It's been a little while since we've released an update to LCPDFR, so on behalf of the entire team, I'm happy to announce that LCPDFR 0.95 RC2 is now available for download -- http://www.lcpdfr.co...sponse-095-rc2/

We've put a lot of effort into this release, and it has a lot of fixes and requested features, as well as some really cool new stuff.

As always, a big thank you to everyone for your patience and continued support,

Sam.

As the holiday season is upon us, we figured that it would be a nice idea to inject some fresh life into the site with a brand new theme. Made by IPB Forum Skins, and customized a little by us, it's got all the same features as our old custom one, but it also packs a few new ones too. The idea of the new theme was that, seeing as we are experiencing our most rapid period of growth yet, it seems like a sensible idea to make things less cluttered and inconsistent, as with new content every minute, the old theme was becoming clogged up and with two separate skins, rather hard to manage.

Everything is still fairly new at this stage, so we will be adding to the theme and fixing up a few things as time progresses. For now though, we've added in a new page titled the "LCPDFR History and About", which is still a work in progress but contains the basics, and can be found under the 'More' tab.

We hope that everyone likes the new theme and as always, we'd love to hear your feedback about it.

Sam.

Just over a year ago today, in my December 2010 post, I shared with everyone some of my highlights of the year, before finishing off by saying "let's make 2011 a year to be remembered". Looking back over the past year now, in December 2011, I think we have done just that. Over the past year we've had almost 14,000 new registrations, we've expanded to the point where we almost always have more than 100 people online at any given time, and we've become something more than just a tiny community dedicated to one mod. Still, 2011 has been a monumental year for LCPDFR. Although we've unfortunately not been able to release a proper version of the mod this year, the mod has kept on getting bigger and bigger, to the point where the RC1 which was released only in October this year, has a whopping 16,200 unique downloads and counting. This project has grown into something which I could have never imagined back in August 2009, it has inspired people, it has shaped the GTA IV modding landscape, and it has resulted in one of the fastest growing GTA communities out there, one with over 16,000 members, and nearly 3,000 registrations a month. LCPDFR, with the support of everyone here, has simply exploded into something brilliant over the course of this year.

As is usual around about this time, I do usually set out some plans for the future and update everyone on the current direction of the project, and this time is no exception. Our main priority is still to develop LCPDFR 0.95 as much as we can, and release the next RC version within the next couple of weeks. Included will be numerous fixes and even some additions, we've gone through the suggestions forum and picked out a bunch of things that we hope will enhance the mod for everyone, whether you're looking for a seriously realistic Taser with it's own model and weapon data, or simply the ability to dish out parking tickets, LCPDFR 0.95 RC2 will have it covered. Beyond 0.95 and into the next version of the mod, I anticipate that we will focus the development around providing smaller, more frequent updates, starting with callouts. With the new framework and base design we've introduced for callouts such as the domestic violence one, and the gang activity/shoot-out, we will be able to generate callouts on the fly in-game, using numerous different events and features. With the ability to give each callout data set its own attributes and name, we will be able to introduce new gameplay elements to each callout, with different challenges and scenarios in different locations. LCPDFR 0.95 has so far been about getting rid of the old messy code, and introducing a bunch of new back-end managers and engines, which we will then be able to safely build on top of in future versions. Unfortunately this has taken a lot of time, but even when simply comparing the stability and power of RC1 to that of 0.91, you can really see the difference.

2011 has, however, had it's challenges and misfortunes. Unfortunately with seemingly ever increasing commitments in real life for all of us, development has been slower than previously, but now with the Christmas holidays just underway, we are hoping to put that right. There have been some other incidents as well, notably with GPM, which haven't been all that good for anyone, but have really shown the strength of this community as before August 2011, we were hitting about 800 new registrations a month, and afterwards we sky-rocketed to almost 2,500. For me, the main highlight of 2011 has to be the rapid expansion of this great community. We've had some great successes and achievements this year, and we've ascended to entirely new heights.

I've said it many times before, but to reiterate once again, it is you, the member, which has enabled us to push forward at such a great speed, and for this, you should be proud. With the combined support of everyone, this mod which was literally a buggy script only designed for personal use for helping me to cop related record videos on IV, has become one of the biggest mods for any GTA game in history. Put simply, without your support, this mod would just wouldn't exist.

On behalf of the entire LCPDFR team, I'd like to wish everyone a great Christmas and a happy new year,
Sam.