RakClient is a self-sufficient SA-MP 0.3.7 client for interacting with servers without launching the original game, built first and foremost for Arizona RP. It plays the whole connection-to-spawn sequence and then runs whatever you script for it — jobs, automation, an Android↔PC chat bridge, or anything else you write in Lua.
It grows out of RakSAMP Lite — the lightweight client I drew inspiration from and whose protocol I covered in full — and goes further: a real navmesh, a native walker, and a scripting host built on typed Luau (static typing over plain dynamic Lua).
You write behaviour as Lua (Luau) scripts against a host API that mirrors MoonLoader / SAMP.Lua, so a script hooks every RPC and packet the same way it would inside the real game. Under that sits the SA-MP "RakNet 3.x" reliable/ordered UDP transport, the per-datagram byte cipher, and the connection state machine.
The bot moves over a real navigation mesh built from the server's own map, and it walks with the GTA-SA
gaits: walk, jog, and sprint, at speeds and animations measured from a live capture of the game client
(walkTo(x, y, z, "walk"|"jog"|"sprint")). A script asks it to go somewhere and it finds a path around
the props and buildings, ramping up to speed and reporting a matching analog input, velocity, and
animation so it reads as a genuine player to everyone else on the server.
Below is the offline viewer showing Arizona RP's sawmill, reconstructed from the game files, with a navmesh route (yellow) planned across the yard. The green carpet is the walkable surface.
| Crate | Responsibility |
|---|---|
samp-proto |
Pure codecs: BitStream, packet/RPC ids, typed (de)serializers. No I/O. |
raknet |
RakNet 3.x transport: byte cipher, reliability layer, async RakPeer, plus an offline pcap dissector. |
samp-client |
Connection state machine, the high-level Client, and the native walkTo walker. |
samp-script |
Luau scripting host: bitStream + registerHandler natives and a typed samp.events port. |
sa-map |
Parser for GTA/Arizona world data (IMG, IDE, IPL, COL, DFF, the streamer bin) and a baked-scene format. |
sa-nav |
Navmesh generation (navgen) over navmesh-recast, the .nav format, and runtime pathfinding. |
navmesh-recast |
The Recast build pipeline (a fork of rerecast); machine-local until published. |
sa-viewer |
A Bevy flythrough of the parsed world and the navmesh. Its own workspace, to keep Bevy out of the main gate. |
app |
Binary (rakclient): config, tracing, and the dissect / objects / rpcscan capture tools. |
test-support |
Dev-only fixtures and a loopback mock SA-MP server for integration tests. |
cargo run -p app -- --server <host:port> --nick <Nick> [--scripts-dir example_scripts]The binary is rakclient, not the crate name app. Set RUST_LOG=info for logs, or
raknet::transport=trace to see every datagram as hex. Pass --navmesh <file.nav> to enable the native
walkTo walker in scripts.
The bot lives on Arizona's custom map, so a few tools reconstruct and navigate it offline.
Bake the world once, then view it:
cargo run -p sa-map --bin samap -- scene <gta3.img> <data-dir> world.scene [objects.csv]
cargo run --release --manifest-path crates/sa-viewer/Cargo.toml -- world.scene [nav.nav]Build a navmesh for a region (the bot walks over it via walkTo):
cargo run -p sa-nav --features build --bin navgen -- <gta3.img> <data-dir> region.nav [objects.csv]Capture and inspect traffic. rakclient --pcap writes a libpcap file; the MoonLoader script at
tools/moonloader/rpc_capture_pcap.lua writes the same format from the real client. Both open in the
offline tools:
cargo run -p app --bin dissect -- capture.pcap # per-datagram RPC/packet decode
cargo run -p app --bin objects -- capture.pcap # extract streamed CreateObject placements
cargo run -p app --bin rpcscan -- capture.pcap # RPC/packet census + needle searchcargo build --workspace
# the gate (must be green before claiming completion):
cargo fmt --all --check
cargo clippy --all-targets --all-features -- -D warnings
cargo test --workspaceWTFPL, do what the fuck you want to.