Grand Theft Auto

What is Grandcarma?

Grandcarma is a Mod, created for Grand theft Auto San Andreas. The mod tries to bring the atmoshpere and gameplay of Carmageddon to the game engine of GTA. Both games have a lot of similarities and that makes it a very logic choise to exchange content.

The mod replaces the San Andreas World map by the Carmageddon world map. This Carmageddon world contains all the Carmageddon 1, Splat pack and Carmageddon 2 tracks. Because these tracks are closed enviroments, and GTA is optimized for free roaming, all the tracks have to be 'stiched' together. The map is 'dressed up' using Grand Theft Auto objects, such as trees, lantarnposts and roadsigns.

The Grand Theft Auto - San Andreas engine also has a couple of features that the Carmageddon Engine is missing. Because GTA deals with changing time, and weather, the atmosphere of the map is constantly changing. GTA can also render vertex-paint. This means that the 3d models can have their own lighting, built in the 3d model, instead of using an actual light source for lighting. All models can also have a day and a night vertex paint, which makes it very interesting to see how the map changes, from day to night situation.

The mod development started in June 2007. Because this mod has been a one man's project from the beginnen, (off course with technical help from others) the progress was rather slow. After 1.5 years of working on the project the 3rd beta, the automatic installer, was finished. From that moment I decided to take a little Grandcarma break, in order to have more time to work on other projects.

Beta's

The current beta release features the entire map, together with a couple of teleportation points for you to get to those hard to go places. The map is fully dressed up with moveable objects. All streets have traffic, and apart from some minor glitches, the map model is pritty much finished. Now would be the time to be working on mission scripting, but I'm saving that for a moment when I feel like doing that.

The Beta files can be found at the download section.

Development, features and extra background

For those of you interested, I will tell someting about the process I have followed in order to create this mod. It will give you an Idea of the amount of work it took in order to acchieve the current status of the project, and it will show you what my goals were with the mod.

Tools used

I've been using a lot of tools for the project. First of all I've been using the 3d modeling programs

• 3d Studio Max - for texturing, exporting, importing and usage of other scripts
• Rhinoceros 4.0 - for very quick and easy modeling

other tools and scripts I used, with many great thanx to their authors;

• Med v0.32, map editor for GTA series - used for the movable object placement (Steve-M)
• Kam's Max scripts - wonderfull pack of scripts to import, export and give properties to the GTA models in 3dsmax (Kam)
• Path Script - script, able to export slines to path nodes in a mouseclick (Deniska)
• Vertex Colour DFF script - for the day/night colour export (Deniska)
• Crazy trainer - for that quick ingame texting (Crazyvirus)
• GTXD, GIMG and GDAR - for handling with TXD and IMG files (Respawn)
• Coleditor II - collision file editor (Steve-M)

3d modelling

The world of GTA San Andreas as you know it will totally dissapear. In return you will get this;

The map you see above features 24 tracks of the Carmageddon Series. In order to hop from one track to the other, landmass has been added in between the gaps of the original models. The carmageddon series were actually one of the first free roaming games available, but compared to GTA these tracks still not 'open' enough. Parts of the tracks were therefore also removed, in order to make corssing the landscape possible.

Because the Area of the world cannot be larger than 6000 by 6000 units, and because I still had some tracks left I decided to place these maps flying above the other maps, only accesible by teleportation. These teleport points can be found all over the map, giving you acces to the 5 'hidden tracks'. The shot below shows these maps, which are all interior maps except for the 'rural development' racetrack and the 'enviromental disaster' track.

Enclosing the map

Next to the added landmass the map also needed some extra infrastuctural measures. Because the San Andreas Engine support actual train transportation, I added a railroad to the map. This track runs along the entire edge of the map, connecting most of the tracks. The train stops at three points, beaver city, bleak city and the junkyard.

For car traffic I added a 4 laned highway to the map, running through the centre of the map. And then you will also find a number of bridges, connecting seperate tracks with one and other.

In fact, the model you see below is what needed to be added in order to make it possible to move from track to track. So, not only did I have to add landmass inbetween the tracks, I also needed to add a seabed.

Vertex Paint and Lighting

GTA supports Vertex Lighting for day and night situation. That means that the lighting of the model changes gradually over time. This feature adds a lof of detail to the map, and I used it a lot during development. The hard work sure payed off, because at night time, the lighting looks a lot better than the somewhat dull, full lit, models of the original game. As you can see in the shots below, the difference between day and night situation can be really big!

GTA objects

next to the static models of the world, you also want to run over some trafficlights or trees from time to time. GTA san andreas has a great collection of movable objects that I was able to use. These objects can also have different attributes. Sometimes they make sounds, sometimes they move on their own, but a lot of them also generate their own light. Lantarnposts, road signs, construction work signs for instance start to give light after a certain time of the day. This again adds a lot of detail to the map.

Traffic and Pedestrians

one of the hardes parts to mod is the traffic system. It is very crash-sensitive and often goes wrong. Still I managed to add walking pedestrians to the map using a 3d studio max script. I had to manually draw all the lines that the pedestrians and the cars will use for their direction. It is also possible to add traffic light support, but because this is a lot of work to do well and because you hardly see the effect ingame I decided to not implement this in the mod. As the image below shows, the script made by Deniska, a russion modeller/scripter, can influence some of the features of the paths. The number of cars, the number of lanes and the direction. The pathsystem for the mod is one of the largest ever seen in GTA modding history. (perhaps the mod Ghost Town Paradise and the the Alien City mod are bigger)

Carmageddon Cars

I intend to create a small number of cars for the mod, representing the most known and popular Carmageddon cars from all 3 games. I started work on the Eagle 3, a total rebuild based on the Eagle from Carmageddon 2. The model is nearly finished, but the porting ot the game would take quite some time. Off course it is intended to have a damage model, which is quite essential for a Carmageddon mod.

I also have a large collection of Carmageddon Cars in 3ds max format. These can easilly form a base for rebuilding the models in higher detail.

Useful links

Thanx

many thanx to first of all my friends from the Carmageddon Modding community for their comments, interest and testing. Many thanx for Toshiba for helping me get a hand on the 3d models from Carmageddon 2, and for providing me with a discussion forum as a base for the mod.

Thanx also for the technical help provided by the GTA community, especially over at GTA-Forums. Thans to Kam and Deniska for their wonderfull script packs, that made all that batch work a LOT easier!