We are happy to present the second episode of the recently announced series SA-MP Legacy. The objective of this serial to gather the old SA-MP players and friends of the clan, who will recall the good old days and give out their own views on SA-MP history and the role they had there, and also share their own stories and experiences that we might didn't know until now. The two guests for the second episode areSneaky, the founder of X2G clan, and Larry, founder of Larry's Rivershell server, which was based on one of the first gamemodes scripted in SA-MP.
Fisher What were your SA-MP beginnings?
Sneaky
I had been playing GTA:SA singleplayer for a while and thought to myself "Playing this with other people would be awesome!" so I started searching for San Andreas multiplayer on Google and found VC-MP, I didn't like Vice City's animations so I never got into VC-MP but heard talks of San Andreas Multiplayer and started playing as soon as it got out, that was in June 2006.
I also tried Multi Theft Auto but they took a lot of things away which made San Andreas well.. San Andreas, I felt disconnected from the game as it wasn't at all like singleplayer, from what I remember you could only drive around in vehicle and not do anything else. I always appreciated that Kyeman kept it as close to the original feel of the game as possible.
Fisher How did X2G emerge on the competitive SA-MP scene?
Sneaky I started playing on littlewhitey's in 2007 and join SiN a while after. After SiN disbanded or when I left, honestly I'm not sure, I decided to start my own clan together with CoMet and Dodger, we recruited a bunch of guys and started fighting other clans on the server. These were some of the most fun times I've had in SA-MP.
Fisher What caused the disbandment of X2G?
Sneaky Again I'm not sure, I don't remember a lot of the details. But, it was probably my fault. I've had several communities/clans over the years and was always willing to accept anyone. This caused a lot of stress for people who were better at the game(s), that together with the fact that I actually had no idea how to run a community or clan caused me to fail a lot of times.
Fisher Did you feel that the community had changed around 2009?
Sneaky By 0.3 a lot of people who were once players had become scripters of gamemodes, filterscripts and ran their own servers. The huge influx of people starting their own servers and creating their own gamemodes changed SA-MP a lot. That together with the release of The Godfather by FeaR, PENo1 by Astro and other gamemodes created quantity instead of quality, and a lot of very well made servers/gamemodes got almost no players.
Fisher What would you describe as the most memorable period you had in SA-MP?
Sneaky
PENo1: it was a gamemode/server created by Astro in 2006, it was way ahead of it's time, it had dynamic missions, races, gangs you could create, houses you could own, an account system which saved all your stats and much more. You didn't see this stuff on other servers until somewhere around 2008 I think.
The great littlewhiteys clan war: a huge clan war which took place on littlewhiteys, between 7 clans, it lasted all day long until late in the evening, check it out.
Fisher How did you get an idea of creating a server based on Rivershell script?
Larry Rivershell was the first gamemode made for SA-MP and it was very basic. Not many people were scripters at the time when SA-MP was being tested and released, especially not advanced scripters. I liked the idea of "Capture the flag" gameplay so I started editing and modifying the script. We had done many tests on it and [KIB]Wire offered to host me a server. Instead, I ended up hosting it myself and as players were actually coming in to play, I kept adding new features.
Fisher The server was also known for duel tournaments. How did that begin?
Larry I can't really remember how exactly it happened, but basically I was asked to referee a duel match between the players. It actually happened a couple of times and as the server wasn't really suited for duels, I added the "/duel" commands. Sonny created me an IRC for the server and the word was spread to some clans such as XII, KIB, etc, and I added a default lobby to the mode with an option to spawn outside the duel area to spectate it, and soon we organized the first 16-players duelist tournament in July or August 2006.
Fisher Would you say that the server was more popular for its duels than for its Rivershell mode?
Larry Yes. By the time I added a lobby and advanced duels commands, nobody even bothered to play the actual Rivershell. At first we would create a thread about it on SA-MP forums when the forum was more "clans-friendly", but later I set up my own forum for that.
Fisher Who were the most active players?
Larry Sonny and I were certainly the most active as we ran the server. Not many people would regularly come unless we would initiate or organize something. We had a few regular players such as Sw33t_EviL, Hyperion, [WAR]INSIDE and few others (can't really remember in detail).
Fisher What had caused the server to be shut down?
Larry Inactivity. At some point we didn't have as many people coming in and I didn't really bother to dedicate myself enough to script new things for the gamemode. We stopped organizing tournaments, so that didn't help either. It was probably because most of the players eventually wouldn't play duels and would rather just play public servers for fun or have clan wars, myself included. In any case, I was mainly playing other servers too, so I ended up just keeping the server hosted for months for basically no reason.
I don't remember a whole lot either, spend literally 8-10 hours a day playing sa-mp / creating gamemodes for years. So much shit happened, think I've been in at least 10 clans, including NB.
It was fun times for sure, learned a lot! Too bad a V-MP never got off the ground.
I remember Sw33t_Evil and WAR, Russian clan. B64 was active there too, there were Luka, Vlaxxx etc. Many from our old roster played there regularly (click)
We are happy to present the second episode of the recently announced series SA-MP Legacy. The objective of this serial to gather the old SA-MP players and friends of the clan, who will recall the good old days and give out their own views on SA-MP history and the role they had there, and also share their own stories and experiences that we might didn't know until now. 
