LU and VC:MP join forces!

Some of you keen-eyed folks out there may have noticed another person in the developers list the last few days, that person being maxorator, which many of you know is the main developer of VC:MP so let me explain.

Some of you may know that the LU team have had a close relationship with VC:MP for quite some time. We have always been in contact with the developers exchanging ideas and we have created some unofficial addons for the mod (such as the hugely popular VCMP Squirrel server) and after some discussion we decided that it would be in everybodies best interests if we join forces

What does this mean? Simply put it means that the VC:MP team have full access to the LU source and likewise with the LU team. We will all be working on the two projects simultaneously, implementing similar ideas and fixing the odd bugs here and there to ensure that the GTA community get two great multiplayer mods for two different games.

We all hope to be able to show the results of our collaboration soon, either in the form of an LU beta or a VC:MP one. But for now, give Maxorator, Falcon and Bakasan a big hearty welcome!

An update on the progress

Its been quite some time since any news was posted on LU so i thought i'd break the silence.

As some of you keen-eyed people may have noticed, the progress bar on the left of the homepage now says the progress on the next version of LU (0.1.1.0). This next version features a lot of changes and new things which we have been working on for a while.

Some of the new features in 0.1.1.0 are as follows:
For starters, LU now allows you to import your own object models to use in your server. We felt this was a necessity as GTA3 has some fairly bad objects normally and custom objects helps to make your server more unique. Objects that can be imported can be made for either GTA3 or Vice City since there aren't many models made for GTA3, so we added a few patches to allow VC models
All that is required to import new models into LU is a dff, txd and a col file. You then simply do CreateObject in your script as normal but specify the name of the dff instead of the model ID. More information on using custom objects will be added to the forum or wiki when the next version is released.

Another thing that we have added in the next version is NPCs. Currently the NPCs are fairly basic and can't do as much as we want them to but we are planning to expand on them in future versions. NPCs are going to be mainly script controlled, with handling how they handle being shot and ran over being processed in your own scripts. This will allow server owners to give greater control over their NPCs and give a more unique feel to the server.
Currently you can set the NPCs position, angle, health, armour, alpha, weapon and place them in vehicles in either the driver or passenger seat. There are also events for when NPCs get shot or hit by a vehicle. As i said we will be expanding on these in future versions so they can follow preset paths and eventually be able to 'break free' of the paths as well as shoot at a specific location as dictated by a script. The reason why they can't currently do that is because its a lot of work.

Something else that has been added which was originally planned for LU is control of the timecyc.dat file in GTA. For those of you that don't know, the timecyc.dat contains information on the colour of the sky, cloud data and light intensity of the sun/moon/stars. This means that server owners will be able to create some strange looking environments inside GTA to better fit their game modes. For example, if you run a zombie-style server then you could change the sky to blood red
Timecyc stuff will be controlled either by adding a custom timecyc.dat file in the server or by using script functions, enabling them to be changed in real time.

Some news that will make some server owners cheer now. Over the past week or so we have been working on a new ban system which doesn't just depend on the IP of the player. We have been forced to add this new ban system by idiots who persist in cheating, abusing bugs and then ban evading. This spoils the game for everybody and ruins the mod as a whole as the player base is still rather small.
Currently the new method generates a unique identifier for each player which cannot be changed making it very hard for a player to evade their ban. We are also looking into other methods just in case somebody does manage to get around the UID as you can never be too careful.
When the system is finished you will be able to choose in your scripts which ban type to add. This could be a simple name ban, IP, UID or any other ways we may add before the release.

That is just a few of the new features we have added in the new version, we may add some more before we release it depending on how much work is required.
Aside from the features, we have also been working on making the mod more stable and optimising it better for lower end machines. Quite a few of the most common crashes have now been fixed, and it seems like we have finally fixed the 'invisible car' issue which caused a few crashes.

As a reminder, please report any bugs you encounter to http://mantis.liberty-unleashed.co.uk so it is easier for us to track them.

We hope you will like the new things in LU and are looking forward to the next release. We can't give any estimations on when it will be released but are aiming to release it soon as some of the fixes are important.

Merry Christmas!

From all of us who work on Liberty Unleashed, We wish you all a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

P.s. Santa left you a present in your LU Browser, so go open it (Pst, Its an update )

New update coming soon

It has been a few days since the last update but as many of you have pointed out, various things are broken.

Mainly that some users cannot use client scripts, which spoils game play and causes a few crashes. There has also been a few new, common crashes occuring.

We have fixed most of these new issues and will release another update after they have been thoroughly tested.
You can keep track, or report new bugs, on our bug tracker http://mantis.liberty-unleashed.co.uk/

Thank you to everyone who has contacted me about these bugs

Progress

After being prodded by the test team, i have decided to post on the current progress of the next update to LU.

We are slowly working on fixing the bugs found since the last update, and any crashes that you may encounter. Most of the common crashes are now (hopefully) resolved.

Some other things that have been worked on are the 'sliding' objects, where you slide when walking on them. Juppi has also worked on adding a few more script functions.

Some of the biggest things i have been working on lately, apart from the stability patches, are the Anti-Cheat and the updater fixes. The anti-cheat should stop, or at least reduce the amount of people using health and armour cheats.
The updater is now more reliable and should result in less problems overall. We have also improved the error reporter so that crashes are sent to us in an easier format and easier for us to resolve

As always there have been further optimisations done on the code so that it runs that little bit more efficiently, most notably to sprites. I also started work on an FPS counter for scripts to check the players average FPS, but it is unfinished and untested so may not make the update.

All the new features and fixes need more testing before we can ship the new update, but it should come soon!