GTA San Andreas (PC) map, to make room for new maps.

A couple of screenshots of SanAn (PC) from my Map Viewer:

Map Viewer screenshot gallery

The day has finally come, GTA: San Andreas has been released for PC in the US today.

I didn’t have the opportunity to check any of the file formats yet, but I got one bad news already: The exe is encrypted and protected with Securom 7, that means there possibly won’t be new versions of Menu Editor, Limit Adjuster and similar tools for SA, since they change the exe file directly, what isn’t possible anymore. However, I think it’s still possible by memory editing at runtime, we’ll see…

Update: I’ve managed to decode the new .col file format (COL3). Besides the collision mesh it also contains a simplified shadow mesh, which the engine uses to calculate the realtime shadows. Here is a comparison, using the col model of the “Bravura”:

Yep, I’m still alive, and I promise I’ll update the site more often once SA PC is out. But if you are visiting GTA Forums regularly, you might know that I was working on a bunch of projects the past months, and here is a short overview of what awaits you in the future.

Collision File Editor II

Since GTA SA has a new collision file format, and I realized the old CollEditor is probably the worst piece of software ever, I started a new one completely from scratch. It will have tons of new features, and actually some real editing functions, along with proper mouse selecting.

Map Viewer

Probably the most interesting project: A map viewer that works with GTA3, VC (both PC) and SA (only PS2 yet). Unlike other viewers, such as MooMapper, it has proper vertex colors and alpha rendering, and utilizes object streaming and frustum culling.

…and more

Further projects include the CharAnimViewer, which is a viewer for character and cutscene animations. In addition to the features of the latest non-public alpha release, it supports SA’s new .ifp file format and got some nice playback features.

Also, I’m working on several mapping projects for Myriad Islands, as well as the website, which will get an automated project and slot management system.

And when SA PC is finally out, I’ll probably update many of my other tools, such as RW Analyze, TXD Builder, Menu Editor, Limit Adjuster and whatever is needed.

Another year over again?

This week the long-awaited GTA San Andreas finally hits the stores. Just in time, there is a SA compatible version of PS2 TXD Viewer, as well as several maps of the paths in San Andreas.

The PS2 TXD Viewer will possibly be updated again within the next weeks, if I find some incompatible files. Also, I’m planning on making a new TXD Viewer, which will be able to display all texture formats of GTA3/VC/SA files for both PS2 and PC.

Furthermore, due to the collision files having a new format, there will also be a new editor compatible with both versions, but that could still take a while.

The guys from the Game Research Lab at University of Tampere in Finland did research on user-created game content within the modding communities of Half-Life, The Sims and GTAIII/VC (of course).

The preliminary results of the GTA part of the very interesting study can be found in this thread. Comments and additions are welcome.

Link: MC2 @ Game Research Lab

Sorry for the long downtime! My hosting provider expanded and moved to another city, so the servers were offline. And then I forgot to update the PHP script, it still tried to connect the MySQL server with the old IP, so it always timed out. Now everything is working fine again.

On the occasion of today’s second anniversary of my GTA site there are are few updates.

On the one hand, there is a new version of RW Analyze, which amongst many improvements allows to convert texture dictionaries (.txd) to XBOX format, what makes VC modding on the XBOX easier. Furthermore due to this update I’ve also changed my character tutorial, the conversion part has become easier.

And on the other hand the CollScriptUtility for 3DSMax got a revision, and amongst other things it’s able to export several collision objects in one go now.

Meanwhile tons of screenshots and information about GTA: San Andreas have been released, catch the latest news on GTASanAn.com and GTAForums.com.

Hey, great news: My site just had it’s 200,000th visitor, what an impressive number!

And the other news is that first breath-taking details about GTA: San Andreas hit the web the last days, as well as some screenshots. Here are the first 3 official ones:

Check out some big news sites for more infos and screenshots, like gtagaming.com and gtareactor.de, as well as the official site.

Also, be prepared for some tool updates soon.