Myrphac

Time for a quick update on Coastal Callouts progress!
 
Development of the new configuration system is almost finished for the boats side of things. Still need to do it all for helicopters, but hopefully that'll be a bit less complex. At any rate, making progress! Boats will now be dispatched dynamically depending on the location, weather, how far off shore it is, and what tasks the boat needs to be capable of. If you're near Vespucci Beach and need a rescue craft, you may get a lifeguard jetski. If you're near the terminal and need law enforcement, you may get port police. A sheriff boat will respond if you're on the Alamo Sea. Deep in the ocean you'll only get the larger coast guard boats (and cutters once they're ready), but near shore you may get the smaller ones. All of this will be fully configurable through XML files, so the user will be able to choose which units spawn where. The peds which spawn are dynamic depending on the task as well. In heavy weather, they'll wear full-body immersion suits. Responding to a pursuit they'll wear vests. You can configure the clothing options used for any scenario. Currently this new configuration system has been implemented for boats disapatched for backup, towing, SAR search, and callouts. 
 
In parallel I've been working on some new boats so we'll actually have enough variety to make these configuration options useful. We now have the Los Santos Sheriff Department response boat, as well as some new dinghy variants for the Los Santos Port Police, USCG, and Los Santos County Sheriff. I'll be doing some more work on the dinghy variants soon. We have also acquired a model for the 87' Patrol Boat, although SkylineGTRFreak hasn't had time to start converting the model yet.
 

 

 

 

 

In the most basic version, it means you willing give him money, and that PNWParksFan does not have to give you anything (such as beta/early access to his plugin)).  Essentially, if he wanted to, he could just take the money and never give the donators anything.  (Not saying he would, just saying what it means)

Exactly right. Its basically a "Manager reserves the right to withhold service from anyone" clause.

The purpose of donations should be to show appreciation for and support projects and creators whose content you enjoy. The "this is not a purchase" text isn't just legal cover, it's a philosophy. Quite a number of people have very kindly donated just to say, "thanks and keep up the good work". Some of the donations I most appreciate are those from people who give just a few dollars to say thanks, without any expectation of a reward. Of course the perks are there as an incentive and reward for those who do choose to contribute, and I know some people are only really interested in early access. But I mean it when I call it a "donation". 
 
From a practical perspective, I have only ever denied one person access to the beta, and that was due to concerns about their ability to maintain the confidentiality of proprietary functionality in development. I proactively offered to refund that individual when I denied them beta access, and processed the refund immediately upon their request. While the license is there to give me a level of protection from abuse, I have never had any issues with any donors and always strive to keep my supporters happy. 

As proof that Coastal Callouts stands strong against threats to modding, enjoy a few screenshots from the continuing development of the 45' Response Boat Medium. I've added working navigation lights, headlights, emergency lights, and have added some of the console equipment but that's not yet finished. SkylineGTRFreak will also be modeling a forward lower passenger compartment sometime soon(ish) as his schedule allows.
 
Unfortunately it turns out that AI can't drive amphibious class vehicles, which means they're utterly useless for backup or for having a team member drive while you man the gun, so we're having to make some changes. I've converted the boat back into... well, a boat. And will be using a workaround with the Coastal Callouts script to attach a working gun to it. This is a bit of a set back, but we're still making progress. Planning to have an unarmed initial testing version of the boat out to beta testers by the end of the weekend, then I'll be diving into creating a bunch of configuration options to that we can support things like guns on boats, as well as start working on boat AI teams. 
 

 

 

 

 

Rest assured, this will not deter me from continuing development of Coastal Callouts.
 
Personally, I feel like this situation is being blown out of proportion. Yes, it's bad news, but it's easy to circumvent. If it means we can't update to future versions of GTA, that's fine. I'll continue supporting whatever the latest version of GTA V is that properly supports modding. It's not hard to find copies of the old OpenIV installer online, and it's easy to prevent it from updating with a firewall entry or the trick mentioned in the video above. It'll make it a bit harder for new players to start modding, but we're not going anywhere. 

Beta participants voted last week to have me spend some time working on the 45' Response Boat Medium model. Still a lot of work to be done, especially on the interior, but here are a few screenshots to share of the progress. Major thanks to @SkylineGTRFreak, as he has done most of the hard work on this model. The mounted gun is now working, and can be used by AI peds or the player. We have working emergency lights as well. Still need to complete the interior, fine-tune the handling, create a custom layout, add other lights, and other details. Lots of work left to do, but I'm happy with the progress so far!
 
 

Sorry for the lack of recent updates! I've been quite busy with work, so development progress has been a bit slower. But I did finally get time to push a new beta update with some new features: 
Boat patient dropoff works now. Locations are configurable in an INI file. Patients dropped off at a dock will get picked up by an ambulance and taken away.  Station Paleto Bay is mostly complete now, with the addition of paint markings, parking lot lighting, and other details.  In anticipation of the eventual EUP 7.5 update which will include some USCG uniforms, I created some new coastal EUP outfits including a better helicopter crewmember and a better rescue swimmer. 
 
What I'll be working on developing next:
SkylineGTRFreak has made some progress on the 45' Response Boat Medium model, and I'll be working soon on adding lights and tweaking the handling line. It looks like we might actually be able to get this one working with a mounted gun that the player can actually use! Still working on that though.  I'm creating a full customization system for all the vehicles and peds used, so you'll be able to choose what coastal-related agencies will be in your game, what vehicles they'll use, and what types of incidents they can respond to. This will make customization for non-US players possible, and will also allow more flexibility and customization for US players. This change is in very early stages right now, but is my next major feature plan.  After that I'm planning to work on creating a "copilot" type AI for boat units, so you'll be able to have a team on your boat to help you out. Then from there, working on more actual callout content!  Hopefully that helps to give folks an idea of what I've been working on and the upcoming developments to expect. I still don't have a release date, but am getting closer with every update! If you'd like to support the development and contribute to testing the beta, you can check out the info here on how to join. 
 
 
Also, I have created a playlist with all Coastal Callouts videos, subscribe to this playlist to stay up-to-date on all the latest previews of Coastal Callouts! 
 
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGADy0TVCqhRvmn7VG_Ps2fmq6rTyh-6v
 

Looking forward to this, Good luck and thank you for pursuing it.

The updates are amazing and this is one of the best mod´s I have ever seen for LSPDFR. Thanks parks!

Building editing is a pain... I hate it... but I love the results! Coast Guard Station Paleto Bay is getting closer:
 

 
Still left to do: collisions on all the newly added terrain/docks around the building, adding quite a few props and such to make the area a little more interesting, and probably some other stuff I'm forgetting. Core layout of the building/docks is more or less complete. 
 

 

 

I thought of some cool possible calls while on patrol. 
 
1. Medevac of injured fisherman or fisherman fell off boat and the boat has lost him.
2. Raton canyon rapid river rescue of kayakers
3.  Person fell ill on cruise ship maybe?
4. Ship taking on water and you need to deliver a pump so they can get the water out.
5. Boats engine stopped and needs some repair parts to get to port, deliver the parts to them. 
6. Ship ran aground near the coast and you if in helicopter over sea the evacuation of the boat while a ground team retrieves the passengers. Possible injured person from the initial grounding of ship and they need to be taken by heli to hospital or something. If in boat then you take the passengers to shore to waiting first responders. Something along that line.
 
Hope this helps with some call ideas!

Have spent some time this week figuring out some of the new developments in map editing! With OpenIV 2.9, proper map mods are now possible. I've also discovered some new tricks to get certain building props to spawn outside their normal area, and I've been doing some custom props in zmodeler. What does this all mean? Well, it's still early in its development, but say hello to Coast Guard Station Paleto Bay! I've gotten some feedback from beta testers (and observed in their videos) that people tend to focus on the Los Santos/Del Perro area when they go out on Coastal patrols. The rugged northern coast of San Andreas has some of the most demanding terrain for coast guard missions, so I'm pleased to finally have a small boats station in Paleto Bay to serve this isolated, beautiful, and dangerous section of the Pacific coast. 
 

 

 

 
 

 

Still working on the life preserver. Everything works, just a matter of tidying up the code and figuring out what kind of controls make sense for using it in the plugin. Good progress though! 
 
Per request, I improved the self-righting boats feature too: 
 
 
 

Today's success: got a throwable life preserver ring working! Still in early testing, and I still need to add the capability to actually detect peds nearby and attach them to it. But I think it looks pretty legit! Thanks to skylinegtrfreak for help figuring out the collisions on the add-on prop and to khorio for reminding me how to dynamically adjust the buoyancy of a spawned prop. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 

Just made a bunch of improvements to the boat pursuit AI. Previously I had a problem where fleeing boats would end up stuck going in circles, with police boats following them in circles, and it all got quite ridiculous and unrealistic. With the new pursuit AI I have developed, the fleeing boats will now take off in a much more realistic fashion. I've also worked a lot on the pursuit AI from the police side the past couple days, as well as the copilot pursuit AI. In short, pursuits are much more realistic and fun now! You can successfully terminate a pursuit now entirely from a helicopter by shooting out the boat's engines and/or shouting commands over the loudspeaker. If the suspect complies, any police boat in pursuit may approach to apprehend the suspect, without you ever having to leave your helicopter. Pursuits can also be conducted from a boat, in which case you can make the arrest if you are near enough to beat the AI to it!
 

Development continues! A massive update just went out to beta testers, with more features and fixes than I can reasonably describe in one quick forum post. Here's a little preview of what's new: 
I fixed spawning of boats with the unlimited boundaries mod, now you can call for backup or spawn a callout anywhere on the unlimited massive oceans I got the add-on cargo boats working, and wrote a new, more challenging rescue mission involving a sinking ship  Updated the copilot AI, now it flies at top speed when flying to destinations more than 500m away, and there's a menu option to slow it down if you want Added a menu toggle for the helicopter spotlight - still working on this, I've figured out how to make it aim at something, so I'll eventually have it track whatever ped/vehicle you might be following, but as of right now I'm having some issues with it still  Fixed a ton of bugs and added a bunch of new features What I'm working on next:
A function to deploy a marker - e.g. if you find the boat and need to come back to it later, or you find a ped to rescue but your helicopter is full, etc. This will let you drop a flare on the spot, and will leave a marker on your minimap Adding more detail to the new callout Making boat pursuit AI take advantage of the unlocked map boundaries, so fleeing boats have a chance of fleeing into the open seas New plane-related features  
Here are a few screenshots from the recent development: 
 

 

 

 

 
 
Also, I will be doing a live stream with @acepilot2k7 tonight at 6 PM Pacific/9 PM Eastern, taking a look at the new features. I will be joining the stream live over voice chat, and will have a drawing at the end of the stream for free beta access for one livestream viewer. Of course, you can also get beta access by joining the Parks Benefactor program at any time! 
 
 

I am excited to announce that PNWParksFan Modding and Coastal Callouts have been acquired by a private defense contractor, for use as a virtual reality military training simulator. As a part of this multi-million dollar acquisition agreement and related non-disclosure agreement, I will be required to remove all of my modifications from public access at midnight tonight. Government entities will be able to license the Coastal Emergency Simulator for $1000 per employee per year for training purposes, but the system will not be available to private individuals. For more information please see this press release from the Federal Operational Organization Liaison. 

So sad to see such an amazing plugin go.  I was really enjoying the beta and all the amazing features you've worked on.

I suppose it's worth it to have such an advanced training simulator for our military, though.

So, today I discovered the "no boundary limits" mod on gta5-mods.com, which gives you access to pretty much all of the ocean areas as far out as you can imagine. For those who haven't tried this themselves before, without this mod your vehicle won't let you go more than about 1km off shore usually, and if you try to swim out you'll get eaten by a shark. Well, this obviously opens up a lot of new possibilities for Coastal Callouts! I spent several hours this evening trying to improve some of the code that makes NPC-driven boats drive. The good news is, it works fine in the far-off-shore areas. The bad news is, I'm still having issues getting NPCs to drive properly when they're near shore... as you may have noticed in some of the youtube videos, occasionally boats will just sit there and not do anything until you get close enough. I've been able to get them to work a bit further from the player, but still not all the time. I'm planning to continue conducting more research on this matter, but in the meantime, enjoy a couple screenshots from my testing today:
 

 

 
 

Love this dlc or plugin whatever you guys want to call it I'm great full to be a part of this and thanks parks for all the work you do its looking good can't wait for the next update

That is true and this is the internet. People use it as a cover and switch their personalities. I personally feel like PNWParksFan deserves everything he gets and more. This mods so far is amazing ans is still being developed. Good job so far mate.

I can't wait to see it working! Keep it up, you're the best! Don't care of harmful comments, they're not worth it!

The latest updates on Coastal Callouts progress:
 
I completely redid most of the boat pursuit AI. It's much more stable now! You can now use a megaphone to order a fleeing boat to stop. There's a random chance they'll comply.  When suspects give up, they'll stay seated in their boat with their hands up until you approach them. AI boat police are now smarter about following suspects.  Pursuit system now tracks bullets fired into the engines, and disables the vessel if enough shots have been fired.  If a ped falls in the water, nearby boat police will chase, and if they get close enough take the suspect into custody. 

New, more realistic rescue basket prop. 


  We finally have driveable cargo ships in the game! They're available now on gta5-mods.com by elcreador, and I'm currently doing some testing to see how I can use them for various callouts. Here's a little preview vid of using one of the cargo ships for a medevac mission: