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.
