Mission Pack

Mission packs are experimental waste of Rockstar Games in San Andreas. They are never used in the original game, but they can be used for modding. Mission packs are used to get additional script content into the game. The most known mod using this technology is Design Your Own Mission by PatrickW and Dutchy3010.

In GTA IV a similar technology is used for the downloadable content called "The Lost and Damned" on XBox 360.

Using Mission Packs

Mission packs must be located in the User Files directory of your San Andreas installation. By default the user files directory is located:

• Windows Vista – C:\Users\%USERNAME%\Documents\GTA San Andreas User Files\
• Windows XP – C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\My Files\GTA San Andreas User Files\

Adding a mission pack

For adding a mission pack point to your User Files directory (as descriped above). Create a new folder and call it "MPACK". In this newly created folder create another folder called "MPACK<num>". (You have to replace the "<num>" statement with a number starting with 1 and incrementing by 1 for each mission pack. Each mission pack corresponds to one additional script.) Copy your script and gxt-file to this folder and rename them:

• The script to "scr.scm"
• The text archive to "text.gxt"

Data format

Create a new file called "mpack.dat" and open it (e.g. using Notepad). Write the following text in there:

<num> #<name>
#

The file needs to end with an # character. Replace <num> with the number of your mission pack (as descriped above). Replace <name> with the name of your mission pack (e.g. "My Mission Pack"). Be careful that you leave the # in front of the name! The name will be what the player see later on in the game when choosing a mission pack on starting a new game.

Using externl scripts

By default the game skips the external script header in the script file, so it is impossible to use external scripts. However Seemann and som guys of the community created a patch for that (See below). Using this patch you can place your script.img archive file including your external scripts in the "%San Andreas%\data\script" directory of the game and rename it to "script<num>.img" where "<num>" corresponds to the number of your mission pack.

(Dis-)advantages

As descriped on the top of the page mission packs are experimental waste of Rockstar. They are not very sophisticated and limited in their functionality. The greatest disadvantages are:

• You can't use external scripts without a patch
• You can only use one monolingual text

But this does not mean that mission packs are useless. They are a good way to reduce encroachments through modding which makes the game less prone to errors. Also they are the only way to use 2 scripts next to each other. Also the end-user of your script do not need to worry about changing savegames and scripts by hand at one time, because the game remembers the current mission pack in the savegame, so all the end-user has to do is loading it.

Tools

• MPack Fix – Allows to use external scripts in form of an script.img file with mission packs. Read  GTAForums: this topic for detaled information.

External Links

•  GTAForums topic
•  GTAForums: Design Your Own Mission