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Hey all and welcome back! It's time for another OwlGaming V Developer Diary! This one has been a long time coming but is more than worth the wait, today we're going to be unveiling the Inventory. Let's begin with a video: Note: The above is a WIP and will change before launch. Everything Has Its Place We designed the inventory with the idea that everything you have in your possession, belongs to a location. Characters no longer have a 'global location' for storing items and amassing weapons which they can /me pull from anywhere. Instead, everything is in a container or socket. Items are also restricted from being placed in unsuitable/unrealistic containers & sockets. Easy to Use The new inventory is super easy to use. Despite having complex functionality such as item splitting, merging and container management - performing these actions is intuitive and done with only left mouse button clicks. Moving items between containers is a simple as drag and drop. Navigating containers inside containers is made easy by the container history shown on top. Item stack sizes & container sizes are shown via badges. What are Containers & Sockets? Containers are items that can hold other items - for example, backpacks, holsters, wallets. Sockets are positions on your character's body which, depending on the socket type, can hold containers or individual items. For example, you can only put a backpack on your back but you can store individual weed baggies in your back pocket. What about firearms? If they aren't in your hands, they will have to be stored in a suitable socket or container. For rifles, you may want to visit Ammunation to buy a sling for storing it on your back. For handguns, we offer various holsters which can fit onto various sockets (e.g. hip holsters, leg holsters). Can I drop items in the world? Yes. Drag the item you want to drop, onto the world and voila. Are there containers in the world/interiors? Yes. What about vehicles? Vehicles will run the same idea, where the vehicle will have various sockets for item storage. Are items visually represented on the character? It depends on the item & socket, but yes. What inventory limits does my character have? Your character will only be able to carry a certain number of items (expandable by using containers such as backpacks, suitcases etc). You are also only able to carry a set weight, this does not increase. Each container also has a limit on how many items it can hold, for example, a holster takes one gun only, whereas a backpack can carry multiple items and of various types. How is the progress? Progress is good. We are currently testing internally with multiple people. This is an on-going test with frequent updates (every script change gets pushed) to ensure that we get good coverage on our features/script. So, when is the next Developer Diary? We don't have a set cadence for these currently. We try to do them in our spare time without impacting the progress of our development. Additionally - unfortunately not everything we have to script is exciting enough for a developer diary! Special thanks to @ThatGuy who worked tirelessly on this with me. As always, feel free to reach out to us below or via Discord.

Hey all and welcome to the first ever developer diary for our GTA V Project. I wanted to use this opportunity to provide you all with an update on where we are at and what our grand vision is for V. Not An MTA Clone Owl V will not be a direct copy of MTA. While the server will feature a familiar experience to MTA, the script is not a port of the MTA script and will offer new features & different features. Everything we do falls under one of two categories: New or Upgraded. For new, we are looking at implementing new features which may not have been possible on GTA SA. For upgraded, we are revisiting & modernizing every feature as we code it on a high level and asking ourselves questions like How do players buy a house? How do they interact with their inventory? Not An MTA Replacement Some may be concerned that V will supersede MTA and we will close MTA down, others are spreading this around as factual. However, this is not the case and this is not something that has even been discussed or entertained as a possibility. When we think about V, we think about how can we grow Owl - right now we peak at ~80 players - how do we get that to 200 across our community? How do we bring extra, high-quality players into our community? MTA as a platform is not attracting many new players at this point which makes acquiring additional players difficult - you essentially have to acquire them from the existing pool of players in MTA / on other servers, whereas V is still an active/frequently updated game with a wider demographic of players who are currently not in our ecosystem. On the other hand, people will continue to play MTA and we don't see it dying out anytime soon. MTA has a very feature rich script with a strong history, lore and excellent game world and a lot of people enjoy playing in San Andreas to this day. The above is partially why we have chosen to expand into V, whilst continuing to not just support but also actively develop MTA. We want to get as many people into the OwlGaming ecosystem as possible. Modern & Clean Modern day gamers don't expect to open up a console and enter a bunch of commands, with mastering the syntax of them being critical to enjoying the game. With V we are aiming to make gameplay as fluid as possible. Do you want to use the bank? Hit one key. Want to interact with a player (e.g. to arrest)? Right click on them, move your mouse over the option and let the button go. We want learning our script to be something that takes minimal effort so that you can spend more time enjoying your roleplay. Now coming onto the clean portion. We are utilizing modern web technologies such as the latest version of HTML & Javascript which allows us to make clean looking GUI's, with smooth animations & interaction, whilst having technically complicated functionality (e.g. complex inventory systems), for minimal effort. Our current GUI efforts are bright and uncluttered and fit in well with GTA V itself. Reliable & Efficient We have spent a great amount of effort in optimizing our code base to make use of modern day PC capabilities such as multi-threading. This will help speed up portions of the code which previously on MTA had to be single threaded and would slow the response time down for other players until that task was complete. With this, we hope that even with a large player base, players will still receive timely responses to any action they perform on the server. We've also made efforts to reduce the amount of bandwidth being used by our script and also to reduce the complexity of code running on the client side so that our script will have less impact on the framerate of V. Easy to Start, Harder to Master, Less of a Grind We have been investigating how we make roleplay easier to get into. Currently, even as an experienced roleplayer, joining a new community is tedious. You have to grind to get your money back just to be able to afford a simple car or property. It's hard to get into your first faction, which is where a lot of roleplay stems from. We are looking at ways of decreasing the 'time to achievement' as I like to call it. That is, how long after I register do I have to wait before I can afford my first entry-level property? my first entry-level car? How soon can I join a reputable faction and start contributing to roleplay throughout the server? What does the first hour, day, week, month look like for a new player? We are aiming to make this more accessible, more engaging & more fun so that a new players first month is not one big grind with little time to actually roleplay and contribute to the experience of others. However, the end game is important too. Achievements have to be earned on a curve, the longer the time I invest in the community, the better my gains should be. We don't want a new player to tire out just to acquire a 20-year-old car, but we want it to be an effort to gain a large luxury automobile so that users feel rewarded for the many hours they spent as a police officer, medic, gangster, etc. More on this will follow in the future. Transparent & Approachable I want to be clear that it is a priority across Owl, not just V, to be transparent and approachable. Over the coming months, I am going to do my best to be as open with you guys as I can without giving away information which may impact/limit our success compared to competitors. In line with UAT policy, I am completely approachable and if you have any suggestions we can discuss them & I will take them on board. The same applies if you have any questions or concerns, I will do my best to answer them as transparently as possible. My discord is always open, just like the rest of the UAT. Team Update We are happy to announce that Eloquent has joined the development team and will be helping out Chaos & myself with scripting, as well as helping out on MTA. FAQ Which modification are we using? We are using RageMP (www.rage.mp). I recommend that you go check it out, it's the closest thing to MTA for V right now and during testing, we've found that it provides a stable client with good sync & performance as well as strong scripting functionality. RageMP is updated frequently and the team behind it are currently working on & showing off more advanced features like adding new synced models to the game. Which city will be used for Owl V? We are going to be roleplaying in the Paleto Bay area. Our reason for choosing this location is due to Los Santos being very large in GTA 5 and we feel that having a smaller area will result in more interaction. We may revisit this in the future if the player base becomes large enough to support a larger area. Who is Daniels? I made the original script that Owl and every other RP community uses as their base, 10 years ago. I'm also the newest UAT member here at Owl and I deal directly with V in terms of both development & administration. Will my MTA/OwlGaming account work for V? Yes, your account is shared across both games. Will there be stat transfers from MTA to V? No. Whilst your core account data is shared (e.g. username, password), nothing else is. Will the admin team be the same for V as it was on MTA? For the most part yes, Admins will be able to switch between both and we will have to load balance between servers as required. Will V have all the same features as MTA at launch? No. MTA has had 10 years of development, V will not have had that. We have a very active development team with aggressive goals though, so expect development iteration to happen fast, like the early days of MTA. Will there be a beta phase? There will be a few staff betas as we test our script for both bugs & feature support (e.g. does it have what we need to roleplay fully?). There are currently no plans for a public beta. Will my GC be usable on V? Existing donator perks will not transfer over. However, any GC acquired, even prior to release, can be redeemed on V. Sneak Peeks General Store Interface (and feeding our taco habit) World Interactions & Banking Property Interactions Dirt System Vehicles will build up dirt over distance, depending on your driving style, driving location (e.g. road vs off-road) and current weather. Rain will reduce your vehicles dirt. Car Wash Thanks for taking the time to read the first of many development updates. 2018 is going to be a great year for Owl across the board and we look forward to going through this journey with you.

Welcome to our next Developer Diary. Instead of lots of text, here's a video: Note: The above is a WIP and will change before launch. Certain UI elements will change to be buttons rather than sliders, character heads will not move during customization, and additional customization options will be added. As always, feel free to reach out to us below or via Discord.