Sounds like a pretty sweet Callout Pack. Should you need a guinea pig to test for you. oink oink oink! no wait that is a pig. Don't know what sound a guinea pig makes, lol anyways if you need some Callout Testing done, shoot me a PM I would be more than happy to test for you..

@Kyben, any updates on progress?

 

Hey guys,

I am sorry for the long silence and lack of information, all that sort of jazz.  This whole thing has been a huge learning curve for me and I generally only have one day a week where I can sit down and focus on the computer, which really makes it a whole lot more difficult because I end up re-learning half of the last weeks stuff in order to keep working.

I was definitely a bit premature in posting this and aiming so high to get something out straight away. It just led to rushing things and what I did manage to put together to 'release' was very basic and disappointing even to me, with plenty of issues. 

What I am aiming to do is something entirely unique; something no one else on here has done and I'm still working on it. I recently managed to rope a friend in to helping out and we've been hard at work (more him than me - I'm the brains, he's the... err... better at coding and not so much writing brains!).

So with all that said, this project is definitely still in the works and is growing by the day because as I work on things or get updates from the offsider, I'm having new ideas which ends up blowing things way out in terms of timeframes because I get carried away, lose focus on what I was doing and end up doing something new.

What we have so far is:

• One fully functioning, awesome, very much working callout. It involves getting called as backup for a couple of EMT's treating an uncooperative patient.  The callout is very dynamic and can go a number of directions based on things such as your response time (and it may not necessarily be a lights and sirens run - you'll get info from dispatch and make that assessment yourself) and then how you approach the patient and ambulance officers. There will be a conversation with response choices and as they say, every action has a reaction. 
• A couple of partially finished callouts that require a bit of work. They are either missing dialogue or just the basic shell of what we're hoping to achieve. They're a work in progress.
• A whole lot of spawn points covering the Vespucci District (see the map above).  I have personally been to every single residence, business, shop, bus stop, dumpster, alleyway, construction site and anything else you can think of in Vespucci, made notes and then saved the coordinates (props to @Stealth22 and @Darkmyre for the coordinate saver scripts). From this, I've been going through creating libraries for each individual callout to pull from, for example, noise complaints will only grab residences. robberies will only grab robbable stores,fights will grab everything, etc.  From here, I'm naming each location in the library and we're hoping to pull the name out of that and have it told to you ingame by dispatch, so when you get a call for a burglary in progress from dispatch and it's in Vespucci Canals, dispatch will actually say to the effect of "Caller is a neighbour, reports that a male just forced the back door and went into the house at 1245 Imagination Ct. You can get to the door by jumping the side fence". Something to that effect.
• Some spawn points from other districts and for specific callouts. Similar to the bank robbery in Albo's callout, I've found locations that have just screamed out a specific callout to me, so they've been saved and had scripts partially written for them. Distractions, right?
• Most of a menu that gives a whole bunch of options that will dictate how you receive callouts. This will be the whole core of the pack, through it you'll select:
  • Zone: Vespucci to start with, then moving in to others like Rockford Hills, Central, etc. Each zone be unique and have it's volume crime and zone-specific calls mixed in with the rest.
  • Duty type: Patrol, something else, whatever else and hopefully more
  • Transport type: Foot patrol (you'll only get local calls - within a few hundred metres), bicycle (moderate distances but obviously nothing traffic related), car (everything is yours!) and for those like me down in Australia where our sedans are literally just a car with a lightbar and we have the specific type of vehicle, caged vehicle (where you may also get calls to transport POI's)
• Subsequent menus (just page across, much like the LSPDFR menus) giving options for:
  • Conversations, given there's a lot of talking and dialog in the mod since that's what the bulk of Police work is. It's also multiple choice and has varying reactions based on each option, think RPG!
  • Radio use, maybe you need a supervisor to help out, maybe you need a forensics crew? Or whatever else. So far this one is pretty bare but I'm hoping to flesh it out - I love the idea that you're at a job - ambulance call for example - and can't negotiate with the guy but he's not doing anything wrong as such. Call the supervisor, (s)he'll rock up, talk to the guy (you probably won't see the dialog) and suddenly he's willing to go to hospital. Just like real life - the Sarge always knows just what to say!
  • Evidence collection and scene assessment. If you're at a burglary with no offender present, look for evidence. You might find something with a print. Take it to the lab and who knows, a couple hours later the print might get a match and you'll have someone to go question (remember, every house has an address and a spawn point - nothing saying the LSPD crime lab is up to date on work and can run a print, give you a POI name and address in a few hours)... or maybe next shift or two shifts later if I'm smart enough to work out a way to this thing save somewhere so you can actually follow up work from previous play sessions. I doubt I'll work it out though and it's down the track!
  • Other stuff but that'll depend on your duty and is a loooong way down the track.
• There's more but I can't remember it at the moment.

So, a lot of all that is spitballing. We have bits and pieces of everything all over the place. Sort of like a shell... with some holes in it. First we're gonna fill the holes, then put stuff in the shell (which we oddly enough have most of) and then polish it up. 

I've written a lot of scripts (talking scripts, not smart cody sort of scripts) and a lot of dialog given I can do that a little more easily on the iPad and then send it home to reformat and whatnot. The majority of these calls are going to involve some pretty in depth conversations so there's that's gone in to that so far. I'm also looking for a bit of a better way to actually have the conversations. The way they appear at the bottom of the screen, similar to all the other mods is pretty cumbersome. 

I hope that gives you a bit of an update. It's definitely still in the works. It's definitely taking longer than expected but I've also had a few bumps (spent a month and a half overseas getting married and honeymooning, done a lot of overtime to pay for said overseas honeymooning and marriage, etc.) and working on one day a week when learning at the same time is hard. As much as I read about this stuff while I'm away from the computer, I'm the type of learner that needs to be doing to absorb.

I'd love to get something out but I don't really want to release just one callout. Unfortunately this is enough of a mod that kind of needs to come out as a package otherwise it's going to be that one pain in the ass callout that requires that extra bit of work so it's easier to just code 3 it there and shoot the guy in the head to not have to deal with it.

That said though, it is also going to be a whole lot quicker and easier once we get the working base out, which I think we're doing well - the ambulance callout I mentioned is huge progress now that it works, so the rest will hopefully just be reproducing that with slightly different scenarios, spawn points, etc. I'm probably wrong though and it'll still be a lot of work. We'll see and I'll let you guys know.

Promise to keep you a bit more in the loop in future!

Oh and also, since I've had a bit of extra free time recently and got the extra help, I'm getting my Youtube channel going again and will post previews of this stuff on there once it's at a point that I think I can show it off effectively. Until then, shameless plug! 

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUVdRLlyIcWglOEeqNeEk3w

Props should go to @LtFlash for the coord saver script, all I did was add a couple of very minor tweaks to his excellent work.

Yep, you're totally right actually - I dunno where I pulled Stealth's name from... though, he's helped too so he should get credit... but yeah, coordinate saver was definitely @LtFlash. Of course it won't let me edit that into the post, so he gets his own dedicated post. >_>

omg can not wait for this

On 3/7/2016 at 2:34 PM, PoliceWomen said:

omg can not wait for this

same

give new news for that its  nice

this will be awesome if you ever need testing or advertising, PM me !!!!

is this still being worked on at all?

Most certainly is. 

I'll give an update in the near future. 

Just now, Kyben said:

Most certainly is. 

I'll give an update in the near future. 

Very happy to hear this as I've been following it for updates.

Seems Awesome !

Can't wait !