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The state of MCNR and its future development

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Mike:
Hi everyone.

I have been meaning to make a post like this for quite some time but never gotten around to it. I wanted to explain to you all about the current state of MCNR development and what I have planned for the future. Some players have expressed their worry that server updates have become stale and wish for bigger updates and massive changes. I agree. I too would like to see bigger updates and massive changes!

I honestly wish I had an unlimited amount of time to put into MCNR or the ability to clone myself, but alas, I do not. I work a full time job (40 hours a week), I get home at 5pm, then after I eat and relax a little bit I might have 2 or 3 hours to script if I'm lucky but most days it's about an hour then I'm mentally drained and have to sleep I don’t have the energy to script continuously for hours on end. I usually spend my weekends off from work scripting MCNR. It's like a second job! Some days I don't even feel motivated to script at all. Sometimes I go a week, two weeks or even a month or longer without scripting because of burn out and frustration. It's hard to be motivated when it's an ongoing battle of fixing bugs and being unable to find the time to add what I and everyone else desperately wants.

The list of things I plan to script is literally endless; more things are being added to it daily, and the biggest the list grows the more pressure I feel under to do it all. Don’t forget I am a single person developing MCNR on my own with no help or assistance. The main thing that I know needs doing at the minute is a rebalance of the entire economy and new robberies/heists adding. This is a massive undertaking and not something that I can do overnight. I am very hesitant to start work on this because I feel I first want to get the server in a stable state and THEN start building on top of it. But now I partly realise this may never be possible as there are always bugs being found and minor changes needing to be made.

Something I want to highlight is that almost every single line of code in MCNR was scripted by myself, barring a couple of things like the anticheat and code libraries. This is not something a lot of servers can say truthfully and accurately. Other servers that were once the #1 servers in their category, these days they have been abandoned and left to die as the owner(s) do not care about the players. That is not something I would ever do however - I am extremely grateful and happy that MCNR is as successful as it is, it was always a dream of mine to run a successful SAMP server and I feel like MCNR is in a good place script-wise with a variety of things to do. I do understand some people can get bored easily when doing the same thing, but that is true of any game. Just look at GTA Online and how much content it has, but people get bored of that too, myself included.

So, to summarise, you have a server with a dedicated developer that pushes out updates very regularly compared to other servers. I am working on version 2.0 slowly, but there is so much to do you can't even begin to imagine the amount of time and effort it is going to take. Creating version 2 is a massive undertaking as I find myself constantly addressing and working on existing bugs and features and trying to juggle my free time to both work on the existing featureset and version 2 is an impossible task. I wish I could dedicate 100% of my time to version 2 but then I’d run the risk of neglecting the server in it’s current state which is something I definitely don’t wish to do. Version 2 is going to take a long while because I’ll be juggling both the current feature set and the future features. But it will be worth it when the update drops, which I certainly intend to do.

A few players have asked why there’s still suggestions on the forums from 2019 that still haven’t be implemented. A lot of this is down to prioritising bug fixes, existing features as well as picking and choosing features that will benefit a large amount of players first with smaller suggestions being added when there’s free time. Though time can factor into this again with large feature suggestions taking a lot of time to implement.

Let's look at the latest update released, version 1.9.13: https://mikescnr.com/forum/index.php/topic,6459.0.html

- Mechanic refuel service has been added. Mechanics can refuel a vehicle up to 25%.
This was a basic feature missing for almost 2 years. I finally got around to adding it. It took about half an hour to add and test.

- Players are now limited to holding ONE molotov. Slight price increase. Existing molotovs in your inventory (up to 5) will not be taken away and can still be used.
I did this to try and rebalance things, which is an ongoing struggle. This change was not as simple as changing a '5' to a '1' I had to recode parts of the code that limit you from obtaining more than 5 throwables, to account for the amount of molotovs being 1 not 5. There were some bugs that this took over an hour to add, test and then fix.

- Slight reduction in Satchel Charge price.
Again, to try and rebalance things which is an ongoing struggle. This took seconds.

- When requesting a personal vehicle, if there's an obstruction on the left side of the road, it will test the right side rather than just defaulting to the middle of the road.
This was relatively straight forward, however there were a couple of bugs. It probably took 30 minutes or so to add.

- /flare command will now prompt if you want to use it for a supply drop or just a regular flare.
This improves the experience for players that don't know about supply drops. 2 minute job.

- When using a command on a player, if you enter their name but there are multiple matches, if one of those matches is an exact match it will now explain that you need to use their ID instead of their name.
5 minutes, improves user experience.

- Securicar tire health increased by 1.5x.
- Reduced cost of mechanic tire repair service.
A few seconds.

- When tailing a suspect (either as a cop in any vehicle, or a regular civilian in a news chopper), if tailing a vehicle with multiple occupants these are now combined into a single chat message.
This took 5 minutes or so, and reduces chat spam, which is good.

- Cop 'shout instruction' button (pull over/freeze/step out) sound from a police helicopter will always be the helicopter loudspeaker.
This was not an important change, but I like to get things right, and having the sound of a cop speaking normally coming from a helicopter hovering above doesn't sound right, so I wanted to improve it. That's one thing I feel I do well when scripting MCNR - doing stuff properly and right.

- You now spawn at your previous location when leaving an event (Decathlon).
1 minute to add this, improves user experience, makes people more likely to join the Decathlon.

- The server was unable to read files after a certain amount of time due to hitting a limit of concurrently open files.
Critical bug, took over an hour to diagnose, then a few minutes to fix.

- Sometimes unable to request personal vehicles in certain areas due to the script thinking the spawn point was under the road.
Took about 45 minutes to diagnose this issue. The general result was just vehicles spawning too close to the player, but there was also a possibility, in certain specific areas of the map, that the vehicle would fail to spawn.

- Personal vehicles were always spawning at the closest road node. This was done for testing purposes and accidentally left in.
Just a few seconds to do this, it was left in after some testing I did and was not what was intended.

- Police Maverick was able to drop spike strips.
About a minute or two to fix this. It was abusable.

- Multiple issues with buying throwables weapons, such as inability to buy if inventory full, and ability to buy more than maximum quantity (5).
Abusable bug, had to fix it. Took quite a while to debug it and fix various systems that give ammo such as ammunation, supply drop, weapon drop, and random weapon pickups. Probably took a good 45 minutes to an hour to fully fix and test.

- Fixed stats, achievements and daily objectives for Mechanic engine/tire repair not progressing.
A bug that breaks progression is always something I fix as soon as I can. Took 5 minutes to fix this one.

- Typo in 'You are holding lots of cash' tip popup.
5 seconds.

- Supply drop vehicle drop box clipping through floor.
About 3 minutes, just adjusted the height. Was necessary in my eyes as it looked dumb the box going through the floor.

- Stealing Securicar briefcase is now a crime.
This was somehow missed, took a few minutes to add and test.

- Fixed floating treasure hunt clue on boxes in LS Inlet (Flint County).
Took 15 minutes or so to find and correct the height.

- Fixed 'cash spent on bribes' stat not increasing for players, making the related achievement unobtainable.
Again, this broke progression so I wanted to prioritise fixing it. Took 10 minutes to fix and maybe another 10 to test.

- Fixed incorrect wanted stars color.
This was quite difficult to find the cause for and probably took about 30 minutes to fix and test. I thought I had fixed it 3 times but hadn't, it was very frustrating to fix.

In total this update took a good few hours to put together, as you can see. This is not counting all the other time I have to spend doing other stuff. I also have to do things other than scripting such as management tasks, verifying donations, approving forum accounts, writing changelogs, writing forum posts, checking and responding to the forum, checking and responding to Discord, auditing ban appeals and complaints and so on.

Looking back on just this past update, I myself am surprised how much time one update requires, a lot of the time players don’t always see the outcome of these updates as they can often be small bug fixes. Bug fixes, feature additions and so forth all command a high amount of my time and attention.

MCNR is a frequently updated server which I continue to strive to maintain while also working on new features.



As you can see, there have been 7 updates so far this year (in 24 days, that's an average of one update every 4 days give or take). Some servers don't receive 7 updates in a year. 2020 saw 63 updates. That's over 5 updates a month, an average of 6 days apart. More than once a week. SAMP is very unforgiving, and a seemingly insignificant improvement or bug fix might have taken hours. I'm constantly facing problems and barriers caused by SAMP's lack of basic functionality and rampant unresolved bugs.

My motivation, like anyone’s, fluctuates and you may occasionally find me scripting smaller updates with more quirky or interesting features to help keep me engaged and sane.

The bottom line is, MCNR is a high priority of mine and I enjoy working on updates for the server and definitely have ambitions to introduce bigger and better features as part of Version 2. Even though it seems like not much is happening at the moment I’m slowly but surely getting the server into a stable and patched state ready for me to work fully on version 2, so please be patient! I’m working as hard as I can to continually improve the server but also plan on and work on a future for the server, it’s just slow as it’s just myself.
I hope this post is informative for everyone in regards to what’s going on with myself and MCNR. There is still a hell of a lot of stuff I want to do and add to MCNR, and it will come with time, but there is a lot of ground work to do first.

Rome wasn't built in a day.

Thanks for reading, and thanks for playing.

howl:
I feel you brother, take a good time and don't stress yourself out, remember that your playerbase is still in leap of faith for your big accomplishment.

Dudesdog:
Thanks for all that you do Mike! We appreciate you making this masterpiece and are looking forward to where the future heads!

ranja:
I have never stumbled across no Man with bigger motivation than you, striving for improvement and reliability towards your second work. You really seem to show true signs of passion and dedication — and for that, I really want to thank you for caring about your community. Let's rock!


--- Quote from: Mike on January 29, 2021, 08:13:53 pm ---[...]when the update drops,[...]

--- End quote ---

CaptainAmerica:
Well first time that im read these update posts and now i've got how hard mike is working on this server. all i can say is good job this is amazing and i love how you take care of your players!

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