Sam

That's irrelevant. For all you know it could be that his older brother was controlling him, forcing him to go along with it, and he ran off when he got the chance? You simply don't know. People need to stop spreading shit and wishing death upon people. Nobody is god and nobody knows the complete and full details of the situation. Stuff like that is how this happens: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/apr/18/new-york-post-boston-suspects-cover We should be hoping that nobody else is injured or killed and that the police safely apprehend the suspects without incident so that everyone can get to the bottom of this and justice can be served.

Pretty sure he's not either. We have these things called trials where you have a jury return a verdict - if they find him guilty of murdering people, that's when he becomes a killer.

Who were they chasing? Bin Laden? I'm not even sure if the President's motorcade has that many police cars!

No, you can't torture them because there is a law against cruel and inhumane punishment in your country, specifically the 8th Amendment to the United States Constitution that forbids cruel and unusual punishment. You might as well take away the 1st, the 2nd, the 3rd, the 4th, 5th, the 6th and the 7th if you're going to take away the 8th.

You can't expect people to follow the law if you break it yourself. I don't want to get into a heated political debate, although I think it needs to be said that one of the driving causes behind the terrorism that our countries face is our actions on the global stage. When the US tortures someone in a secret camp in Afghanistan, all they are doing is giving people reason, very good reason at that, to hate America, and all of the things that Americans stand for. Its the Taliban that tortures people, its the Taliban that kills people, what's the point in pretending that we're any different if we're going to do the same? As NB said, they want death to America because America wants death to them.

Incredible stuff. I'm hoping that you didn't get injured or anything by it?

Unfortunately not, ELS.Net uses a very different system, here's an example: [ENABLED] Enabled=True [DETAILS] Name=Police Buffalo Author=Sam (www.lcpdfr.com) Version=1.0 ELS-DN [MODEL] Model=Police [PATTERNS] Primary=Rotator Secondary=None Warning=DoubleFlash [LIGHT1] Exists=True OffsetX=0.45 OffsetY=-0.25 OffsetZ=0.925 Colour=Maroon Size=50 Type=Rotator Group=1 RotatorAngle=0 [LIGHT2] Exists=True OffsetX=0.29 OffsetY=-0.18 OffsetZ=0.925 Colour=DimGray Size=40 Type=Rotator Group=2 RotatorAngle=45 [LIGHT3] Exists=True OffsetX=0.15 OffsetY=-0.1 OffsetZ=0.925 Colour=Maroon Size=50 Type=Rotator Group=3 RotatorAngle=90 [LIGHT4] Exists=True OffsetX=0 OffsetY=0 OffsetZ=0.925 Colour=DimGray Size=40 Type=Rotator Group=4 RotatorAngle=135 [LIGHT5] Exists=True OffsetX=-0.15 OffsetY=-0.1 OffsetZ=0.925 Colour=Maroon Size=50 Type=Rotator Group=5 RotatorAngle=90 [LIGHT6] Exists=True OffsetX=-0.29 OffsetY=-0.18 OffsetZ=0.925 Colour=DimGray Size=40 Type=Rotator Group=6 RotatorAngle=45 [LIGHT7] Exists=True OffsetX=-0.45 OffsetY=-0.25 OffsetZ=0.925 Colour=Maroon Size=50 Type=Rotator Group=7 RotatorAngle=0 [LIGHT8] Exists=True Type=LeftHeadlight Group=8 [LIGHT9] Exists=True Type=RightHeadlight Group=9 [LIGHT10] Exists=True Type=LeftTaillight Group=10 [LIGHT11] Exists=True Type=RightTaillight Group=11 Also, some of you might want to suggest it to Grady to making an account and a topic here, he's going to get a lot more feedback and exposure that way than just posting it on GPM.

COMMUNITY GUIDELINES UPDATES - 14 APRIL 2013 The following updates have been made to the community guidelines: Gallery Section The Community Guidelines have been updated to include a set of rules specific to the LCPDFR Gallery: Certain exemptions are given from the site-wide guidelines. Clear details on what is and what is not allowed. Restrictions against spamming the image strip on the forum index. Clearer text on advertising - the LCPDFR gallery is not your personal advertising tool. You will be presented with the full text of these guidelines when uploading an image.

Well, no, ELS.Net isn't intended to replace ELS -- it is ELS! And yeah, don't come in here just to criticise EVCS with silly comments. You might not like it but you've got to respect the effort and work that's gone into it. By all means you can leave helpful feedback, but don't just come in here to flame.

Wow, that's insane. Incredible how he just rammed a truck and all those cars out the way like they were nothing. I'd say they made completely the wrong move by trying to run up on him when he got stuck in the traffic there though, looks like it just freaked him out.

That last video, how many cops do they need? Wow.

Okay, so when was EVCS announced? Late January right? How about ELS.Net? It was announced last week, right? Are you expecting to see something arrive within a week of the first public announcement? If so, perhaps you need to rethink your expectations and think back to the time it took for EVCS to 'arrive' - 2 months later. Here's the thing, ELS.Net is being designed from the ground up as a special or alternative version of ELS. It uses the same name for a reason, it is for people who want ELS, but don't want the extra parts system. As such, I'm doing my best, in close collaboration with Lt.Caine (we've exchanged upwards of 100 lengthy messages), to replicate ELS. Now, if you take time to consider just how complex ELS is (think about the controls, the little touches, the interface...) you might realise that doing so is actually quite a daunting challenge. This is getting ridiculous, I'm sick of the flaming about all of this, so let me make some things very clear. 1. Contrary to what some people are claiming, EVCS is not the first mod of its kind The first mod to feature coronas as a method of emergency lighting was made by me in 2010, it was called Illumination and it was a very experimental thing that I ditched for the same reasons that a lot of people are criticising EVCS for: http://youtu.be/9WNEj9yskh4?t=1m45s 2. ELS.Net has been in development since January 19th, 2013 (before EVCS was announced) I started work on ELS.Net on January 19th, coming up with some basic concepts for how it might work. Back then, it was still known as Illumination, and was me picking up where I left off here: 3. EVCS and ELS.Net are alternatives for people who don't like the extra parts system. That's all they are - alternatives. Some people will prefer the options of EVCS like livery switching, some people will prefer the features of ELS.Net such as full pattern customisation, exporting and sharing as well as the ELS interface and the rotating light simulation. Now please, can we cut the crap?

I'm hopeful it will be before the end of the month. I have a few university things to take care of first (one of them being 3000 words about HTML5, yay!) but after that I should get back onto it. I ran into a few problems which slowed down progress meaning I've got to rewrite a lot of the code under a new design as my old one was a little bit flawed - it allowed you to define custom patterns and export/share them, although the patterns were generic and not vehicle specific. This cased a problem where if cars had different light set ups, the patterns would need to be different as well. Essentially, if you have the cruiser using some sort of LED lightbar and nothing else and you have the patrol using another type of LED lightbar yet you want them to have the same sort of pattern, you would have to make two different patterns, one like "WigWag Police Patrol" and the other "WigWag Police Cruiser". This is fine until you have lots of different vehicles and patterns, as it starts to become a big mess and you would have to cycle through all of them to get the one you wanted if you were changing it ingame. If the patterns are defined in the vehicle's folder, however, they become specific to that vehicle, meaning that only that car will be able to use that pattern, making things a lot easier to work with. Obviously with a lot of code to refactor, this is taking a while and its pretty boring stuff just changing the way that the program takes in and stores data. For obvious reasons, I don't really want to go too far into how the custom patterns work, although they are really really powerful.

To set the record straight, she was the prime minister of the United Kingdom of Great Britain (England, Scotland & Wales) and Northern Ireland, not just England. I'm not sure how many people here would admire her as being great. She ruined the lives of thousands of people in Scotland with her right-wing agenda and to this day is loathed quite considerably throughout Scotland. She deregulated the banks and the City of London (the financial square-mile in the centre of London) which maybe wasn't such a great move given the recent economic happenings and during her term, 1 in 5 people working in industry in Scotland and northern England were unemployed. Hundreds of mines were shut down by her tax policy which had something like a 12% approval rating. Thatcher's legacy at home was pretty awful in my opinion and for Scotland in particular, it was devastating. Abroad, she had her finest moments with her courageous and commendable response to Argentina invading the Falkland Islands, sending thousands of British soldiers and military assets to forcefully reclaim the islands in a move which shocked the entire world. No doubt she had a big role in stabilising the world during the Cold War, significantly contributing to its end and through her strong partnership with the US and Ronald Reagan, successfully convincing the Americans to communicate with Soviet reformer Mikhail Gorbachev which undoubtedly made the world a safer place. Of course, she has some other achievements under her belt, the fall of the Berlin wall being one of many. To many of the people of Britain though, particularly those without mansions and inheritance money, she might well be considered one of the worst Prime Ministers in recent history. Also, on an unrelated note, to clarify how the UK works: United Kingdom (A sovereign state made up of four constituent countries) = England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Great Britain (Not a country or state, just a group of countries) = England, Scotland and Wales England is governed solely by the UK Parliament in London. Scotland is governed through a process known as devolution through the Scottish Parliament here in Edinburgh on all matters except those which are reserved (such as national security, defence, taxation, certain aspects of internal affairs like immigration and foreign affairs) Wales is governed through a process known as devolution through the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff on some matters (their assembly has considerably less power than the Scottish Parliament) Northern Ireland is governed through a process known as devolution through the Northern Ireland Assembly in Belfast on most matters (their assembly has similar powers as the Scottish Parliament) Ireland is an entirely separate sovereign state and country, it is not part of Britain or the UK.

See?! I was telling the truth!

No, our focus is more directed towards every day policing as much as possible, so we don't have any plans for things like that.

So, I was thinking that after a day of April fools jokes and such that perhaps a few people would appreciate some real news regarding our community, LCPDFR and our plans for the future. I used to do something like this at the beginning of the year however we were a little sidetracked and honestly didn't have much news that we were ready to share - something which has changed considerably. The first thing that I want to say is that right now, as I speak, we're actually in the middle of a huge surge in popularity, traffic and activity and although the numbers are still a little rough, I can quite confidently say that the past few days have been our most active ever. Yesterday alone we saw over 400 registrations - a phenomenal number for one day. Today, we've had 414 so far. Put simply, we're doing our biggest numbers ever and as the guy that sat for years and watched this project grow slowly, the past few days have been really exciting for me. We have now surpassed GPM in total member count, which I'm pretty sure was the only thing that was left to surpass them on. Indeed, just a year ago when we really started to expand and grow I don't really think anyone expected that we'd do so well in the long term. Back at the time, we understood the surge of traffic, all the new content and our sudden boost in popularity, but we didn't really think that it would continue that way - we thought of it as something that would come and stay, or even go, but certainly not come and then keep coming and coming (don't read that the wrong way please!). Back in late summer 2011, all I could hope for was that we could be a viable and progressive alternative, and now I feel pretty silly for setting my expectations so low. On the subject of all this development and activity, 2013 is shaping up to be quite a big year for us. Aside from the blockbuster release of GTA V later on in September, there's a lot more going on closer to home with the recently announced ELS v7 coming out, for the first time ever on LCPDFR.com, in a little bit and also with LCPDFR and another project I've been working on for the past couple of months in close collaboration with Lt.Caine and LMS. Basically, as a lot of you will know, I've always wanted to make a lighting system that's a decent alternative to ELS. Years ago I put out a small and unfinished script called Illumination which used GTA IV's native method to draw light coronas in the game world, making a decent LED lightbar and an absolutely horrible traffic advisor. This didn't really go anywhere because of how bad it was, the complications of the whole thing and the popularity of ELS at the time. A while back I decided to revisit it, and didn't really get much closer although I did come up with some ways of making things look a whole lot better but nonetheless it was scrapped and forgotten about. The real breakthrough came early this year, however, when Lt.Caine sent me a message after something like 2 years of being away. After a few days, we had a basic plan put together, which brings me to the first announcement I have for everyone: Emergency Lighting System (ELS) Dot Net ELS Dot Net is a special version of ELS, running on the .Net Framework and being developed primarily by myself. It is a corona based system, like a few of the ones that have been shown of recently, although it has several key differences: Fully customisable and distributable patterns and vehicle configurations The ELS interface everybody knows and loves Several different light types, such as LEDs and halogen bulbs Realistic rotator lightbar emulation (with rotating beacons and environmental lighting) Built-in visibility checks for coronas shining through solid objects and such AdvancedHook integration for flashing headlights and taillights (agan, these are customisable) I hope to get some video of some of the cool features of ELS.Net released in the next week. The next thing I want to address is LCPDFR, and where we're headed with it. For the past few months, LMS has been really hard at work with the mod, doing his best to write a whole host of new systems for it which I'll talk about a little later on this year - most likely in a couple of months. All of our development energy and focus as far as LCPDFR is concerned has, however, been directed towards these improvements which I suppose you could describe better as a complete rewrite, because that, to be quite frank, is what they are. We wanted to go further with the mod in the sense that instead of adding new callouts or pursuit features, we wanted to make the very core of it much more powerful and easy to build on. After many months, we're finally almost there with almost all of the features of the ever elusive 0.95 RC3 ported over and re-worked for the new engine. I thought that instead of waffling about the things LMS has been doing, it would be better to briefly list some examples of the new functionality present: PedIntelligence class - it handles AI for peds, meaning that now instead of people not giving a damn that you're pursuing a highly armed suspect right in front of them, they'll actually notice and care about it! Pursuits - We have some really powerful stuff for all sorts of chases, both in cars and on foot. Instead of using ranges and distance checks, officers can now lose sight of the suspects, and if they do, will spread out and search a perimeter like in real life (helicopters are really useful now). Drastically improved Police AI - Suspect with a gun? Cops will start shouting at him to drop it. Misc. Improvements - New tasks for things like pulling over (they do it a lot better now), ability to get the side of the street that a vehicle is on (useful for traffic stops) and full support for controllers. All in all, we're trying our best to make the next version of LCPDFR (which is most likely going to be 1.0) as powerful as we can given our limited resources not to mention all of our other commitments. I'm sorry that it has taken this long for us to provide some concrete information about the state of the project - we've just been incredibly busy with all sorts of other things and only a few weeks ago were we anywhere near certain of what direction we were headed in with it. That being said, the one thing I can say with confidence is that you will see a release of LCPDFR this year, unless of course LMS gest run over by a bus or something and my screen spontaneously combusts sending highly charged lethal glass shards through my body, but that won't happen hopefully! To conclude, I'm feeling really optimistic about the next 8 months. I think we've got a lot of exciting things on the way and from what we can tell, we're obviously doing something right on the community side of things given our recent statistics. I think we've all proven that LCPDFR, both the mod and this awesome website, has been nothing short of a total game-changer. On behalf of the entire team here, I'd like to thank everyone for their continued support, even after 3 and a half long years. We've really made something special here, and it's not going to stop anytime soon. Sam.

I might have a little something for everyone later today.

I play on Patriot, might make a character on Joker as well. Colby is dead as far as I understand, Patriot is pretty crap too.

The game is a trainwreck to be honest. It's been flawed ever since I started playing it (in the beta before it was released in 2010) and it's still flawed, perhaps even more so, today. Realtime Worlds got a lot of the core of the game really badly wrong, it's centered around pretty boring PvP in that the only combat that takes place is if you are on a 'mission' against someone, which means you have to go somewhere, break a door down then go return the stolen goods to a drop off all the while the enemy team tries to stop you. That's fine, but it gets really boring after a while and it's just wrong for the type of game that it is. You have criminals and paramilitary police/vigilantes called enforcers in two districts of a big open-world city, therefore you would expect it to have some open-world crime - it doesn't. All the criminals can do is mug NPCs, raid stores or steal cars and if they do that enough, an icon appears above them and you can 'witness' them, starting a 'mission' where you have to kill them and take whatever they had and bring it back to a police station. The problem with this is that nobody ever does it, because it frankly isn't worth it. If you witness a criminal mugging someone, stop them and return the stolen goods, you only get a few hundred APB dollars (in-game money) for it and a minute amount of standing (standing is how you level up). On the other hand, if it puts me into an objective based mission where I have to raid some property and take photographs of a car, upon completing that I get at least 400 standing and anywhere from 200-1000 in-game money. As such, the game is just like this: Criminals and enforcers set their state to ready Criminals get put against enforcers Criminals have to destroy something, enforcers have to stop them Repeat. If you see a criminal run over an NPC civilian and you want to chase him down and arrest him for it, guess what, you can't. The entire game is based around a 4v4 team-deathmatch objective thing, like capture the flag, sabotage, demolition, whatever. It just shouldn't be, it's not meant to be a third person shooter, it's meant to be an open-world crime based MMORPG/TPS. The second thing is the people that play it. If you don't have a group of friends or a clan to play with, you shouldn't really bother. Random teammates are almost always stupid and they don't have a clue what they're doing, making it rather miserable for you. Secondly, almost everyone that plays it is a total jerk with people calling you every insult under the sun, and then some. Thirdly, there's a few hackers and the anti-cheat is either non-existent or really ineffective. Another main problem with the game is the company that owns it, they don't really care too much about it or have any idea what they're doing. All they've done is remove content, then add it back to their cash shop as "limited edition exclusives" and all that stuff. The development team is a fraction of the size it once was when Realtime Worlds up in Dundee, Scotland developed it (and a game this big and ambitious that was created by a large development team needs a large development team) and while they're certainly very talented people (most of them are ex-Realtime Worlds employees), they simply don't have the money or the resources to do anything big with the game. Back in 2010 there were two open-world districts in the city: Waterfront and Financial, with a third promised. Today, three years later, there's still only the same, boring, two. That all being said, the game is still fairly addicting when you first start playing it if you can overlook all of the flaws (and sometimes you just can't) and focus more on the good parts of it. I think the best thing about it is the customisation by far, you can buy clothes and vehicles, and dress your character however you want, then apply your own symbols and stuff to their clothing (which you can design using up to 100 layers in the symbol editor), with the same going for cars. You can make really cool stuff, like this car which I made last month: Also, you can be a jerk yourself and grab a dump truck and smash the crap out of other players with it. It's more fun than you might think, especially when you get a good hit and they blow up. I guess if you're relatively good at shooting games, you might like it. With the right weapon and teammates, the game can be pretty fun, and you can destroy virtually all opposition: I got one of the boxed retail copies of the game for less than 10 bucks, it gives you 30 days of premium, a couple of permanent guns and some other stuff which is a rather good deal. The game is fun for the most part I suppose, you just have to be with the right people.

It's just another Sunday for me, although I get chocolate eggs and stuff which is cool, makes it a better Sunday anyway.

You can release people by using the baton arrest, aiming at them with a bat/baton and pressing E, then choosing cancel.