Mission Pack

Mission packs are experimental waste of Rockstar Games in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. They are never used in the original game, but they can be used for modding. Mission packs are used to get additional script content into the game. An example usage of this technology is Design Your Own Mission, created by PatrickW and Dutchy3010.

In Grand Theft Auto IV a similar technology is used for the downloadable content The Lost and Damned.

Using Mission Packs
Mission packs must be located in the  directory. By default, the user files directory is as follows:
 * Windows Vista and later –
 * Windows XP –

Adding a mission pack
For adding a mission pack point to your User Files directory (as described above). Create a new folder and call it. In this folder, create another folder called, where   is the number identifying your pack. This number begins with  and increments by one for every mission pack installed. Copy your script and GXT file to this folder and rename the script to  and the text archive to.

Data format
Create a new file called  and open it using any text editor. Insert the following text:. Replace  with the number of your mission pack (as described above), and replace   with the name of your mission pack (e.g.  ). Ensure that the mission pack name is surrounded by two   characters, as shown. The name will be what the player see later on in the game when choosing a mission pack on starting a new game.

Using external scripts
By default the game skips the external script header in the script file, so it is impossible to use external scripts. However, some members of the SannyBuilder community created a patch to combat this issue (see below). Using the patch, you can move the  file containing your external scripts into the   directory, which is located inside the game's installation directory. Rename  to , where   is the number of the mission pack.

Advantages and disadvantages
As described on the top of the page mission packs are experimental waste of Rockstar Games. They are not very sophisticated and limited in their functionality. The greatest disadvantages are as follows:


 * External scripts cannot be used without first patching the game
 * Only one monolingual text can be used

Despite these caveats, mission packs are not useless. They are a good way to make major changes to the game while still maintaining compatibility and stability. Additionally, they are the only way to use two scripts side-by-side. Another advantage is that the end user of your script does not need to worry about switching save files and scripts by hand, because the game remembers the current mission pack in the save file, so all the end user has to do is load it.

Tools

 * Mission Packs Fix – Allows to use external scripts in form of a  file with mission packs. See this topic for detailed information.