If you're a dedicated, loyal news reader on this site (yeah, right!) you'll know that the recently released patch 1.28 for GTA V, containing the second part of the Ill-Gotten Gains DLC, is not only causing some new bugs, but also adversely affected the performance of the game due to additional anti-hacking measures.
The presence of the so called "dead code", which serves as a decoy, was discovered (or at least reported) first by the developers of the widely popular work-in-progress mod Los Santos Police Department First Response. The mod was recently announced for GTA V, and development is progressing nicely.
This is the continuation of the LCPDFR mod for GTA IV, which added various abilities, features and missions to the game, allowing players to act as a police officer. LSPDFR seeks to take things to the next level though by being a complete conversion mod and turning GTA V's single-player mode into a police simulator, with numerous additional features, as well as some returning from the popular GTA IV mod.
We discussed yesterday how Rockstar's new anti-mod method works, and why it affects modders. Even in the case of the vanilla game, the new protocol can cause performance issues. In the case of LSPDFR, however, due to the extensive new features and advanced artificial intelligence used, the effects are disastrous.
LSPDFR 0.2 was supposed to launch today, but due to the issues update 1.28 caused, it had to be delayed indefinitely. In a recent update posted by the creators of the mod, they've managed to identify the first specific script causing issues.
In short, on the previous patch (372), it took 585 milliseconds for the function to be executed 1000 times. On the newest patch (393), it took 2490 milliseconds, which is roughly 2.5 seconds, to be executed 1000 times. This means that this particular function takes five times longer to execute on the latest patch than it did previously.
The script in question is what prevents NPC police officers from killing suspects on sight, and therefore a pursuit with several units would severely hamper performance.
We hope this new version is out soon because the mod is AWESOME. How about you guys — looking forward to LSPDFR 0.2?
