Hello,
before I start, let me very quickly introduce myself. I am a member of the MTA Team and actively developing MTA. This post is as well approved by the other team members.
We?ve been silently observing what?s currently happening with SA:MP and you for the past few days. We decided to wait a bit till the turmoil in the SA:MP scene cooled down a bit - that?s why we haven?t said anything earlier.
In our opinion, the current situation is a great chance for MTA:SA and SA:MP to come closer. We do understand that you?re not happy with the current situation, but we believe that starting another multiplayer project from nearly ground up seems counterproductive for an ancient game like GTA:SA. We love San Andreas - just as you do - although player counts are stable, we can?t deny it?s difficult to attract new players, especially considering the change in demographic.
Instead, we?d like to encourage you to think about joining the MTA community. Talking about technical details, we think that implementing an SA:MP compatibility layer for MTA is totally possible and an optimal long-term solution. On the other hand it will also get you faster to an initial release (which we assume is one of your greatest problems).
To mention some stats: During the past three years, we released four new versions in addition to lots of rolling-release fixes and anticheat updates whereas the last official SA:MP release is more than four years ago (according to sa-mp.com).
Apart from a few exceptions, MTA is technically already capable of ?emulating? all features SA:MP has and we?re sure - with your help as experienced developers - we?ll be able to address the remaining exceptions together as well.
Furthermore, we already have a resource called amx (https://github.com/multitheftauto/mtasa-resources/tree/master/%5Bgamemodes%5D/%5Bamx%5D) that runs a Pawn virtual machine inside MTA. Unfortunately, it?s outdated since a couple of years and probably needs refactoring, but the general approach works.
In the end, we?re sure that it will be a win-win situation for both sides and is a great opportunity for both communities: Besides more workforce and fresh ideas, we?d benefit from better gameplay diversity for our players and you?d delight in an influx of new players (e.g. ?die-hard? MTA fans) and lots of new scripting features.
If you have doubts about any kind of possible issues, we?d be happy to discuss them with you.
Kind regards,
- on behalf of the MTA Team