From now on, all announcements to the community will be made on the website.

Las Venturas Playground News & Updates.


Also, we have removed older topics on this board, to prevent confusion. :)

Another week has passed and fresh out of its beta the Development team is proud to bring the community another gamemode version: Las Venturas Playground 2.91.9.

2.91.9 fixes an issue which has been present in the gamemode for a considerably long time. Known to the community as "the saveinfo", parts of the core handler have been rewritten which re-introduces crash restoring. From now on, when a player disconnects from the server for whatever reason, if they reconnect within ten minutes, their game will restore to the exact state it was in before they left! This includes their spawn weapons, properties owned, vehicle they were driving, position, interior, world and much more!

Additionally, all other known connection issues have been fixed. This includes countless problems with the automatic login and that frustrating message which some players randomly suffered from showing "You cannot use commands until you select a skin", when the player was most certainly spawned.

A new command has been added for people who like to cruise the streets. The new /cruise command allows players to assign a cruise leader, and from there gives them an opportunity to repair their vehicle if they are within range of the leader using the command which was only previously available in map zones: /vr.

A command for VIPs has been improved. The /my colour command now saves to a VIPs profile so that they don't have to request a permanent colour change from a crew member.

A few other fixes are detailed below in the changelog:



- Fixed a servercrash (TransporterX)
- Fixed /ctp not working with an ID (TransporterX)
- Fixed random spawn weapons after reconnecting (Jay)
- Fixed position / vehicle / other data failing to restore (Jay)
- Fixed property restore after crash (Jay)
- Fixed automatic login causing "Please choose a skin before using commands" message (Jay)
- Fixed all other known connection issues (Jay)
- Improvements to the SaveInfo data loading (Jay)
- Fixed some issues with ship fighting (TransporterX)
- New command: /cruise (TransporterX)
- Fixed being able to get an early start in a race from a menu (Jay)
- /my colour for VIP members now saves (Jay)



On behalf of the LVP Development team,
Jay

Exactly ten days ago we launched an action to give aid to the Haitian people. Their island got hit by a terrible earthquake, destroying almost everything they cared about. Las Venturas Playground tried to help by giving all incoming donations to charity.

With your help we've been able to gather enough money to give lots of water, food and medicine to various charity orginisations. A total amount of € 474.40, which is just over 671 dollar, has been donated to the Dutch SHO (which includes Oxfam and Unicef) on behalf of Las Venturas Playground.

This has been made possible by your donations over the past ten days; absolutely amazing, thank you! While we've welcomed quite a few new V.I.P. members as well, a large part of the money was donated by current V.I.P. members and LVP Staff, after which LVP donated another 50 euro coming from our own balance.

If you would still like to donate, please consider doing so to Oxfam Novib or Unicef.

With kind regards,

Sander Rutten
Las Venturas Playground Management

This last week there have been a huge amount of changes in the code. The main focus that we're going for is following the roadmap laid out by our Lead Developers, Wesley and Fireburn. That being said, most of the changes were done in our own benefit when working with the code. The main file, which previously contained over 12,000 lines, was sliced and diced making it only 1,937 lines in length. The rest of the gamemode has been cleaned up, organized, and optimized on a global level.

In just a few quick search/replaces, we are now able to speed up the loops regarding players by a noticeable amount, though it may not be apparent "in game". This boost allows us to add more features and content without the fear of slowing the system down! We're getting closer to 2.92.x, and there are many things that need to be done before we get there. We are becoming more organized than ever, both in code as in teamwork, so you can expect more features coming faster and even better than ever before!

Several bugs have been fixed, all of which have been listed in the changelog posted below. If you find any discrepancies with anything posted as "fixed", please report it in the proper way!

* Fixed a bug where the SaveHandler would respawn you after loading the data. (Matthias)
* Fixed a warning with the GTA Handler. (Matthias)
* Fixed a small bug when /fight watch'ing someone and fighting. (Matthias)
* Fixed a small /stats bug. (Matthias)
* Fixed a small bug when starting a fight. (Lithirm)
* /getstats now shows lamekills. (Matthias)
* You are now still godmoded when buying stuff in interiors (Fireburn)
* Fixed anti-teamkill not working (Fireburn)
* Fixed an error in the /brief minigame (TransporterX)
* /ignore, /unignore, and /slap now support partial names (TransporterX)
* /bank all automatically calculates and adds when you breach your limit (TransporterX)
* /v ID health and /p ID vehiclehealth now support admin+ setting the value (TransporterX)
* Fixed a teleport bug (TransporterX)
* Fixed a bug with the GTA Merchant requesting vehicles that wouldn't be attainable (TransporterX)
* Lots of dumb typos (TransporterX)
* Rewrote and reorganized a lot of the gamemode to make it easier to manage (TransporterX)
* Lots of global code optimizations reducing lag (TransporterX)

With kind regards,
TransporterX

A terrible earthquake has struck the Caribbean island of Haiti last Tuesday. While the extend of the devastation is still unclear, it's obvious that tens of thousands lost their lives, millions of people became homeless and countless other people lost friends or relatives.

By making a donation to Las Venturas Playground between today and Monday the 25th of January, you can support the Haitian people! Las Venturas Playground will donate your full donation directly to Oxfam Novib! Of course, all additional VIP privileges generally acquired through donating will still be made available to you.

So don't wait any longer and make a donation! On the 25th of January we'll announce how much money Las Venturas Playground has donated to Oxfam, directly in aid of the millions of people who desperately need help.

Thank you!
The Las Venturas Playground Management

This message is the first of our new, weekly gamemode announcements. From this point forward we'll publish a larger gamemode update every Wednesday, together with an associated news message.

In the past week we've been working on lot of new features, fixed quite some bugs and have created a few new ones to be included in this update. This has been done with the help of a new developer, TransporterX. On behalf of the entire Development Team I'd like to congratulate him with this new position, and wish him all the luck as an official developer of our SA-MP Server. TransporterX is already actively developing our gamemode. He has been busy cleaning up the code, fixing typos, and generally improving the source. Among these changes there were a number of annoying bugs (including the fire bug getting you jailed, wanted level being lost when being killed on the ship, and the spawn money bug) which no longer are an inconvenience.

Internally in the Development Team, we have created a roadmap containing rough plans for development in the next few months. We'll share a bit more about these plans in the next update, which is exactly seven days from now. Our current priorities focus around fixing a number of annoying bugs which still are present in the sourcecode. Please remember, if you happen to run into any kind of problem or bug, be sure to report it properly! This is the full changelog for version 2.91.7:

* The /brief minigame now doesn't end when there's 1 player left. (Matthias)
* Added an info pickup to the FightClub showing some information about /fight. (Matthias)
* Added, /fight info, /fight watch, /fight stopwatch, fixed the FightClub location. (Matthias)
* Fixed some small jail bug. (Matthias)
* Fixed a few small typos. (Matthias)
* Fixed the bug where other admins couldn't talk during a muteall. (Matthias)
* Admins can now use commands in mapzones. (Matthias)
* /fight challenge now supports names. (Matthias)
* Fixed a few bugs with /watch. (Matthias)
* Fixed the bug where the killboard would fuck up after a secret kill. (Matthias)
* Fixed spawnmoney bugs. (TransporterX)
* Fixed taxi place owner being told the correct place where someone is taxi'ing to (TransporterX)
* Fixed /hitman as well as all commands using SelectPlayer to work with partial names (TransporterX)
* Added earnings to /my props and /properties (TransporterX)
* General code clean up, formatting, optimization, grammatical and typographical errors, and some cleaner logic (TransporterX)
* Added a check for "on fire" deaths on the ship to prevent a mean bug (TransporterX)
* Fixed a bug regarding the wanted level being lost when killed on the ship (TransporterX)



On behalf of the Development team,
Matthias van Eeghem

Yes, we do realise that we haven't published a lot of updates lately. This mainly is due to the fact that we're busy creating some larger parts of our website. Next to the announced user control panel, we're moving large parts of LVP's administration features towards the website. This includes our financials, crew coverage information, and IP Tracking tools, all meant to easen up the job of our administrators.

Considering most of you will never see these components of our website, we figured it would be a nice thing to share some screenshots. The first screenshot shows the relation manager. This allows us to link all your accounts together, making sure that all your statistics are being gathered and can be used in your profile. Mind that IRC linking is still missing on this page, as we haven't finished implementing a proper way to monitor your activity throughout our IRC Channels.

The second screenshot shows an overview of the crew coverage page for Management Members. It's a powerful tool allowing us to decide who should get demoted due to inactivity. The systems allows us to look back to coverage early 2007, see yearly overviews and "zoom in" on specific days and crew members. It also features an automated warning system to tell us which crew members haven't been ingame a lot recently. We'll publish more screenshots of area's like these later on!

As usual, a number of bug fixes have been applied to our website as well. You can use the "enter" key on your keyboard again when searching for a specific player, various typos have been fixed and an Atom feed is now available for those who would like to use it. In the next few days we plan on publishing WhatPulse overview pages for user profiles, giving information about all pulses, averages and progress of a single user in our team.



With kind regards,
The LVP Management

A small part of the people who join the Las Venturas Playground SA-MP server leave, and never come back again. Fortunately, a much larger part likes the server and registers on our website, which has been done by over 73 thousand people so far. Among this group there are a few people who we feel deserve some special attention.

I'm talking about people like Xanland, Cave, Halo and Turkey. People who have been around since forever and, while not constantly active, have been actively involved with Las Venturas Playground on several subjects. For that reason we have decided to grant them a special Appreciation Award, a clear sign of the respect that we have for them. While this doesn't bring any additional rights or privileges, we believe this is an appropriate way to show our gratitude. Congratulations, guys!

In other news, some minor bug-fixes have been applied to the website since yesterday. The contact form is working again, the WhatPulse date-selection menu agrees that it's 2010 and more work has been finished on the control panel, results of which will be visible soon. We'll share the first screenshots of that within a few days!

With kind regards,
The Las Venturas Playground Management

Now that most of you (and us!) have sobered up from New Year's Eve, we figured it might be a nice time to push out another news message for our website. Please be aware that no updates doesn't mean that nothing is happening! Smaller items and announcements usually occur using our Twitter Feed and on IRC.

In the past few weeks we've been working on finalizing parts of our website. A WhatPulse Team Overview got added, an easy instructional page has been added for users new to Las Venturas Playground and we've launched our Google Chrome Extension. Lots and lots of bugs have been fixed, the website has been made faster by, on average, 0.8 seconds for a full load and WhatPulse now features semi-live statistics, updated once an hour.

Within a few weeks we are expecting to publish other large parts of the website. Firstly we're preparing a new theme for our forums. This theme will feature full integration with LVP's member system and website layout, creating a more coherent feeling between our website and forum. The user control panel is making steady progress as well, we'd like you to be able to modify almost everything by yourself, so we're creating lots of interactive options.

In the short run we expect to publish quite some smaller updates soon. WhatPulse profile pages are planned with quite a high priority, we'd like to enable sorting when searching for a specific player or clan and the website should support comments on news messages and profiles. All by all, lots of things are upcoming, so stay tuned!