Developer Diary #1 - Welcome to Paleto Bay!

[Daniels 420]

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.

Edited January 22, 2018 by Daniels

[Script 2,518]

AAAAAAAAAAAAA :((( why can't I PLAY! this looks so sick

[ResidentPeach 6,687]

Solid work thanks @Daniels, looking forward to putting in some serious effort into an idea of mine when it's finally up and running for us.

[ThatGuy 3,470]

Very exciting to start sharing details with the community!

 

[Skateboard 179]

pretty nice looking forward to playing this

[Law 2,681]

That’s what I like to see.

[Lewis 6,881]

Interesting choice of location. Love it. Keep up the fantastic work. 

[SniicK 845]

Fairy noice gooda joob

[Chaos 7,144]

More updates to come

[Kaasisbaas 294]

Looks amazing! One question arises though, how are you gonna tackle the lack of housing in Paleto Bay? I mean let's be fair, there's gonna be a lot of players and not a lot of houses.   

[DylanW 2,911]

Man this looks amazing keep up the good work! 

[disappoint 655]

Thanks for not using LS

[croozerdog 698]

Looks awesome so far, I don't know if you guys heard about the VC:RP release.. Please do not underestimate how many people from the Owl and MTA community will be exited and ready to join on release. hehe

[mTamas 273]

[DrJoseEviI 3,129]

Rcm calls dibs on the Altruist camp

Edited January 22, 2018 by DrJoseEviI

[RayPayne 531]

What you guys going to do about housing? There isn’t many in paleto. Or is the map going to be open to sandy area as well.

[Chaos 7,144]

49 minutes ago, RayPayne said:

What you guys going to do about housing? There isn’t many in paleto. Or is the map going to be open to sandy area as well.

It's open to other locations(maybe just not LS for starts). The focus is having services available in Paleto to hopefully bring more people there.

[DrJoseEviI 3,129]

3 minutes ago, Chaos said:

It's open to other locations(maybe just not LS for starts). The focus is having services available in Paleto to hopefully bring more people there.

So starting jobs and mandatory factions like EMS and PD will be out there?

[Eloquent 642]

Boom! Nice update! Excited to be a part of the fun again, to help grow this community even larger than it already is! Our MTA server has over 1.5 MILLION hours played by over 50,000 characters, can't wait to see what sort of things we can achieve with two amazing role play servers.

[zac 4,671]

Zooo wee mama as they say x

[Tailor 438]

41 minutes ago, OhhPixelz said:

Zooo wee mama as they say x

 

OT: Great job GTA V devs, you've got me excited keep up the good work!

[RayPayne 531]

Do you know what the max players on the server will be at a time yet?

12 hours ago, Daniels said:

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.

 

when you spot that mechanic servicing in the background. 

[Novanard 712]

Sadly my low end computer would not allow me to join the fun! But thanks for the dev team and the hobos who are gonna enjoy this unlike me  .

[Chaos 7,144]

5 hours ago, RayPayne said:

Do you know what the max players on the server will be at a time yet?

As many as we need

[Beatty 7]

Hi daniels