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Divergent Network RP 2.0

Welcome back, Divergents, to another blog update! It has been a while since the team at Divergent Network wrote to our player base, but we took a much-needed break to go back to the drawing board on the foundation of the server and what sort of role-play experience we want to bring to our community. Thus, we have decided to incorporate a slight ESX framework, adding some economy that was initially against our advertising. However, this economy inclusion will not be a driving force but an addition to the sandbox role-play experience we promised at our original launch. On top of that, we have many more features to go over that fundamentally change Divergent Network for the better! This is going to be a long blog post, so strap in! We have a lot of news for you all! 

When joining the server, you will be met with a brand-new character creation menu with creator options similar to Grand Theft Auto Online, making creating characters much more familiar! Many people look up GTA online character creator videos, which allow players to create those same multiplayer peds on our server! After creating your character, players can spawn at several popular locations around the state! If you want to go back to the character selector menu after spawning, simply type ‘/relog’, which will bring you back to the main page to create or select a new character. If you select a character you have already created and spawned in with, you can teleport to the last location you left as that character. When you apply for our reserve or floater programs, ensure you create a designated character for whichever department you go into, as jobs will be assigned to characters. 

Our original marketing and vision of Divergent Network was not to include ESX or any economic features to avoid the grinding nature that comes with it. Our goal for our community is to promote creativity with role-play in a sandbox experience that we provide. However, as we researched more into the mods and scripts that comes with ESX, we have decided to include aspects of it but only embrace it partially. Instead, we have opted for a hybrid between VMenu and ESX scripts to ensure the same sandbox experience we previously experienced and jobs and businesses that civilians and criminals can enjoy. 

Let’s start with the economy. Money will not be a driving force in the community. Instead, it will be treated as monopoly money: easy to get, easy to spend, and a playful interaction between people. Here at Divergent, we want to promote fun and enjoyment; our vision will not include a grinding aspect where players spend an hour in the middle of nowhere in the state, spamming a singular key. Every job or interaction we have promotes inclusion with other players on the server. Money in our server will only be involved in criminal activities, civilian-on-civilian interactions, whether Uber or taxi, food deliveries, and more, as well as business operations.

We'll have multiple different types of jobs on the server. One of the types of jobs that will be more single-player based is interactions with other AI or NPCs, but it can also include other civilians. One good example is the taxi job. If civilians are not contacting you for rides, you can look for NPCs to take across the state. We will also offer multiplayer jobs that are not businesses where you need to lead multiple employees but instead join a small party of players and play together. We will have three multiplayer jobs at launch: lumberjacks, miners, and Gruppe Sechs, who transport money. Becareful, criminals have the ability to rob Gruppe Sechs and perform heists! The final job interactions we plan to have are businesses where players can own any business at different locations and pay their employees. These businesses are up to the creativity of the members of Divergent Network.

When it comes to properties, to stick to the sandbox experience we aim to give, home properties will be accessible to all civilian players. One property can host unlimited players' homes if it is a shell / IPL property. Homes that are MLOs are properties you can freely walk into without teleportation to a new instance that will only be owned by one player. When it comes to businesses, the same thing applies; however, we will be leasing those properties to stay true to the economy involved in businesses. MLO business properties such as the Flywheels will only be owned by one player, and the same applies to shell / IPL properties that are singular buildings. However, if the building is a large business complex where multiple locations may fit, then those locations will house various businesses. One example may be a skyscraper that can host various offices or a large warehouse that can host multiple garages and rooms. 

Another popular thing amongst many ESX and QB-Core servers is food and water, necessities for survival. We will not be having this as we don’t want players to be stacking food on them to eat when they forget to do so. However, we consider having food give off specific effects to enhance role-play. Our idea is that if you have a hamburger or a hotdog, for example, they may prevent you from sprinting for a few minutes after consuming. Alcohol will have drunk effects, but to combat it, consuming water will help remove the effects. However, this feature will not come at launch as we need to do more research and develop it to work correctly. 

Many servers contain an unracking/racking feature that requires commands at the back of the trunk of a vehicle to utilize heavier weapons. This functionality could be more precise, and our approach to the server is to streamline the server's role-play and gameplay experience. We have gained a new script/mod that simplifies this experience. Simply equip the weapons through vMenu, approach the trunk of a vehicle, go into the weapon wheel, and equip the primary weapon. You will automatically open the trunk, do the animation, and equip the primary weapon. You can then assign a “sling” position to your player; when you unequip the weapon, it slips onto either your back, chest, or side. When you unequip the primary weapon, it will play an animation and place it on your body.

For secondary weapons, you can assign a holster, which will automatically place it on you when performed. When you equip and unequip the weapon with the holster assigned, it will either empty or fill it. Players can press Z to place their hand on the holster and quickly draw it when pressing “tab” and aiming. The last command a player needs to do is if they want to take the weapon off of their body. Simply go to the trunk and do /rack, which will place the primary weapon back into the trunk and remove it from your body. This new script enhances the experience of utilizing weapons in the server. The only bug we have faced is this script doesn’t work well with normal Peds, as it doesn’t correctly sling or holster the weapons. We will work on a fix for this. We also only showcase 3 different slings and 2 different holsters. Currently, at launch we have around 10 different sling positions and 7 different holsters. We are merely showcasing how the script works for our players.

To continue to enhance the role-play and gameplay experience of Divergent Network, we have included the third eye on the server. Simply hold “left alt” and look towards players or specific props and interact with them. For example, players can use it to look at chairs or benches and sit on them or lay down on them. When they use it on other players, they can do several features, including carrying them, piggyback riding, or taking them hostage. We will add more features in the future. Police with handcuffs can arrest and escort them. Civilians can eventually gain zip ties and do something similar to the handcuffing that police can do. Players can also use third-eye on vehicles to toggle doors, hoods, and trunks, place or take items from their storage, and mechanics can also repair vehicles that way. Police can impound vehicles as well. Certain props that allow the third-eye features also include payphones where players can call the police or any other phone number. We will continue adding new features to the third eye to give all our members a streamlined experience.

We have implemented some brand-new features for the police. First, we have added door-locking to most of the doors within the building, including all exterior and cell-block doors. This way, there is no need to rely on players to stay within the cells they are put in or glitch through to ensure they stay inside. We also want to add lock-picking possibilities in the future, applying for door locks and cuffs mentioned in the previous subject.

We have also reworked our tackle script, which packs more punch than the other simple animation set. This key bind is re-bindable, but on default, simply run up to a player and tap “Left Alt”  when near them. Your character will drop their shoulder and hit them, causing both of you to ragdoll, but the “tackler” will instantly get up, and it might take 2-4 extra seconds for the other player to recover based on how close you are to them. The closer you are when tackling them, the longer they will ragdoll. Even though this is in the police section, this feature is available to all players. We have noticed that it may not work for some players when trying it for the first time. This is a weird bug, and we regard it as a “day one issue,” as many times, the next day, after trying it out, it works perfectly. We do encourage players to go into the server, record their attempt, and upload it to our feedback page so we can attempt to fix the bug.

We have also updated our arresting feature so we no longer will have the SEM Interaction menu to cuff or drag. As explained earlier, we will be utilizing the third eye to arrest and drag people; however, there are some unique additions. Currently, the default keybinding is “G” to put your hands up (simply because when you cancel an emote, it is “X” and the default hands up was “X” so when standing up from sitting down, your hands raise while standing. We want to remove this as it looks slightly strange, but anyways) so when someone arrests you while raising your hands, there will be no option to break out of the cuffing. But, when you don’t raise your hands, the person will aggressively cuff you, allowing the possibility to escape the cuffing process. However, it is a concise window, making it very rare to do so. Another cool feature we offer is the rear cuffing and front cuffing, adding another sense of realism to the server. All the cuffing is reliant on items. We are still figuring out the on / off duty (clock in / clock out) feature to give and take the items.

We have also embraced a brand new radio script called Sonoran Radio. This script bases itself around radio towers, so if an officer is in range of a tower, they can speak clearly, but if they begin to lose their connection, they will become distorted. We rely on Teamspeak 3 to connect everyone to the radio, so we plan to have a dedicated communications division to help dispatch units from different calls to priorities.

Another feature we have added is an updated Air One script that adds several features such as locking onto vehicles, night vision and realistic thermal vision, reading street locations based on where you look, realistic and synchronized spotlight, and tagging/marking locations. Hence, everyone within the helicopter can see. Camera operators can hold and lock onto players and vehicles; however, if an object crosses in front for too long, it will break the lock, and players will need to re-lock onto them. Players can also lock onto the ground floor when looking into a building.

We’ve added several new cosmetic features to the police on top of new MLOs. By the time of writing this message, the Blaine County Sheriff’s Office in Sandy Shores is being completely redone and is not ready to be shown just yet. However, we can share that of San Andreas State Police’s new interior at the Noose Headquarters! During the first iteration of the Divergent Network servers, San Andreas State Police were told to deploy from there without having an interior. This has now been changed to a temporary State Police Interior! We eventually want to own our own custom interior. Still, for now, we have opted for this one, which creates enterable interiors for both of the larger buildings, including a variety of rooms such as offices, classrooms, armories, shooting ranges, jail cells, dispatch centers, labs, and more! 

Some more changes to come for the San Andreas State Police are a brand new add-on EUP pack, as the previous pack severely lacked diversity. Now, the San Andreas State Police can wear its new gear proudly! One final thing to come to all Law Enforcement agencies arriving at launch is new liveries, specifically made for our server! They are unique to us and are of 4K quality! Some of the older vehicles for the Blaine County Sheriff’s Office also include a retro-style livery if that's what you enjoy!

Our server has seen a return in many scripts, such as the gas pumps, hiding in the trunk of a vehicle, realistic vehicle damage, and the gear-shifting feature! We also have a couple of new features to come, such as a speedometer in the bottom right corner (which can be adjusted by doing /hudsettings), a better seatbelt script (toggled by pressing B), synchronized turn signals (each turn signal can be toggled by clicking or double-clicking Num Pad 4 and Num Pad 6), and a highly optimized Cruise Control (toggled by pressing Caps Lock). Divergent previously had the cruise control and seatbelt script, which were poorly optimized and hit performance significantly. Still, we hope these replacements fix a lot of the performance hitting our players while driving!

We have also added a number of custom vehicles and will continue to add more. Most of the vehicles are available on the Role-Play tab under the Civilian Operations section of the website. Another fun feature we offer is that if a player has a knife out, they can go up to any tire and slash it. A pop-up will appear on the tire, giving directions on how to slash it. The following video showcases how slashing tires are utilized in the server. 

We have added a new popular phone script called LB Phone, which aims to simulate a real-life iPhone with custom apps. We will add the base phone and apps at launch, but we strive to sprinkle in custom apps as the server's lifetime progresses. With the new phones, several other payphones around the map are workable, as previously mentioned, utilizing the third eye. To uphold our sandbox vision, phones and payphone usage will be free of payment and not use in the economy! We hope that this new phone enhances the role-play experience for players and sees better functionality than the previous phones we’ve had before!

Not only can you call other players, but you can also call the police or other businesses! You can also text message businesses, and whoever is currently on the clock of the business will receive those notifications, creating a more interactive role-play environment for business employees and civilians!

Some features in the server came as default, but we are looking into better options that fit our vision more. Most of these features aren’t here on launch strictly because of our financial situation. Here at Divergent, we are entirely transparent about our server, which includes our finances. Currently, the scripts we want are out of our price range. We hope we can obtain these scripts within the next couple of months for our community to use and enjoy. We have temporary versions that our players may try out for now, but we ask you not to dedicate too much time to them as they will be updated.

One of these features is the current housing system. Right now, only one player can own one house property, regardless of whether they are an MLO, a shell, or an IPL. As we stated earlier in this blog post, we would like housing to be owned by an unlimited amount of people (except for MLO house properties), leaving only some business locations to be owned by one person and the rest an unlimited amount. We also want our housing to be free of charge to stand by the creative and free sandbox experience we promised our civilians, which, currently, all properties charge. We have potentially found a new script but are still researching to ensure the best quality for our servers and our community.

Speaking about businesses, we have another business script that we are looking into that adds a fully customizable experience that allows players to choose where their employees should go to perform tasks, the animations, what will each task achieve for the company, and more. This script also adds to TVs that allow YouTube and Twitch videos. This script may be one of our priorities, but again, we are continuing to research to provide the best possible experience we can give.

We don’t expect our player base to cop bait as we do train our civilians on how to role-play as a civ properly, but to horde off the temptation, we want to introduce an NPC 911 Calling script that pretty much functions similarly to how Watch Dogs has a 911 calling feature. If an NPC sees you performing a criminal act, they will call and submit a 911 report that gets sent to our police department. Criminals do have the chance to kill them to prevent them from calling 911; however, if they are in a very populated area, more 911 calls will be coming in after that. To avoid potential cop baiting, criminals can now perform criminal acts across the state to hopefully have a 911 call sent on them and possibly have the police respond!

We also plan to use a new K9 script that is highly optimized and has many features. This script will be released once a police department announces a K9 sub-division.

• The Dispatch CAD dashboard doesn’t always display correct information regarding the status of the LEO Officers.

• LEO currently doesn’t receive 911 calls; we are creating an on / off duty script that gives the proper items to the officers and toggles 911 calls to come in or not.

• Sniper Rifle scopes have no HUD and will be fixed at a future time.

• There is a Driving School in the game; however, we plan not to have that feature and will remove it later.

• Ammunition Stores are in the game; however, we plan not to have a store for them that is run by menus and will be removed later.

• There are two job centers. One is run by an NPC in the back but can only give a taxi job. The other is a circle in the middle of the room with a drop-down list of jobs. We will remove that drop-down list in favor of the NPC giving the jobs. The job list on there will be cleaned up soon and accurately show what jobs you can get.

• The taxi uniform at the taxi location is currently broken and will be fixed at a later time.

• Food and Drinks are obtainable, but they are not consumable. We seek a way to make them consumable but only give effects. An example may be a person eating a hamburger or a hotdog and not being allowed to sprint for a few minutes as it was a heavier meal. Alcohol will give obvious drunk effects, but drinking water will help dissipate those effects quicker.

That’s it for this update. Hopefully there will no longer be this lengthy of a blog post ever again as we will aim to bring a steady stream of content every month or every couple of months. However, this blog post was necessary to communicate precisely to our player base what has been changed, what has been added, and what they can expect when joining the server. If things have been missed or will get added when with full launch arrives for the server, another blog post will come to detail those changes.