[X-Seti]

Update Sun Apr 21th, 2013 - Please take note of the amendments

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Side note: This information page is short and to the point so if you have any suggestions, this is the place to state it.

Please use the correct threads to post your questions only. Please do not private message me (X-Seti) until you're given permission to do so. You are welcome to open up new threads with your questions.

We welcome any Renderware modding questions, we are also recruiting new members so please take the time to read up on the important pinned topics before you join the team.

Main Index
1. History of the Project.
2. Development.
3. Joining the Team.
4. Contributions and Credits
5. A New Future for GTASOL.
6. Ethical Hacking / Modding.

1. History of the Project.
GTA: State Of Liberty (SOL) is a mod that combines maps from all of the GTA Randerware era that was released on the PC - GTAIII, GTA VC and GTA SA, Ie - (Liberty City, Vice City, Los Santos, San Fierro, Las Venturas, as well as all rural areas of San Andreas)

2004/5: The Start:

We added to Midway Island, Mainland Liberty (to be Chicago), Miss Liberty (created by ODIE), bridges and tunnels linking the islands to each other. We are in the process of writing a new launcher in order to replace the gta-vc.exe.

GTA State of Liberty has always been about pushing the bounds of what the Vice City Engine can do but in time we hope to move to other game engines. My/ Our aim is to remodel most of the cities to improve overall game play and add the changes from the PS2 story editions.





http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/840/screenshot7ng.jpg
http://img840.imageshack.us/img840/1022/screenshot7ng.th.jpg
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/269/screenshot6uk.jpg
http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/3915/screenshot6uk.th.jpg



2. Development

2004: The Start.
I conceived the idea of combining the maps GTA Liberty City and GTA Vice City together on one single map. however this idea of combining maps was not new around the modding community as the GTAWO team had attempted this before me and on a smaller scale.

So initially we moved all the coordinates of Vice City to the west and the positioned Liberty City to the East. As a result this map idea turn out to be Map Version 1. There have been 4 other map layouts in SOL to how you see the map today and this is Map Version 5.

2006: Copy Cats abound:
A lot of other mods with almost the same name had come and passed like GTA LVS, GTA Unity (Russian team). I decided to add SA 4 months after the game was released by Rockstar. I had decided to re-brand the project from GTASA-LVC with the merge with GTA: Ultra to GTA: State Of Liberty. At the end of 2009 we released Version 51.9. After that the development stalled for some time.

2010: The Merge with VCO:
we merged with Vice City Online multiplayer and GTA: State Of Liberty Online was conceived from VCO, SOL-O was for a time developed in secret. Early 2012 VC0 decided to spin away from SOL leaving us with a new beginning.

2013: Heading in 2 directions - 2 versions of the game map (Original and SOL version)
We will be redoing / remodeling the island chain 'VC. LC and SA' so I can take the models 'We have made' to a better game engine. This will be a side project from the goings on without the SOL project.

There will also be a native VC. LC and SA untouched version with the original models that R have created. This version will have none of the SOL add ons like bridges or other land masses. We are doing this version because there are fans of the mod who want to fly to each island where the current version of the mod beta 69.9+ is designed more around driving around the map.



3. Joining the Team
An Open Door policy will be in place where members can come and join in without the commitment to being on a team. I will offer leadership like in any project or in time someone else can take leadership from me so the project can continue on.

How to join the team. Well, anyone can and you do not even have to ask as this is a community project. All you have to do is type either on this thread that you are in and what you would like to do or add me to your Skype -ID X-Seti and say !optmein

All you need to do is download the mod and start posting in this section on the board and of course in the correct thread. Bugs, Glitches. Tell us about these issues and even better that you're able to fix them.



4. Contributions and Credits 2004-2012
Here we list the members who have been either involved in this mod or have contributed towards this project in the past.

Luten, HackMan, City_Poke912; Kind use of the PC Vice City Stories Models that will be integrated into SOL. (2013)

Almost630, SilentPL; junox; Use of Illegal Sectors objects. (2011 -Used and Modified)

Solom; former mapper. (2012)

Mick Trebs; IPL/IDE Renamer and Coords Scripts. (2006/10 -Replaced)

GForce; 3dsmax scripts and Vehicles. (2008/11 -In Use)

Steve-M; The Col Renamer Script. (2005/11 -In Use)

Regex, Dave, Mex; Hacks taken forward from SOL-O - Water, Radar (2011 -Used)

Mark; Kind use of Fun Islands within SOL. (2007/9- Unused)

MasterK; Help in converting the SA MAP into SOL. (2007/9 -Removed)

Jonny52002; Kind use of the GTA Rally mod. (2006/8 -Removed)

Andy80586; the EXE patch and Limit Adjuster 2. (2007/11 -Replaced)

Odie; In rememberance, The Statue Of Liberty. (2003 -In Use)

Kam; This mod's progress made possible by Kam's scripts created for 3Ds Max. (2005)

PatrickW; Allowing us to use the train SCM code. GTALC (2007) (Unused)

Maxorator; Vehicle loader and assist with helping Swoorup (2012)

Tux Coder; Mission Coding for Vice City and Liberty, Storylines (2008/10 -Replaced)

Craig Kostelecky; http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showtopic=125744 GTA: LC Team,

Assisting Teun with the LC Peds/Vehicles paths and allowing us to use the col files. (2007)

Teun Steenbekkers; kindly doing the SA Vehicle convertions. (2007/9 -Removed)

If you feel you're not on the Credits and you should be, please can you let us know.



5. A New Future for GTASOL
SOL Online will be GTA State Of Liberty once again, leaving Vice City Online to go their own way.

Where did we go wrong? Well I could rant on a while and it depends on your point of view I suppose. There have been many issues within the team and outside in our personal lives that built up - after all life, like other bodily functions, happens. Me with my illness, family, and death of my father last November. Regex with his personal and work life. Unfortunately that reduced the amount of time we had to put towards the project.

Where do we go from here? Well: GTASOL will become a community project for GTAForums and only GTAForums. The modding files would be open for everyone else to use in there own projects ie.:

All Coding - Exe hacks, Game soft hacks.
All Mapping - Models and Texture.
All Animation -Vehicles and Peds.

All I ask is please give credit where credit is due.(after all think of how you'd feel if someone used something of yours without permission or thanks).

An Open Door policy will be in place where people can come and join in without commitment to being on a team. I will offer leadership like in any project or in time someone else can take leadership from me so the project can continue on. All I ask is you have at least one mod of your own before you join and you do not have to ask to be on the team, just join this thread and start posting.

Please remember that the project files and everything else within GTA: State Of Liberty will become propriety of GTAForums except content owned by Rockstar Games and Take 2. If I was asked to give a time line I will try to stick to it in terms of what engine that will be worked on.

The time line is open to debate so what I plan may well change. Like I said, life happens, but I will do my best.

2012: 1 more year for the Vice City engine but the development does not have to end there.
2013: I would hope to be ready for Rage or Better.
2015: Who knows, but what ever we are doing the future looks bright.

That is enough for me to do. Now in order for me to bring this project to it's realization, I need your support in the following:

Helping me find the right people who might be interested in spending some time on the mod. Wanting to model and map in order to improve what we have already. Help with the EXE Launcher so I can move on to mapping.

If you have anything else to offer, bring it here.



6. Ethical Hacking / Modding.
We abide by GTANet's rules thus discourage any topics or talk about No-CD cracks, Illegal activities, downloaded copyrighted material or anything that could result in the termination of this project.

This project is a private FAN MADE endeavor and is not associated with any "Official" Grand Theft Auto games or any of its trademarks.

No infringement is intended by these FAN MADE projects.

We encourage fans/ you to join us in this development and support the project any way you can by spreading the word about us.
[/SIZE]

This post has been edited by X-Seti on Sunday, Apr 21 2013, 15:58

[ALMOST610]

Our new DropBox structure has come to life Today, I have tried to PM all members with this news and also supplied a small Documents which outlined these changes and how it is all to work from now.

If you missed this message please PM me and let me know, also that Document is available on the GTA SOL DB.

[X-Seti]

Just a quick update about me mostly:

I have decided to take a break this week and maybe next as we seem to have some good weather for a change from the Rain and Floods.

The wife and I have spent last week traveling around the UK as we want to move out of Bognor Regis, so I have been checking out the Jurassic Coast and around Devon, we may look more up north if the weather holds up. Anyone live anyplace good? Give me some ideas here!

Team - We have done some understanding work with the paths and EXE Launcher.

I have been reversing SA and looking into Rage, we want a limit adjuster for the map boundaries so I've taken a peek into this too.

Guys - Take a break, it's the summer, enjoy the sun if you've got it. God knows we don't get it enough around here - The Project will always be here.

[X-Seti]

GTA SOL beta 69x (Map version 5) and 70x (Maps from scratch)

There will be no more downloads of beta 69.5 will I can find a stable file host.

I have delayed SOLbeta 70.0 till after Christmas (Leaning more towards March).

There has not been a lot of development as late, this is due to a lot going on with team members out studying, Me with my personal life, family, and being without my development PC. In the time I had before all the goings on I have ported 30% of the map to SA, The new Midway island, Midway south and some of VC to see how things will look towards the jump to Rage later once everything has been ported over to SA.

The plan is to get every model in the game under 20000 object ID with LODs remade for each new object. This also entails that I have to rename every model in the IMG /Data file achieves so LODs can be seen by the engine.

A good example would be to rename the models like NorVCTranbit01 and the LOD counterpart would be LODVCTranbit01, The naming scheme is set out like Nor for Normal and VC for ViceCity. This will help us see what these objects are and where in each city these belong and help the engine toggle between near and far objects faster. I at least hope this will speed up FPS.

I will be introducing a chain of smaller islands to solve the horizon and flickering / rending issues between the gaps between the islands, so from the Airport in VC your now see hills in the distance half way between LAE.

Some of the old existing objects will be combined to reduce IDs even more and once on Rage there are map limits to overcome but there are not many other limits to get in the way.



For beta 70 I have decided to move towards scratch made models. A map we can call our own that I will feel better porting to Rage.

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This post has been edited by X-Seti on Tuesday, Feb 12 2013, 03:59

[Lehlu3]

QUOTE (X-Seti @ Saturday, Aug 18 2012, 10:29)

GTA SOL beta 70. I have delayed SOLbeta 70.0 till after Christmas (New Year maybe). There has not been a lot of development as late, this is due to a lot going on with team members out studying, Me with my personal life, family, and being without my development PC. In the time I had before all the goings on I have ported 30% of the map to SA, The new Midway island, Midway south and some of VC to see how things will look towards the jump to Rage later once everything has been ported over to SA. The plan is to get every model in the game under 20000 object ID with LODs remade for each new object. This also entails that I have to rename every model in the IMG /Data file achieves so LODs can be seen by the engine. A good example would be to rename the models like NorVCTranbit01 and the LOD counterpart would be LODVCTranbit01, The naming scheme is set out like Nor for Normal and VC for ViceCity. This will help us see what these objects are and where in each city these belong and help the engine toggle between near and far objects faster. I at least hope this will speed up FPS. I will be introducing a chain of smaller islands to solve the horizon and flickering / rending issues between the gaps between the islands, so from the Airport in VC your now see hills in the distance half way between LAE. Some of the old existing objects will be combined to reduce IDs even more and once on Rage there are map limits to overcome but there are not many other limits to get in the way.

Hey, I like to help! Whats there to do???

[X-Seti]

I would like to know what you can do.

Can you code, Model using 3dsmax?

Have a look at the recruitment thread before you reply to this.

[ken rosenberg1234]

QUOTE (X-Seti @ Sunday, Aug 19 2012, 00:06)

I would like to know what you can do. Can you code, Model using 3dsmax? Have a look at the recruitment thread before you reply to this.

Excuse me i don't know where to post this but i got a crop duster working
perfectly in mvl

[X-Seti]

Upload this onto GTAGarage also look at the other vehicle mods first to get an idea first.

There is a simple format you need to follow.

State that it is for MVL + VC.

[ken rosenberg1234]

QUOTE (X-Seti @ Sunday, Aug 19 2012, 12:34)

Upload this onto GTAGarage also look at the other vehicle mods first to get an idea first. There is a simple format you need to follow. State that it is for MVL + VC.

I xan follow these instuctions I xan send it to you thru pm if you want

[ken rosenberg1234]

QUOTE (X-Seti @ Saturday, Aug 18 2012, 08:08)

Right now, VC and SA

Iam not a fan for iv but does iv have enough memory
For sol???

[X-Seti]

Not sure at this time m8

I have not tried to port all the map into Rage yet to find out.

I have 8Gb of memory on this machine, but I need to aim for those who have 4Gb at least to run the mod.

[X-Seti]

Well show me what you have.

Post the information needed in the vehicle topic.

[ken rosenberg1234]

QUOTE (X-Seti @ Monday, Aug 20 2012, 08:16)

Well show me what you have. Post the information needed in the vehicle topic.

QUOTE (X-Seti @ Monday, Aug 20 2012, 08:16)

Well show me what you have. Post the information needed in the vehicle topic.

OK this is what i got so far
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/856/screenshot8660.png/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/839/screenshot3053.png/
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/194/screenshot1669.png/

[nkjellman]

Hey, once you get the mapping limit hacked for Rage, please release it. There are plenty of map mods out there, that are good, but I don't like how they have to be nudged up agienst LC. For example Red Dead Desert. I like it, but I think it would be better away from LC. However good luck with the modification.

BTW, is the stuff you have ported to SA already outside the map bounds?

[ALMOST610]

We have not even started looking into RAGE, I think that someone else might come up with a Limit Hack for RAGE before we start on it.

[nkjellman]

Maybe. However I know I'll get the "Your talking about modding a game that isn't even out yet bull sh*t" but bare with me here. At some point GTA V will be out on PC, and it will be moddable. Based on how Rockstar said its going to be a "Very big map" and that map looks f*cking huge from the screen shots, there is a chance that you may be able to fit the map in GTA V's mappable space. I have a feeling the mappable area of GTA V's map could be around the size of this. Like I said I know the game isn't out yet, but as its a popular game and gonna be a large title in the franchise, it will be on PC, and it will be moddable. With the stuff from GTA V, SOL would get planes, even better graphics than IV/EFLC, and there is a chance you won't need to hack the mappable area.

Anyways is Beta 70.0 going to be the first public release of the car and ped paths in all the cities hack? If thats already out, which is the latest build and where can I obtain it? Also when you get the mod situated on GTA SA, will you release the SA version or is that just to aid the Rage port? In my opinion if you get everything working all golden on SA, it would be great for the mod as SA has planes, and the ability to have multiple time cycles.

[ALMOST610]

One thing we have planned is for there to either be an IV or V based game, initially the plans were for IV but now that it seems V is starting to showcase and advertise it might be released when we are ready for a Next Gen Port.

No Public releases have working paths yet, it has only been tested on out Dev Builds, and we plan to develop the SA and VC versions alongside each other in the future, that is when we make a change to the VC map it is immediately also made for SA, but as I said earlier ports to anything but SA are still just ideas, nothing has been looked into completely.

[nkjellman]

QUOTE (ALMOST610 @ Monday, Aug 27 2012, 06:57)

One thing we have planned is for there to either be an IV or V based game, initially the plans were for IV but now that it seems V is starting to showcase and advertise it might be released when we are ready for a Next Gen Port. No Public releases have working paths yet, it has only been tested on out Dev Builds, and we plan to develop the SA and VC versions alongside each other in the future, that is when we make a change to the VC map it is immediately also made for SA, but as I said earlier ports to anything but SA are still just ideas, nothing has been looked into completely.

Sounds great.

In my oppinion, if you can get all the hacks you have done with Vice City on San Andreas, it would be the best game for a mod like this. (That is having all the III era cities, with the original III era style graphics, and game play.)

Reason's why San Andreas would work best:
-Proper effects with under water swimming.
-Climbing
-Zones for police vehicles. (So each city has the proper police vehicle. Feature may be able to be expanded to other things like Ambulances, Firetrucks, Taxi's, Garbage Trucks, ect)
-Multiple License plates for cars. (Each city can have the right plate.)
-Slightly better driving physics.
-Multiple timecyc zones.
-Trains
-Tow Trucks (If I remember correctly, you said your main protag was supposed to be a tow truck driver.)
-Parachutes (Try to keep one on the buildings in MLL. All those tall buildings will allow me to go from roof top to roof top. Speaking of, you might be able to make some good roof top action in MLL.)
-Planes (Most important one of all. You can have it so we can buy plane tickets, and get to and from Liberty City, Vice City, Los Santos, San Feiro, Las Vanterus, and Main Land Liberty more quickly.)
-Stay original (I'm all for a Rage version of the mod, but SA would still keep the original III era feeling as in game play, and graphics. The Rage versions would be good for a improved version, both are good in their own way.)

[X-Seti]

I am back and I've said this before but life as late has gotten in the way, now over the loss of my father and grandfather things have been hard for me for the last 9 months, plus other issues where I have had no time for the project.

@Team

I've always said that real life matters take priority over this project so I can understand when people have to take time away for studying for example, all I ask is you communicate with me or any other team member.

My point of view is I pretty much need to find new team members.

As far as the project goes, I am going to start the project from scratch as there's content I have been asked to remove that belongs to the time spent with GTA SOL Online, this includes Radar textures, Road Textures and any of the tools I was given.

Starting again with a new respective will fix a lot of the problems with 69.5 mostly bugs.

Having a new map will leave issues from the past in this project's history.

@Swoorup

There is no need to change the paths, as I will be using the old layout as a base for the new map, the only content that will be changed is the models, collisions and textures.

So with a cleaned Vice City game, I will add LC once again with SA soon after reimporting everything from scratch.


This post has been edited by X-Seti on Tuesday, Sep 18 2012, 13:30

[nkjellman]

Can't wait to see what you will come up with. However look at the topic I created about some ideas I got for the mod.

You should make SA, VC, and LC be further apart from each other and try not to have new land masses visible from ether LC, VC, or SA so it doesn't alter the story line.

However, as you can't use the hacks anymore that you had on the VC engine, why not switch to SA and try to redevelop them on SA? If you can get the hacks working on SA, it would be awsome, and this mod would be more suited on the SA version of Renderware.

This post has been edited by nkjellman on Monday, Sep 17 2012, 21:45