Well, I never thought I'd be writing one of these again!

My apologies for the outrageous delay - work, life & exploring other things got in the way. Always intended to get this released though and the day has finally arrived.

At approximately 7PM BST today, we will be launching 2.1 live on the server. Be sure to download the latest SA-MP client version in preparation: https://www.sa-mp.mp/downloads/

What is this update?
The purpose of this update is mainly to make the almighty 2.0 playable. As ground breaking as 2.0 was - it was also foundation shattering. It introduced game-breaking bugs that made the game unplayable - and it remained that way for 8 years. Around this time last year, I set course to try right them wrongs and leave the server in a playable state. Accomplishing this with the 2.0 gamemode version was not going to be an easy task however. So it was decided that the best option would be to get an older gamemode version (1.6) in a playable state. This became 1.6.5 and is the version the server has been running since this time last year.

Myself & WatakiWatako have been running a business together for the past 12 years. Finding time to work on this update was not easy but we finally got around to finishing it. We believe this update (minus any issues observed after release) will be the definitive and possibly final ECNR server version.

Purpose
I loved my time running CRRPG/ECNR. Memories from that time will stay with me for the rest of my life. Nothing has ever quite been able to fill that gap for me. These past 9 years, it has always bothered me that the server was unplayable. The purpose of this update is to bring the awesome & innovative functionality that Wataki introduced in 2.0 to a finally playable state - while at the same time letting the server run indefinitely in a working state so that any time nostalgia hits, you, the community, can hop in. This is the position the server was supposed to be in 9 years ago and this wrong has finally been righted.

Features
The lions share of the new features and improvements can and should be read in the original 2.0 announcement post. Alongside the functionality mentioned there, 2.1 mainly focuses on bug fixes and some smaller additions.

Key New Features:

• Backpacks can now be purchased from 24/7 stores using bank cash
• A ferry has now been placed at the custom dock near the ocean pipeline in North East LV. It travels back & forth between Eggland. You can find it using the relevant map icon. Hop on!
• Players that have purchased a house via the new housing system introduced in 2.0 can now choose to spawn in their house (legacy house owners can still choose to do this as well)
• Widepsread Discord integration, effectively replacing IRC
• !say can be used to send messages into the server from Discord
• CopXP, RobXP, TerXP will now be shown as TextDraws on the screen
• Added a /toggleinfo command to hide the info bar at the bottom of the screen

General improvements:

• All plugins have been updated to the latest versions -> Even when the server was last running 9~ years ago the plugin versions were massively out of date lol. So this is a fairly big deal
• As a result of updating all plugins, we have been able to update the SA-MP server varsion from 0.3z to 0.3.7 R2 (be sure to update your SA-MP client!)
• If you own a SkyView card, there will now be a TextDraw that informs you that you can press Y to enter/exit Ireland, when near the toll booth
• The bank balance textdraw on the screen will now be readable/formatted correctly
• The trash bags placed around LV will now be positioned correctly on the ground (no longer floating)

Game Breaking Bug Fixes:

• Exiting/entering interiors was riddled with issues. All identified issues have been resolved.
        Some examples would be:
           - Falling underneath Ireland/Eggland when leaving an interior
           - Being positioned inside the structure of a building when exiting an interior
           - Being stuck in a virtual world when leaving an interior
           - Being frozen forever when leaving an interior
           - Not being taken to the correct location upon leaving an interior
           - Various other similarly hard to find interior related issues
• Resolved an issue that would cause NPCs to not appear in stores in certain situations
• Some places were not robbable due to aiming at NPCs doing nothing
• The Anti-Cheat system was/is having false positives. We've now prevented this from banning players and added additional logging to help identify the issue
• The code had various SQL injection vulnerabilities that some bad actors had previously taken advantage of

General Bug fixes:

• The "more options" option at gas station wasn't working
• Fixed issues with the anti-cheat system (WAC) which could cause false-positives when a player was paused
• Transfender was not working (vehicle was despawning and stuck inside)
• Fixed "You require at least rob skill level %d to rob this location." not being sent to the player sometimes
• Reduced cooldown for the "You require at least rob skill level %d to rob this location." message
• Updated old store checkpoints to tell the players to rob the NPC (instead of mentioning /robstore)
• There was an issue that was preventing players from entering the inside interior of the Andromeda plane
• Eight ball's was riddled with issues:
        Fixed car bomb garage repeatedly charging players for the bomb
        Fixed detonator not working
        Fixed car health not being set to 0
        TerXP will now increase (by a small amount) even if no players are within the blast radius
            It will still increase by a larger amount if there is a player in range

Final Thoughts:
I wanted to thank Wataki for helping us to finally get to this position as well as the community for your patience to finally get this out. I wanted you all to know that I thoroughly enjoyed my time with CRRPG/ECNR and as long as I have any control over things, the server, forums & Discord will continue to run, ensuring that a hit of nostalgia is always sitting here waiting for us.

You will need the latest SA-MP client version to play this update: https://www.sa-mp.mp/downloads/
Join us on Discord: https://discord.gg/nJyc7jxCF2

Love & appreciate you guys.

Byrner

Hey,

This suggestion will be included in any future update. Thanks for the recommendation!

I'm happy to say that after 48 hours of ignoring IRL responsibilities, the ECNR SA-MP server is now back online for the first time in many years.

While I do not plan on any major updates like back in the day, if you come across any game-breaking bugs feel free to let me know.

I've added Discord functionality to the server so that now when a player connects or speaks in-game it will be echo'ed to the Discord.

I may also further extend the Discord -> SA-MP functionality as a sort of replacement for IRC, dependant upon whether people actually play on the server. Outside of that, I wouldn't expect any significant updates to the server.

I've taken steps to ensure that the server remains online (hopefully in perpetuity) so that anyone can come and get their fill of nostalgia whenever the mood strikes.

Feel free to hop in-game at samp.enigmaticgc.com
Or join the Discord: https://discord.gg/n3WdQ5Nz

You'll need the sa-mp-0.3z-R2-install SA-MP client version, which you can get from here: https://github.com/Se8870/SAMP-File-Archive

I hope everyone is well and gets a minute to re-live some CRRPG/ECNR.

Peace & Love
Byrner

Hey everyone, been a long time!

Our local Viper has brought it to my attention that whoever was running the old ECNR community Discord has shut it down for some reason. I'm not sure who created it or why it was shut down but it is a good opportunity to start fresh.

Feel free to join the new official Discord here: https://discord.gg/nJyc7jxCF2

As a side note, the enigmaticgc.com forums had seemingly broken at some point in the past month. I've gone ahead and updated the forum version (was massively out of date) however unfortunately neither the theme nor forum split plugins are compatible with newer SMF versions.

So I've used a similar looking theme and opted to combine all the sub forums into one large forum.

While there is essentially zero activity on the forums, I'm sure a lot of us would like to keep them alive for when the mood for some nostalgic reminiscing strikes us!

I hope everyone is well and I'll hopefully see you on the Discord.

Peace & Love
Byrner

During some routine machine/server relocating we managed to forget that the EGC website was hosted on one of the machines we were moving. This resulted in the website/forums not being transferred to the new location. We did not notice that the website wasn't running until after all the remote backups had also been deleted.

Good news, we found a hard copy of the forums database on our home systems.
Bad news, this database backup is from 2015.

While we have the most important years of EGC (2012-2015) we do not have access to the the last four years. While it is sad that the records we had of the passed few years are now gone we are fortunate to have the the early, most important years.

We've taken measures to ensure that we store remote backups more regularly and are less prone to deletion should something similar occur.

The opportunity was taken to upgrade the SMF version to v2.0.15.

To clarify, only the forums were effected by this. The ECNR SA-MP server is still up & running with the latest database information.

We apologize for allowing this to happen and assure you we have taken measures to ensure it doesn't happen again.

We're happy to announce that Saw will be joining the ECNR Administration team. With that, his mIRC Bot Houston has been promoted to channel operator on #ECNR.

Congrats Saw!

Perhaps a !recent (Or whatever you prefer) to list the last (maybe 5?) forum posts!

Classic SA-MP bug. 

Welcome back dude.

Also note a significant amount of features were added and forgotten. We stupidly did not keep a list of these additions.

If you happen to notice any that aren't on this list, feel free to let us know and we will update the main post.


Enjoy the new beginning lads.

The main post has been updated. Click the time for a countdown.

http://ecnr.enigmaticgc.com/forum/index.php?topic=2661.0

That is happening.

Can you feel it?

Due to http://evolutionhost.co.uk/ now offering DDoS Protection with it's SA-MP Servers, we've had the opportunity to move over to this newly protected system.

EGC's ECNR SA-MP Server and IRCd is now located in Roubaix, France. This also includes a more powerful machine.

No need to worry about an IP change, you can still use samp.enigmaticgc.com:7777 to connect.

I was back and forth about doing the end of year awards for days. In the end I decided not to, as to not tarnish the prestige of the yearly awards. Everyone knows the most part of 2014 has not been good. For those who have stuck around, trust me, it will be worth it.