How to Play Offline, SA:MP & MTA together

The only/easiest way you can launch all these three mods and the greatest experience of playing GTA:SA on a modern PC in the late 2021

Ah god, another useless guide?

I've seen a lot of guides in the Steam Community and collected THE ONLY WORKING METHOD for the guys who are a serious enthusiast of playing SA:MP & MTA while their Steam Overlay is working and can share screenshots without messing with the .exe file names.

Step Zero

--Backup your game files so you don't have to redownload the game if you miss some steps

--Turn off GTA SA auto update by right clicking on it in your Steam Library, choosing "Properties" and opening the "UPDATES" tab.

Step One - Downgrading

As you know, SA-MP & MTA require the GTA SA 1.0 version of the game to run. Here is a guide from a friend that does a clean downgrade with some extra optional improvements:




https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=382803643

Step Two - Installing SA:MP & MTA

Download SA-MP[www.sa-mp.com]
And
Download MTA[multitheftauto.com]
From their official websites and Install them INSIDE THE GAME DIRECTORY, GRAND THEFT AUTO SAN ANDREAS FOLDER (usually located in steamapps/common)
If you can't install MTA in the same directory, install it somewhere else and move the MTA folder from the installed directory to GTA SA folder.

Step Three - Launching them through Steam

Steam has some limits for launching third-party .exe files directly from. We're gonna use "SteamEdit" for it to add two custom launch options to the game.

Download SteamEdit[steamedit.tg-software.com]

• Unzip SteamEdit
  
• Open SteamEdit.exe (turn off your antivirus if it is detecting SteamEdit as virus. Don't worry it's safe)
  
• Write "Grand Theft Auto San Andreas" in the search box and choose "Edit Launch"
  
  
• Now we're gonna add the custom launch options. As I said, SA-MP and MTA must be installed in the same directory as GTA SA. Press "Add New" twice. Fill as explained in the picture:
  Note:changing gta-sa.exe to gta_sa.exe is optional.
  
  
• Press "OK" and then "Save & Refresh" button
  
• Wait for Steam to launch.
  
• Done! Now you can Play both Multiplayer/Singleplayer mods while having access to your Steam Overlay AND the benefit of increasing your playtime.

Recommended Mods

You can use these Mods to give GTA SA a fresh view for your modern PC without ruining the atmosphere (GTA SA enhanced edition is strongly recommended. Download it from the first step):

RoSA Project Reborn[gtaforums.com]

A Great Upscaled texture mod.

Project 2Dfx[github.com]

Bypass the draw distance limit with HQ corona lights (requires a high-end PC).

Additional Content

You can do the same thing with SteamEdit to your other games such as GTA3 Liberty Unleashed and GTA Connected mods, GTA VC VC:MP and also adding mods to Ultimate DOOM and TES and a whole lot of things!

FAQ (Frequently-asked Questions)

Is SteamEdit dangerous?
Literally No. It's a tool that changes the cached launch options of the games.

Will SteamEdit ban my account?
No. It doesn't make any change to the Steam servers database. Just changes some values inside the client files that will not harm your computer/account.

Launch options going away after a few days.
Open SteamEdit and press "Save & Refresh" again. It's because of the cached database being updated after a couple of days.

SA:MP can't find my game .exe when I choose my game directory
Cuz it can't find the gta_sa.exe ver 1.0. Use the downgrader in the first step.

Steam starts downloading the game again.
Read Step Zero carefully. Auto-update and any other works that makes Steam to verify game files (such as Backup, Verify Integrity of game files and etc.) must be disabled or shouldn't be done after modding the game.

My last words

If you found my guide useful, let others know by liking and adding to favorite. Sorry for my weak English; If you found any misspell or grammatical problem please let me know.


A Big Thanks to:
Rockstar Games for such a masterpiece
SA:MP & MTA devs for their great mod
Django - The one who made GTASA Enhanced.
Tim Green for making the super useful tool, SteamEdit
And All of you for making this community a great place

[Zopheir]

Thanks for the guide man. Played both but didn't find many interesting English servers.