It's been a while since we really provided a "real" progress update, so we're taking the opportunity to tell everyone about what's been happening under the hood.

The last public beta proved to be very useful, and this has resulted in many new changes and fixes.

As always, a number of crashes have been fixed which should make DM feel more stable.  Vehicle interpolation has been tweaked which should make it more efficient, resulting in an increase in FPS.  There have also been other changes to areas such as the streamer, which also impact the overall FPS positively.  We're hoping that issues of FPS should be reduced for the next public beta.

Occurrences of "sliding" (a form of desync) have also been further reduced, which should also be evident in the next test.  One very notable fix worth mentioning is that players can finally shoot players who are inside vehicles.  This is something that was supposed to make DP1 but was removed at the last minute.  This has finally made it and is worth testing for the next public beta.

I'll mention again that if you haven't already, join our email list by visiting beta.mtasa.com or join follow us on our twitter page to be told when and where the test is happening.

EDIT: The test is over. Again, thanks to all of those that participated.

We're going to have a public test tonight (GMT) of the upcoming DP3 release. We'll be testing the numerous fixes and improvements made over the last month or so. DP3 contains fixes for over 300 issues since DP2. We'll be particularily focusing on shooting sync accuracy, both on foot and for drivebys.

Estimated time of test start:

Sometime between 19:00 and 21:00 UK Time
Sometime between 20:00 and 22:00 Western Europe Time
Sometime between 14:00 and 16:00 East coast US Time

As with our previous tests, join our email list by visiting beta.mtasa.com or join follow us on our twitter page to be told when and where the test is happening.

An immediate, high priority error that occured for first-time users trying to install the previous release has forced us to make another update to the Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas Deathmatch game client.

To sum it up, if you were experiencing any serial number (or user account) problems or received any "Mod not found" in-game messages, we strongly recommend you to download this new release which contains fixes for these problems.

Serial support has been temporarily dropped due to reasons stated below, and may be replaced by a new system in the next major release (v1.0-dp3). In the mean time, this release should make sure that anyone who wishes to play can play. Do not be alarmed by the "dp2.1" version notation in-game: the actual game logic has not been changed, as only the necessary parts were patched to solve the above issues.

Head over to the download page to download this new release. Please note that the v1.0-dp2 servers are still compatible with dp2.3 and do not have to be upgraded. 

Due to the recent shutdown of a third-party service we have used for our user account and serial number management, and the majority of problems that have appeared with this system, we have decided to bring out a new game client that is meant to fix all related problems.

Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas Deathmatch v1.0-dp2.2 disables some strict enforcements regarding serial numbers that are currently no longer possible. This means that all our users (especially our first-time users) should be able to play again. We apologize for any inconvenience caused by these serial numbers in the previous releases.

We have chosen to release this minor version instead of our next major v1.0-dp3 version due to some major changes we have made in this new version that are not yet stable enough to be released.

Either way, we hope you'll enjoy your game of Multi Theft Auto without any problems you may have had in the past.

The new release can be downloaded by navigating to our deathmatch download section. Please note that all v1.0-dp2 servers are still fully compatible with this release.

We are currently in the process of upgrading our server hardware that is currently serving this website as well as various other Multi Theft Auto related websites.

Short downtime is expected to occur as we make the transition from a Texas, United States based server to our new hardware that is located in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.