Open-Source Mod for Grand Theft Auto
“Today we are marking a new milestone in the history of Multi Theft Auto [...] we have made the decision to re-launch Multi Theft Auto as an open-source project.” The developer announcement on the Grand Theft Auto website comes just before the official release of the multiplayer mod of GTA version 1.0.
Since 2003, up to 16 developers have worked on the multiplayer-modus. Work which included not only Reverse Engineering and LUA scripting, but also manufacturer Rockstar concepted extensions for the single-player modus GTA-3, as in GTA III, GTA: Vice City and GTA: San Andreas. Server and clients offering the original game can be found on the project website.
The announcement on the GTA page continues, "Of course, the migration to open-source is more than just slamming your undocumented source code in a zip up for anyone that is interested." The repository code has been cleaned up, accurate documentation and headers have been added and proper credits to authors noted.
The release of the source code is supposed to encourage the contribution of external developers. To this end, the bugtracker has been opened and access to the build system made available. A clean and stable multiplayer extension requires more than a memory address and offsets, say the developers.
The code can be viewed at the Google Code Repository and a detailed developer Wiki provides insights to programming and scripting.
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