The basic concept and rules of these rounds are the same as they have always been, and they continue to bring a lot of enjoyment and activity to our community, but the process behind creating them has fundamentally changed with the evolution of modding.

11 years on, the process is much simpler. Now we read and save the co-ordinates as they are and modify the save file data directly. We can even have multiple contributors each produce a save file and then use an automated method of merging these together to produce a final save.

There was then a lengthy QA styled process of checking every vehicle and ensuring that it met the guidelines, spawned properly, and that there were no issues you hadn't thought of earlier. Once the save file was created, that was it, so you had to make sure you got it right!

The editor, created by Barton Waterduck, applied the modifications you'd make to the main.scm file meaning that to create a save file, you would then need to launch the game and start a new game, completing the first mission and then saving at the first safehouse.

You also had to be careful of which vehicles you were replacing. Certain vehicle models replacing certain other vehicle models would result in a game crash. I therefore had to document and split all vehicles in to two categories, ensuring that I didn't mix them when adding them to the editor.

Using LithJoe's Ultimate Trainer, I'd read and save the co-ordinates of where to place each vehicle to a Word document. The Z co-ordinate you'd need to mulitply by 1200 and convert the value to hexidecimal. There was no ability for us to use custom colour schemes for the vehicles back then.