Multiplayer

MTA: San Andreas

First of all I'd like to thank DJ Skyline for the article. He took the trouble to sum up everything a real gamer needs to know. The article covers installing the program, using it, and the gameplay. Here and there pictures help make it easy to understand.

What do you need for it? The base game, of course, how surprising (:)), then the MTA: SA R1.0 Client, and a fast internet connection! What should we be ready for? Basically it can give you an insanely good atmosphere, but be ready for lag, and for racers who aren't in the best mood! Yes, some people are inclined to push you out, ram into you, and if they happen to be in a Hydra, they'll shoot you down! This multiplayer is mostly about racing! Just like the single player version had checkpoint races, there are the same kind here! You also get the chance to make a track yourself, any way you like! That's enough of an intro, let's see it in more detail! :)

The install

It isn't complicated, you just have to choose where it should install, then give the place where the game was installed.

The menu

• There's a Quick Connect - connect by IP
• Browse servers - Here we can browse between the servers
• Map Editor - Here we can make our own track
• Settings - Settings. Apart from our name, we can't set anything else.
• About - Credits
• Quit - No comment

Which is the best server? The best one is the one with the lowest ping, so it's worth sorting them by ping! The higher the ping value, the worse the server!

I can't connect because of a Verifying Client problem?! You can't connect to a dedicated server with a modified game (edited handling.cfg, etc), so if possible, the files in the data folder should be the originals!

What can you do in MTA SA? Mostly there's only one mod in the game, as I wrote above, the checkpoint races. Whoever passes through the last point first wins! You can also set when making the track that you can wander around freely wherever you want, but that's not really typical, racing is the more common thing!

Let's join a server! Most likely you'll see that you can't join the game, that's because a race is going on right now, you have to wait until it ends! Meanwhile we can watch the others and how they race! The keyboard layout is in the MTA SA readme:

In-game:

• F8 or ~ : Console
• F11 : Take a screenshot
• TAB : Playerlist
• T : Chat

Spectator:

• 1 : Cinematic view
• 2 : Side view
• 3 : Car view
• Left arrow : Previous player
• Right arrow : Next player

Voting:

• F1 : Vote Yes
• F2 : Vote No

So in Hungarian (translated here):

• F8, or ~:
• F11: taking a screenshot
• TAB: Player list
• T: Bringing up the chat window
• 1,2,3: Switching views in spectator mode
• Left arrow: Previous player in spectator mode
• Right arrow: Next player in spectator mode
• F1: Voting yes in a vote
• F2: Voting no in a vote

You can vote on the upcoming tracks! I don't know how to start a vote, but from my experience it's not really worth it anyway, because the majority votes against it! :)

The game finally starts! At the start, get ready for a lot of pushing and shoving. That doesn't mean we should push everyone out, it means being ready for the people who might be pushing! :)

What do we see on the screen? What's new!? I wrote down everything in this picture:

Watch out for damage, because you can wreck your ride pretty easily! Also take care not to fall into water, because then we die too! We can fix the damage by driving through a wrench icon, or whatever icon it is! You can see it in the picture, only there it's a nitro icon! Yes, if we drive through the nitro icon, then we can use nitro! :)

The game gets more varied when on some tracks we drive through the vehicle changer icon (I couldn't come up with a better name :) ) I guess it's obvious what it's for! If you drive through it, you can continue with another vehicle! One that the track's creator set! But there are also vehicle changer icons built in on purpose! For example if we see a checkpoint on a waterfront, let's not be scared, there we'll probably go on with a boat! :)

I don't know how to start your own server, I haven't tried it yet, but I think it's not really worth it anyway, since there are so many servers to choose from as it is! I wouldn't really go into the map editor, it's simple to use, you can figure out quickly what is what! It boils down to this: we give the starting point, we can set which vehicle we start with, then we add the checkpoints as we like, and we can fancy up their size and color! Then we can add a vehicle changer icon, we can set which vehicle it changes to, we can add repair icons and nitro icons! The more creative ones can add objects, so you can even build a completely unique track!

Good luck to everyone, and have fun!

Making an SA-MP server

To make a game server that others can connect to as well, we have to download a server program.

Go to www.sa-mp.com / Downloads and download the latest server. Then create an empty folder named samp server, and unpack the downloaded file into it. After that we have to set a few things, which we can do in server.cfg. Associate it with Notepad (or another text editor) and rewrite the settings in it; like this:

echo Applying server config... // notice text that the settings are taking effect
lanmode 0 // 0 for an internet server, 1 if people will only connect over a LAN
rcon_password password // the password for doing admin stuff (kick, ban, etc.)
maxplayers 99 // maximum number of players
port 7777 // which port the server runs on
hostname [HUN] ServerName // the server name
gamemode0 sftdm 1 // the game mode goes here (see the files in the gamemodes folder)
filterscripts adminspec actions // the add-ons that load, leave them as they are for now
announce 0
query 1
weburl www.gta-xtreme.info // any web address, shown in the server info

After we've set the settings the way we want, save and exit. Then double-click on samp-server.exe and the server is already running, and you'll see it at "your-ip:port" (What's my IP?, port: the one you set earlier)

If you'd like to set up the add-ons or the game modes, then read the following guides too.