Walcroft

Police stations?
 
Well, I know one really cool "station" that could use some love. Of course, I mean the FIB building in Pillbox Hill.  It would be really cool if LCPDFR 0.4 will have it's outer/inner doors unlocked... Add some FIB agents inside, reactivate the elevator, place 'Go on duty' and 'Garage menu' triggers for people who love to play as feds.

This is the second part of our LSPDFR 0.4 Preview Series.  Not caught up yet?  Check out the initial announcement here: https://www.lcpdfr.com/forums/topic/81745-lspdfr-04-announcement-first-preview
 
With LSPDFR 0.3, we got the ball rolling with backup customization, letting players configure their own backup units, giving players the ability to have four separate agencies in their game, each able to cover a different part of the map.
 
Now, back then, this was a pretty cool system - car mods weren't even a thing when we released LSPDFR 0.1, and even by 0.3, the modding scene was nowhere near as massive as it is now.   Obviously, there's a whole lot more available to players in terms of content now, especially with popular mods like RDE and EUP which add multiple new ped models, vehicle models, and even entire police agencies.  As such, we wanted to find a way to bring these in to LSPDFR.
 
So, forget just rolling the ball.  With 0.4, we're hoping to hit it clean out of the park...
 

 
LSPDFR 0.4 gives you the ability to add your own custom law enforcement agencies, each with their own officers, outfits, inventories, vehicles, police stations and patrol areas. 
 
 
Custom Agencies
 
One of the coolest new capabilities in 0.4 is our new approach to dealing with the various police agencies in the game.  LSPDFR has always had a collection of pre-defined agencies, and you've been able to choose from them while going on-duty and you've seen them respond as backup units, but you've never really been able to properly configure them to your liking.  Perhaps you've always wanted to set up Rockford Hills as an independent city with its own department, or maybe you've longed for the full, authentic Southern Californian experience of having way, way more cops than you could ever know what to do with?
 
LSPDFR 0.4 now gives you complete control over every agency in the game that we've already added (so the defaults that you're familiar with since 0.1, like the LSPD), but it also lets you define entirely new ones too.
 
The possibilities of this system are extensive: you can even have multiple agencies assigned to share one jurisdiction, and there's no pre-set limits for how many different agencies you can add.
 
 
Patrol Areas
 
Of course, what good are a bunch of custom agencies if you don't actually see them?  0.4 also expands on our existing backup customization capabilities, now letting you define your own patrol areas.  With this system, you can assign any number of agencies to a particular zone in the game (like Strawberry or Del Perro), and you can combine these areas together into wider groups which can be used in-place of individual zones, making things much easier to manage.
 
Likewise, in LSPDFR 0.3, it was called Backup Customization for a reason - the only time you'd really see any of your customizations was when calling for backup.  Again, this has been revamped in 0.4, and similarly, we're calling them Patrol Areas for good reason too.  You'll now see your agencies actually patrolling in their designated areas.
 

 
Kiss goodbye to pesky data file edits - LSPDFR 0.4 actually puts cops on the beat.  And not just any cops... your cops!
 
 
Police Stations
 
In light of the way in which we approach police agencies and backup areas, we've also taken the time to rework the various police stations in LSPDFR.  Now, in 0.4, each police station is also configurable, and in similar fashion to Agencies and Patrol Areas, this system is also fully expandable, meaning you can define your own police stations too.
 
Aside from the various options like choosing where vehicles will spawn, you can also choose which agency each station belongs to and LSPDFR will configure things accordingly so that you'll actually see vehicles and officers belonging to the specific agency situated around it.
 
This system is pretty powerful in its own right as well, to the extent that even if you defined a police station at a random office building, you'd still see parked cars outside belonging to the agency.  Plus, there's also extensive customization options for this too, meaning that you could choose a very specific vehicle model (like a special car with a recruitment livery) to be visible outside a specific police station, without it ever being used as part of the core backup system (i.e. you wouldn't have recruitment vehicles arriving at shots fired).
 

 
The Davis Sheriff's Station, all grown up...  It looks a lot better now with the right people outside! 
 
 
Outfits & Inventories
 
For the first time, 0.4 also introduces full support for multiplayer freemode characters (like those that you'll be familiar with from EUP), meaning that not only can you now play as a custom character in LSPDFR (through our new Character systems, which we'll talk about later), but you can also make it so that all the cops around don't look like clones anymore too!
 
If you add freemode characters to your Agency definitions, LSPDFR will automatically handle all of the nuances that they typically bring, generating everything from unique faces to head overlays and props.
 
And, to top things off - we've included a comprehensive system for managing outfits for multiplayer characters, meaning that LSPDFR 0.4 is fully compatible with EUP, both for player characters and non-player characters.  With this, adding all of your favorite custom outfits is a breeze and there's also support for templating - meaning that you can define one complete outfit as a template, which can then be used as a base for other similar outfits - like having the same uniform with both short sleeves and long sleeves.
 
It doesn't stop there, either, because we've also included support for each Agency (and for each different type of officer within that agency) to have their own Inventories too - this handles everything relating to weapons, including attachments, and also supports the MK 2 weapons added in recent GTA Online updates, like pistols with hollow-point ammunition.
 
 
Putting it all together
 
We've really gone the extra mile in making sure that all of these systems join together, forming what we think is one amazingly powerful platform which will give everyone the freedom to play LSPDFR exactly as they like, with as much or as little additional content as they desire. 
 
To give just one example, there's been a lot of thought into the structure behind this, and we've devised a system similar to that of the 'mods' folder in OpenIV, meaning that in most cases all of your customizations will be seamlessly merged together, eliminating the burden that comes with maintaining huge XML files that contain everything and drastically simplifying the process of installing customizations made by others.
 
There's a lot of great mods out there already like Custom Backup by @PNWParksFan, Emergency Uniforms Pack by @Alex_Ashfold, and Realism Dispatch Enhanced by @dilapidated that have done a fantastic job in demonstrating the potential that GTA V has for adding new content and giving players much greater control of their games, and we're really excited to be taking things to a whole new level in 0.4.
 
Finally, I'd like to say a special thanks to @SuperStumpje from the RDE team for his efforts behind the scenes in helping to refine many of the features shown above.
 
We hope that you're all as excited about LSPDFR 0.4 as we are, and we're looking forward to sharing more about 0.4 soon!
 

 
Customizations to LSPDFR are still made using simple XML files, and can also be split-up and neatly arranged on a per-agency basis.
 

 
No smart captions here - we just thought this looked cool ;]
 
Note that many of the pictures shown in this post contain a number of vehicle and character modifications (mainly EUP), simply to demonstrate their compatibility with 0.4.