Now, don't get me wrong by the title of this thread. I love LSPDFR (and LCPDFR) and I'm glad they exist.

However, I'd like to start a discussion here about whether or not the efforts of the dedicated modding community would be better utilised elsewhere.

 

Let's start at the beginning. Grand Theft Auto IV and Grand Theft Auto V are games with the original intention of you playing as a criminal. While this lends itself quite well to reversing the roles and turning you into a police officer, there are some issues.

Let's start with an obvious one that many have tried to resolve: AI. We all hate how the AI in GTA V behave, especially vehicles. Firing at a suspect while near a road can be like playing the lottery with your virtual life, because often cars will just decide to go insane and quite possibly run you, and/or the suspect, over. 

So why is this something we can't resolve fully? Well, because GTA V is a proprietary game that we can't modify the source code of. We can only modify it, to a certain extent, to try to control the AI to some extent. Obviously, that's not ideal, but it's all we can do.

Next we have the issue of adding our own custom content without replacing the game's content. Of course, this is something that's gotten better with the whole DLC packs thing, but that wasn't always the case, and it's really just coincidence that we were able to take advantage of it in that way.

 

I suppose I've rambled for long enough and you perhaps see what my point is here: While a convenient base in some respects for a police mod, GTA V certainly has some issues that we have to try to work around rather than being able to simply change directly.

So here's the main point of this thread: Is modding GTA V to turn it into a 'police simulator' of sorts a misplaced effort when the game is, in certain respects, not very realistic? By trying to fight against the very base which we're using just to get it to do what we need, perhaps the convenience of having GTA V as a base for a 'police simulator' is offset equally by the problems it has.

Of course, LSPDFR is perfectly adequate if you just want an arcade-y sort of police game. But when we try to make things more realistic, inevitably we're fighting more and more with GTA V itself. 

What do I think the solution is? Well, this may sound insane, but hear me out - I think we should instead focus our talents on creating our own police simulator. From scratch. With its own custom-built engine. And right now you're probably thinking "That's insane. Why don't we just use an already existing engine for this?", and while I would find a response like that totally reasonable, I hope I can sway opinions here.

Here's what I'm thinking. A modding community is, at its core, a "building on the shoulders of giants" deal. If we didn't have GTA V to build off, we wouldn't have a LSPDFR, right? Well, if we create our own engine, licensed with GPL v3, then everyone - not just people looking to build on a police simulator, but also people wanting to make any sort of 3D game in general - can use the engine and perhaps even contribute changes back which would be useful for our purposes.

Now, I'm not that great at explaining things, so I'm going to try and keep this simple. There are specific steps I think we would want to take to be as efficient as possible here.

 

Step one:

Make a 3D engine. All we need here is the basics. Rather than specifying at the core level more specific things like how movement works, we should just have a level/map editor with basic "fly camera". By having the engine allow direct in-game map creation, people could easily create their own maps, not requiring a specialised editor for the task. The engine should be as modular as possible, so you can build off anything you require as easily as possible, while allowing different people to work on different things with complete separation and a guarantee that doing something in one module isn't going to break things in another.

 

Step two:

Once we have the engine, we would want to start creating modules which work towards our specific goal. We don't have to worry about making modules for things we're never going to use, because if someone else wants to create a game which isn't a police simulator with the engine, they can just pick and choose modules which fit their needs that already exist, then create their own more specific ones for their functions. For example, a police simulator doesn't need spacecraft. We don't need to program in planets, orbital physics, etc (although a futuristic police simulator in space could be interesting, but I digress).

Some examples of modules we would require would be handling weapons, vehicles, movement systems suited to a police simulator (possibly allowing for dynamically taking cover without simply pressing a button, think an Arma 3-like system), physics (vehicle physics, object physics), etc.

 

Step three:
Modules which aren't strictly necessary for the core experience, but are nice to have, would be the next step. Once we had everything in place for a functioning game, we could focus on things like lighting/siren control, the ability to place cones and barricades with an easy to use system (perhaps being able to aim at a nearby location and a ghost of the object appearing, having the option to rotate it before placing it), a ticketing system, parking tickets, towing, etc. Just think about all the addons created for LSPDFR by the community - that's the sort of stuff we could focus on after the core of the game functions. 

 

So, you may still be asking, "Why GPL?". Well, like I said previously, modding is very much a collaborative activity. If any code isn't made available to everyone, then we're doing a disservice, not just to others but to ourselves. By allowing anyone to contribute, we can achieve so much more than a fixed team of people could. By sharing what we have made with the world, maybe others will be able to create projects entirely different to ours. I believe that even very different projects can still contribute back to our goal in a meaningful way, so it benefits everyone. If this were attempted, and the code was locked down, proprietary, what-have-you, I don't think it would succeed. Perhaps a project like this that was locked down would have potential. But I've seen a few games already which 'have potential', but unfortunately don't seem to live up to it, and could possibly never live up to it. With free software (and that's free as in freedom), we can make the foundation for something that both has potential and can live up to that potential in the future. 

 

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

 

Joking aside, if anyone wishes to get the ball rolling on this, please, be my guest. The sooner the better. While I personally am not a coder (which may explain why this is very ambitious), consider this: Rome was not built in a day. Nothing starts until someone takes action. And if that action is the foundation for something anyone else can take action on? Then I believe we, collectively, can succeed. 

 

As a side-note, I would highly recommend that the engine is, from the very beginning, designed to target Windows, Mac and Linux. (Edit: While I mention Mac, I forgot that it's the awkward one in this list. The engine could use Vulkan for both Windows and Linux, but Mac doesn't support Vulkan. It does have something called MoltenVK, but maybe it'd be better to focus on Windows and Linux?) I'm not just saying this as someone who now uses Linux - I'm also saying it because I know that trying to shove things like that in later usually involve more effort than simply doing it from the beginning. I'm fairly certain that not even modules would solve that issue.

 

TL;DR The GTA V modding community should attempt to focus its efforts on creating a free as in freedom game engine which it can use as a base to create something better than GTA V, could ever be, modded or not. Modding can only ever go so far, and while it's impressive and the effort is admirable - I think if we'd shift that effort to creating something we can do anything with, it would be much more beneficial in the long run.

Edited June 4, 20205 yr by Pipeline

A fascinating idea, and undoubtedly ambitious; as you said. I do recall someone starting a project like this a few years ago, though I don't think it go very far. With that said, this idea is wonderful and would make many people happy. I do not have much experience with coding or anything of this sort, but if the project starts picking up, I would be happy to do whatever I could to support it. Your statement of Rome not being built in a day rings true, and it would be awesome to see a project like this start to take off. Good luck, and if anyone is reading this, I urge you to comment or offer your support, especially if you are into coding or developing game engines, could be fun learning experience if nothing else.

It's hard to get people to work gratis, there always needs to be an incentive. A lot of projects like this has been suggested, started and later scrapped because it's too ambitious or people grow tired of the project.

 

To put things into perspective: GTA V was in development for over three years - And that's with a dedicated team of people working full-time. A team of modders working on this as a side project (for free) will take considerably longer. There's another reason these projects usually die out - Time. Most people do not have the energy to work on something for that long.

 

The reason why GTA is used as a base is because it's literally the best thing we have. An open world, which is finished. A game code that is (in relative terms) easy to modify and bend to our will, under certain restrictions.

 

With that said, you are free to start a project like this - Literally nothing is stopping you. I do not mean to put you down.

 

Black Mesa (formerly Black Mesa Source) suceeded in recreating Half-Life 1, although they eventually went the paid route through Steam. But they started out as a free, hobby project.

I agree with you about a team of modders working on this as a side project taking a lot longer, but with the code freely available for anyone to work on I don't think we'd have to worry about such things, including your mentions of such things being scrapped. I mean, as long as there's code, someone can work on it. Like I said though, I'm not a coder myself. I'd love to start it, but unfortunately while I've tried to wrap my head around programming previously, I never managed it. That's why I started this thread, because while I can't start it, maybe I can inspire someone who can to do so. That's what I hope, anyway. 

 

28 minutes ago, ColonelJim said:

I do recall someone starting a project like this a few years ago, though I don't think it go very far.

Do you know what it was called? Was the code released under GPL or another free software license or was it proprietary?

 

Edited June 4, 20205 yr by Pipeline

It was titled Police 1013, though as far as I know the development has stopped, and apparently there has been a fair bit of drama about the simulator project.

Edited June 4, 20205 yr by ColonelJim

Oh, I think that got cancelled. Pretty sure it wasn't free software though, it was a proprietary game being worked on by a team of people who disbanded.

Ah, that is a shame. That was the only project like this idea that I had heard about. It doesn't seem like it was the most well developed engine anyway.

Wasn't it using Unreal Engine, though?

Yes, Police 10-13 does not seem to exist anymore. There's a bunch of Youtube videos showing it was basically never going to happen. 

What do you mean when you say "a bunch of Youtube videos showing it was basically never going to happen"?

7 hours ago, Pipeline said:

What do you mean when you say "a bunch of Youtube videos showing it was basically never going to happen"?

 

It was a scam, never had faith in it since the author's background was sketchy and promised things that were really too good to be true.

Although the guy who made these videos sounds like a complete jackass, he has a point a guess. 

 

Spoiler

 

 

Back to your topic, i think that the arcadey feel and the atmosphere of GTA, the lore, the humor, the already laid-out gameplay is what makes LSPDFR enjoyable. Most changes are really minor when you think of it, a backup system, a cop skin and some enemy blips who get labeled according to calls n stuff. Most of the LSPDFR experience is mainly a GTA experience, i think that's why most cop sims flop (think Police Force and that Police Simulator thing). 

And when it comes to realism, i don't know, i don't get the appeal of a perfect real life representation like they do in those german sim games. A lighthearted tone, fast paced action approach is what makes stuff exciting to play, if i wanted paperwork i'd work on my exams IRL not type up imaginary charges on an imaginary perp.

 

I don't think you'll find much success with this endeavor my man, if you been around modding communities like the San Andreas golden age (and now, Bejoljo), you'll see that modders have this god-complex with making mods for free, even though most mods were made for their own fun not as a Sisyphus type task like they make it out to be. But good luck nonetheless.