User:Lioshenka/Grand Theft Auto: Criminal Russia

Brief information
GTA: CR is a modification for GTA San Andreas, which was started in 2004 by a group of people, located mainly in Russian Federation]]. This ambitious modifications aimed at replacing thw whole GTA world with a custom map, new vehicles and a new storyline. The development process is frozen at the moment although a demo-version is available.

History and the effect
It all has started in 2004 when a person known as Labukh, Ukraine, set up a small team whos aim was to create a small Russian town for GTA Vice City. In notime the project became popular and many other people, considered as the best modellers on RuNet, joined the team. Unexpected success gave the developers faith, and the next important stage of the project was the decision to replace the whole map.

Summer 2006, GTA San Andreas came out for PC and that was another important stage. The team has decided to change the platform from VC to SA due to the large amount of new features, endless possibilities regarding the map and the weather condtions as well as many other things. Since then and until October 2007 the team worked hard to achive its ambitious targets.

During 3 years of development there were enough models produced to replace at least half of San Andreas map. However, the main problems that the team encountered was that many developers were too busy with their private life; did not find the project successfull or were in deep conflict with the manager of the project, who, on a number of occasions, has expressed his concerns regarding Ukraine and Russia's today's and past relationship. Every time the developer left, the team lost its models, which sometime made up over the half of the map. One of the most discussed moments was when Predator, Lioshenka and GexoDiver left, nearly at the same time, leaving the team with no map at all. Another problem was that at that stage there was no person in the team left who knew how to convert models into SA. The team had only couple of months to finish off the promised demo-version and they have successfully managed to do it, although not without some troubles.

It would be unwise not to mention that the team hasn't influenced the GTA modding community. For its 3-year old history the team had almost all well-known Russian modellers working for them, who, despite the fact they left, brought even more public attention to the project. The team has build the confidence and faith in itself and the project is considered as one of the most successfull of all time like GTA: Myriad Islands, GTA: United and GTA: Gostown. It is the only global Russian mod that reached the successfull demo-version stage.