Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin. Welcome to "Learn Mission Code in 7 Days" (or lmci7d as I cunningly call it). This is a 7 step tutorial for learning basic GTA1 mission coding. Throughout the course, we'll be writing full mission for GTA, whilst explaining new concepts and terms along the way. The aim of this littl' tutorial is that, once completed, you'll be on your way to writing any GTA mission you care to do. Not only that, but it makes me feel big and cool.

The mission we'll be coding is a simple take-car-to-garage job, with a few extra twists. We'll be playing with peds, setting time limits, and doing fancy checks to create a full, complete, bug-free mission.

Before I begin, it's worth mentioning - this isn't a complete beginners guide - it won't take you hand-by-hand through the early steps. I presume that you know what a mission.ini file is, and how it's basically laid out, how to read a map file, and how to change text entries. If you don't, I suggest you check out various other sites that will take you through your first early steps. However, I am presuming that you have little to no programming experience in GTA or otherwise.

You'll need various tools before we get stuck in to the coding - here's a list:

• MTD.doc - the official Mission Template Description. This lists and explains how each and every keyword used in GTA scripting. Although I will aim to explain all the keywords that we'll be using, it's worthing having this as a handy check point.
• A map editor - your two options being Junction 25 and M1. Again this isn't really compulsorary, but it's worth having to have a look at what's going on in the mission.
• A full copy of GTA - sounds daft, but this will not work with early versions of Freeloader's copy - which (to my knowledge) did not support mods. I downloaded it a couple of months ago and I had no problem, so go grab it again if you're running an old copy.
• A decent text editor - nothing fancy required - but something with multiple undos and a decent search/replace is very useful. I suggest Editpad from JGSoft.

Before we begin, here's a rundown of what we'll be doing:

• Day 1 - We'll be kicking off straight away into code - the whole basics of the code will be layed down.
• Day 2 - On the second day of the tutorial, my true love gave to me.. our first check! We'll be checking against blowing up the car on the second day.
• Day 3 - An important (and tricky) day - checking for them getting out of the car.
• Day 4 - We want to make this trickier - if they die or get arrested, we want them to fail the mission. Day 4 shows you how.
• Day 5 - Still too easy? Then lets have a time limit! Don't get to the garage door in time and it's BBQ time.
• Day 6 - We get in to advanced stuff here, using GET_DRIVER_INFO to get a shooting ped
• Day 7 - Extra titbits. We'll be introducing loads of kewl l33t extras to finish off the mission.

Once you're through the course you'll be an (un)official mission.ini coder! Harrah!

If you're got any questions about this tutorial or any other mission.ini questions or problems, gimme a shout at nickjones@eidosnet.co.uk.

So without further ado, on to the first day!