Jun 11
NTAuthorityNews
The Citizen pre-preview version (see the last post for details) doesn’t just come with a few story missions, it also comes with hidden packages, shirts, rampages and even a few side-missions causing even more fun to be had. As I know how likely it is for people to go searching for those themselves, I’ve put all those fun things on a map outlining everything there’s to find as for map-based stuff. 
And don’t worry, this data will all be saved for later versions, it’s not like some normal modifications that save games don’t work properly after a while.
A snippet of the Citizen locations map.
Jun 07
NTAuthorityNews
After a long time, I’ve released the first (second, actually — counting an odd beta build) preview for Citizen as promised. It might be buggy, it might not even run properly, but hey, it’s a preview! You can install it using the installer on the download link below. Note that it was only tested and will likely only work with gta_sa.exe of 14,383,616 bytes, or the non-cracked similar version to it.
Download
The installer will download and install possible required dependencies, and will get the Citizen updater, which will then download the full Citizen game files (~50 MB currently). To play, you’ll need to register an account on the Citizen forums, but I can’t see that being such an huge issue.
The most important parts of this release have been tested and proven to be working, but other parts might not work as they have only received limited testing. If this happens, do not hesitate to contact me on the forums, on GTAForums.com or wherever you may have found this pre-preview.
Now, for a list of third-party asset work used in this modification:
- some of OnePiece’s wonderful HQ GTA vehicles
- a modified version of Wesser’s Windshield GUI and Zone Text modifications
- ceedj’s Tommy Vercetti conversion
- ‘Jeff’s
altered Doherty map files (used for a side-mission
)
- and a lot of things by other people which aren’t used in the current version.
Have fun with this pre-preview, and stay tuned for future updates.
May 29
RedactionNews
Well, first of all, I have to apologize for not posting any new items here and not even working on Citizen. As the last post (which is 1 month and 1 day ago) said, something would happen when ‘a game turns five’. Well, surprise – June 7th is the 5th birthday of the North American release of San Andreas for the PC. I had planned to release a nice, solid preview version on that day, but various things happened that caused that not to happen as I planned.
Firstly, some weeks ago, I decided it’d be best to go and write concrete plans on what to do with Citizen. Many of the ‘ancient’ base code (hook, launcher) was rewritten quite some time ago, but a lot of odd code still remains in the game itself, such as the unfriendly pager, some initial missions that don’t work properly, the gang zone manager, the blip manager (when the preview comes, you’ll likely see buggy Pay ‘n’ Spray blips), the mission handler (very complex, it works, but is nearly unmanageable, and gives blip issues) and even the mission runtime system (mainly as it was made before the new ScriptLoader was implemented).
Secondly, when I was just deciding on how to write those plans (and found pen and paper is still not for me 
) I had some issues with an application I wanted to try next, and then just let the writing be for a while. Some hours later, I decided to follow up on some old non-working project, which I got working properly, but what happened next, I didn’t expect. A video of it was posted on YouTube, and got some backlinks and a lot of views in a few days, and people would start asking ‘when will it come’ a lot. I rewrote the application (it was quite simple) properly and released it on a Wednesday (May 12th) for the entire world to try it. And they did.
The project decided to take up all my time, and even now the web site gets 100,000 pageviews per day (~10,000 visits), and I’ve promised releasing a new version ‘early next month’. Even worse, that project has 20 people asking me ‘when will it be released?’ per day, while Citizen hasn’t gotten 20 people asking in its entire existence. Anyway, once I finally finish the most important features for that project, I hope I’ll be able to continue on Citizen, and making it the perfect SA modification.
Also, June 7th (or 10th, depending on how much time I have) will still see a pre-preview anyway. Things you see there will be changed, altered, or even possibly removed, and it shouldn’t be seen as being too relevant to the final game.
Apr 28
NTAuthoritydevLog
Soon, a game turns five, and it’s actually still alive, mods will come and go, but Citizen will steal the show.
PS: Also, the post about CitizenMP was actually not an April Fools’ joke, at least, in part (those roads are ugly, right?). I’ve been thinking of various ways to implement it, and may finally have thought up something implementable… though it’ll come after the release of the item hinted above. Modifications will be supported for CitizenMP in a very limited way, but there’ll also be a version working outside of Citizen (and an API for TC developers). As for a maximum player count, either 8 or 16 would be usable for this type of full synchronization… SA was meant for a maximum of 8 players, internally.
Apr 01
RedactionNews
As announced in a prior post, the first of the two updates to be released after Episode one was the C4 update. I feel it’s now finally time to announce the second: the multiplayer update. This update will contain an advanced multiplayer system, similar to GTA IV’s multiplayer, but in SA. It also will allow for user-made game modes using standard ‘SCM’ scripting. Also, an advantage over other multiplayer modifications is that pedestrians and random vehicles will still appear, and AI will also still be working.
Because everyone I test with is absent, I couldn’t make a screenshot of the current testing version of the multiplayer in action. However, I could get a shot of the console commands for multiplayer, shown below:
CitizenMP’s console
Also, state environment regulations required green driving, and the City Department of Los Santos decided to implement it by making all roads very green, as shown below.
Green roads for green driving
Mar 29
RedactionNews
Would you like to play Citizen way before everyone else? Do you want to play an important part in the development of Citizen’s missions? Are you bored of just hearing of how cool Citizen is, and want to actually play it? Well, here’s your chance! The Citizen SP3 (Semi-Public Preview Program) is accepting applications. Wondering about what will happen when and if you’re selected? Well, you’ll get access to semi-recent development builds for Citizen, and might want to leave a bit of feedback for any update. It’s not exactly a ‘tester’ position, since you’ll have to leave less feedback as part of the SP3. Also, you can say to anyone ‘haha, I’ve played Citizen, and you’ve not!’
Where to sign up? Well, contact me in any of three ways: send a private message on GTAForums or the (still inactive 
) Citizen forums, or send an e-mail to citizen-sp3@dotbas.net. You should hurry – registrations close April 12th! And now, for the new screenshots:
Mar 25
RedactiondevLog
Well, I expect many of you to already know the current iteration of Citizen. However, this was not how Citizen started. To not make the old iterations get lost in time, I’m going to dedicate this series to the history and original iterations of Citizen. This is part I: Storyline Versions
The original idea, and the initial implementation
Originally, Citizen was envisioned under the ‘idea flash’ SA MSOG – a Massively Singleplayer Online Game, based on the popular term MMOG. It was to use my then-new advanced scripting API for San Andreas and provide – like the earlier GTA.Next project – offline gameplay mixed with remote connectivity. However, Citizen was to put the connectivity concept a lot farther. Many of these visions have since been lost, but a basic mission line was planned, but also features like car selling, weapon trading, donating and other community features. Not much later, these features were scrapped for the initial release, but were recently re-added for the C4 update – Citizen: Community, Competition and Challenges – which is one of the two planned updates between Episode 1 and Episode 2.
Some time later, after the end of my long absence, the initial Citizen implementation started. The storyline was not that interesting back then, you got to choose a gang and player character, and plans were to provide some simple, non-tied-together, mission series. A beta release was made containing the Citizen launcher utility, a few collectibles and the character choice menu, and Citizen got a few people interested. Nothing much was happening back then, and nobody ever played much of it. The later update containing a initial mission, based on GTA: Chinatown Wars’s mission Deadly Xin was missed by everyone, and soon the beta versions were taken down to go to the new story direction.
The original loading menu, dated 2009-07-06
Betrayal and lost heat… the beginnings
Then, a day came where I decided to watch a two-part episode of some TV show. The main plot seemed quite interesting – the main character got framed for something he didn’t commit, his partners (a local police unit) thought he did it, but his boss did believe he didn’t do it and got him a place to stay – and an initial part of the writing was quickly made. You’d still be a gang pedestrian model, but actually be a ‘high-ranking criminal’ from Liberty City, framed and sent to stay in San Andreas with a local gang. This story iteration didn’t keep itself alive for a long time, but a few tweaks were made.
Firstly, the gang pedestrians were replaced with a ‘new’ player character, for which I initially auditioned a Claude (GTA III) model who after a short time was turned away due to the legs just not fitting with the new animations used in SA. Obviously, after that I tried Claude’s replacement from Vice City: Tommy. He seemed to be a good fit back then, even more so: only recently have I been turning away from liking Tommy. The main reason these characters were chosen was to help the plan of adding some sort of comic sections (‘ComicScene’, internally) as cutscenes. These, not being dynamically generated, would be very difficult to make by hand for all possible pedestrian models.
A ‘comic sequence’ from the introduction mission, original date has been lost
The Agency is coming
And finally, that story didn’t live for that long. I don’t know how, but a government agency setting – the Control Agency – just popped in to my mind, like the initial idea for the MSOG. The first part of the implementation of this story was to remove the gang association code from the game – but a lot of it is still left. What the Control Agency does seemed similar to many other ‘corrupt very secret agency’ stories, but with a GTA take on it to fit right in with the expected storyline for a GTA modification. The base part of the setting should be posted somewhere already, but I’m not sure – it’d just help the surprise on release!
Part of this story iteration was to add various gangs for the player to act with and do jobs for. The turf war system initially added was replaced with a more dynamic one based on gang respect and jobs done for a gang. A couple of mission designs were written, and less than a month before this writing, a new ‘gang series’ system was invented to help provide even more dynamic and non-linear gameplay. Lessons were taken from other games, and boring or otherwise annoying tasks were made sure to be ignored, while hopefully still providing a lot of fun. This system is still not completely worked out, and information will be posted when Citizen is finally near release.
Mar 09
NTAuthorityNews
… fixing old bugs and adding a developer console. The MissionHandler script for instance is so complicated, anything I edit in there ends up in a partial or complete bug. Anyway, some screenshots (some of which were made in regular SA):
Mar 04
NTAuthorityNews
These three photographs. What could they mean? Hint: look in my GTAForums posts. Some might contain a hint to their meaning.
Mar 04
NTAuthorityNews
Failure, the opposite of success. And, I, now, have failed again. These shots just came in from some unknown location, where rotations are different from our dimension and the GTA game world… where things are supposed to be up-side-down… or wait, I just failed.
The ugly initial version of this notice.
When I was implementing a new cheat, and I forgot that you can’t put 6 things in a container only fitting five.
This bug is still there, and will be there until I make a mission named ‘gangwaropen’ or decide to implement an alternative.
I don’t think many people will see the mission names when they need a jet pack or any kind of elevation to see them.
You should have seen how everything looked when I messed up the text rendering completely. This is just nothing compared to that!
This almost looked nice. Sadly, this was not my intention.
The very thin yellow line in this image is the text object. Really, really easily visible, right?
P.S.: ‘The Setup’ is just an example mission name, and does not indicate any actual mission in Citizen or any other game, except for perhaps that I’ve played a bit too much Bully and might have gotten it from Bully which is a wonderful game and Citizen is possibly taking other features from Bully, but I don’t want to say that Citizen is taking features from Bully because I would be saying Citizen is taking features from Bully if I would have said that Citizen is taking features from Bully.
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