StephenPuffs' Dev Log

[StephenPuffs]

May 30, 2014
Yay! Accessories are done as they need to be for now. What a pain in the butt that was, but at least now they will fit on your character much MUCH better than ever before. Next up, how many of you readers ever tried being police and found it annoying that people wouldn't turn on their headlights at night? I know it's one of the most mundane things police can go around giving tickets out for. Hopefully this next change will help as a reminder to people to turn on their headlights. Presenting a new dash light system! Where when your headlights are turned on the dash lights of your car come on as well! It is quite awesome and works in all but one car at this point I believe, just because that one car is a bugger and it's materials aren't set up in the same way the rest of the cars are so trying to figure out how it would work on that one is a pain. Anyways, here are some pictures to show you what I mean.
Headlights off

Headlights on

There may be some weird things that also get illuminated at the same time, but really that's just being overly picky at this point, the idea is to create new features which are fun and helpful, not try to be 100% to the Nth degree. One thing to note, the dash lights will only come on when you turn on your headlights; they do not turn on with the car ignition. This should make people more willing to turn their headlights on at night so when in first person anyways; it makes their car more lit up in a way and easier to tell that headlights are either on or off. Also it's just plain greatness at its finest to be honest, can't say I've seen it anywhere else in Garry's Mod. Obviously other games and what have it, but I haven't seen here. To anyone wondering, no I can not control each light on it individually or can I adjust the needles to be completely exacting such as adjusting the fuel gauge.

I also worked on the car customizing display, but I'm not very happy with it, so I need to try to find a better way or something. I mean it works, so I may have to go with it for now, but it doesn't show off the car as nicely as I would like it to. Since I have removed it from spawning a car in that room which you go to now. Instead it looks sort of like the clothing customizing window, just because the lighting in a panel like that can be far more predictable than in world. Which is ultimately important for displaying the new paint jobs and/or metal work. So where to go from here, I don't know exactly. Because as I said before, the different metals are more noticeable on some cars than on others. So with how it is now, you can clearly tell silver from gold on the ones where it's easily apparent, but ones that have more subtle use of these metals it's very difficult to tell what is being changed. Both because of the size of the window and because you can't view it as though you were standing near it as effectively. Anyways, we'll see what I do. It may initially be this window I have but changed later on to be more friendly. Speaking of metals, still need some more likes on that post, if I'm going to do the standard color (red,pink,purple,green,etc) metals as well.

That's the news on this Friday though, hopefully you find the dash lights as amazing as I do.

 

[StephenPuffs]

June 1, 2014

Some of you may realize I didn't post on Saturday the 31st of May, but that's mostly because I was missing some key stuff that I needed so I would stop getting errors from new systems Fredy has been working on. I won't say what because they aren't part of my development, so you will see for release or if Fredy doesn't mind me mentioning here on my log. That is not to say I totally took the day off either, I have fixed a few things that I don't know how I could show in picture form or it is just simply optimizing which has no picture to show. So I will list a few things that I worked on yesterday and today.

• Jumping out of a vehicle while moving now actually makes your character tumble an appropriate amount, no more of the short distance roll outs, unless travelling at a low speed to begin with. Expect to die from too high a speed as usual though, but damage is progressive as you tumble now, giving it a more semi-realistic feel.
• Vehicle code behind the scenes generally improved and easier to maintain. Was an absolute mess before, duplicate values and such.
• Car garage claiming, now asks you if you wish to reclaim your [vehicle name here] instead of just asking if you want to use your last vehicle without saying what it was.
• Working on improving vehicle spawn places, right now, if all spawns were taken in say car dealer, your car would still spawn, but over by the car garage in city. This to me seems like bad behavior and should be corrected to just inform you there is no space to spawn the vehicle at that time. Also it no longer will spawn your vehicle if there is a fire where it is attempting to place it.
• Trying to design a better vehicle garage claim window, it looks better but it's still far from what I would classify as great, mostly just larger car icons to display them with more detail.

As it seems like anyone can like these posts, not just admins or what, so I will use that as a sort of way of voting, since I doubt I am able to put an actual poll on here, and I only really need to see how many yes votes I get, not really no for this. Anyways, if you think in the car dealer window I should have it mention how many spaces for seating a vehicle has as well as number of aftermarket kits and a variety of other info, like this post. If it can at least get 20 likes, I will set aside some time to include that for next update.

Doesn't seem like much, but when doing things blind essentially, makes changes harder, I have the necessary functions and such now so tomorrow will be back to normal. And I have a treat in store, which has been eluded to in the discussion of my log, but not officially announced yet. More to do with vehicles as a hint, but just wait and see what it is then. Later.

 

[StephenPuffs]

June 2, 2014
Surprise surprise, today was mostly me trying to figure out how to edit a video using Blender and what, so it's my first attempt at editing footage using it. Anyways, I will put it on here for all to see, it includes a brief look at me driving around in a Morgan Aero SS as well as getting a clothing change. However, one thing you will notice is the beginning scene seems like the same thing twice, and that is the feature I wish to introduce to you today, vehicle modification. While not as complex as many other games have, far as I know there's no way to change some car stuff on the fly, so has to be all or nothing.

So how does this feature work then? Well basically you'll go talk to an NPC at the vehicle repair/mod shop (across from car dealer, next to gas station) and request that he modify your car, which will improve both your vehicle's max speed and acceleration, which is evident in the video. You can do this a total of two times, which may not seem like much but the idea is to get it so you can clearly tell your vehicle is different with each upgrade as well as keep the cars balanced. Prices on this I can say are figured out and known. Essentially either upgrade will cost 40% of your vehicle's value, or 150k minimum and 1M maximum. So if you had a 500k car, it would cost you 200k per upgrade which may seem like a lot, but with all your upgrades purchased, it will be essentially the same performance roughly as a 1M vehicle so if you really like your vehicle and don't necessarily want to purchase something more expensive or want to go completely nuts, now you can push it to the limit. Also it should be noted, as most aftermarket kits are of a certain racing appearance, you will first need to purchase one upgrade of vehicle tuning before being able to purchase those. Fortunately those won't cost nearly as much. How much exactly, not certain yet, but far less than the vehicle tuning itself for sure.

Anyways, here is my video I have shot and produced myself. Song used: Dr. Jacko and Okeanos - Romance The sequence of events is listed below and in description of video...

[video=youtube;cBoNgToVdB8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBoNgToVdB8[/video]

1) I race down to the end of highway stretch with an unmodified Morgan Aero SS.
2) I race back down where I started with a Morgan Aero SS which has the second level of tuning giving you a rough impression of how much this changed its performance.
3) I drive around the new subs area a little bit if you haven't seen this already (I'm not running the latest version of the map so some houses look a little funky but that's been fixed)
4) I enter the clothing shop and purchase a new shirt and put a monogrammed S on it.
5) I show off my Morgan Aero SS with gold trim and a nice dark blue smooth metallic paint job.
6) I drive over to the car dealer and when I park I show off the headlight system mentioned here.
7) I walk around the car dealer showing off the different cars inside.


Few things to note:
When I'm getting my clothing changed, you'll see my character's face change color as well, this will be corrected by release, just silly me forgot to do it before recording this. And to anyone wondering, the red/orange Audi S5 in the car dealer has the chromed paint and shows off perfectly why that will be crazy expensive for any car. Also it should be noted that the Murcielago SV seen in the car dealer will not be outright purchasable, as in, won't appear in the list of cars to buy, more details on that later.

 

[StephenPuffs]

June 5, 2014
So anyone tracking this so far might have noticed I skipped a couple days. Few different reasons for this, both personal and not. But I believe we are getting close to releasing this stuff, or at least, I'm getting close to having my part done, some things when first released may not work as intended due to both map changes as well as unaccounted errors that can pop up with a project this massive, though I believe I am doing a good job of keeping those one's to a minimum. But anything that does arise as a problem will be addressed and fixed, but mostly trying to get all this new stuff organized and set to go, and that in as of itself is a trick and a half as both the way the map content is being held SEE HERE as well as the new textures and such being added to make all these updates possible. Anyways, while I start putting the final pieces of this puzzle together to wrap it all up into working order and then improving on it later in terms of appearance and what all, other things are being finished as well, mainly the map to optimize and add a few other key features.

In other news, yesterday and today, I have been working on creating an official event type of game which can be held for events occasionally. If any of you are familiar with "gungame" from the Counter Strike series, it is much the same idea. If you haven't played it, basically it is a deathmatch gamemode whereby you kill anyone you see and everytime you do you receive a different weapon, ending with a knife (or in this case machete) and if you get the final kill using it, you win. However, I have put a PerpHeads take on this, so when a player dies, fireworks shoot up around their position, which can alert other players nearby to approach that area with caution or know that they may find someone injured from the gun battle that might have occurred over there. Additionally this all takes place in the forest area at night and it will eject you from the event if you leave the area too many times/for too long. Also, your flashlight becomes unusable and you can not see other player's names, so finding people is kind of spooky and can be highly unexpected. As a note, listen for footsteps nearby. The order of weapon unlocks goes as follows...

1. ​Beretta M9
2. Glock 20
3. Colt M1911A1
4. H&K MP5
5. IMI Desert Eagle
6. OTs-33 Pernach
7. Remington 870
8. IMI Mac11
9. FAMAS
10. Colt M16A2
11. Sako92
12. Remington M24
13. Benelli M3
14. AK-47
15. Sig Sauer 550
16. M14
17. Colt M4A1
18. H&K G3A3
19. SR-25
20. H&K G36C
21. Barrett M82
22. Beretta M9 Suppressed
23. Machete

So it can last awhile to get through all them, but with a number of players this can be a very fun gamemode and go fairly quick. Ammo is unlimited, but you still have clips essentially having to reload when you run out per clip, so sure you can spray your gun endlessly basically but don't expect to go unnoticed that way or survive for long. Respawns are shortened so you won't be lying around waiting forever to get back in the action.

I would imagine I can be done with my part within a week-ish time, if everything goes to plan that is, which is always hard to say. *crosses fingers*

 

[StephenPuffs]

June 6-24, 2014
Testing phase has begun essentially putting last corrections on things and checking to see if all systems are working the way they should. So don't expect much in the way of me updating this for the time being as it's just all behind the scenes, you've seen all the new features (more or less) so it's just making sure they all work with each other and don't have any conflicts. A number of problems already discovered which are being dealt with, there's some errors that at this time I'm not sure what could be causing but will be ironed out by release time, at least enough so it wouldn't be as noticeable as it is now, since I first need to figure out what causes it exactly. Anyways, when Xquality streams his map editing, I can often be found on there helping check his progress and answer questions directly relating to the map, I will not be answering questions about my stuff there, those questions should be asked in my dev log discussion FOUND HERE.

In other news, V2 has hit a delay, but not for bad reasons, if anything it represents hopefully an exciting development that is unprecedented in Gmod to my knowledge. Map size won't change, but perhaps the way it looks will (hopefully this doesn't mess anything else up making it take longer). So if you're ever interested in checking to see what Xquality is doing for V2, you can find his stream HERE on Twitch. Hours are unknown but just keep checking and you're bound to find him streaming once.

So yea that's basically the gist of what's happening now, things are slowly being finalized and completed. I may post some short tutorials here or have someone post in the tutorials section of what to do about TDM car materials as they can cause conflicts which I mentioned in a previous post. Unfortunately there's no way to avoid this from happening really as we can't change/determine the order i which Gmod loads materials. So if you have the TDM materials active, it's impossible to know if they will or our materials will take effect over the other, so it's better to not have them active. One thing for sure though, if you have the TDM workshop addons, remove them period. 1) They aren't a complete set ever so you won't have all his cars and 2) You don't need it for our server at all. If you want TDM cars for single player or other servers, I would recommend you use his SVN instead which you can find on his Facepunch thread about his work. Simply Google "TDM SVN" and should be the first result.

 

[StephenPuffs]

June 24, 2014
Alright so I'm sure some people think I've completed abandoned this and well, it's not so much that as there's just been a number of testing phases going on mostly of subsystems which I didn't mention on here. Anyways, I realized the other day there are some other changes that I've made since the last update which I never mentioned here but I'm sure most people would want to hear about.​​

• Gun sounds are fixed so you are able to hear guns being shot nearby, it isn't perfect but neither is the way sounds work so dealin' with what we have to.
• The gun sights bug with not shooting exactly where you were aimed is fixed but obviously you still have inaccuracy and kick when shot repeatedly.
• Just lots of general changes/improvements in the behind the scenes and not noticeable by players really.

As I think of more things I'll update this list, but since it's been forever from our last official update I would have to check more of what we had then than what it is now. I'm too accustomed to my test server and how it is, so I can't remember every detail of how it's changed since then.

Anyways, some of you have already noticed, but Xquality made a post FOUND HERE which is sort of like a cheesy advertisement for his latest version of what V2 will be like. That is, if we could even call it version 2 after all the iterations it's really gone through to get to this point. Anyways, I suggest you go look at it and see what's new, I will probably create another short video of me driving around the downtown showing the new shops that are around. One feature I should mention that's listed in there is the gun range, over the next few days I will be working on implementing this. Basically the plan right now is you will purchase X minutes, probably up to like 5 or something. You will have unlimited ammo although still using clips, you can pick your weapon of choice. Depending on what weapon you pick, will determine your range distance. As for now it is entirely a for fun thing to go do with a friend and see what score you can get against your friend.

Moving on, one new feature is that meth cooks differently than it did before. Meth, as some may know, will blow up occasionally as it cooks causing quite a fire hazard and danger of exposure of your location. This itself is not changed, but if it cooks past this point without blowing up, it will put "Danger" above it in red (Seen below). What this danger sign means is that if you go pick it up in this state it has a 1:4 chance of exploding in your face and killing you. So trying to pick this up during a raid, police or criminal, would be breaking numerous rules. Least of which is putting your own life in danger. However, police are subject to this as well and can not safely confiscate the meth in this state, so they will need to stay around for it to finish cooking and can safely get it off the premises. SWAT are able to pick this up with no risk though, so if you're stuck in a drug den as police with meth just sitting there in a dangerous state, call in the SWAT and they can dispose of it easily.

Enough with the danger state, moving on to other new bits of its cooking. At current when it blows up, all it does is rupture and not effect anything around it, now it pushes nearby objects around which tends to tip other ones nearby over, which leads me to the final point, meth must be cooked upright as show in the picture above, if it is on its side, then just imagine the meth seeping out the nozzle at the top, so upright it must be. Which like your other drugs, you can now just press R with fists out while looking at it to flip it back upright even in the danger state, but if you right click it to pick it up that way, it will explode. You can not pick up wet meth with your physgun otherwise it'd be essentially the same as picking up with your fists.

So yea, that's all I'll put for today, but I'll show you more around how V2 is tomorrow as for now look at the link I provided for Xquality's post above. Which has an ENTIRELY new feel to it than V1, the layout is generally the same except a bit of downtown area so you don't need to learn a new map. Just need to know it'll be different and some properties are gone in place for different stores.

 

[StephenPuffs]

June 25, 2014
So what have I been up to today? Well originally I thought I would have time to show you around the downtown, but as it turns out we will be making a feature trailer which shows off a whole range of things and hopefully is entertaining, but I will give a brief overview tomorrow of the shops of how they look and all for now you can sort of see in Xquality's post. That said, what I will tell you is this, player owned shops in the city no longer exist, all player shops are now only in the business district. This was changed as to help encourage competition between stores as before if you were a shop out there and the city shops were owned, no one would do business with you. So all shops in the city are now controlled by NPCs and some stuff has been shifted around to fit whatever their store is marketed towards. The two shops you may know as Chaddy's and Uncle Cos' are now into one shop together while surrounding shops may contain some of their old wares and other items may be moved to a more relevant NPC. Some items later may be moved around as some other ideas come to fruition. Anyways, moving on with what I did.

I recall seeing a request on the forums for not allowing police's road barrier to be freezable, this change is now in effect so trying to freeze this prop does nothing. Also along the lines of prop related things, when anyone below the rank of moderator tries to throw an item via their physgun, it will still slightly keep going the direction thrown, but not full force as to cut down on any prop pushing/throwing. One new item has been added, the orange warning barrels like the ones that can be found near Parker Building Materials / J&M Glass Company. I've also increased the weight for a few items but this doesn't effect your overall carried weight, it is simply to not make the props seem light as a feather when spawned. That's it for props.

I noticed my one post still has not received the 20 likes to qualify for me to include additional information about the cars in car dealer. So that may have to wait until after release, but I do plan on doing it at some point just to help give people a more informed idea of what the car is like before buying as a test drive can't tell you everything. Additionally, I have noticed that TDM has been exceptionally busy and created some more cars which will not make it in for this release as it would take awhile to get set up and I'm currently ironing out a few more bugs/badly coded spots.

You may wonder to yourself why there are so many bugs, and well we are overhauling our entire database of all player info and everything else to a new updated system which should help very much in terms of performance on its behalf and allow us to do some more expansive things that we couldn't without it. Does this mean you will lose everything you have done up until this point? No definitely not, my post about player resets that I'm sure many have seen, I probably can do away with at this point as the some balancing changes have been in effect for a good long while now so resets are not as needed now than they would've been then, but just to reiterate: your items, your money, your cars, your skills, everything that is your player remains after this update so don't be afraid of this change. More bugs are now found because we changed how our guns were set up to operate so now it is much more functional and less of a total mess. However, I still am mystified by how some stuff works some places but if I try it in a different place then it won't, so I really don't quite get why that is. That was another change I did today, all guns after shooting their last bullet should go to the correct look with the slide in the proper position or something along those lines. Unfortunately the creator of the weapons did not prove any animation with the gun not having a magazine attached, so guns will always still have that regardless if one is actually loaded or not. Also now when you go to shoot but your magazine is empty it will no longer reload for you, you must specifically press R or whatever your reload key is. (This was one thing that I'm sure exactly what triggers it to happen but I found a way to stop it from happening). If you don't, you'll simply be standing there going click, click, click futilely.

Anyways, there's a bunch of other small stuff done but not worth noting really as it doesn't effect gameplay and mostly is visual things. So as always more to do tomorrow, stay tuned for more as I get it done. If I see some other decent ideas in the forums that are relatively simple to add you may see it put in, but not all ideas are as simple as it seems or something that I feel comfortable with adding unless I can have questions of balancing and fairness answered, as well as some other criteria.

 

[StephenPuffs]

November 6, 2014
I guess I should post here instead of on the upcoming server update as partially I honestly don't have a clue when Fredy plans to release some stuff and not others as we managed to luck out in part because of changes _killburn has made in the dev version of Garry's Mod so we could release some as you saw with indicators and the like.

Moving on, today was all about guns (a few other minor tweaks as well), which have been a real nasty bit of code, better than some other things but still fairly gross. So I worked on porting some of my own weapon base that I did for the SWAT gamemode which is still in development, just at the part where BLAHHHHHHH I don't have much interest in doing to be honest (setting it up so you can pick loadouts, matchmaking, etc).

Anyways this now allows for some weapons to have burst fire instead of / in conjunction with full auto. I'll make a chart later of what each weapon will have so you can easily review. Keep in mind this may make some guns you're accustomed to having full auto, may no longer. That said, burst fire is quite effective as it has slightly better accuracy than just holding the trigger down spraying wildly, unless you keep jamming on the trigger instead of pausing between bursts (obviously). Also unless it is an armored target (excluding a possible headshot) you will take the person down in one 3-round burst. So fairly easy to conserve ammo if you use it properly, but can be fired about the same speed as full auto if you so choose which as anyone that has played the gamemode knows, is simply a waste of ammo if you never take your finger off the trigger.

Additionally you can now change the firing mode while in passive (may have been able to before, I forget, but I know it is possible for certain now). Currently you can simply hide your gun in an instant after firing which I have found to be a bit dumb, so now you are required to put the gun back into passive mode before being able to switch to anything else (think of it like holstering for now).

When you take out the gun, as I'm sure many of you have noticed, you kind of flicker as if you're holding the gun about to attack when you pick one up. This is also fixed so now when you pick it up, you just hold it passive style immediately.

Reloading a rifle should generally now actually reload like a rifle and not a shotgun because HERPTY DERPTY SAT ON A WALL. So many annoyances with guns that should have been fixed a long time ago but weren't. There's also other general improvements. Shotguns still need a TON of work but I'll get to that another time.

The one last thing, which yes isn't actually from today technically, but many of you have seen my post about "my melone". It is a thread for just random junk, however it served a purpose although hidden at least initially. You may wonder why what my character is doing exactly, and to answer your question. @Xquality has been back to work finally and made some new animations other than the ones we already showed off in the upcoming server update thread post. The one in my melone is the one for eating. I have had no time to set up proper things for every food item yet so generally you just kinda jam your face in it, but if you ask me, it's far better than ever before. No longer can you spam click food either because of this. It has a few quirks because of other animations but whatever, I figure it's still good enough in all reality. I may take the time to make a teaser trailer specifically for all of the new ones added.

I think this post is now long, enjoy reading it and/or understanding it. If you have any questions ask in comments as I'm quite certain you can do that despite this thread being closed. If you are unable, either message me or find some way to get in contact with me. TS I usually don't see messages in just to warn you now, but I may at some point.

 

[StephenPuffs]

November 7, 2014
Made a few minor improvements so far today as I continue to try to perfect these. Unfortunately some of these changes may make some people mad, as now you have to specifically press your USE key + ATTACK1 key (typically this is E+Left click) to enter or exit passive mode. Also your gun will always originally be in the semi automatic position, so if you don't want this, be sure you change the mode before you head into a fight. Anyways, for the time being before I continue on. Here is the chart I promised yesterday, so you can review.

 

[StephenPuffs]

November 28, 2014
So I found doing vehicles extremely boring but did some minor tweaks to ones already marked completed as I am slightly changing how balancing works because we didn't originally envision upgrades so they were never accounted for. Anyways I went for something exciting instead, although not really necessary probably. However it is fairly easy and a lot of fun, although deafening, explosions! Here are just a few GIFs I compiled while final testing. Enjoy! (Don't get any crazy ideas)

Spoiler: Explosions

 

[StephenPuffs]

December 1, 2014

Alright so worked with @Xquality a slight amount today on some things which was beneficial and solves some nastiness to do with models. This includes correcting the physics object for the fish/fire extinguisher so they now no longer sink into the ground oddly. Now you can cook your fish without them peeking their head out looking at you with their sad face.

Also we corrected/added new drug packet looks, so now you can clearly tell the difference between cocaine and cannibis for both the product and the seeds.

Picture courtesy of @Xquality

As many people have noticed playing as speed enforcement and properly accessing the speed of a moving vehicle is difficult to say the least. So I have modified the speed camera to lock onto the vehicle much faster, and in addition you have 1.2 seconds in which you can look away then look back at it, so you don't have to track it nonstop as this made it impossible. However their currrent recorded speed or max speed reached will only be updated while actually looking at the vehicle. This should make tracking speeders far easier, as also the limiter will be functional so not speeding will be much easier.