When The Big Apple launched, it was in a bad state. It was essentially half-complete due to a variety of reasons, such as overestimating what I could get done, underestimating what I had to do, and trying to do it by a deadline. Since its release, I've been working nonstop on bringing the server up to the state it was supposed to be and now it's finally there! Here are the changes, day-by-day, that have been made to the servers since October 1st:
October 3
You can now see most large weapons and communications devices on character models.
Fixed guns being able to be purchased directly instead of needing to be crafted.
Gave police jobs a gun and a radio by default.
Added certain entities to the pocket blacklist.
Added certain weapons to the drop blacklist.
Added certain tools to the Tool Gun blacklist.
Added an STHackerWar mainframe to every police department.
Names of perma-killed characters can no longer be chosen when creating a new character.
October 4
The website in the F1 menu has been updated. The contents of this website will be updated as time goes on.
Job descriptions have been updated to better reflect each job instead of being directly copied from STRP.
You now get a notification about your first ATM account whenever you spawn as a new character.
Added flavor text whenever you spawn as a new character.
Players now drop all of their money when they leave the server without transporting.
Added random recoil to all guns.
Mayor broadcasts are now relayed across all servers.
The player list is now properly synced and updated at all times.
October 5
There is now one police car spawning terminal in each police department. A police car can be retrieved for free once every ten minutes.
Entities can now transport across servers.
You can now open team chat with the Radio's primary attack.
Magic money is now added to each map's bank vault.
Player-owned entities now persist when the player transports.
Mayor votes are now broadcast to all servers and combine vote counts to determine if the player becomes mayor.
Suppliers can now purchase various sticks and cuffs.
October 6
The PIN request text entry in the purchasing menu now hides your PIN.
Players' weapons are now packed into evidence boxes in the police department they were arrested in when they are arrested.
Mayors can no longer start lotteries.
Each police department now has two wanted screens inside.
October 7
The PDA and Radio can now be dropped with their secondary attack.
The Radio now gives you a hint if you reload it.
Dropping the Radio stores its channel for the next person to pick up.
You can now break a text phone you're holding by reloading it.
All jobs can now buy books.
The mayor's presence, death, and disconnect are now broadcast across all servers.
October 8
Passengers of cars now transport across servers along with their driver.
Cars can now be properly locked.
STGunrunning and STHackerWar products now properly transport across servers.
Door ownership and co-ownership now properly persist across transports of everyone involved.
Remade the door HUD to disallow players from knowing who owns a door.
Adding a player as a door co-owner now immediately gives them access instead of requiring them to own it themselves.
Players must be near any player they want to allow to co-own a door.
October 9
Lockdowns are now synced across all servers.
Laws are now synced across all servers.
Clothes for all players now persist across sessions.
Phone numbers for all players now persist across sessions.
October 10
Added a message catchup system, allowing players to see messages that were sent while they were transporting.
The Mechanic's tools can now repair vehicles as well as chop them.
Repairing cars costs parts, which can now be purchased by Mechanics.
The Chemist can now buy chemical vials to charge their medkit.
Today, Infiltrator closes and STAGE 4 begins. The magnum opus, introducing The Big Apple!
The Big Apple is a unique DarkRP experience where you will be able to play among three separate servers each running a separate map! With data and chat shared among all three, The Big Apple offers one of the largest roleplay experiences on Garry's Mod!
The Big Apple features the trio of gritty New York-themed maps.
The Big City is the main server and hosts RP_NYCity, the largest map.
South Side is the second server and hosts RP_SouthSide, the middle-sized map.
Union City is the third server and hosts RP_UnionCity, the smallest map.
Each map contains tunnels to the other maps that you can walk—or even drive—into to connect to another server.
The gameplay of The Big Apple is similar to STRP from last year but with a number of enhancements. First and foremost, money is a lot easier to come by. Care has been taken to to allow nearly every job to generate money without having to rely on any other players.
Arms dealers can make use of STGunrunning, previously seen on Gang War RP, to export guns.
Mechanics can use their tools to chop up cars and sell their parts.
Chemists can use the powder machine from STPowder to refine their drugs for premium sale.
Brewmasters can distill moonshine using STMoonshine to mass-produce strong alcohol.
Tailors can buy boxes of silkworms and pump out sheets of silk from the new addon STSilk.
Botanists can also use STPowder to refine the cocaine from their plants.
Tech dealers can buy computers from STHackerWar and steal the government's files.
As you might recognize, most of these addons were previously seen on STAGE 2, Gang War RP, but there's one main difference: this time, you'll be selling your goods to The Contact, a mysterious individual willing to pay for all of your fine products, but it might not be as simple as it sounds...
Besides that, there are obviously other ways to make money and roleplay at the same time.
Mechanics can sell cars to players. Will you be a sleazy car dealer or an honest salesman?
Chemists can sell powerful drugs and heal players, allowing you to play on either side of the law.
Brewmasters can sell either alcohol or coffee, using the brand new STCoffeeShop Neu.
Tech dealers can sell unique items, such as radios allowing you to use group chat, and cell phones allowing you to text your friends.
All players can also, of course, buy items from any other player and take ownership of them so they don't lose them when the buyer disconnects.
If all else fails, you can be a simple hot dog salesman using the new Hot Dog Cart or a fisherman with STFishing Neu. both exclusive to The Big Apple.
With all these ways to make money, what will you decide to spend it all on? You better think fast and move quickly, because you will drop all of your money when you die or disconnect unless you've stored money in an ATM. Most purchases involving money that disappears into thin air can be made with ATM money, but everything else must be done with cash.
The Big Apple supports however you want to play. Want to take your in-game life dead seriously? You can choose to perma-kill your character and create a new one any time you die. Don't even know what OOC stands for? Don't worry! The Big Apple strives to allow all players to play how they want.
And finally, due to the massive scale of this STAGE, The Big Apple will be open for three months instead of the typical STAG Servers one month. All three servers of The Big Apple will be open from now until the new year, so there's plenty of time to flesh out your character!
There's plenty more I'm sure I've forgotten to mention, so what are you waiting for? Join The Big Apple now on any of its three servers! Connect to either stag.sweptthr.one to reach The Big City, stag.sweptthr.one:27016 to reach South Side, or stag.sweptthr.one:27017 to reach Union City. Hope to see you there!
When STAG Servers started a couple months ago, STAGE 4 was always meant to be the main attraction. It's the biggest and wackiest server of the entire series and because of that, I'm excited to reveal it two weeks before launch
STAGE 4 is going to be a three-server roleplay experience where each server will be running a different New York city map: RP_NYCity, RP_SouthSide, and RP_UnionCity, all connected via tunnels around the map with global chat across all three. These servers will essentially be a rerun of STRP from last January with a number of changes to spice things up, mainly the addition of the six addons made for Gang War RP.
And now that it's been revealed, I can also reveal the secret parts of the last few progress reports:
For WPR 266, I worked on server ports that will allow you to walk between servers as well as a new way to display global chat messages. Any OOC chats will show your Steam name colored based on your Steam ID, and in-character chats will show your RP name colored as your set player color.
For WPR 267, I continued the server ports, making them spit you out at the corresponding tunnel on the target map and saving and applying select data, such as health. Everything else is pretty self-explanatory except for the "something relating to dying" which is a perma-kill feature, which will allow you to choose to kill your character permanently when they "die." STAGE 4 is not a serious roleplay server; this will all be explained more when the server releases.
These changes have been updated on my Weekly Progress Reports website.
That's all I'll say for now, but join us when this server launches on October 1st!
Today, Gang War RP closes and STAGE 3 begins! Introducing Infiltrator!
Infiltrator is an original stealth-based gamemode set within the sprawling Boreas research facility. Complete objectives or catch the infiltrator to win!
Infiltrator pits a team of armed guards against a sole, sneaky infiltrator who must enter the facility, complete six objectives, then exfiltrate safely. With five different classes for the guards to choose among and five different perks for the infiltrator, each round can play out vastly differently from the others.
The infiltrator has access to a handful of perks to help them complete their mission.
The Thermal Inlay prevents freezing when outdoors. Without it, you may experience a slow, cold death out in the arctic hills.
The Active Camo, when active, makes you completely invisible when not moving and barely visible when you are.
The Extra Ammo does exactly what it says, and grants you double the ammo when you spawn.
The Lightweight Armor grants you 10% damage resistance, which might just make the difference between life and death.
The Three SLAMs also do exactly what it says, giving you three SLAM explosives to use however you want.
The infiltrator can also choose where they want to approach the facility from, with each spot offering its own benefits.
Approach from the Upper Path for the quickest access inside, situated near the Calais Radar Station and the Relay Station.
Approach from Zethes Checkpoint to come from below and maybe just find something helpful on the way...
Approach from the Ridge Tunnel for a slow, methodical approach, giving you an overhead view of the entire area.
In addition, the infiltrator can find the Jammer stored somewhere in the Calais Radar Station and attach it to either the Relay Station server to intercept the guards' communications, or the security office box to look through the facility's cameras from anywhere.
The infiltrator also has access to Infil-Vision to help them find the objectives and exfiltration points.
To combat this sneaky solo, guards can choose one of the following classes:
The Assault class grants a choice of assault rifle and a pistol, with the added bonus of 25% damage resistance.
The Medic class grants no primary weapon, but a medkit to aid the rest of your team and choice of pistol.
The Officer class grants a choice of SMG and a pistol, and sends you notifications when doors around the facility are interacted with.
The Marksman class grants a choice of ranged rifle and a pistol, with the added bonus of having a Thermal Inlay.
The Heavy class grants a choice of heavy weapon and a pistol, and resists 50% of damage while also incurring a punishing speed penalty.
There are also a number of special features of weapons to make the gameplay more exciting, such as ballistic bullets being fired from every gun and lethal headshots from all ranges, allowing skilled snipers to show what they're made of.
The infiltrator is outnumbered and outgunned, so they'll have to rely on their stealth skills to make it out alive!
Infiltrator is open now for this month only, so get in while you can! You can join at any time by connecting to stag.sweptthr.one. Hope to see you there!
Today, several things have been updated on Gang War RP, mainly just to fix bugs.
Fixed issues:
Oil drilled from the Industrial Sector is no longer half the quality it should be.
This was due to the amount of oil being updated twice but the quality only once.
Selling items from your pocket no longer prevents you from buying more of them.
This was due to DarkRP entities not being removed from your "custom entities" list when deleted.
Gangs can now purchase Crypto Miners.
Gangs can now purchase Rifle Crates.
These were two things I just forgot, but now you can buy them!
Sectors no longer announce they've been lost if they were never owned in the first place.
This was due to points not checking if they were "secure" before being lost.
Other changes:
PTU operators now get a base reward for killing gangsters as well a killstreak reward.
PTU operators now get a notification when they get kill rewards.
These changes make playing PTU a little more clear.
Dealers in owned sectors will now always pay out 100% of the value of the items.
Dealers in unowned sectors will now always pay out 33% of the value of the items.
Previously, there was a lot of inconsistency with this behavior. Some dealers paid 100/25, some paid 75/33, some paid 100/33, and some paid 75/25. It was a mess. Now all dealers pay out 100/33, which just makes more sense.
Today, Blitz TTT closes and STAGE 2 begins! Introducing Gang War RP!
Gang War RP is a more coherent spiritual successor to AnkoRP. Pick among 15 different gangs, each with unique models and names, and fight it out across the streets of Downtown.
Instead of an awkward round-based system where the main objective is to get kills, you must now capture sectors of the map so you can sell your products. "What will I be selling?" you may ask. Gang War RP launches with six all new addons for you to play with.
GWRP Crypto allows you to buy an upgradable crypto miner and let it ride as long as you want. Token value changes every minute and you'll have to carry the miner to the dealer, so don't wait too long to sell!
STGunrunning gives you the option to craft and sell premium guns. Make sure to sell in bulk, or else you might just lose money on your investment!
STHackerWar gives you the power to steal files from the government and sell them to those interested. Keep your eye on the network though, because other hackers might want what you have...
STPowder allows you to make customizable packs of heroin and cocaine and sell them for a nice price. Pretty straightforward.
STMoonshine lets you set up your own illegal distillery for the strongest alcohol in town. Keep your distiller full to keep the moonshine flowing!
STOilMogul allows you to become a powerful oil tycoon, drilling oil out of the ground. Keep your filters clean to maximize profits!
Prefer a more legal but morally-questionable way to make money? Join the Police Tactical Unit and get paid for keeping the city safe!
All gangs can manufacture and sell every product, but care should be taken when selling, as each sector is home to one of the dealers.
The Crypto Dealer hangs out in the spawn district, keeping a low profile.
The Arms Dealer can be found at the beach, ready to export your guns.
The File Dealer hides out in the forest, far away from the government.
The Powder Dealer has set up shop in the slums, ready to sell what you bring.
The Moonshine Dealer stays around the club district, always ready to party.
The Oil Dealer works in the residential district, supplying oil to Pelco.
Only gang leaders can purchase producers, but the number of producers they can buy is based on their gang's size, so get recruiting!
If your gang owns the sector you're selling in, you'll earn substantially more money than if you sell in a rival-owned territory. Keep in mind, though, the dealers don't work for free, so you might not get the full expected value of what you sell!
But that's not all, the last remaining sectors are special in other ways:
The park is where the Gold Dealer waits to take the gold that can be stolen from the bank.
The clinic district gives you and your gang passive health regeneration across the whole city if you own it.
The industrial district provides a boost to machines, doubling production speed of any producers in the sector.
So what weapons do these fierce street gangs have at their disposal? Just like AnkoRP, Gang War RP puts the pack of over 600 CS:O weapons in your hands. Buy the basics and upgrade them at your local gun store. This time, gun dealers will be responsible for upgrade stations, requiring them to set up shop if they want to keep a stable income. Gun dealers would be wise to stay within the city square, close to the police department, but maybe the gangs could offer better protection...
Gang War RP is open now for this month only, so get in while you can! You can join at any time by connecting to stag.sweptthr.one. Hope to see you there!
