Maple

Since I intend to leave again at the end of the month, I wanted to complete one final project here. Back in 2017, when Ryder's missions were first introduced, I submitted speedruns of those two missions, for a bit of fun. (Raid had not been introduced yet) Now, over 7 years later, I am back with a slightly more interesting concept, that also falls under the speedrun category due to requiring fast movement to succeed: completing the four combat missions without killing any NPCs. The reason is twofold: I think it's a fun and interesting challenge, albeit difficult; the mission AI has had no improvements whatsoever in the past 7+ years - they are still just as clunky and unfun to engage with as they were back then, so I wanted to just avoid engaging with them as much as possible. Thus, you will see a particular movement tech being used extensively in the first three missions to achieve this goal. By 'combat mission' I am referring to missions which include NPCs that can attack you. Thus, the four missions in question are: Ryder's Steal the Jetpack; Ryder's Steal the Ammo Packs; Ryder's Raid; OG Loc's Steal the Disk. Well, we're off to a great start then, seeing that Steal the Ammo Packs requires killing the gangster in the final sequence of the mission. Therefore, that mission can't be completed in 0 kills, but we can handwave it off by saying that it's technically Ryder who kills him, not us, since the mission switches us to Ryder's POV to kill him. And even then, we can still allow it, since the mission forces us to get that kill, and so a pacifist completion of Steal the Ammo Packs involves 1 kill. One final mention is that these were all completed without any health regen skin bonuses. I don't know if that bonus even works in missions, but if it does, it would seriously trivialize this challenge. With that out of the way, here are the completions, as well as my thoughts on them in this challenge. 1. Steal the Disk - Difficulty: Easy Video: This is the easiest of these four missions, as there are very few NPCs, you are not in their line of sight for too long, and they shoot relatively slowly. A recurring theme in these completions is going to be the use of sliding because, with Hitman skill (50+ hours left on your Weapons license (please revert this stupid change, guys, nobody likes it)), in addition to moving at sprint speed indoors, you can also shoot while moving. This allows you to take out the cameras without stopping. Additionally, you may notice that I make no noise despite moving at full speed. I'm sure this trick must have already been discovered in these 7 years, but the script only checks for you holding ALT to treat you as 'moving quietly,' and it doesn't actually care about what you do aside from that (you can also make noise while in the interior cutscene that shows you the camera placements if you try to move!). Thus, you can slide while holding ALT to get through this much faster than usual. Not much else to say, simple enough mission, as long as you don't get the somewhat rare bug where the first camera can spot you in the doorway, despite you being behind it. Completion time: 5:50 2. Steal the Jetpack - Difficulty: Medium Video: On paper, this seems harder than it really is, and I also thought that. But it turns out that I was doing basically this exact strat all the way back in 2017 in my speedrun of it, minus the vent entrance, which really surprised current me. There's only ever two NPCs shooting at you at most, aside from the entrance, but if you enter through the vent, they cannot actually shoot you until you jump out of it, giving you a bit of extra leeway. I took a very pointless risk at the end, flying directly towards the oil refinery rather than going around a bit, and didn't get punished for it. There is a cop waiting on the cliff next to the road that can easily kill you if you're unlucky, but he only got one shot off on me this run. This was also about 20 seconds faster than my 2017 run. Completion time: 7:38 3. Raid - Difficulty: Hard Video: More sliding, woohoo! This was the first mission I completed with 0 kills, when I decided to try it on a whim about a month and a half ago (OG Loc's mission chain was still broken back then so I couldn't play Steal the Disk). I saw that it was just barely doable if you got lucky, and that's what inspired me to actually try this challenge. Throughout the weeks I've been improving my route through the building both for this and for general fast completions, and I think this is the most consistent one. For a general completion, the only ones you need to kill usually are these five enemies, and on the way back you can take it slowly and kill the others if you are low on health. Still, this is quite harder than Steal the Jetpack, as you are attacked by a lot more NPCs at once, and it's very easy to die before even reaching the doors on the way back. Also, the NPCs can shoot through those doors! Fun! I hope this video and strategy helps some of you complete this mission faster than you normally would - I'm sure some people didn't even know you can complete it without killing all the enemies. Completion time: 6:31 4. Steal the Ammo Packs - Difficulty: Hard+ ? Video: Here it is: the mission that actually terrified me when it comes to this challenge. A surprise, then, that this was only my second attempt at completing it as a pacifist. You can see in the video that I am left a bit puzzled at the end of the mission. This is for two reasons: one, I did not expect to actually complete it that soon; two, it was only after the mission that I realized I had to kill that final gangster - I was in such a rush to get that kill before I died that I completely forgot about it. But, like I said at the start of this post, that kill is required to finish the mission, so there is nothing more I can do. At the end of all this, I'm still a bit torn on how much harder this really is compared to Raid; it requires a very awkward flythrough and good landing on the construction site, and there are so many enemies that can shoot you at once, and they also fire at you while you're in the helicopter. But at the same time, if you know what you're doing, overall you don't stay in their line of fire for as long as you do in Raid - from the moment I jump out of the Maverick to the moment I throw the last satchel, only 16 seconds pass, compared to ~33 seconds in Raid. However, you can still get shot during the two seconds it takes to line up the shot as Ryder, and you have about four NPCs firing towards you, as opposed to just one in an average completion (there's a single NPC on the lower floors of the building for some reason, and I bet nobody goes out of their way to kill him unless they are on 1HP). I'm going to say this is still harder, as I think I got lucky with their firing intervals. On my first attempt I got killed much faster and also had somewhat sloppy movement. Either way, it's possible. And, like I said, could be much easier if you have health regen bonus on your skin, and if said bonus works in missions. Completion time: 2:39 Final comments It's been decent being back these past two months, there's been some ups and some downs. I'm a bit upset I probably won't get to see whether my feedback about the recent quests will be considered, but maybe I will lurk around on the forum to check. Maybe I'll be back in another 7 years, if this server still exists. If you are curious about how sliding works, here is a video by tduva which explains everything you need to know and more. If you have any other questions, feel free to post them down below and I will do my best to reply. Trans Rights Are Human Rights

I experienced this bug as well and managed to figure out how to consistently reproduce it. I did some testing and this is everything I figured out. If you fail the job (easiest by dying or blowing up your job vehicle) while it's loading your next checkpoint, you get stuck in a weird state where you are able to continue going to job checkpoints while technically not working. Mechanic, however, softlocks you if you get the minigame of moving the towtruck to the wrecked vehicle, as it doesn't register your mouse inputs. It does also work with Electrician, and that one doesn't softlock, so you can technically do endless Electrician with your personal vehicle. The only caveat being that you don't get teleported back to your vehicle, and need to walk back to it yourself. This bug also bypasses the 10 minute timelimit to complete your job mission - you can just keep that checkpoint however long you want. You can't start missions, jobs, bunker missions, use /gps etc. because you always have an active checkpoint. You also can't usually join events, but if you are fast enough, you can join one before the next checkpoint loads in after you complete a minigame, and this will "stop" the bug. Alternatively, you can just relog to remove it. It also allows you to turn Electrician into the Daily Job (double payout) everyday, similar to how you can sell Archeology artifacts after changing jobs to get double payout.

Discord ID: rainrun Reason: Matching my nickname on the Discord server with my in-game username Roles: User RPG Profile: https://www.rpg.b-zone.ro/players/general/Maple New nickname: Maple

Well, as we are reaching the end of this quest, I think it's a good time to leave a review with my opinions on each mission featured, as well as some constructive criticism. General The quality of the dialogue left much to be desired, there were a lot of misspellings and dropped letters, and I was willing to let this go, until I found out that the Romanian version of the quest had similarly butchered words and nonsensical phrases. Mission #4 (Barbara) was particularly egregious, so I'll talk more about this in that section, but was there seriously no one to proofread the strings? Especially the Romanian ones?? There were also quite a few bugs, more than the Union quest and the Valentine's Day one. I understand that this quest came very soon after the Valentine's quest, but, if anything, that should have told you that you need to release a simpler, less ambitious quest. Easter is a month away, and I honestly believe it would be a better call to make that quest a 150-object fetch quest, like they used to be years ago, and use this extra time to plan out the quest after the Easter one, to give you more time to ensure there are fewer bugs and issues associated with it. Day 1 - Katie I don't have much to say about this mission, it really was just a somewhat more tedious version of the base game's Paramedic side-mission, given the 3 second player freeze to do the CPR animation. I at least appreciate the idea of making the player have to drive carefully and not damage the Ambulance, and also that you made sure to heal the Ambulance when that point of the mission is reached. Day 2 - Helena Somewhat annoying that you make us drive all the way to the Ammunation in Temple LS just to then make us go out to Shady Creek, when Helena is first met next to the one in Blueberry in the base game. You can make the argument that "well that would only be 10 metres away from where you start the quest, it would be boring," but that did not stop you from spawning Vlad at the exact spot Helena spawns in the base game, in the Valentine's Day quest's final mission. Aside from that, I actually thought this mission was quite neat. I liked the idea of actually going out into the forest and hunting deer, it was unique. Though, in some places, the deer model was very difficult to make out against the dirt background, and it detracted from the feeling that you're sniping it from far away, as I personally had to go near it just to figure out where it is exactly, and then inch my way back to past 90 metres. Still, a pretty nice experience, and glad you didn't make us use the stupid Windsor for it. Day 3 - Millie Wasn't a big fan of this one, quite strange logic that we're driving around LV and photographing flowers and then also just stealing them off people's properties in full view, including ones in front of a goddamn casino. This mission also seems to have caused players using modpacks plenty of issues, but I can't speak on that given I play vanilla. Also quite strange that we're delivering them to Mirela instead of Millie, but honestly I'm actually glad we skip the extra trip, considering how boring this mission was. Day 4 - Barbara Here we go, this is where the dialogue really falls apart. But before we get to that, credit where credit is due, it was another unique mission. Having an investigation segment where we have to be careful with our answers was an interesting concept, but god was it dragged down by the horrible dialogue. Also, the first time this mission was available, the game told you to go out in the lake using "the Predator," but did not place a checkpoint at said Predator, but rather it placed it already in the lake, at the bodies. Thankfully this was fixed by the second time this mission became available. So, let's talk about that dialogue. I've been willing to forgive the occasional misspellings in the English versions of the past two quests and throughout this quest too (even though there've been realistically far too many), but this mission is where I was starting to lose it. Nevertheless, I just saved them in some screenshots and went on with my days. That is, until two days ago when I saw an unrelated screenshot, in which Karther was complaining about similarly strange phrasing in this mission... in the Romanian version of it. Seeing that is kind of what made me want to write out this entire post, actually. I'd attach some screenshots of said phrases, but the maximum allowed size is 500kB and my ingame screenshots save at ~2.5MB, so instead I'll just list them out. These might sound very pedantic, but I really don't care anymore: "I've gave you Share Location" should have really been something along the lines of "I've sent you the location of where the bodies were reported;" "I got a warrant to search his vehicle, frisk it!" - you don't 'frisk' a vehicle, this should have been something like "I got a warrant to search his vehicle, go there and look for anything that might be a clue!"; Blood slides. What the actual hell is 'blood slides' supposed to mean and how did you come up with this term, and not find out the term you're looking for is actually 'bloodstains' ?? This particular term is what sent me over the tipping point and made me realize no one is proofreading these strings when I first played this mission, because I was completely baffled as to how this could be unironically written. I really am curious what the Romanian version said here, because for the life of me I can't figure out how this was left in the dialogue without anyone catching it. Seeing as "Oh, you've gotta be kidding me... Doakes? [...] You son of a bitch!" was directly translated as "Ah, chiar tu... Doakes? [...] Fiul tau de nenorocit," I don't have high hopes; "Break his house and search more proofs!" should have been "Break into his house and search for more evidence;" "You found victims trophies" is supposed to mean... what exactly? Is it meant to imply he cut off fingers or something to that effect and was keeping them in a drawer? That's the only thing I can imagine would be useful as evidence against a serial killer. The phrasing is just strange, once again; "Be careful at what he respons;" Again with the stupid 'blood slides,' we ask Doakes: "Do you have a collection? Some blood slides, perhaps?" ???? And then he replies: "Collection of what? Of motherfucking fucking pokemons?" There were more instances, but I did not save screenshots of them all, so I won't bring them up since it would be unfair to try and potentially remember them wrongly in here. Please, please, get someone to proofread these dialogue strings before you release quests like these. At least do it for the Romanian version, seeing as this is a mostly Romanian server. Day 5 - Denise Forcing the suspension of disbelief a bit, making people that played the base game believe that Denise - a local street girl whom CJ had to rescue from a Vagos crack house after he set fire to it, and who later is caught cheating on CJ with Big Poppa during A Home In The Hills - would have access to a helicopter and a Sniper Rifle and would be able to send you to act as a hitman to kill various rival gang members across the whole state of San Andreas, but whatever, I'm probably the only person that cares about this. Once again, a decently interesting mission concept, making us kind of be in the shoes of Hitman Agency members. Really, my only complaint about this mission's gameplay is that the NPCs weren't loading in unless I was within ~200m of them, and only spawned in once you got within ~150m, so I couldn't really go for fun super-long range shots - instead, I'd have to fly close enough to spawn them in, then fly slightly further back but not too far away. Maybe this is just a limitation with the NPC system, and Hitmen don't have this issue with regular players, or they use a mod for extra Sniper Rifle zoom, I don't know. Day 6 - Michelle Well, if Barbara's mission had horrible dialogue, this mission had horrible gameplay design. This was the most anti-fun anti-player mission I've experienced on B-Zone, despite being relatively short. Let's start with the bugs, and actually with a very welcoming one I ran into: this mission could potentially bug out in a way where it would also start another quest mission at the same time, thus spawning two girlfriends you could go to. In my case, it happened to be Helena's mission, which meant I got to use the Sandking, which was very nice considering the Windsor kind of sucks. Now, an actually important issue that clearly wasn't tested for is that this mission was very easy to softlock, because the checkpoints for the pickups you are instructed to get were meant to be taken only on foot. The script does, in fact, tell you to get out of the car if you try to drive into the checkpoint. But the checkpoint would still disappear as if you triggered it correctly. Thus, you would be stuck in the mission, and the only way to fix it was to quit and relog onto the server. This was the case for all checkpoints prior to completing the Hotrod, and many players ran into this bug. This makes me wonder: how come there is no [/leavequest] command for cases like these? While otherwise uncommon if you exclude this mission, this isn't the first time a quest mission can softlock, and in fact one could be found in the Valentine's Day quest too. I think I was the only person to find that particular one, and I only did so at the end of the quest, so I never reported it, but it baffles me that there is no way to leave the quest unless you finish it or close the game. (for those curious, in the 555-WE-TIP inspired mission where you plant drugs in the trunk of Stefan's ex's car, if you killed the valet and then jumped into the clothes pickup, you would get stuck midair after changing to the valet model, and nothing could unfreeze you) Another bug players said they've run into is that the condition to not damage the Hotrod carried over to the Windsor while driving back to Mirela, which, again, caused softlocks and unfair fails. Now, about that anti-fun design, coupled with more baffling story logic: why do we have to drive to different corners of San Fierro to pick up wheels individually? Particularly, why do we have to install them individually, before we can pick up the next one? Why can't we just... pick up all the wheels and then drive back to install them? And why is one of the wheels in a stupid alleyway next to Wheel-Arch Angels? (okay, as I'm typing this, I realize the obvious pun, and if it was intentional, fine, well played, it's clever) But most importantly, why is one of the wheels on the Navy ship??? Not to mention, it was clearly placed there with the expectation that you would swim through the rear of the ship and run all the way to the wheel (thankfully, it was possible to skip this nonsense by parking the Windsor next to a.. 'balcony' thing off the side of the ship and you could just barely jump and climb onto it, then jump back off). This makes absolutely no sense and is clearly there just to take the piss out of the player and to prolong the mission for no reason. The other two wheels are found in car showrooms, what the hell is this one doing on the navy ship? Now, something that bothered me personally but can be argued to be a nitpick, I want to talk a bit about the setting of this mission. In the base game, we meet Michelle at the Driving School, and then we get to date her by going to her house, where she also has a garage. And, to your credit, both the driving school and Michelle's garage are used in the quest. But... they're reversed. Michelle is working on a car at the Driving School, which we then deliver to her garage. Not only that, but we are delivering a Hotrod, a car which, in the base game, spawns at the Driving School after you get Gold medals on all the tests. This is such a strange choice considering you're clearly leveraging the base game for these missions, by using the girlfriends found there. Day 7 - Mirela The only noteworthy thing regarding this mission is that the introductory strings were left untranslated when this mission first became available, which just reinforces the idea that this quest wasn't properly tested. Aside from that, it's just driving all the way around the map and then back to Blueberry. Whatever, it's not the most offensive thing in the world. (Well, saying Katie "brings good vibes and smiles" when she's canonically into self-mutilation is surely a choice) Final thoughts I understand that there are only two scripters working on these quests while also working on the rest of the server's code and also having lives outside of B-Zone. This is why I tried my best to be as objective as I could and give credit where it was due, and to lay everything out in as complete a manner as possible, rather than resorting to calling you names for releasing broken shit, like some other members might have done on the Discord server. But I really hope that at least some of the things I've said in this massive post are taken into consideration for the future. You have great ambitions with these quests and these systems, and I respect that and all the work you put in to keep the server running, but you need to remember you're still working within the constraints and limitations of the janky SA and SAMP code. I don't think even OpenMP can do too much to salvage that fact. Madalin said he prefers longer quests so that players can't easily go through and complete them on 10 different accounts, and that is fair. But this quest clearly shows signs of having been rushed in places and not tested thoroughly. If you want to continue making these storyline quests, you need to give yourself more time to work on them, which is why it's been suggested you break up this streak with at least one 150-object fetch quest, since it would be easier and quicker to implement. Really, with the next quest (probably) being the Easter one, it makes the most sense in my opinion. And, at the very least, please add a [/leavequest] command similar to [/leavemission]. Relogging because of softlocks isn't fun. I don't have much to say about the rewards, I don't really know what to do with my tickets and fragments, especially with the skin system rework that's been teased. I mostly cared about the gold, 500k, and wheelspins. This is everything I wanted to say, I think. I probably forgot some stuff since I had to leave midway through writing this, but it's not like many will even bother reading after the first two paragraphs.

Nick: Maple Server: RPG1 Description: The message from Tanti Mirela that appears in chat when you start Day 7's mission is not translated to English.

Nick: Maple Server: RPG1 Description: The "Killer Clown" Stuntplane has a bunch of neon-like effects attached to its wings that do not get disabled when "All Vehicle Neons" is disabled in [/tog]. I see this as a bug tied to the vehicle, rather than an "oh that option only refers to regular car neons" explanation, because the glowing line in Ryder's second mission, "Steal the Ammo Packs" is comprised of similar neon effects and it is invisible with said toggle option deactivated. Video: https://streamable.com/ul5y8j

I can personally confirm that the bug still happens after the update, I've had it respawn my NRG and eat one of its insurances right after I towed it back to the bunker

I have not actually experienced this bug again since first posting this, so I don't know if the recent update would have done anything to fix it.

I can confirm I've had this bug happen to me as well ~2 weeks ago, but when I got the same task two days later it randomly worked for me.

Nick: Maple Server: RPG Description: Vehicles associated with jobs such as Mechanic and Electrician can get despawned while you're outside of them doing the job task. This ends up cancelling your [/work] and can just leave you stranded. My only recording of this bug happening is during Mechanic, but I have also experienced it a few times during Electrician, particularly in the area near the Pizzeria in Blueberry (Trucker town): https://imgur.com/HmGT80U. I hadn't reported it then because I wasn't recording it and assumed maybe I'd just accidentally flipped my car when jumping out of it (since I've also done that in the same area with the Picador going into the little motel area that's there), but during this recording it's obvious the car just despawned on its own. Video: https://streamable.com/vehsnw The only guess I could come up with is that I got unlucky with another vehicle spawning in with the same ID as my Bobcat just after I got out of it, so it got overwritten? Not sure if that's possible on this server.

Would like to point out this issue is still present. If it's something specific to this mission, could it at least be disabled like Nea Mirel's missions until it is fixed, so that OG Loc's first mission could still be repeated?

I think it might be safe to close the issues related to the despawning props now? I haven't personally experienced the bug anymore and it seems others who reported it have stopped encountering it as well.