Sam

AI traffic stops are currently in our build - but they have quite a few kinks which we'll see if i can sort out. As far as random chases go, they won't be like GTA V. In GTA V it makes sense to have the player witness random chases out of nowhere as that could happen. As a cop though, you're almost always going to be informed about these chases if they get anywhere near you so the way it works is as shown in the preview, you get the choice to respond to them or not. Lethal force is more or less the same as it is in RC2 from what I can remember. You have the option of authorising lethal force on any suspect you are chasing - this will mean that cops will default to it. Otherwise, cops will default to non lethal force. By default, I mean that it is the course of action that cops will take unless something happens to change that. Say for example, you're chasing a suspect with lethal force disabled, if they run over a cop, they'll start opening fire regardless. Criminals with weapons get challenged by police to drop their guns - sometimes they do and sometimes they don't. We might have some more news to share come the end of the month.

So you have like 50 police cars and everything from the FBI to the MPD to the secret service involved and they can't even get her alive? Crazy.

As shown in the preview, I can confirm to you that all AI cops are now capable of making arrests and starting pursuits. With the callout API, you'll also be able to set it up so that other cops respond too.

Nope, you don't do it like that. You use the parameters of BindKey to specifiy modifiers. like BindKey(Keys.O, true, false, true...);

Okay, so the best thing to do is use the scripthook's BindKey functionalitiy. You can bind a key and multiple modifiers to a method that will be called once that key is pressed. The easiest way to get user configured keys is to also use the scripthook's inbuilt .ini functionality. You can do this with Settings.GetValueKey(...).

You know, back when everyone was modding San Andreas and we had the ELM mod back in 2006/2007, before GTA IV was out, you could have probably said the same thing. GTA IV's emergency lights were an improvement from the ones in SA. GTA IV had better mechanics, graphics, driving, etc. Heck, GTA IV even had multiplayer. So, surely the assumption would be that SA-MP would die, ELM would never be needed, neither would weapon mods, neither would graphic enhancements, neither would ENB series. Oh, and one of the main things people used to rave about was how awesome the police ped models had improved in GTA IV. They had decent looking equipment belts now with batons and radios. The thing is though, as these games evolve so to do the mods that come out for them. San Andreas Multiplayer (SA-MP) is actually to this day, still somewhat more popular than LCPDFR is. They have over 30,000 players on right now, and just last year they were pushing record highs too. The same goes for most other things too, we still have weapon mods, we still have ped mods, we still have script mods. Granted, everything in GTA V is a big step forward (perhaps excluding the vehicle physics), but that doesn't necessarily mean that mods won't be popular for it. Just like we were able to use GTA IV's resources and assets to make great mods, we'll (hopefully) be able to do the same with GTA V. Does GTA V offer better police lights? Absolutely. Does this offer us better police lights for modding with? Probably.

I disagree, I think its pretty sloppy. The POLICE text on the buffalo is really misaligned (it actually looks like the same alignment as IV), and the badge logo on the front is just plain weird. I think the rotator lightbars look fantastic, as do the LEDs at night, although you would think that the liveries would be the simple part here. There's just no reason why you would have the all white sheriff cruisers and the black and white sheriff SUVs - it makes no sense. I really don't see why they couldn't have applied the same livery across all the LSPD cars either. At the end of the day though, if we can mod these on PC then there won't be a problem, and it will be great to have loads of new options open to us that these provide.

So, here's a list of the cop cars with some images that I've found: Police Buffalo I think they really ruined this with the ugly badge on the front. FIB Granger Smart looking car. There's also a buffalo which I'm yet to come across an image of. Unmarked Police Cruiser I think this is the best looking police car in the game. Los Santos County Sheriff Cruiser Nice car, but it should be black and white. Also there's a bug where a white LED is constantly on on the back right rear flasher. Police Transporter Looks disgusting, in my opinion. Park Ranger SUV Great addition to the game, just a shame they didn't use it for a Blaine County SD instead. Los Santos County Sheriff SUV Very cool SUV, just a shame that it looks out of place beside the white sheriff cruisers. Police Interceptor Great car, terrible paintjob. Police Cruiser Very rare apparently, but they look great. Its a real shame that the interceptors don't have this livery. Highway Patrol Bike More or less the same as the TBOGT one, just with new lighting which is really nice. Unfortunately it has the POLICE decals from the interceptor on it. Overall, I think they've done a great job with the lights and the models, but the liveries really need a lot of work and they need to be consistent as well. I personally think that these cars are in more desperate need of mods than the ones in IV. At least in IV, they all had the same liveries.

The Taser is fine. Just change it in the .ini so you don't have to press ALT. [TASER] UseSecondKeyForTaserDrawOrHolster = false As far as tackling goes, we gave it a shot a while back and it just didn't seem like it would ever get anywhere. The best we could really do was put the player into ragdoll and launch him into the target, it worked maybe 3 times out of 10. Something like this wouldn't be possible with animation editing either I don't think. It would require motion capture of people being tackled from different angles, something which we can't do.

This (or part of this building) is Rockstar North's main office in Edinburgh. Last time for GTA IV they took over all the advertising space on a massive scaffolding on another building, this time it looks like they've redecorated their office.

This is absolutely brilliant.

Now that we've officially announced LCPDFR 1.0 and unveiled a big preview of the brilliant new features and additions it has, I feel like it is a good time to elaborate on the timeline leading up to this and indeed, our timeline going forward. Back in February, we set up a new SVN for LCPDFR and carried over LMS' code that he was working on at the time. Eventually we made the decision that we'd abandon what we'd done with RC3 and instead focus on this new batch of code, which was built from scratch solely by LMS. Over time, more features were added and most of the old functionality from RC2 was converted over to the point where it actually started to resemble LCPDFR again, at which point we decided to go ahead with it and call it 1.0. With 1.0, we've all come a long way since the beginning of the mod 4 years ago. Back then, it was coded in a really horrible fashion by someone that was completely new to programming (me, sadly). When LMS joined the team, he started to add his own code which was of course far more advanced than anything I could ever do and as such, he started to make more and more of the backend of the mod with me focusing more on the polish and realism. Indeed, this continued to the point where he started coding his stuff in an entirely different language, C# and merged it all together in with my old VB.Net code. Eventually I started learning C# and we began to develop only in that, although much of the old code still remained and was still used for the traffic stops, hardcode mode, frisking and many other things. This was the set-up that we used up until 0.95 which is where we began converting most of the features over to C#. As well was this, LMS also started adding in more backend for the mod, giving us things like Callout Managers, Backup Managers and Pursuit Managers. Ultimately this is what LCPDFR 0.95 RC2 was built on - a much better system but at the same time it was technically the same foundation as even as far back as 0.80. Clearly this was not the best approach as far as the continued development of the modifcation was concerned, so when LMS offered to rewrite the mod from the ground up, I gladly took him up on the offer and now a year and a bit on, this is where we are. Regarding our next steps, LCPDFR 1.0 entered its initial closed testing phase a few months back. In these few months, we've added so much more functionality and polish to the point where there is a very noticeable difference between the mod today and the mod back then. In fact, most of the features that we showed in the preview were added recently, including Hardcore mode, advanced helicopter logic, character selection, the police station interior update and the new arresting, detaining and frisking options. We're slowly but steadily getting happier with the amount of content in LCPDFR now and at this point in time, the focus is on developing example callouts for the Callout API that you'll be able to edit and use as a base for any custom callouts you want to make. Aside from this, we're also hard at work at fixing bugs and polishing things up to make them more realistic, fluid and presentable. Now, this could take another month or two, although the great news is that we are making very good progress as the weeks go by. LCPDFR 1.0 now contains a lot of stuff that we're all very proud of and it will be released in some form or another later on this year. Of course, LCPDFR 1.0 isn't the only thing that's noteworthy at the moment, however, with the console release of GTA V right around the corner and with our community just recently surpassing the amazing 100,000 member mark. In relation to GTA V and the community, we're in the final stages of our forum restructure and re-organisation and this may actually be rolled out as early as tomorrow. When this does happen, we'll probably need to take the site offline for an hour or so while we perform the changes and move things around, although we'll let everybody know as early as we can beforehand. Finally reaching the 100,000 members mark was definitely one of the many highlights of these past 4 years and I don't really think there's any other way to put it other than to me, and I'm sure many others here on the team, it was simply the best feeling in the world. Looking back at some of the struggles and battles that we've had over the years, there were honestly points where it felt like we were in real trouble as a community - especially during the summer of 2012 and early 2013 as we were relentlessly hit with just about every kind of denial of service attack known to man. Of course, there were the events of 2011 where GPM and myself parted ways and just out of sheer desire to surpass them, we started relentlessly pushing the community forward as hard as we could. Even just to think that back then, we only had something like 10,000 members really shows just how much this place has grown and expanded over the past few years. To consider all of this, all of the things we've been through and all of the work that we've done, it really was just the best moment for me when we smashed our online users count yesterday and also when we went over 100,000 registered members the day before. With GTA V just around the corner, the dynamics of the community will once again begin to shift. While of course there'll be no LCPDFR or modding of any sort yet, we're going to support GTA V as best we can and just like we did with GTA IV in 2011, we'll provide a new home for an active and hopefully ever-growing GTA V community too. Ultimately, by the end of the year our goal is to have released LCPDFR 1.0 and provide everyone with the best community and gameplay experience as we possibly can. There's one other thing as well though, and that's our next big milestone. If GTA V does make its way to PC (and let's hope and pray that it does), we're going to do absolutely anything and everything in our power to get code running on it. If we do, I can assure everybody that it'll only be a matter of time before LSPDFR makes it way onto your system. I, for one, just can't wait to go wild on GTA V as a cop. Finally, I'd just like to say a big thank you to everyone for having the patience to stick with us. I understand that the website is about a whole lot more than just LCPDFR now, but I also get that there are so many hungry people that are dying to get their hands on the next version. I honestly wasn't expecting such a positive response yesterday when we unveiled the feature preview so when I saw the messages of support and excitement flow in, it actually caught me a little bit off guard and it was just really an amazing thing to see. In a way it sort of reminded me of the LCPDFR fever which used to grip the website prior to a release of a new version - everything just seems so exciting and so right. It'd been a long time since we'd all felt that and it was definitely a very welcome change. On behalf of the entire team here, thanks again for your support and for being part of this unique community, Sam.

I'm not even sure if it has. It's been abandoned for ages as far as I know.

I realised that there was something that I forgot to mention regarding the air support in LCPDFR 1.0 in the preview, so here it is. That's right, the helicopter searchlight now works on player flown helicopters too! (No manual control, though). Thanks so much for helping us break the online user record and for being so supportive of the work we've been doing. LMS has been literally working his ass off on all of this and I've been contributing as much as I can as well so it really does mean a lot to us. I really want to get a release out as soon as possible.

I'll be here too. No PC version = no GTA V for me. The big picture though is lets face it, people aren't going to be playing GTA V on console for months and months. It looks like an absolutely fantastic game, but I'm not sure just how long people could play it religiously. I think eventually in a couple of months everyone will be finished the story and start to get bored of the game. Let's face it, we all like using our own mods and swapping out cars and making textures and scripts or whatever - these are things you simply can't do on GTA V because its on consoles.

I don't, no.

We actually had this fully working once. Cleveland023 mapped a bunch of walls and objects and stuff to act as collision for the walls and floor and desks and stuff and it worked pretty well. The problem, though, is that the interior isn't in EFLC. The interior didn't really have much else other than that though.

There's probably more chance of pigs flying to be honest!

Aw, thanks. Unfortunately I didn't have the time to do anything but make a quick logo alteration (apologies for re-using the birthday party hat, by the way). It was 1am-ish when Original Light started spamming me over Steam every time a new member joined and I realised we'd have 100k within the next 30 minutes, so that was all I could do at the time as my brain was pretty much dying. I had to get up pretty early, then had to go through to university, so that was 2 hours, then was only actually there for an hour (pointless, I know), then got the pleasure of coming back during rush hour so that was another 2 and a half hours, then I spent a good few hours trying to finish up today's preview page and then I was about to go bed and that happened! I do enjoy my 'essays' too though, although they're pretty much just a raw dump of my thoughts and emotion at the time so require very little editing actually.

The truth is simply that we were never happy with RC3. It didn't do the stuff that we wanted it to do. I think pretty much the number 1 feature request for LCPDFR has always been more callouts. With RC3, the way callouts were done was a mess - they were all in their own little scripts with very little central management. Essentially, if we wanted to add a new one, we had to write it from scratch and it was really frustrating and time consuming. Callouts are actually one of the most boring and tedious things to script, you have no idea how hard it is to get the AI to go here, do this, go there, do that, and then go somewhere else and do something else. They start walking into walls, they get stuck in doors, they don't play the animations, etc. The other problem is dialogue and animation sequences. We have to set everything up very precisely, scour through all the lines of speech in the speech files and see what we can do with them. If I wanted to make a domestic callout where you have two people in an interior who are fighting - It'd be really nice to sync animations so that they actually look like they're fighting instead of boxing each other. Of course, this is painfully difficult due to the problems I stated above. So the key things with RC3 were that, one, we were never happy with it. Two, it was built on really bad foundations (I mean there was still code from 4 years ago in there, written in an entirely different language), and three, there was very little content in it. In fact, I can't even remember what RC3 had other than updated chase logic and a few new callouts. Also, I don't even remember us ever showing off RC3 - as far as I remember we went pretty silent about it, and with good reason!