Hey everyone, just made an account here after lurking for a while reading through some of the scripting threads. Figured I'd say hi in the off-topic section before I start bothering people with questions about server setup.
A bit of background on me: I got into VC:MP through a friend who ran a small roleplay server back in the day, and I've been messing around with private servers on and off ever since, mostly just for nostalgia at this point rather than any serious ambition to build a big community. There's something about the old Vice City map that still hits different compared to newer open world games, even with all the rough edges the engine has.
Lately I've been spending most of my free time outside gaming actually digging into how online payment systems work, which sounds unrelated but bear with me. I got curious after a friend mentioned he'd started using crypto for deposits on a few sites instead of his bank card, and the reasoning made sense once I looked into it: bank transfers abroad can take days and eat a chunk in fees at every hop, while a crypto deposit usually clears in minutes with the network fee shown upfront before you even confirm.
I ended up reading a useful overview comparing deposit speed on a Mexican platform against the local SPEI bank transfer system, and the difference was honestly bigger than I expected. Bank transfers there can take a day or two to settle depending on the bank, while the crypto side confirms almost instantly and withdrawals clear in hours instead of the usual multi-day wait for a bank to process things. It's a small thing, but it changes how you think about moving money around, especially if you're dealing with international transfers regularly.
Anyway, not trying to derail the thread into finance talk, just thought it was a neat parallel to how much faster peer to peer systems can be compared to legacy infrastructure, which honestly reminded me a bit of how VC:MP itself works around the limitations of the base game engine with clever workarounds instead of waiting for an official fix that was never coming.
On the gaming side, I'm mostly interested in getting back into scripting a bit, haven't touched Pawn in a long while and I know a lot has changed with the client scripting additions. If anyone's got recommendations for a good beginner-friendly tutorial thread that's still accurate to the current client version, I'd appreciate a pointer, since some of the older guides I found seem to reference deprecated functions.
One more thing I noticed while reading through old threads is how much of the documentation is scattered across different eras of the forum, some of it predating the client scripting split entirely. It would be handy to have a pinned "start here" thread that links out to the currently maintained resources, but I get that maintaining something like that takes ongoing effort nobody's necessarily signed up for. Might be worth suggesting in the tutorials section once I've got a better feel for how active things still are over there.
Looking forward to being part of the community here, and thanks in advance to anyone willing to point a rusty scripter in the right direction.
A bit of background on me: I got into VC:MP through a friend who ran a small roleplay server back in the day, and I've been messing around with private servers on and off ever since, mostly just for nostalgia at this point rather than any serious ambition to build a big community. There's something about the old Vice City map that still hits different compared to newer open world games, even with all the rough edges the engine has.
Lately I've been spending most of my free time outside gaming actually digging into how online payment systems work, which sounds unrelated but bear with me. I got curious after a friend mentioned he'd started using crypto for deposits on a few sites instead of his bank card, and the reasoning made sense once I looked into it: bank transfers abroad can take days and eat a chunk in fees at every hop, while a crypto deposit usually clears in minutes with the network fee shown upfront before you even confirm.
I ended up reading a useful overview comparing deposit speed on a Mexican platform against the local SPEI bank transfer system, and the difference was honestly bigger than I expected. Bank transfers there can take a day or two to settle depending on the bank, while the crypto side confirms almost instantly and withdrawals clear in hours instead of the usual multi-day wait for a bank to process things. It's a small thing, but it changes how you think about moving money around, especially if you're dealing with international transfers regularly.
Anyway, not trying to derail the thread into finance talk, just thought it was a neat parallel to how much faster peer to peer systems can be compared to legacy infrastructure, which honestly reminded me a bit of how VC:MP itself works around the limitations of the base game engine with clever workarounds instead of waiting for an official fix that was never coming.
On the gaming side, I'm mostly interested in getting back into scripting a bit, haven't touched Pawn in a long while and I know a lot has changed with the client scripting additions. If anyone's got recommendations for a good beginner-friendly tutorial thread that's still accurate to the current client version, I'd appreciate a pointer, since some of the older guides I found seem to reference deprecated functions.
One more thing I noticed while reading through old threads is how much of the documentation is scattered across different eras of the forum, some of it predating the client scripting split entirely. It would be handy to have a pinned "start here" thread that links out to the currently maintained resources, but I get that maintaining something like that takes ongoing effort nobody's necessarily signed up for. Might be worth suggesting in the tutorials section once I've got a better feel for how active things still are over there.
Looking forward to being part of the community here, and thanks in advance to anyone willing to point a rusty scripter in the right direction.