Gerard

I'm not suggesting that we do nothing and leave TGTAP to die. I'm saying that I'm happy to do whatever the community thinks would help. However, bear in mind that there are some things I can't do, like pay for MTA servers or code huge gang systems or pay for plane tickets for TGTAP member meetups. Regarding the Red Dead website, that took Chris a couple of hours to make, and almost no effort to run. You can't compare that to spending weeks coding a brand new gang system from scratch, fully integrated into the forum, testing it and making sure it's secure. If you want to ask Chris to code the system, go ahead. I wish he would, but he won't. That's his choice, he doesnt have to do it. Right now, we need some good ideas for things we can reasonably do. If you can't come up with good ideas, then don't expect good things to magically happen.

The gang system was never finished, so what would we reboot? Gang membership, gang forums, shop to buy weapons, organised multiplayer, our own servers, compeltely custom MTA system, MTA integrated with forum gangs and the shop? If it's a custom system on this forum, who's going to code it? If it's MTA, who's going to pay for the server every month? If it's anything custom in MTA, who's going to code it? I'm not trying to shit on your fire here, but it's not as if we can just 'decide' for a gang system to exist. I can make subforums and user groups, the rest has go to be up to you guys.

Dude, you could just ASK us if you wanted the gangs back. Everyone here has been sad to see them go, but nobody used them, and nobody has asked for them back. There's no need to start a petition or revolution, just discuss it. I've asked what people want. If they want somewhere they can talk privately with their friends, we can do that. If they want to have named clubs/gangs to be a part of, then we can do that. If they want to play multiplayer GTA, we can try to sort something out. So - in this topic, give your ideas for what you want (whether it's gangs, forums or multiplayer). I'll put a poll up next week. This isn't "majority rule", or "democracy", but of course we're happy to make these forums how its members want.

There's a difference between "knowing that some people do it" and actively helping them (and everyone else) to illegally crack the game. The rule on these forums is no cracking under any circumstances. Stick to it.

Alvas - Please don't give that advice. Cracking the game is against the terms of use, whether you paid for it or not. Yes it's a lot better than stealing, but people often use the excuse "I lost the DVD" even when they didn't. TGTAP will not help with cracking or torrenting or anything like that, whether or not you claim to have paid for the game.

Life goes on, but when we die, we just aren't a part of it any more.

We will absolutely not help with cracking a game. This is illegal, whether you have an excuse or not, and it would only be abused by other people. If you go down to a local game store (or even a library), they may have a machine for fixing scratched CDs. Otherwise, buy it on Steam or eBay for just a few dollars.

That may be true, but TGTAP needs its own design - not just one that's been recycled from another website.

Well.... no you didn't, that's stolen from another site (gta-series?) with "the gta place" thrown on top of it. I agree a new banner is needed, and IMO a new design. You can check out the banner I made for Grand Theft Wiki.

HIV Positive (I kid)

Yeah it is sad to see gangs go, but they've not been contributing for a long time. We just need to replace them with something else. Ideas?

TM is right - if photography was really popular here, then more people would be talking about it. So far I've only seen a couple of photography-related topics - mostly posting pictures of yourself, hottest women, and maybe a flickr channel topic. As TM says, the best place to post is Graphics & Writers. Would you suggest we rename this back to 'Creativity', or just add something else on the end?

RDR isn't GTA, so there's no need for it to be here. It could be, but you can't call it a flaw. If some GTA news is missing, then post it yourself and get a moderator to move it to the news section. There is only one person who posts news, so he won't post absolutely everything that happens. Don't forget that everyone here works for free in their spare time (except Chris), so they can't be expected to be dedicated 24/7. Plus nobody reads the homepage anyway - just downloads and forum.

We'll discuss the tournament in a separate thread. Keep this one discussing the changes that have been made, and ideas for more changes. As for the network, I see what you're saying, but not sure it works like that. TGTAP is old, people will have moved on to other sites - Chris wants them to move to his sites not other peoples'. That said, TGTAP really needs to get more popular again. Anything we can do to help that we should do. But this site is entirely Chris's responsibility, I just help run the forums. This is my 3,333rd post

That leaves us with the same problem we have now - nobody has the time to run that sort of system. The idea of a tournament is that it is occasional rather than continuous. But it would be big, probably taking a whole month to do. I don't mean just one deathmatch, because that would be insane and unfair, and it's not as if everyone could be on at the same time. I meant a proper knockout tournament. We could have a league in each continent, and the winners (or the winning teams) battle it out against each other. The winners/winningteams would get prizes and benefits on the forum.

We're not quite in the same position. Gordon has said he would step aside for another leader, which both the Lib Dems and the public clearly wanted. But that process will take until the Labour Party Conference in September. He'll still be PM until then. Of course, if the Lib Dems and the Tories reach an agreement tomorrow, then David Cameron would become PM and Labour would just be picking their leader. EDIT: Okay now he's resigned as PM and Labour Leader. Yay. Go Cameron!

Try now. It should only be accessible to gang members, not just any member. But I made the "Forum Gangs" subforum itself public now. The gang system has been inactive for years now. All that's really been happening is that a small number of gang members talk in their private subforums. Those members tend to do ALL of their socialising in there, hidden away, instead of in the rest of the forum. This is contributing to the appearance of inactivity (since all the active members talk in public). The MTA server never took off because of a lack of commitment from anyone involved. It requires someone not just to say they want to be in charge, but to put the effort into getting the server, configuring it, and running it. Then they have to make it interesting enough for other members to want to join in regularly. However, I thought instead of a 24/7 TGTAP server, it would be better to run MTA tournaments a couple of times a year. What do you guys think of that idea? As for guests, they get a register link at the top. Log out and see.

At the bottom - here

Mothers' Day is the 2nd Sunday of May in most countries. Only the UK, Ireland and Nigeria have it on the 4th Sunday of Lent.

At the moment, the gang forums are only used by a handful of old members, and most of them are inactive too. That isn't really useful for 99% of the membership here. It also means that those members just talk there, instead of outside in the main forums where other members can join in. It's significantly contributing to making this forum look 'dead' to some people. We are planning on getting rid of the gang user groups, which means that the gang forums have to be accessible to either everyone or noone. Obviously the discussions are private, so we won't make them public, so they will be archived and invisible. However, it would be great if you could figure out which topics are okay to be public, and then we can put them in the lounge where everyone can enjoy them. I agree it would be nice for the gang system to be brought back, but whilst a lot of people have shown an interest, not many people actually bother to get involved. There is a huge amount of time and effort from a staff perspective to setup, manage and maintain the system - and for the past few years that has pretty much been a waste. If we could work out (together) a way to do this that people would use, then I'm up for it.

If it's your birthday, or you want to wish another member a happy uterus-ejection-anniversary, then post in here instead of making a new topic...

My bf and me

Following a few suggestions and a lot of deliberation, we've made some big changes to TGTAP! Subforum Changes You'll notice a number of subforums have been moved around and many deleted/merged. The biggest changes are in the General Forums, GTA Gaming and GTA IV categories. Forum Bosses should speak with the staff if their forum has been changed. Gangs Retired The gang system on TGTAP has now been retired. This is due to the gang community declining in activity and consisting of old members; and the gang war modification has never been able to be upgraded to the work on the current version of the forum software. We are open to suggestions for a replacement, but we have no specific plans at this time. Old gang members still have read-only access to their gang subforums for the next few weeks. They can request that some of their topics are moved into the public areas (ie Members' Lounge) by replying in this topic. It would be great for the other members to be able to join in some of the discussions and fun topics you guys have. Staff Changes A number of long-serving Staff have retired from their positions: Righty, Spaz, Chris82, MishoM. I'd like to thank these guys for their long service to TGTAP - three of them have been staff here for 5 years now! This has left us with a much leaner staff team, and we may be open to offers for new staff soon - so get active and be on your best behaviour! Do you like these changes? Should we change some of them back? Do you have more suggestions? Reply here.

I believe you can only play online together if you are playing the same episode (either GTA IV, TLAD or BOGT). As the Bossman says, he would need to buy one of the expansions or you would need to buy the original. I recommend you get the original game, since that has a lot more gameplay than EFLC pair. It's quite cheap now.