Greek translations and translations on the fly

Previously on GTADS if you wanted to change to another language set you would have to close the app or a window and reopen it for the language settings to propagate throughout the text. Well with the ClassRegistry project we have been working on changes to applications on the fly will be able to occur with the click of a button. Right now thanks to Ridergr from Age4Greeks our newly functioning translation system now has full Greek support. With the live system as well jumping from Greek to Norwegian is as easier as selecting which language.

Here are some screenshots of 1.14 running in Greek:

Translators needed

We are coming to the stage of wrapping up everything for the new GTADS release 1.14 but we need some translations done. I set up a file that has all the English labels found in the app and all one has to do is translate what is found. I ideally want to have the following languages done for the release:

Spanish
French
German
Norwegian
Russian

Greek translations are being worked on so far. The template file can be found here and it may be subject to change from time to time but nothing major until 1.14 is released.

Rez has had a body transplant

Thats right, tonight between 12am and 1am rez underwent a machine change, which consisted of me moving the hard drive from a 450mhz machine to a 1ghz machine. The machine was my old media machine and until I find a permanent machine for it, rez will remain there. I made the switch because of the very unstable hardware the 450mhz was running on. Anytime the processor was utilized heavily the machine would go into a coma with successful reboots becoming more and more random. Anyone interested in the specs of the machine:

CPU: VIA C3 Nehemiah+RNG (999.52-MHz 686-class CPU)
Origin = "CentaurHauls" Id = 0x693 Stepping = 3
Features=0x380b03d
real memory = 234815488 (223 MB)
avail memory = 220123136 (209 MB)

It is running on a VIA Mini-ITX board with everything integrated onto it. Runs very silent too :-).

What we have so far

Development is still going on for GTADS. Since the holidays all of our availability has been limited but I want to share all the things we have fixed, added, and working on since 1.13.

Client Side Bug Fixes:

- Preferences Bug that didn't allow you to leave the username and password fields blank
- Made Join and Host gameroom buttons more descriptive
- Improved messaging code to remove appearance of "lag"

Client Side Finished Features:

- Added sound events
- Expanded Preferences to include Sounds and Games tabs
- Friends list shows number of friends on
- Server Browser
- First time users load up Preferences to Games tab
- Games Tab gives you the option to auto-load games
- (XP Only) Option to load up gamepaths from Registry
- Encryption login support
- Friends lists loads on startup (Optional)
- Main window and Friends list save window position
- Gameroom introduces countdown before game commences
- Code cleanup and optimization to improve performance

Client Side Features Working On:

- Autoload Game - Auto-Minimize GTADS
- Multiple players (3+) on GTADS Proxy

Server Bug Fix:

- Fixed SQL Mem Leak bug
- Fixed Messenging Code to manage users better

Server Finished Features:

- Account encryption
- Login encryption for safe login
- SQL storage option for accounts
- phpBB option for accounts
- Version checking for clients
- Smaller memory footprint
- Added tools to migrate accounts to 1.14 compat.

Online Petitions suck, here's another idea

Ok I know a few of you have been bothering me about the status of the petition to open the code of GTA1 and/or GTA2. Here is what happened.

Months ago when the petition signature size reached about 1000 I printed out the sheets even though the online petition site wasn't very printer friendly, riddled with Google ads. I did the best I could to throw it up in a usable format by copying and pasting 15 pages and editing out the extra banner waste. I also threw in a link to see the petitions if anyone receiving the petition wanted to confirm its validity and so I put the link up on the header and footer of each petition page. The printable version came out to about 40 pages (margins :-) ) a hefty pack of online signatures, that I knew were half duplicates. To give the petition a little touch of humanity I appended a small but concise letter stating the reasons why openGTA would be a good idea. To this day there was no reply either by email or by regular mail. I had placed the paperwork in an envelope with my return address appended but silence is the response.

I should have realized that online petitions are a waste of time to really try to get something like this done but it was actually a good measure of how many people (divided by 2) are genuinely interested in opening the source code and doing some cool things with the oldies.

I have a new proposal that I think will make more of an impact or perhaps at least raise a few eyebrows. The internet is a bad place to express interest in doing something if that entity you are looking to influence is big company with lots of cash. We need to send Snail-mail letters to Take-Two's HQ. The power of a type written letter in an actual letter is probably at least worth 50 emails and unlike a petition it will show some sort of "face behind the mission". If we can get 50 or even 100 distinct letters sent to Rockstar I believe perhaps we can at least get a response from them.

If you do decide to write a letter, which doesn't have to be very long, it should convey your interest in the games and tell them why, in a non confrontational way, they should open the code for us. How do you think they will benefit? " We will benefit?

For anyone in North America the address for TakeTwo/Rockstar is:

Take-Two Interactive Games
622 Broadway
New York, NY 10012

For those in the UK or other parts of Western Europe:

Rockstar-North
Calton Square
1 Greenside Row
Edinburgh
Mid Lothian
Scotland
EH1 3AP

The only thing we are losing here is postage, maybe 10 minutes, and 1 sheet of printed paper.