LukeD

So for those of you who live under a rock you will have missed the latest in gaming news. That's right, Steam has gone pro-consumer with their completely amended refunds policy. The new policy will allow users to return a game and get a refund providing that you are returning the game within 14 days of purchase AND you have not played the game for more than 2 hours. The best part about this, is this isn't a half hearted policy in which you get Steam credit. No, where it is possible Steam will credit you via the initial payment method, meaning if you buy a game via debit/credit card, you'll see the funds back in your bank account rather than through steam wallet. Again, emphasis on "where it is possible" as Steam states this may not always be possible due to restrictions. You can view the full refunds policy document here: http://store.steampowered.com/steam_refunds/ Now as a consumer, I think this is a phenomenal change and a good decision made by Steam, I'm very much liking the one section that states it is not abuse if you return a game when you bought it just before a sale so that you can rebuy it at the sale price. That's going to make a lot of people happy, but I'm anxious as to how it will work when the sales do hit and a game's price changes twice. The media however have taken this by storm and are making all sorts of claims about how it will ruin the industry. What do you guys think?

As Yard has said, the upgrade is official and is available for windows 7 and 8 users (that includes 8.1) for exactly 1 year after the launch of windows 10. So basically between the 29th July 2015 and 29th July 2016 you'll be able to upgrade to windows 10 FOR FREE. After that you will no longer be able to upgrade for free. WORD OF ADVICE: If you upgrade immediately you'll be in the group of users who get all the teething issues of a brand new release, you'll also need to wait for certain apps etc to become available as not everything will instantly support the new OS. Personally, my desktop on windows 7 will not be upgrading until damn near the end of the 12 months. My laptop will get upgraded instantly because I loathe windows 8. Here is the Microsoft certified page on the windows 10 upgrade for anyone still concerned it's illegitimate. https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/windows-10-upgrade

​It depends on what program you use to manage your firewall as to how it works. But generally speaking you have to create a new rule for the executable, that blocks the inbound and/or outbound connection.

​I'm afraid I simply don't know how the patch is applied outside of steam. My best guess would be through the Rockstar GTA V Launcher. In which case simply block it from connecting to the internet via your firewall (if you plan on playing mods it's probably better you do this anyway) ​There is a button underneath the download itself which disables automatic download of updates (you have to then approve the update to download) for some stupid reason it's not visible in the settings. (see example below) You can also limit auto-updating in the settings to specific times, I would imagine setting this to "between 2am - 3am" or something and then switching your pc off at those times would be the equivalent of disabling auto-updates. ​It's not the case of "it will break modding". By applying a new patch we have to rebuild things at the base level in order for them to work again with the new patch. Updates Rockstar release will always have the potential to break mods for a short while as a result, we just simply need to rebuild/update them in line with the new patch in order for them to work again.

​You can disable automatic updates via steam, just be smart enough not to go "oo a GTA V update" and click install. Otherwise you're, hmm what's that phrase, ah yes... shit outa luck.

​It could be worse...Cyan could take inspiration from all those really piss irritating websites that autoplay music without you being able to control it.

Loving the screenshots Sam. looking forward to playing with this when it's out. Just one question regarding the california highway screenshot, is there any information you can give us on how well the AI handles itself in a pursuit when there are so many cars involved?

​Or we could keep it exactly as it was with LCPDFR and if you wished to completely bypass or reply the tutorial you just set "FirstStart=true" in the .ini file. :) Actually being able to revisit a location to run the tutorial is nice, so long as it was well out of the way of "typical" game play (so you couldn't accidentally enter the tutorial, scream and burn down your whole house in a blind fit of rage.)

​You mean like how LCPDFR 1.0 did with "press E to play a short tutorial". Yes I think that is the best way to go about that, because then I can ignore it :D ​Oh I know. The revolution will be led by me. dinosaurs will take over the world again and reign supreme. Cats will rule governments and will be appointed by that countries head dinosaur. Oh and the legal defence of "insanity" will make you instantly excused from all crimes providing you are able to write a full 3 book novel series about your crime that is able to keep me interested. (I don't read a lot) :) But yes, unskippable tutorials are a pain in the arse.

I'm not a fan of forced tutorials regardless of if it's a mod or a story driven game. Having an opening mission which "hints" at what to do is ok, but having a full scale completely separate tutorial that you have to watch pisses me right off. If I can spam "skip" right the way through or opt out of the tutorial altogether then I'm happy.

​I love the idea of using North Yankton as a tutorial level (especially given the map is incomplete). I also like that this would tie in with the fact NY is the opening sequence to the game itself and is therefore a "tutorial" in some sense. I don't like the idea of it "unlocking" the rest of the game though, I think we should have the choice to ignore the tutorial and dive straight in head first screaming :D

​Correct, they "should" be fine in theory, however to save the hassle it's best not to explicitly support such mods. By providing support or integration with mods like this you open the doors for a potential copyright infringement. Technically speaking if you make edits to their map you should be alright, providing you don't go spouting about saying you made it 100% and try claiming money for it etc. Again, it's copyright protected. But as I say above, if LSPDFR doesn't support the map mod (it just happens that some of it works, such as traffic stops in IV map mods) then that removes any chance of LSPDFR being challenged legally for copyright.

​GTA V's AI isn't actually that much better from experience. I waited for an ambulance once after brutally murdering someone seeing an injured pedestrian in need of help and I spent 5 minutes watching it reverse into a car, crash into another one, slam into a pole, reverse back into the same car etc etc. All because it had tried to drive down the wrong side of the road when turning at a junction. Modifying a game that doesn't provide modding support isn't an issue generally speaking, providing you're not doing it to cheat/exploit the online services or to rip the developers off by redistributing their game. If you however rip someone elses work (a map or a vehicle model that has been taken from another game) that's where the copyright or legal challenges come into play. Scripts I suspect fall into a different ballpark as it's quite difficult to prove you've "stolen" code when all the answers you need are probably on stackoverflow.

@NoVertigo Unfortunately that error log doesn't help me at all as it doesn't show what part of my plugin is crashing. Please post the LCPDFR.log file. @Hero540 I have no idea why it's causing problems with one of the default callouts to be honest. There are a few problems with the plugin, as you would expect with it being developed by a single person. However mod development has been suspended until after May now. I have all my coursework due in in 2 weeks time, followed by my exams. I don't have time to be bug fixing or figuring out problems as I'm sure you can all appreciate. I will hopefully do some bug fixes, maybe a rewrite of some features to solve the issues, after my exams. But I also hope to get into GTA V modding as and when it's possible so my time will be split between the two. As I have mentioned this plugin will eventually die out, it's demand will be much lower due to GTA V. But I will try to fix more things before I fully switch to V. I hope this answers any questions people might have.

Correct, it isn't supported. Closing to prevent clan ads. If you feel this topic has been closed in error, please report this post.

These TechRadar articles might be of some use to you. Article 1 - Best cheap smartphone deals, Article 2 - Best mobile phone deals 2015 Also take a look at the new and less known names such as OnePlus. That's if you can get them. Sadly that's about as much help as I can give without comparing specs of potential phones, considering I'm waiting for my contract to renew so I can get the S6 Edge (around £700) :)

@craptasticjack I embedded the video for you. For future reference you copy the youtube video URL, click "insert other media" in the bottom right corner of the editor, click "insert image from URL" and paste the youtube URL there.

I still don't see any need for that. It doesn't make any logical sense to me to take a discussion away from the discussion. It's a support thread at the end of the day, not a ticket that gets assigned to a community team member. If other people wish to give their advice on how to fix the problem they can, if the user needs to ask more questions to solve their problem they can. We have the facility to mark as the best answer or to up-vote the better responses now so that removes the "oh do I really need to scroll through 2 pages of replies just to find the answer" assuming of course people actually bother reading first. If you're discussing help and advice, there really is absolutely no need to take it elsewhere, if you really really wish to discuss something like that with the person you're replying to PM them, yes other people will miss out on that PM, shame. I'm pretty sure they're not going to the thread to discuss good/bad advice with you they're going to look for help to a problem that might already have a solution. Again, "Mark as best answer" solves this problem. At the end of the day if you want to create a thread about good/bad modding practices or advice you can do that with a few button clicks, you don't need some hotkey function linked to every post to say "I made a discussion about this here".

It's not always the case though, most of the time it's a spark between 1 - 4 people that ignites the whole thread. You can group PM that, and if you're really feeling that what you're saying is off-topic enough that it warrants a new topic in itself then it's probably something very specific that isn't really worth opening a thread for. When I say unused or abused, I mean that it will either cause a plethora of new threads for unnecessary conversations or you're just going to redirect the entire thread to a new one. You're not necessarily going to get the ideal situation where only those who want to follow that conversation go to the new thread. Let's be honest in an ideal situation people would just learn to stay on topic rather than voluntarily derail threads. Additionally people who derail threads more often than not are doing so by replying to someone elses comments. They don't always think about what it is they're saying they just rage type, hit post and suddenly we have a burning train wreck. I see nothing wrong with you discussing best practice for modding in a modding support thread. I don't really see any need in your example to take that out of the thread into another thread. In your example, it is a help request, the user needs help. how much help you give them is up to you. you can tell them how to fix their problem or you can give them advice on how to further prevent the problem as well. That's all relevant, it doesn't need to go to a new topic. In an ideal world every user here would be a good boy/girl/other and they would report content rather than reply saying "this is stupid", ah who am I kidding. In an ideal world we wouldn't need to moderate because nobody would derail threads.

If you want to further discuss something that doesn't benefit or stay true to the original topic then you can simply PM the user should they wish to continue the discussion, I've done this with users a few times where I've either sent or received PM's about topics. I don't see any need to create brand new topics about off-topic debates. I can only foresee this being either unused or abused, and then we have to keep track of more threads and debates. I think personally it would be better to keep it as we already have it and to just....well....not derail threads? Just a suggestion ;)