RS5 Development Blog

[Chase]

Hello,

You have not been abandoned!

In an effort to communicate to the community with more transparency, we will give progress updates as they arrive in this topic. This will include previews of what we're working on.

In the coming weeks and months you should expect more new features, more enhancements, and more bug fixes.

The 2018 resolution on our mind is to MAKE ARGONATH GREAT AGAIN.

Please check back on this topic every so often for progress updates. Questions regarding the progress updates can be posted here.

#MAGA

[Chase]

Progress Update - RS5.3
January 19th, 2018

So far, in this update, firearms will be itemized. That means all firearms and ammo will be inventory items, and the ammo and weapon separated. This will look like this:



Like normal, you can't carry more than 1 type of a weapon at a time. That means you can't carry more than one pistol, assault rifle, etc.
And also like normal, you will lose all weapons and ammo upon death, just as it is now.

This also means that /giveweapon will be no more, and replaced with /give. You will only be able to transfer the weapon, ammo, or both, but no more weapon cloning. Giving a person a weapon will be useless unless they also have or get ammo.

Ammunations: /buyweapon will be replaced with the standard /buy, and ammunition is sold in bulk via boxes.


*Prices in this screenshot are only PLACEHOLDERS, same for weight. There will be a min and max price owners can set when stocking their gun shop. And no, those prices have not been decided yet.

When you buy a gun, you must also obtain ammo to use it. If you buy it from a gun shop, it will be a box that you must unpack. To unpack a box you can simply do /use [box item name].

Confirmed upcoming features

• You will be able to store items (including weapons and ammo). Specifics not yet decided.
• You will be able to craft restricted weapons (M4, AK47, etc) from gun parts, this process will be very challenging to do. No further specifics at this time.
• More "purpose" for drugs, more incentives to buy and sell drugs.

Features being considered (unconfirmed)

• Payroll system for groups such as corporations. This could be integrated into the banking system.
• The ability for shop owners to add personal (used) items to their stock. (Kinda like a pawn shop)
• More opportunities for legal civilian market.

[Chase]

Progress Update #2 - RS5.3
January 23rd 2018

In this update, I will give a sneak peek at the vehicle storage system. Before I go further, there are some things you will need to know, especially when RS5.3 goes live.

• There are some small vehicles such as bikes where storage is impossible.
• For vehicles that allow storage, the capacity of the vehicle is determined by size, and capacity is measured by weight (in grams). The general rule is if the vehicle has less than 4 doors, such as a 2dr sports car, you won't be storing much in it. On the flip side, if the vehicle has 4 or more doors, it will typically be considered medium or standard capacity. And of course, if the vehicle is a cargo vehicle such as a van or truck with trailer, you should be able to store quite a lot in it.
• At this time we have not decided whether or not vehicle inventory will be wiped upon destruction.
• ANYONE can access the inventory of your vehicle if it's unlocked. So make sure you lock your vehicles if you intend on storing things in them,
  and be careful of who you let inside your car.
• Local messages will be sent (in /me style) when you place or remove items in a vehicle. So if you plan to burglarize unlocked cars, make sure there are no witnesses!
• If the vehicle is unlocked and a door or trunk is open, inventory can be accessed from the outside.
• Property storage is next on the list!

So now on to the teasers...

Store Item Dialog

Take Item Dialog

Stay tuned for property storage information!

[Chase]

Developer Announcement - RS5.3
January 23rd 2018

Hello,

We have decided to save the changes of "RS5.2.1" to RS5.3, which will be an even bigger update that will be coming relatively soon.

The main reason for this is so we can have all RS5.3 features tested in a public test to weed out any bugs. Since this will be a major update, there can't be bugs, there WILL be bugs that need fixing.

Alongside what I said previously in the blogs, we can confirm the following will be the most prominent new updates in RS5.3. Please note these aren't very specific because not all of it has been fully planned.

• More purpose for drugs.
• More opportunities for both legal and illegal organizations.
• Both legal and illegal organizations will be able to gather raw materials, craft, store, and sell both legal and illegal products. You can consider this update to be mainly geared for both legal and illegal industrial/economic systems.
• Everything has a risk. That's why lock picking will be back but with more challenge and risk for both property owners and burglars.
• .. And there will probably be some even more things we come up with and add in between now and beta.

I know one of the questions I will be asked is when it will be released. I will go ahead and answer that - when it's ready. I cannot and will not set a date in stone right now, but once we implement all the features we feel would make up RS5.3, we will update with a public beta date. Then we will go from there.

I have plenty of time on my hands so I can tell you I am working as fast and hard as I can. I can at least assure you RS5.3 will be out quite before the end of 2018. I will not stop until it's bug free and complete, and Argonath is made great again.

So I hope you guys are as excited as I am to finally get an actual economy going, it will be worth the wait, trust me.

See you at the next progress update!

[Chase]

Progress Update #3 - RS5.3
January 27th 2018

In this update, I will be showing the property storage system. When buy or own a home, you can use /manage like you would in your business, but instead of business management, it will bring up a dialog of options for managing your home.

If you want to store items in your home, you must purchase a safe from the "Upgrades" menu. The price of the safe will depend on the size of your home. The bigger the home, the more it will cost to buy a safe, likewise, the bigger it is, the more space you have to store your items.

If you're inside a home you own or have permission to manage, and you type /invent, it will give you the option to store items in the home. You can also take items from the home using /manage -> Manage Storage.

Screenshots:




Cya next time.

[Chase]

We owe you guys some transparency... The progress of RS5.3 as shown in the previews has been broken and therefore deprecated. It may seem like a lot of code was written to make those previews, but really it's something that won't take us long to rewrite. We want to make as less bugs as possible on the first release, so that's what we're doing.

Asides from that, we also got some rather exciting news. It has come to our attention some of the more unique and popular servers use 0.3.DL version of SAMP. That version allows for server sided custom world objects and player skins, as well as custom textdraws. Some of the player skins will be from Manoni's work from his collection here.

We will only add low poly models that fit the GTA SA game style in order to preserve file size. If you know how to make 3D models and/or textures and want to help, shoot me a PM here or on Discord!

Also keep in mind I said world objects, skins, and textdraws only. Unfortunately 0.3.DL does not support custom vehicles or weapons, and it's unclear if it ever will.

To ease some worries I see approaching... I will go ahead and address it.

What if I have a really slow internet? We will be using a CDN (content delivery network) which is a network of servers around the world to provide you the files from the closest server to you for the maximum speed your ISP will allow you. On top of that, we will be compressing the files to minimize size, and we won't go overboard with adding too much at once. SAMP will only download the files once, and if new files are added, it will only download the ones you don't have.

And no, this will NOT lag the SAMP server as the CDN will be a completely separate network of servers across the globe. The SAMP server will only redirect your download to the closest one.
In the coming weeks we will show some new previews. The features shown before will still be implemented, just re written to be more efficient and less confusing. The only major change to what I've shown you is the types of ammo. Initially I made them super realistic down to the calibers such as 9mm, 5.56, 7.62, 45 ACP, etc.. In the rewrite, they will be simpler. SMG ammo will simply be SMG ammo, pistol ammo will be pistol ammo, and assault rifle ammo will be assault rifle ammo, etc. This is to make things simpler for people who don't know much about real weapons and to speed up the scripting process.

Stay tuned for fresh new previews. I promise it will be done right this time.

[Chase]

A lot of you have been asking for updates on progress..

We have been making progress in our spare time. The reason you have not heard much from us is because we really don't have anything to show off. We could show things off but it would be on a technical level that is boring. We don't have any "new" features to show with screenshots or videos right now.

If RS5 was a car, it would be a car that has been driven so much it cannot be upgraded or fixed without the need to be essentially rebuilt under the hood. As of lately, all the mechanical parts inside this RS5 car has been worn down and rusted up. What we're doing is slowly rebuilding RS5 part by part with improvements to allow for rapid upgrades (new features). Once we have more of RS5's parts cleaned, polished, and tuned up, we can focus solely on the upgrades or new features.

For those on the more technical side - the way RS5 was coded and organized makes it very difficult and slow to add new features, without potentially messing some other part of the script up. We're cleaning it up in a way that will allow us to make more features, and less bugs with it.

We have no ETA, because our schedules are very sporadic, but be assured we are working on it, just nothing really we can show off, for now...