Problems & Questions

I have somehow buggered up my FXT file.

Did you make a backup? No? Well, too bad you didn't buy the full game then, because in that case you could've just copied the file in question from the CD to your hard disk.

The map picture has errors in it.

Well, the "errors" were probably made by the map maker. Gman doesn't know what the terrain looks like, it only knows what it "logically" ought to be. A piece of street may look like street but be pavement logically - which means GTA won't move sim-driven cars there (e.g. the road to the docks). Another source of error may be the fact that GTA looks on the map from above. Each map square is liek a stack of cubes. While Gman disregards cubes logically tagged as air, some map makers may tag (invisible) air cubes as grass or water, hiding the real geography below and thus fooling Gman.

What do the numbers in the map status bar mean?

You may have spotted that the numbers to the left of the zoom percentage reflect the cursor's coordinates on the map. The numbers to the right of the words "Terrain Overview" are the height of the cube stack followed by the indices of the cubes in the stack. The second set of numbers adds up to the address of the exact byte in the cmp file's 256x256 base array that holds the index to that cube stack. If you don't understand a word of this, read the Unofficial GTA Reference Handbook and DMA's Cityscape docs.

I have a question or found a bug that is addressed neither here nor in the online help. Now what?

Send me an email about it. Make it as detailed as possible.

Created by Michael Mendelsohn 6. Sep 98