First off, huge thank-you to the LSPDFR team for LSPDFR 0.3 - it's awesome!

I'm enjoying customizing my backup.xml, but am finding myself wishing for a bit more flexibility, especially with probability of certain backup units arriving. It appears that each <VehicleSet> has an equal probability of responding, regardless of how many <Vehicle> entries are in that set. This means, for example, that I get a police bike almost 50% of the time when I call for State Patrol backup, even if there's 4 different vehicles listed under the non-bike group. It would be nice to be able to set the probability like you can with peds for any of the sets or vehicles groups, e.g.:

  <StatePatrol>
    <LosSantosCity>
      <VehicleSet chance="80">
        <Vehicles>
          <Vehicle chance="15" extra_2="true" extra_7="true" extra_12="false">police4</Vehicle>
          <Vehicle chance="15" extra_1="true">fbi</Vehicle>
          <Vehicle chance="70" livery="4" extra_2="false" extra_4="false" extra_3="true">police2</Vehicle>
        </Vehicles>
        <Peds>
          <Ped comp_shirt="1" comp_decals="1" comp_pants="1" helmet="false">s_m_y_hwaycop_01</Ped>
        </Peds>
        <NumPeds min="1" max="2" />
      </VehicleSet>
      <VehicleSet chance="20">
        <Vehicles>
          <Vehicle>policeb</Vehicle>
        </Vehicles>
        <Peds>
          <Ped comp_shirt="1" comp_decals="1" comp_pants="0" prop_head="0" helmet="true">s_m_y_hwaycop_01</Ped>
        </Peds>
        <NumPeds min="1" max="1" />
      </VehicleSet>
    </LosSantosCity>

 

It would also be nice to be able to add additional response regions. We currently have LS City, LS County, Blaine County, and North Yankton. I'd love to be able to add a region for the parks, so I could configure park rangers to respond in some areas. It would also be cool to be able to configure LS International Airport as a separate area, and have Airport Police, TSA, etc. be able to respond. It seems like there is some way of determining where you are in the game, e.g. callouts say "Backup required in... umm, Raton Canyon". Whatever system estimates what region you're in for that, could be adapted into the XML file. At the top of the file, before <BackupUnits>, you could have <ExtraBackupRegions>. Each entry would override the default regions included when the player is in that region. The format might be like: 

<ExtraBackupRegions>
  <BackupRegion name="Parks">
    <IncludeArea>Raton Canyon</IncludeArea>
    <IncludeArea>Paleto Forest</IncludeArea>
    <IncludeArea>Mt Chilliad State Wilderness</IncludeArea>
  </BackupRegion>
  <BackupRegion name="Airport">
    <IncludeArea>Los Santos International Airport</IncludeArea>
  </BackupRegion>
  <BackupRegion name="Port">
    <IncludeArea>Terminal</IncludeArea>
    <IncludeArea>Docks District</IncludeArea>
  </BackupRegion>
</ExtraBackupRegions>

<!-- Resume file as normal, allowing the regions above
     to be used in any of the backup unit sections. 
     If a region is missing a definition for one of 
     the categories, then just use the default for the
     area, e.g. if no "state patrol" is specified for 
     Los Santos International Airport, just send the 
     regular state patrol defined for City of Los Santos -->

<BackupUnits>
  <LocalPatrol>
    <Parks>
      <VehicleSet>
        
        ... 

 

Edited January 17, 201610 yr by PNWParksFan
Added details to example xml

28 minutes ago, PNWParksFan said:

First off, huge thank-you to the LSPDFR team for LSPDFR 0.3 - it's awesome!

I'm enjoying customizing my backup.xml, but am finding myself wishing for a bit more flexibility, especially with probability of certain backup units arriving. It appears that each <VehicleSet> has an equal probability of responding, regardless of how many <Vehicle> entries are in that set. This means, for example, that I get a police bike almost 50% of the time when I call for State Patrol backup, even if there's 4 different vehicles listed under the non-bike group. It would be nice to be able to set the probability like you can with peds for any of the sets or vehicles groups, e.g.:

  <StatePatrol>
    <LosSantosCity>
      <VehicleSet chance="80">
        <Vehicles>
          <Vehicle chance="15" extra_2="true" extra_7="true" extra_12="false">police4</Vehicle>
          <Vehicle chance="15" extra_1="true">fbi</Vehicle>
          <Vehicle chance="70" livery="4" extra_2="false" extra_4="false" extra_3="true">police2</Vehicle>
        </Vehicles>
        <Peds>
          <Ped comp_shirt="1" comp_decals="1" comp_pants="1" helmet="false">s_m_y_hwaycop_01</Ped>
        </Peds>
        <NumPeds min="1" max="2" />
      </VehicleSet>
      <VehicleSet chance="20">
        <Vehicles>
          <Vehicle>policeb</Vehicle>
        </Vehicles>
        <Peds>
          <Ped comp_shirt="1" comp_decals="1" comp_pants="0" prop_head="0" helmet="true">s_m_y_hwaycop_01</Ped>
        </Peds>
        <NumPeds min="1" max="1" />
      </VehicleSet>
    </LosSantosCity>

 

It would also be nice to be able to add additional response regions. We currently have LS City, LS County, Blaine County, and North Yankton. I'd love to be able to add a region for the parks, so I could configure park rangers to respond in some areas. It would also be cool to be able to configure LS International Airport as a separate area, and have Airport Police, TSA, etc. be able to respond. It seems like there is some way of determining where you are in the game, e.g. callouts say "Backup required in... umm, Raton Canyon". Whatever system estimates what region you're in for that, could be adapted into the XML file. At the top of the file, before <BackupUnits>, you could have <ExtraBackupRegions>. Each entry would override the default regions included when the player is in that region. The format might be like: 

<ExtraBackupRegions>
  <BackupRegion name="Parks">
    <IncludeArea>Raton Canyon</IncludeArea>
    <IncludeArea>Paleto Forest</IncludeArea>
    <IncludeArea>Mt Chilliad State Wilderness</IncludeArea>
  </BackupRegion>
  <BackupRegion name="Airport">
    <IncludeArea>Los Santos International Airport</IncludeArea>
  </BackupRegion>
  <BackupRegion name="Port">
    <IncludeArea>Terminal</IncludeArea>
    <IncludeArea>Docks District</IncludeArea>
  </BackupRegion>
</ExtraBackupRegions>

<!-- Resume file as normal, allowing the regions above
     to be used in any of the backup unit sections. 
     If a region is missing a definition for one of 
     the categories, then just use the default for the
     area, e.g. if no "state patrol" is specified for 
     Los Santos International Airport, just send the 
     regular state patrol defined for City of Los Santos -->

<BackupUnits>
  <LocalPatrol>
    <Parks>
      <VehicleSet>
        
        ... 

 

You can simply duplicate your vehicle sets to get the desired effect for your first request.  Each vehicle set has an equal chance of being spawned, so if you had two vehicle sets with a car and one set with a bike, the car would have a 2/3 chance.

The second thing is something we're considering for future versions.

Well you can also make a copy of the VehicleSet to increase its probability. 

2 minutes ago, Sam said:

You can simply duplicate your vehicle sets to get the desired effect for your first request.  Each vehicle set has an equal chance of being spawned, so if you had two vehicle sets with a car and one set with a bike, the car would have a 2/3 chance.

The second thing is something we're considering for future versions.

Thanks for letting me know about that. It'll lead to enormous vehicle sets to get desired probabilities, so if you can add support for "chance=" in future versions it would be much appreciated. Adding more entries does work in the meantime though. 

Can you comment on the issues some of us are having with enabling/disabling extras not working as expected? http://www.lcpdfr.com/forums/topic/58961-backupxml-sharing-thread/#comment-392376

I know if I could edit probabilities of multiple vehicle sets for one areas that would be awesome.

I created a tool that parses a "nicebackup.xml" file that includes vehicleset chance tags and creates the proper amount of duplicates to get the desired effect. 

I'm considering making a graphical editor for backup.xml but that will take some more time. 

 

 

Edited January 18, 201610 yr by jackscrj

23 hours ago, PNWParksFan said:

First off, huge thank-you to the LSPDFR team for LSPDFR 0.3 - it's awesome!

I'm enjoying customizing my backup.xml, but am finding myself wishing for a bit more flexibility, especially with probability of certain backup units arriving. It appears that each <VehicleSet> has an equal probability of responding, regardless of how many <Vehicle> entries are in that set. This means, for example, that I get a police bike almost 50% of the time when I call for State Patrol backup, even if there's 4 different vehicles listed under the non-bike group. It would be nice to be able to set the probability like you can with peds for any of the sets or vehicles groups, e.g.:

 

Very interesting thread, if I may ask how did you find out about the VehicleSet and per vehicle percentages? Don't see that documented anywhere. Thanks for sharing.

Sam's response:

23 hours ago, Sam said:

You can simply duplicate your vehicle sets to get the desired effect for your first request.  Each vehicle set has an equal chance of being spawned, so if you had two vehicle sets with a car and one set with a bike, the car would have a 2/3 chance.

The second thing is something we're considering for future versions.

 

Each <vehicle> in a <vehicleset> has the ability to be tagged with <vehicle chance="80"> say.

The main issue here was if you want to have your car <vehicleset> spawn with certain peds and your bike <vehicleset> spawn with a single ped with helmet say. 

But you wanted the car to spawn 75% of the time vs 25% of the time for the bike say. 

Edited January 18, 201610 yr by jackscrj
clarification

5 minutes ago, jackscrj said:

Sam's response:

 

Oh, I'm an idiot, I didn't realize that was a hypothetical .ini. I already knew you could put a vehicle multiple times for increased chances. Anyway, posting from work, disregard @PNWParksFan

No problem, at first I didn't realize what an awesome addition the backup customization was. 

@Kilyin just to clarify there are a few distinctions, I think you are aware of this but for others reading: A vehicleset and a vehicle are not the same thing.

<vehicleset>

 <vehicles>

<vehicle chance="30">police<vehicle>

<vehicle chance="70">police2<vehicle>

</vehicles>

...

</vehicleset> 

Is possible in the original. 

 

The request was to allow chance tags on the <vehicleset> to allow for easier editing. So I made a tool as a work around. 

Edited January 18, 201610 yr by jackscrj

Is it possible to clarify? Can we use the chance attribute with vehicles too?

Can I use :

<vehicle chance="90">police2</vehicle>
<vehicle chance="10">police4</vehicle>

instead of typing the police2 line 9 times (more like pasting but you get the idea) and police4 1 time?

Edited January 23, 201610 yr by DLM3

Yes, it is supported by lspdfr by default. Check the default backup.xml for an example. 

3 minutes ago, jackscrj said:

Yes, it is supported by lspdfr by default. Check the default backup.xml for an example. 

default backup.xml doesn't have any examples of vehicle chance, so I'm not sure what you're referring to.

Yeah as far as I can tell, chance only applies to peds, but @Sam or @LMS would have to confirm that. 

Ops you guys are right... Disregard my earlier comment. I can probably add it to my backup parser if you'd like. 

Edited January 23, 201610 yr by jackscrj

Well you guys were correct, vehicle chance tags were not supported. So I updated my xml parser to do those as well. 

If you guys do check it out, can you let me know if my directions are confusing. 

 

 

Edited January 23, 201610 yr by jackscrj

2 minutes ago, jackscrj said:

Well you guys were correct, vehicle chance tags were not supported. So I updated my xml parser to do those as well. 

If you guys do check it out, can you let me know if my directions are confusing. 

 

 

I'll give it a whirl.

I'm going to update it with a file choosing gui within an hour.

Edit: Done,  Ok guys final update for a while...  barring in any bugs.  I added a gui file chooser to try and make things easier. 

Edited January 23, 201610 yr by jackscrj

I said before I was considering making a graphical editor, this is not what I meant. 

In other words would you be interested in a gui tool where you didn't have to touch the xml at all. 

Just now, jackscrj said:

I said before I was considering making a graphical editor, this is not what I meant. 

In other words would you be interested in a gui tool where you didn't have to touch the xml at all. 

I'm pretty comfortable editing .xml files by hand but I'm sure it would help someone and I'd at least test it out. Depending on how intuitive the GUI is I might use it exclusively.