KiliHD

Lessons from the virtual world, for the real world, in LSPDFR 0.4.9  
We're back with another update for LSPDFR 0.4 which introduces a small handful of new features, as well as a couple of changes to the way in which the core pursuit system within the mod works.  
 
Before we get to that though, the key headline of LSPDFR 0.4.9 - and something that we're really excited about - is that we've partnered with researchers at two major North American research universities: Brigham Young University (BYU) and the University of British Columbia (UBC) to explore the real-world research potential of LSPDFR, and the role that it could play in helping to understand how people react and behave in a law enforcement environment.
 
I know this might sound like a big change from the sort of updates that most of you who follow our work will be familiar with - and it certainly is in many aspects, but this doesn’t represent a fundamental change to LSPDFR itself, nor does it imply any significant changes to the way in which players will approach or interact with the mod.  Instead, we've created an opt-in system, similar to the statistics features already integrated into the mod with LSPDFR Sync, where with merely an enhanced level of in-game stats tracking, you'll be able to contribute towards our research with two top institutions by simply playing the mod.  
 
To this end, we've added a new, simple call to LSPDFR that is used to support the survey data by following a more predictable pattern as compared to our traditional callouts within the mod.  Note that nothing changes in this regard if you choose not to take part in the study, and you can still play the new call as normal.
 

The new 'Arrest Warrant' call in LSPDFR 0.4.9 has you query the Police Computer and respond to a suspect's residence.
 
By gathering together these statistics with the player’s response to a couple of in-game scenarios, we’re hopeful that we can use this data to better understand how players, and by extension, law enforcement might react in certain situations in the real world.
 
There's more information about our research study over at https://research.lcpdfr.com/ where you can also opt in to take part.  I should note that as a thank you for helping with this, the universities have given us a couple of $50 Amazon gift cards that anyone who participates in the study will be entered into a lottery to win.
 
 
Changes to pursuits, a new apartment and more interaction.
 
Back on the topic of the other stuff in LSPDFR 0.4.9, though, one of the biggest changes that you'll notice affects the NPC police response to pursuits, bringing a new sense of variety to the way in which situations can be handled by responding officers.  Instead of all pursuits within LSPDFR being treated exactly the same, we've split up the system into two modes: Investigation and Chase.
 
A new 'confrontation' during an investigation, conducted entirely by NPC officers.
 
In the Investigation state, we no longer consider a Pursuit to be an actual chase - if that makes sense.  Instead, there's a little room for diversity in the actions of the officers and the suspects, rather than just someone running and the officers following.  So, in our initial implantation of this we've created a new response scenario where the responding officers will approach a suspect at a walking pace, usually with a hand on their holster.  They'll point at the suspect, call out for them to stop, and the system then takes over from there depending on the suspect's response, with the potential the suspect to either resist and escalate the Pursuit into the Chase state (which is what we're all currently familiar with), or for them to surrender peacefully and be arrested without any theatrics.
 
Moving on from this change, there's a couple of new features that've snuck their way in to LSPDFR 0.4.9 as well, including a new Downtown Los Santos apartment that not only boasts an absolutely killer city view, but is also conveniently opposite the FIB and IAA buildings - perfect for those of you that like your LSPDFR with a side of paperwork and federal bureaucracy.
 
You can also now seamlessly sit down on most chairs and benches throughout the game world with the tap of a button.
 
LSPDFR 0.4.9:
Download and release notes: https://www.lcpdfr.com/files/file/7792-lspd-first-response Release Highlights: https://www.lcpdfr.com/lspdfr/04/highlights/  
Our Research Study with BYU and UBC:
More Information: https://research.lcpdfr.com/  
We hope that you enjoy this update for LSPDFR and that you'll also help us out with our new research project, which we think is a really worthwhile opportunity for all of us and something that will be genuinely rewarding to take part in - it's not every day that major universities partner up with a game mod and we're thrilled to be able to take part in this.
 
If you are having problems with LSPDFR 0.4.9, please do not post about them in this topic, but use the support forums instead.
Before you do, though, read through this topic: https://www.lcpdfr.com/forums/topic/89691-read-will-save-your-time-common-issues-fixes-and-bugs/
 
There are a lot of fixes for common problems in there.

The default is CTRL + H

Dear all, 
 
As many of you will have noticed, my activity in the LSPDFR scene has decreased significantly over the past few months. There are many reasons for this, the details of which I won't bore you with. It mostly comes down to being busy with other things in my life, as well as LSPDFR becoming less interesting for me having played it for so long and the introduction of frameworks allowing modded GTA5 multiplayer environments.
 
How times have changed since when I joined the community in 2015, from me taking an interest in learning to code in C# to having multiple plugins released on the site. It's been one heck of a journey here. I recall well the first 'mod' I uploaded for the LSPDFR community, which was called 'More Jail Points' at the time. This was first published for RAGEPluginHook 0.20. This later evolved into 'More Jail Points & Prisoner Transporter' and is now known as the all-so-familiar Arrest Manager. When I was contacted by @dbock1989, who was so enthusiastic about my More Jail Points & Prisoner Transporter plugin at the time, I couldn't quite believe it. He had been so kind as to create a variety of images related to the plugin (see below)! It frankly couldn't have been a more exciting moment at the time and, alongside other overwhelmingly positive and welcoming feedback, served as a major motivation factor for me to continue learning to code and create plugins.

 
Following this, I was looking to give more purpose to the LSPDFR traffic stop system. And so, Traffic Policer was born - a plugin originally intended to add a few ambient events related to traffic offences. This has now grown into one of my most feature-packed plugins to date. By this time, some YouTubers started using my plugins in their videos. Not only was this a great way for me to obtain feedback on my mods' user experience, I also watched @Zachary Houseknecht with great pleasure while my ANPR Hit AI lit many of his police vehicles on fire... An absolute howler: https://youtu.be/4D8HshZzWMQ?t=606
 
Some weeks on and Assorted Callouts was next in line. This was originally created out of a callout idea by  @CaptainSugarFree  and turned into what is now known as the Pacific Bank Heist. This took about 4 weeks of intensive development to fully complete (and am I shocked at the code quality looking back at it now... works though). As the first of its kind, the callout featured voice-overs and an intense, detailed SWAT based LSPDFR callout. I was incredibly proud for this to be featured on @Jeff Favignano's channel and I see now that the video in question has amassed over 1.9 million views... breathtaking. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIXKvUyzylA
 
Moving on again. At this point, @FinKone had managed to get me into YouTube. After having released British Policing Script, longing for an LSPDFR experience closer to home for me, many longed a version of the plugin for international and American users to incorporate the traffic stop improvements and a court system. With that, I released LSPDFR+ by doing my first ever YouTube live stream, which was quite the experience. After this, I released Siren Mastery, PoliceSmartRadio and a variety of other tools and smaller plugins. Many hours of coding, effort, stress, giving support and obtaining feedback had been put in by this point. I was absolutely chuffed to then achieve one million downloads on my published files...
This figure has since risen to over five million.
 
Following some negative coverage of LSPDFR in some of the Australian media, I'm also very happy that Wired UK decided to publish an overwhelmingly positive article on the whole GTA5 police modding scene: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/gta-5-mods-lsdpfr-british-police?utm_content=buffer9ca53
 
After PoliceSmartRadio's release - with the infamous April FoolsRadio download giving four thousand people a perhaps frustratingly good laugh - I placed the whole modding scene lower in my priority list. As mentioned previously, this has since been pushed far further down.
 
Some thoughts on the community's development over time
I would describe the LSPDFR community as healthy. @Sam @LMS and all the other contributors have created something very special for all the right reasons and this is largely reflected in the attitudes of the staff & moderation team and community members. With publishing mods on a popular website like this, unfortunately, comes some drama and negativity - and while I have not always agreed with the way and speed the moderation team dealt with my reports relating to me and my work, they have done a good job overall. The few issues that I experienced were all resolved. From my experience in the plugin side of the modding scene, this continues to be the case now.
 
One thing I noted during the months that passed is that both experienced but particularly newer modders are now frequently treated with disdain in the scene. The modding scene has grown massively since when I first started and unfortunately, in this area, it shows. Everyone starts somewhere and the fact someone is spending their free time creating something for all of you to download, for free, has become massively underappreciated and taken for granted. Sure, a new modders' release may be full of bugs and be nowhere near as feature-rich as more developed plugins, but this takes time to solve. Had I received the negative feedback I've seen on many a new modder's release page back in 2015, you can rest assured I wouldn't have continued my development here. When providing feedback, by all means, point out the issues, but do so in a friendly, constructive manner, not in an entitled, toxic one. Have a look at the first few comments on my Arrest Manager download page to see what that is like - this was a major factor for me to consider continuing development! It is essential for the development of the LSPDFR modding community that this attitude is changed back to what it was in the 'good old days'.
 
With all that said, I also hope the release of LSPDFR 0.4 kicks a breath of fresh air into the now somewhat stale core LSPDFR modification. With over 2 years having passed since the latest update of the core modification, I'm sure we all agree that an update would be a very welcome step. From the various preview posts released by the development team, it looks that we all have something great to look forward to there.
 
'Retirement'? So does that mean you're permanently done with the LSPDFR modding scene?
No, but I won't be actively developing plugins for LSPDFR any more. To be fair, nothing's really changing much now compared to the past few months. I intend to remain as a member of the LSPDFR Testing Team and I'm sure I'll be drawn back in at some point to explore some of the new development options in the 0.4 API. I'll also stay around on my discord and occasionally the forums and I intend to continue publishing occasional videos on my Youtube channel. If my time and motivation levels allow, I may publish some minor updates to my current mods before 0.4 is released. The fact remains, however, that I would currently classify myself as 'inactive' in the scene. With so much other stuff going on, I simply don't have the time to commit that I used to. It would be a pity to say the least to let all my work slowly deteriorate and waste away. Therefore, I've decided to publish the source code to some of my plugins to https://github.com/Albo1125/. At the very least, I would like it to be a learning resource for other ambitious plugin developers in the scene. At best, I hope other developers will take it upon themselves to improve the code where necessary (yes it is very necessary!) and create pull requests to share those improvements. These can then be merged and released, with credits obviously included for contributors.
 
Back when I started developing for LSPDFR, very few learning resources were available bar the great example project by @LukeD . This hasn't really changed since, despite the creation of the LSPDFR API repository by LMS (https://github.com/LMSDev/LSPDFR-API) and some posts aiming to document the LSPDFR functions by myself in the API development subforum. A noteable step was the creation of the LSPDFR Developers Discord server thanks to  @Stealth22 A full post with current development resources can be found here: 
I'm planning to publish the source code to a number of my plugins one-by-one to improve this and give something to the community:
Arrest Manager: https://github.com/Albo1125/Arrest-Manager  Assorted Callouts: https://github.com/Albo1125/Assorted-Callouts Albo1125.Common: https://github.com/Albo1125/Albo1125-Common Traffic Policer: https://github.com/Albo1125/Traffic-Policer LSPDFR+: https://github.com/Albo1125/LSPDFRPlus British Policing Script: https://github.com/Albo1125/British-Policing-Script  
By no means do I claim that any of the code I post is perfect or amazing - on the contrary, far from it. With the experience I have now gained, reading through some of my old code makes me want to tear my hair out. This is only to be expected, though - most of my plugins were created as part of my learning experience of C#. Prior to this, I had no coding experience or knowledge. It's fascinating to see how the quality of my code has evolved over time by looking at my various different plugins in order of initial release date.
 
Wrapping up. I hope this post provides some clarification and closure for those of you wondering where on earth I've been over the past few months. It's been an absolute blast and a pleasure. To all of you who were a part of my journey here, thank you.
 

Dear community,
'Tis the day! 'Tis the hour and the minute, the 10th of October 2016, 22:39 CEST. Everyone over in my Discord server is going crazy and I quite frankly cannot quite grasp what on earth has just gone on. I've just hit a total of one million total downloads here on lcpdfr.com!

To mark this, if I may say so myself, special occasion, I would absolutely love give a short overview of my time here, but moreover to say many, some overdue, words of thanks.
I'd like to start with some graphics. @ItsFozzy has very kindly thrown together an amazing infographic at just about the shortest possible notice.
You can click here to enlarge if necessary.

You can click here to enlarge if necessary.
Next up, I'd like to give my limitless, special thanks to the following community members, in no particular order:
@Sam, @LMS and @MulleDK19 for their continued dedication to both RAGEPluginHook and the First Response series, without which, I definitely wouldn't be writing this right now! @FinKone. Back in July 2015, you as a coder were a massive inspiration to me which ultimately turned out to be one of the deciding factors to start creating script modifications. Since that time, I am very glad to be able to say we have become good friends. Stay safe out there, and I hope we can eventually continue that coding collaboration!  @Stealth22, @alexguirre, @LukeD, @PNWParksFan, @Darkmyre, @Fiskey111, @khorio, @PieRGud, @AlconH and @LtFlash. All of you are amazing modders, and are a pure pleasure to work alongside. Together, we keep the script modification development environment healthy and pleasant, and our collaborative plugins really bring the absolute best out of the police experience in GTA. I can only say that I hope we all stay in it for a long time to come! Thank you to every other scripter who has uploaded script modifications to further enhance police roleplay. Again, there are far too many of you to list right now, but your work definitely doesn't go unnoticed by me! @Zachary Houseknecht, @STEVETHEGAMER, @FirstThirtyMinutes, @Jeff Favignano. Your support has been absolutely overwhelming over the past 15 months - and the fact you have videos out with suspects changing clothes when calling for transport from all the way back in August 2015 only goes to show this further! Thank you for consistently using my modifications in your content, all the kind words and the dedicated support! Thank you to all the other YouTube content creators who support my work and use it in their content. Unfortunately, there are far too many of you to list you all, but I watch all your brilliant content regularly! @55charlie. Your works of art are absolutely compelling and they give a whole new feel to my modifications' download pages. To get an impression of his amazing work, check out the screenshots on the Assorted Callouts download page. Merci beaucoup! @ScottehBoyy, @Gazarhya, @GeekAwesomized, @festivalmatt, @Double Doppler, @Razor792, @ItsFozzy, InTheJungle and AdamPlays. As members of the IGradeGaming crew, you've all done a lot for me behind the scenes and we've had, and continue to have a great time roleplaying British police online in FiveReborn! @Cyan. Special mention to you for managing the site's infrastructure, providing all the useful site APIs and ensuring the site's bandwidth is plenty to make the 1 million download count possible. The coroners weren't lying when they made that certain statement about me! The moderation team. Thank you all for keeping the comment and review sections of all my modifications as clean as you do. Much appreciated! The content team. @Harper, thank you for writing all those lovely reports about my work!  All participants of my Loyalty Rewards Programme. Without you, all of this wouldn't even be close to being possible. Thank you all so much for your continued support and the fun times! Special thanks to @Kilyin for reasons known to us  Thank you to everybody who has continuously offered support in my comments sections! @Kal74, @Quakex64, @Kilyin and all the others, thank you so much for easing my inbox and helping people out! Everybody who has given me loving feedback and reviews, those who have submitted those essential RAGEPluginHook.log files to squash the bugs and those who have continued to make useful suggestions for features to add. And lastly, everybody I haven't mentioned yet! Without you and your support, that one million count would certainly not be there! Finally, I'd like to inform all of you that didn't see this on my YouTube channel yet that my next project is currently a complete rewrite of the good old classic Police Radio! I hope to add some awesome new features in the process and I will keep everyone updated as this project progresses in due course.
That'll be all from me today! Props to you if you've made it this far into this post, and until the 2 million mark! 
-Albo

man, heartbreaking to hear but I definitely understand. Thank you so much for everything you've done! LSPDFR wouldn't be the same without your work!

Albo, I'm sure I'll occasionally see you around but just wanted to say thank you for the massive amount of time and resources you have poured into this community. Your plugins have made LSPDFR so much more immersive. I know you will have success wherever life takes you.
 
Cheers,
Carson

what a shame and a huge loss to the community. you'll be sadly missed. thanks for everything you've done though.
 
if one was wanting to get into modding for lspdfr what would your advice be where to start?

@Pumpk1in is 100% correct. This game wouldn't be the same for me without your plugins. I only started messing around with LSPDFR about two years ago. So I have only seen a world with Albo. 
 
While I am excited for 0.4, it definitly won't be the same without Mr. 1125. God speed.

Without your mods I doubt I'd have stayed interested at all in LSPDFR. I really hope you dont really ride off into the sunset just yet. will will need the next gen of mods for .4

Albooooooo !
Thank you for your invaluable, priceless work.
 
I'm using your plugins since the beginning, and I remember reporting bugs in your PM on Discord like if it was yesterday. You always answered and try to help. Again, thank you.
 
I 100% agree with @liverlande point. You filled the huge void in LSPDFR core and to be honnest, no one, or only some will be still playing lspdfr if your plugins never released. For the third time, thank you.
 
Have a great day, and please, come back... Soon ?

Your plugins have filed a lot of the void left in the core LSPDFR modification, and I am very glad that you are choosing to open source so these plugins can be improved upon further. Thank you.