Seven years on patrol: an interview with Sam

Firstly - Who is Sam? The founder of what is undoubtedly, one of the most popular modifications for the GTA series?

Wow. I suppose when you look back on the past six or seven years, an undeniably insane lunatic is perhaps the only label that fits. Ultimately though, when you think about it at a very simple level, I’m just someone that was lucky enough to be growing up at such an amazing time when the first Grand Theft Auto titles were coming out. They were a huge part of my childhood as I’m sure they were, and still are, for so many other people and I just really enjoyed playing them. That being said, I couldn’t help but wonder what it’d be like to be on the other side. I remember it being really exciting in some of the earlier titles when you would unlock the police uniforms and such – it was always really fun to head out in a cruiser and do whatever, be it the vigilante missions or something else. I think that’s where my desire to see a police version of GTA came from, but sadly it was never to be and over time, we actually saw a lot of these things stripped out of the newer titles. Indeed, with GTA IV, it was extremely disappointing that things like the police uniforms were removed.

Aside from that, I’m just your regular, boring university graduate! I’ve got a degree in Computing Science, and currently balance (probably quite unhealthily and unsuccessfully) working as a software developer in the real world with developing LSPDFR and our various other projects. It’s actually quite a heavy load, although a lot of the great people here have helped to significantly lessen it over the years. Still, I rarely get more than five hours of sleep!

What gave you the idea for LCPDFR?

Well, I talked about that a little bit at the start of this, but more specifically, it was really just a lucky combination of some great timing across the board. Having just started learning the basics of computer programming maybe a year before, I was interested enough in the stuff to understand probably a lot more than most 15 year olds typically would. Aside from this, some of my family moved to Paris and I suppose as somewhat of a parting gift, I finally got my own computer. We built it from scratch, stuck Vista on it and with a pretty decent ATI card inside, I actually had a computer that could play the new games. Of course, GTA IV’s system requirements were outrageous, and the desktop that I had before was getting quite old, so it’s quite hard to understate just how important this was. Really, it was what set everything into motion. Being able to play GTA IV on PC was awesome and so was having a capable computer of my own that I could actually do things with.
 
Now, the funny thing about LCPDFR is that it happened entirely by accident. I can’t stress that enough. It was never planned and it wasn’t some sort of project. Nobody was writing down ideas on a sheet; there was nothing like that. Far from having aspirations to create anything like what LCPDFR and LSPDFR have come to be, I actually started off with making a couple of videos in the new Rockstar Editor that they introduced with GTA IV on PC. Having control over the camera angles was (at least at the time) a really neat feature and when I noticed the options for adding ‘handheld’ effects and such, I immediately thought of trying to shoot some video in the style of the COPS TV show, which I religiously watched back then. With that in mind, this is where it all really kicked off as to start with, I was mainly just making clips of small shootouts, which were generally quite boring. To make things more real, I wanted to have other cops on these scenes too, but the only feasible way of doing this was to use the game’s phone and 911 system which wasn’t all that good - you can probably imagine how it looks on video when the cop just pulls out his phone and stands like a sitting duck, talking with the dude that speaks really slowly, asking which specific service you require. I think it goes without saying that in most cases, due to the volley of gunshots aimed in the player’s direction, no answer to said question was given!
 
So, in an attempt to get some footage that was actually somewhat interesting recorded, and after having exhausted all the options already available through the various trainers, I started work on a small script of my own. As hinted at above, the one thing that I really wanted to do above everything else was have some way of calling backup, so the now famous ALT + B key combination was born. Of course, what would’ve taken me about ten minutes to do now, took about ten days back then, so progress was rather slow to say the least. Still, I got there eventually and ended up with backup functionality that despite all its flaws, was actually a huge step forward and ultimately gave me the drive and confidence to keep on scripting. I should probably note as well that when I say it had flaws, I really mean it – the police cars would arrive with their indicators flashing instead of any emergency sirens, for example. Regardless, as I kept on scripting and added more stuff, like frisking and arresting animations, it all gradually became more of a coherent, and really quite awesome gameplay experience, and not just some sort of utility script. Sensing that some other people might enjoy it, the idea for LCPDFR was born.
 
Let me just say as well that I’m glad you didn’t ask where the name LCPD First Response came from. Honestly, I have no idea.

Were you excited when V was announced for PC? How quickly did you build a framework for what is now known as the successor to the original? How easy was it?

Oh, absolutely. I was thrilled when they finally announced that GTA V was coming for PC – especially so as the details started to emerge and the indications were that we were actually in store for a really solid experience this time around – quite the stark contrast with GTA IV on PC.
 
As for LSPDFR, we’d had ideas for it ever since the first release on the previous generation of consoles, although we had never actually thought about it seriously until it was announced that GTA V would hit PC. Still, we were quite busy with LCPDFR still at the time, and most if not all of the actual planning (not that there really was any!), ideas, or whatever you want to call it, started in the weeks after release. I believe that we were one of the first to actually get custom code running on GTA V, thanks to what is now known as the RagePluginHook being almost immediately available to us, so this obviously helped out greatly. Still, it was probably just under a week until I started doing any sort of coding, so I spent my first days with the game playing it to death with no mods, etc. (which is actually really important from a development perspective as it allows you to get a feel for the game and gives you loads of reference points to look back at in a “oh, how did Rockstar do this on that mission” kind of way).
 
The real development work on LSPDFR started a couple of days before we released the first trailer. Before then, LMS had been working really hard on the hook and I had been dedicating hours on end to coming up with loads of code snippets and test concepts.
 
Was it easy? No! Categorically no! At the very start, we didn’t even know the names of any of the scripting functions. Of course, as development on RPH and the other scripthooks continued, things became much easier, but it was a nightmare at the start. I don’t think any of us cared though, we were just really excited to be able to work with the new game, and what a game it is!
 
There are so many stories I could tell about this initial period, enough to take up an entire article themselves, so perhaps these can wait for another time, but I will say that we had so much fun developing the first few versions of LSPDFR, and I really hope that it shows in the releases so far.

Have you got any exciting ideas or features for future versions of LSPDFR?

In the spirit of keeping surprises as surprises, I’ll just say that ever since the release of GTA V on PC, we've always been floating around new ideas. With the first couple of releases, we wanted to implement as many of them as we could, while at the same time also provide as much of the core LCPDFR functionality that people had become so familiar with. You can definitely expect to see a lot more from us, and since this is quite a special occasion (or because I like a riddle, or maybe both!), I’ll go one further and say that I think people who are looking for some character, customization and connectivity are going to be very pleased indeed with our future plans.

Have Rockstar ever acknowledged either mod? Be it via a twitter link or newswire
 
Weirdly enough, I don’t think they ever have. I’m fairly certain that there are people at Rockstar and Take Two who are aware of the mod – we’ve certainly seen their corporate internet traffic on our website, but I don’t think they’ve ever mentioned us. With the stories that have come out about some other mods, though, I’m thinking that’s maybe a good thing!
 

What about the wider media, what other outlets have acknowledged the mod?
 
Well, one of my favourite memories of the early days of LCPDFR is the time when someone posted a topic on our forums mentioning that they’d just been reading their copy of PCGamer Magazine in the UK and that LCPDFR had been featured in it! Obviously, I dropped literally everything straight away and headed to the shops in a frantic, hyped rush to pick up my own copy (which I still have). Heck, even thinking back about that now, I can’t help but smile. It was an awesome moment, and one that I’ll carry with me forever. I’m pretty sure that the mod has been featured many times after this in a number of different outlets, but I don’t think anything will top the feeling that I had after seeing it in PCGamer for the first time. Yeah, it was a fantastic moment that I'll never forget.
 

That's it for this special edition of the spotlight, a big thanks to Sam for taking the time to answer my questions, and a massive congratulations are due to everyone here for seven amazing years.  Thanks so much for all of your support, and happy birthday LCPDFR!