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churchill

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Posts posted by churchill

  1. Back in 2008

    Hi, I was active on here back in 2008, I released a BetterWeather script, and was working privately on some scripts with the intention of developing my own server gamemode, with what I thought had a Unique Selling Point alongside the usual features that you'd probably find elsewhere. Sadly, real life got in the way and those other scripts never saw the light of day.

    The aim was to make a realistic RP server, with all the scripts remaining private. It was my intention to do it all myself, without any other 3rd party resources, and not make them public. But that was foolish, as I reckon that was one of the reasons why the plan was doomed. The plan was too grand for one person to do it alone, if it was even possible at all. I didn't know, because I didn't really reveal it to anyone.

    2013

    Now, call me stupid, but having taken a renewed interest in MTASA due to my son (he has also got me into Minecraft, he has a lot to answer for) I also started to think about my original plan. Except this time, if I was going to attempt something like this, I wouldn't do it alone (I have even less time now than I did then, but more importantly I'm wise enough to realise it's a big job!) Plus a change in my philosophy means I actually I want to see these scripts made public. We'd github the lot and collaborate with other developers as long as the scripts were being developed towards the same end goal.

    Below is what I had in mind (at least the bits I can remember - I can't find the original big list of notes I started with) - backed up with a huge set of database tables and lots of scripting to handle not just real player interaction, but fallback computer controlled outcomes if there were no Real Players to perform certain functions. I wasn't even entirely sure it was possible (or playable without lots of lag) - ideas had come mainly from reading the functions and events available in DP2, and what was coming in DP3.

    Now it's quite possible that there are game modes/scripts/servers that do all this by now, if so, I'd love you to point me in the direction of them, but if not, I think I might be up for restarting this project again, but only if there are others willing to join in?

    Registering and starting a new character (this part was done)

    • You register for an account, with a username, email, password.
    • You create a character (name, skin, etc, can be randomly chosen for you) but if you die, this character and all its possessions die with it. You have to start fresh with a new character each time. There gives you a reason to stay on the straight and narrow, so if you want the fun of being a criminal mastermind, you need to be clever about it, and make sure you surround yourself with people you can trust. This was the Unique Selling Point!
    • You spawn at a run-down caravan park or house, with just a knife and a small amount of cash, possibly a phone as well.
    • You can live your life on the straight and narrow, or turn to crime, or both, if you can keep it secret. Anything goes regarding crime.

    Gameplay

    • You have an inventory of items. These can be weapons but also other items that are not normally found in game. Finding/buying items activates additional features. You can also handle goods/items that belong to others.
    • You need a licence to drive cars, trucks, buses, taxis, planes, etc. Not having the right kind of licence is an illegal activity, and can result in police coming after you.
    • Another such item would be the smartphone and shovel, etc, that allows additional functionality.
    • Fuel system that would realistically require refuelling when going from Los Santos to San Fierro or Las Venturas, making it a trip you wouldn't do often.
    • Banking system, means you can carry cash, which means you could be mugged. However, banked cash probably isn't always safe either.
    • Health levels - you need to eat.
    • There would be a smartphone GUI that allows you to do certain things, like add contacts, and call them privately. Also additional in game info would be displayed via this.
    • There would be a context menu system that allows you to right click on objects and perform actions (lock/unlock/buy/sell/enter/manage/etc) depending on the thing you click on. The underlying system for generating context menus was complete.

    Houses

    • You can buy own and sell houses, lock doors, insure your house contents, and hold private meetings.
    • Houses can be broken into.

    Cars

    • You can buy, own and sell cars, lock doors, upgrade and insure your car, etc.
    • Each car would come with a unique generated number plate, but also with the ability to put fake number plates (e.g. other existing numbers, or completely made up ones) so that your criminal activities can't be traced back to you.
    • Cars can be broken into and stolen.

    Business and Economic system This was the main script I was concentrating on back in 2008)

    • There would be a real economic simulation in the system.
    • A number of businesses dotted around SA. Each business would fulfill a certain type of service: (Arms, Food, Soft Drinks, Alc. Drinks, Drugs, etc)
    • You can be employed by a business and do collections and deliveries for them (assuming you have a licence. You can be employed as a driver even if you don't have a licence, it's up to the employer to verify that you have one. Failure to do so can result in minor criminal offences for both the driver and the business owner.)
    • businesses would have a stock inventory system.
    • Businesses would be autonomous, so that if there are no real players available, unspecified NPCs would do things automatically.
    • With enough money you can own a business, at which point you would be responsible for organising deliveries/stock.
    • Businesses can act as fronts for illegal activities, maintaining an optional black market inventory, to deal in drugs or weapons.
    • Collection and delivery of arms/drugs would be via coast lines and docks.
    • All delivery vechicles can be hijacked. As the driver of a vehicle you can even choose to divert the vehicle and deliver to alternative locations, or simply steal items from the vehicle.
    • For non-illegal deliveries you will attract police attention. For illegal deliveries they won't be reported, but gangs may take an interest in you...
    • You can deal with NPCs to generate automatic income, but real players would be able to interact and purchase from you. Assuming you trust them to do drug/weapons deals.
    • You have an employment record, which indicates if you have previously failed to carry out your duties.
    • Opening and closing times define business hours.
    • Business premises can be robbed.
    • You can advertise available jobs and place adverts for the business (increases NPC streams, and possibly also Real player interaction) - Ads appear in the newspaper

    Other jobs

    • Emergency services could be used to salvage/save people's lives.
    • Public transport, bus, coaches, trains, plane journeys, taxi driving, etc. again, licence permitting. Remember that your life is in the hands of your pilot.
    • The aim was to make it possible to live a normal life within the game if you wanted, in a range of careers.

    Crime and Law enforcement

    • Murder, muggings, hijacking, handling stolen goods, hijacking goods vehicles, driving without a licence, etc, are all possible criminal activities.
    • Illegal activities reported by civilians (or double crossing gang members) can be investigated by police. Police can uncover evidence (e.g. digging up buried bodies) and issue warrants for arrest.
    • Once arrested, you go to court.
    • Judges pass sentences (NPC but can also be real player if they take that role) - Judges can be corrupted, to avoid sentences. (Real players might choose to accept a bribe and then pass sentence anyway...)
    • Jail time makes characters unplayable for periods of time depending on the crime.
    • You can have a criminal record.

    Weapons

    • Amunation is disabled.
    • You can purchase weapons from the black market if you know where to look/who to ask.
    • It's almost impossible to get weapons from the outset (except for your knife) because you won't know anyone in the criminal underworld. You'll have to either steal a gun from a policeman, or dig one up if you know where one was buried.
    • But how do you get into an organised gang if you have no contacts? (I could never answer that one, it's unlikely you're going to go around asking everyone if they are in a gang...)

    News and current events

    • News report would be generated daily, viewable in game, but also via a website.
    • The weather system would change realistically. (which is why my BetterWeather script was created)
    • Bad weather reports might put pilots off flying.
    • News would be auto generated based on the events of the day, including arrests, jail terms, deaths of notable people.
    • Adverts for businesses and jobs will appear in here.
    • Additional messages can be placed by real players (classified ads section)
    • Notable people are those with criminal records, businesses or accumulating large sums of money
    • Regular "rich list" generated, could lead you to becoming a marked man...

    Gang hierarchy

    • Organised crime.
    • You can belong to a gang, and hire people below you (henchmen)
    • You can kill the person above you in the chain you assume that level of command.
    • You can belong to multiple gangs, meaning there is a chance of double crossing people.
    • Gang back accounts and gang properties. Profits of criminal activities are split between henchmen and also the person above you.
    • e.g. you can hire henchmen to carry out activities while you stay in hiding. Though eventually a henchamn might decide they want a bigger piece of the pie and kill you...
    • Assassination can be ordered.
    • In theory it's possible to remain a gang member and be known to be the kingpin of the gang by only your second in command. Meaning you can lead a normal life, while the gang go about makking you rich. Except at some point, someone is going to get fed up with that hierarchy....

    Chatting to others, making friends, bugging, trust

    • The chat would be localised, in that if you sit in a car or building, the chat will be not seen to those outside of that area.
    • If you are having a chat on your smartphone, local people will see your side of the conversation.
    • The ability to place a bug on someone meaning you can listen into all conversations that person has, regardless of where they are.
    • This includes tapping phones, which allows them to listen in on both sides of the conversation.
    • Once you meet someone in game, you can add them as a contact (if you have a smartphone). You can also share contacts with others.
    • It is up to you to gain the trust of others if you intend to involve them in illegal activities.
    • It's nearly impossible to get into a life of organised crime. You need the right contacts, and get people to trust you.

    Getting rid of evidence

    • If you kill someone, you can bury the body and hope that it won't be found. (You need a shovel)
    • However, if someone witnesses you doing bad things, they can give the co-ordinates to authorities. You may want to kill witnesses as well...
    • You can also bury items previously owned by others, and weapons.

    And more (but I've probably forgotten some of the more intricate bits of the system)

  2. Hi, I was active on here back in 2008, I released a BetterWeather script, and was working privately on some scripts with the intention of developing my own server gamemode, with what I thought had a Unique Selling Point alongside the usual features that you'd probably find elsewhere.

    Sadly, real life got in the way and those other scripts never saw the light of day. But my son is now a bit older, and likes exploring driving around in GTASA or GTAIV, but I'm not really keen on him playing them due to the the chances of violence and bad language in the game.

    Child Friendly Freeroam/Life Mode

    So, I installed MTASA, and I'm running a local server so that he can drive/explore in freeroam.

    I began to wonder how much of my earlier plans could be put into this local server to add some realism. I expect there are a number of scripts or game modes by now (It has been 6 years after all!) so I am basically looking for scripts or a game mode that has:

    * Jobs (deliveries, public transport, taxi driving, etc).

    * Buying Houses.

    * Buying and locking cars, being able to upgrade them etc.

    * Banking system.

    * Fuel and refuelling of cars.

    * Doesn't require command lines to activate them, done all through a nice GUI.

    So far I've downloaded pizzaboy, bank, mabako-services, fuel, and my own betterweather (which is now fixed, the last version being untouched since DP2). Are there any other good scripts that you recommend, do they play well together? Is there a gamemode that already has nearly everything I want? (I don't mind tweaking and removing functionality if need be - e.g. I don't want weapons on my local server, amunation would be unavailable, it will be played offline)

    I think that will probably be a good start for his point of view.

  3. It's been ages since I was even relatively active with MTASA, before it became open source, but recently accepted a Facebook friend request from someone I used to speak to on here, and it got me wondering how things are these days.

    Is MTASA now an active, thriving community? did anyone ever come up with an awesome complex scripted RPG server that didn't require "meta gaming" rules to keep people in check?

    Reminiscing about the RPG server idea I started to develop, but can't find most of the notes I wrote, and a HD crash no doubt means I have none of the original code either, not that it'd probably be any use these days if things have moved on.

    Would still love to see an RPG in the style I had in mind though, coz it would have been bloody awesome, if it'd ever been finished :)

  4. As much as I admire your enthusiasm, but the way things are going, without any real desire to learn about how to add the features you want (Scripting is how you do it, but you need to LEARN!) your server is going to become just another bog standard RP server, with hardly any users and nothing new to offer anyone.

    You either need to encourage others to work with you to make yours stand out as a better RP server, or why not join an existing set up and try to help them build a better RP server?

  5. Oh, all usernames are the same, DP2.3?

    :idea: - I didn't know that :D

    But why i can /login [uSERNAME] when there are all the same?!

    that's a local server account, unique to the server you're playing on, rather than your MTA community username. However, not every server is set up to allow that kind of thing, or at least not ervery server has a GUI equivalent of the register/login system, to make it easier for the players.

  6. for DP2 support you'd want to have it so that you register an account on the server and then use that as the username?

    edit: Ace Gambit just edited his post above to say the same thing, in effect. Yes, it requires more work on the server to set up, but it's definitely a good idea.

  7. It really seems that putting everything in 1 query was the problem. The query seemed to be too long, and the database couldn't handle all those things after eachother. Fortunately, I fixed it, and light testing made it seem like it worked! I tested it on my own, with about 160 characters per message. All a's. xD

    that's what I was referring to when I said that it was more likely a problem with the MTA command rather than a db issue. :)

  8. just tell you on here? So you want us to copy and paste large chunks of stuff from the wiki because you're too damn lazy to look yourself? Your server = EPIC FAIL because it's owner = EPIC FAIL. Sorry sunshine, but round here, you only get rewards when you put in some effort yourself. Otherwise you WILL get shot down in flames. Nobody is going to help you unless you're willing to help yourself. The reason? We're all too busy with life, and our own projects to help people with their every little question that they need answering, when the answers are already available to them somewhere else.

    So how about you start by reading up the MTA DM server and the introductions to scripting, etc, and then at least TRY to answer those questions yourself. When you come unstuck and have demonstrably tried to make things work yourself, then we'll be more inclined to help.

    I'm afraid most of the replies below will now say the same thing, with you replying "GTFO meanies, I just want some help, if you're not willing to help, FO"...because no-one will pander to your laziness.

  9. I know, I meant that 160 * 15 seems like a small amount of data to be causing problems!

    it's more likely that it's a problem with column data length...2400 is quite a bit of text for one column to handle (though I had originally assumed that BLOBs were quite large), as opposed to 15 rows with each holding a column containing 160 characters.

    just had a quick look, and got found the current implementation of BLOB in SQL Lite, has a max length of 2147483647, so 160*15 should be fine.

    So maybe it's a problem with the MTA command that reads/writes that data, rather than SQL itself? in this case, maybe the change of DB structure to a 2 table approach will be more successful?

  10. there is a BIG problem: SQL doesn't support the huge length of 15 SMS' with 160(actually, 168) chars and my guess is that we need to go to MySQL. Which is alot harder for the customer...

    Oh noo thats bad :/

    A alternative: smaller SMS? So there is a limit of chars or so.

    Is this Limit only for one table or in the whole database?

    Well, the IRL limit is 160. It also has that same 160 limit. But that's too big... =/

    Hmm, something's not right if that's the limit...if I'm understanding the sql table you created you're storing all the users SMSs in one column?

    I think GioSerpo is right when he suggests a two table approach.

    phoneOwner table

    username (Primary Key)

    phonenumber

    SMS table (a new row for each SMS entry)

    username (Foreign Key)

    SMSMessage (main body of SMS message)

    ReadStatus (for holding a true/false)

    to me, that's a better structure to hold the data as it's a more normalised approach, is more flexible and more scalable than the original structure?

  11. I'm still keen on having the conversation appear in a separate window to the main chat. If I have some time tonight I'm going to try and work on a gui where you can add players to a private chat area. It'll be a separate resource probably, allowing for "teamsay" type chats (I guess you could have restrictions on who has team chat facilities, e.g. Police and Emergency services, but not any random gang on your server), or a window for admin users, etc.

    But this same resource would then be useable in this phone/pda system, because by default it will just be a private chat for the two players, but will also then extend to allow conference calling.

  12. there are more than enough rp servers as far as I know.

    yes, but as I said, most of them are exactly the same, and don't really take advantage of the full power of scripting in MTA. They can and should be aiming for better systems, rather than just the basics. There are plenty of those kinds of servers, but only a handful of more complex servers, which are all still in development from what I've seen. Quality over Quantity. I could also say the same about DM servers....more than enough as far asi know ;)

  13. and maybe better RP modes IS what MTADM needs

    anybody... please take that gun and shoot me..

    Just because you don't like the idea of RPing doesn't mean everyone else feels the same way. live and let live, and all that.

  14. While you (churchill) have a point, it's not like this one function is going to make a difference and make people leave SAMP by the hundreds. :roll:

    I never said this one function would make people leave SAMP, I said a half decent RP(G) server would. There are plenty of other things that can be scripted to help make that happen, which would push things forward (when it comes to RPing on MTA, at least) as opposed to the usual RP server which usually amounts to a choice of skins, a bank account, limited ways to earn money, so they become little more than DM servers but with stupid rules on when and where you can kill people, and Admins who ban you if you break them. Servers which have rules such as "You can't call someone by their name in IC chat because you've seen it above their head. You can only use their name if they've told you their name. This is called Meta Gaming and is against the rules of the server".

    That's not my idea of an MTA RP server. MTA scripting can make more complex RPing modes than that. A well scripted RP server would only have rules that are enforceable through code, not through asking players to behave a certain way or be kickbanned. An RP Server should allow DMing, if that's how the player wants to RP, but the server should provide the in game players with ways and means of handling a DMer, and not resort to needing an Admin to kick/ban them.

    I've seen a few RPs in development that all seem to be bucking that trend, and I look forward to them being released properly. Hopefully THEY will be what helps brings users over from SAMP.

    My suggestion was just another small element that could be applied to such a server, that would mean one less "meta gaming" loophole.

  15. but being able to change the nametag of a player to "IM_LAME" really makes the deathmatch mode better? ;)

    and maybe better RP modes IS what MTADM needs in order to wrestle more players away from SA-MP? :) After all, DM hasn't exactly been a roaring success, judging by the player numbers on most servers :)

  16. is it possible to have the setPlayerNametagShowing function extended?

    Ideally, bool setPlayerNametagShowing (player thePlayer, bool showing, client theClient)

    so that you can do things like turn off nametags on every player except for those on a player's team, for example?

    I note that there's a SetPlayerNametagText coming in DP3, so I guess it would be possible to set the text to "" on every client, which would probably cause the same effect?

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