Podcasting for Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas

Update: I’ve created a guide geared toward adding your own MP3s to San Andreas’ User Radio Station. I suggest reading that over this post if you’re just looking to add MP3s to the game.

I love to listen to my own music and Shoutcasts while playing video games, since I find in-game music rather boring. Blowing people away while listening to a Hardcore jam or some Rage is great, but I always hate it when I have a track playing in the background, and it drowns out the speech (and everything else) of a game’s cut-scene.

Case in point, earlier today I was chilling out with a little Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas after yet another day of training at work and I ended up jamming to the decent collection of energetic tracks I’ve built up for the “User Radio Station” feature implemented by Rockstar in the newest game in the Grand Theft Auto franchise. I love this thing, now that it actually works the way it should.

Rockstar tried out the User Tracks idea with it’s PC release of Vice City, but I found it useless as I would have to switch radio stations to my tracks own every time I got into a new car. Rockstar has solved this problem by adding a feature named “Radio Auto-Tune” which makes the game remember which station you were last listening to after leaving a car, and even after quiting the game (provided you saved before-hand).

This got me to thinking, If Rockstar took the time to design several mock radio stations for the game (all of which happen to be really good listening too), why shouldn’t I do the same so that I always have something fresh to listen to? The answer: I’m too busy (lazy?), but there’s another option! Podcasting!

Podcasting [Wired] is something that’s been around for a while now, but has just recently gained Internet popularity. Basically, it takes the idea of internet radio stations (a la Shoutcast), and the iPod and mashes it into one blooming, user-driven community of, well… Podcasters! Users create their own segments, usually an hour(ish) long, and post them on the internet for others to download. This allows listeners to download their favorite “podcasts” to an iPod or other MP3 device to listen to at a later date.

What’s all this have to do with running over pedestrians and laying waste to the Ballers? I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this. With a few applications, a user is able to download podcasts to their computer and use these podcasts as in-game music for San Andreas. Unfortunately, Shoutcasts do not work with San Andreas, yet.

To get started, you’re going to need a little something to download podcasts, iPodder is the weapon of choice for most listeners these days, as it seems to be the podcasting “industry standard.” Download the Windows version, read the help, and get familiar with the program.

Now, normally what you’d need to do is either download the podcasts to your San Andreas’ “User Tracks” directory (which, if you’re wondering, ends up being “C:\Documents and Settings\USER\My Documents\GTA San Andreas User Files\User Tracks” in Windows XP, at least), or manually creating a m3u playlist of the files you’d list to listen to (in this case it’ll be the podcasts) and pop the playlist into the User Tracks directory.

That sounds like a lot of work, eh? Well, it is a bit of a pain, but I hope to have a small application written sometime soon that will allow a person to parse a directory of MP3s, then output a m3u playlist to the San Andreas’ directory. If you know of a program that already exists that would do such a thing, which doesn’t necessairily need geared towards GTA itself, drop me a line to let me know.

Once you’ve created your playlist (or moved your podcasts to the User Tracks directory), all you need to do is start up GTA, tune into the User Radio Station, and crank the volume. You may also want to turn on the “Radio Auto-Tune” option I mentioned earlier, so you don’t have to keep picking the User Radio Station every time you hop in your low-rider and rotate those tires.

This is just a simple idea, and may not even be practical, but who cares! This is what computers are for.

Related Links:
Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas
Hot-To: Podcasting from Engadget
PodNova

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Update: There’s a little discussion regarding the idea behind podcasting in San Andreas at the GTA-SanAndreas.com Forum. Check it out if you’re interested in the idea.

digg this / del.icio.us / bloglines / Posted: June 27th, 2005
Category: Gaming
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