User:Cerbera

Ben "Cerbera" Millard began modding the Grand Theft Auto series somewhen during 1998 and continues to this day, having modified all PC editions of the GTA series since. He lives in the South of England with his parents and was born on 1985-06-27.

Modding History

GTA1

His first mod was an altered "mission.ini" file for GTA1 which added several exotic cars to the dealership in the "Vice City" level. Subsequently, he created several cities for GTA1, some of which took over two years to complete. He wrote several GTA1 tutorials and some of his work was published on the GTA1 Mission Coder's website, hosted by the infamous Gouranga! fan site. He retired from GTA1 modding somewhen during 2004.

GTA2

In 2002 he began modding GTA2, creating the GTA2 MultiSlayer project. This was an ambitious multiplayer level created in partnership with Delfi, illspirit, Sektor and other GTA2 modders. It took nearly two and a half years to complete, nearly a year of which was spent testing and developing the level with the help of the most experienced GTA2 online players in the world. It is regarded by some players as being the best GTA2 multiplayer level ever made.

GTA3

When this edition was released for the PC, there was already some documentation by Proteus about the editability of the "handling.cfg" file available on the GTA3 Modding website. This file determines vehicle performance and was of interested to Cerbera as he enjoyed the realistic performance of vehicles in the Gran Turismo series but openly criticised the arcade style of GTA handling.

Building on this early documentation, Cerbera wrote many handling tutorials for GTA3. He found a new use in modding by creating new handling for GTA3 vehicle mods. He founded the Curveshire District project, which aimed to create a modern version of the 1970's European Grand Prix road circuits but using English countryside. The project was cancelled in September 2005, after just one beta release.

GTAVC

Released in 2002, this edition was technically very similar to GTA3 and modding continue to expand. Cerbera had become quite well-known for his knowledge about GTA3 handling and wrote some tutorials for GTAVC. As the handling engine was largely unchanged from GTA3, he wrote some tutorials which combined GTA3 and GTAVC together. He also created new handling for GTAVC vehicle mods.

He had attempted to bring his Curveshire project to GTAVC but the project turned out to be too big an undertaking.

The Myriad Islands project was founded by illspirit, which became one of very few successful "total conversions" for GTAVC. Cerbera assisted by creating the first vehicle paths for it, as well as adding the first street lights and traffic lights for the entire first island (over 600 objects in total). At this time the editors were not reliable, so it he wrote all the data manually in Notepad.

GTASA

The additional complexity of file formats in GTASA, the high system requirements and the Hot Coffee incident prevented modding from expanding at first. As the file formats slowly became better understood and better tools were developed, the modding community began growing again.

Cerbera did not feature prominantly after the start of GTASA modding, during which he had written some of his most detailed handling tutorials for GTASA. Towards the end of 2005 this began to change as he became involved in developing handling for several experimental vehicle projects, ranging from aircraft carriers to road trains. Around this time he began assisting Tonywob with his MEd project, which aimed to create a complete mapping tool for GTA3, GTAVC and GTASA.

Cerbera created the popular CFG Studio handling editor which supports GTA3, GTAVC and GTASA. His enthusiasm to create efficient, user-friendly interfaces may be partly responsible for modern GTA modding tools becoming more sophisticated than their older counterparts.

Community

Cerbera is part of the GTAForums community and is particularly active in the GTA Editing Discussion area. He frequently assists people who ask about vehicle performance and has become quite well known for his knowledge on the subject.