Documentation
Using Vending Machine Creator: map machines, placing your own with the creator, machine types, ownable machines with stock and earnings, robberies and the VendGo phone app.
Vending Machine Creator has three windows, each for a different person. Buying a product is not one of them: [E] on a machine opens a plain menu of its products, their prices and — on owned machines — the stock left.
Window | Opened with | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
The creator |
| Admins and the jobs in |
The purchase panel
|
Any player: the machine's price, the account it is paid from, and the button that buys it. |
The owner's panel |
| The owner: earnings, stock, prices, and selling the machine back. |
Prompts appear within two metres of a machine. While a panel is open or a robbery is running, the machines behind it stay quiet, so one key press never triggers two things.
The GTA map is full of vending machines, and every one whose model is listed in Config.MachineTypes works out of the box: walk up, press [E], pick a product. Nothing to place and nothing stored in the database.
Machine type | Model | Sells |
|---|---|---|
Drink Machine |
| Water, Cola, Orange Soda, Energy Drink |
Drink Fridge |
| Cola, Water, Beer |
Sprunk Machine |
| Sprunk, Lime Soda, Energy Drink |
Snack Machine |
| Chips, Chocolate, Nuts, Candy |
Snack Machine 2 |
| Cookies, Donut, Cupcake |
Coffee Machine |
| Coffee, Espresso, Cappuccino |
Water Dispenser |
| Water Bottle |
Map machines sell at the config's prices, charge the config's account and never run out. They have no owner and cannot be robbed — for that, place a machine of your own.
/vendingcreator opens the creator. The left column lists every placed machine with a search box, its product count, its payment account and a blip badge; the pin button teleports you to it and + starts a new one. Selecting a machine opens it on the right.
Panel | What you set there |
|---|---|
Machine Settings | The name, the model, the payment account, and Apply Template, which fills all of them plus the products from a machine type in one click. Below them, the For sale switch with its purchase price, and Can be robbed. |
Placement | Where the machine stands. Select puts you in placement mode. |
Products | One row per slot: the item, picked from your inventory's own list with its picture, the label shown in the menu, and the price. |
Blip Settings | An optional map blip: its name, a sprite and a colour from searchable lists with previews, its scale, and its position — typed, or picked by aiming. |
Access Control | Jobs and grades attached to the machine. They are saved with it, but in this version they do not limit who can buy from it. |
The model list holds the props of Config.MachineTypes, and the account list is Config.CreatorMoneyTypes — both are covered below.
Select closes the window and puts a see-through copy of the machine wherever you aim, sitting on the ground. Instructional buttons at the bottom of the screen show the keys:
Key | Does |
|---|---|
Aim | Moves the machine. |
Mouse wheel | Turns it 15° per notch. |
| Turns it slowly, for a precise angle. |
Left click | Places it. |
| Cancels, keeping the position it had. |
The creator reopens with the position filled in. Moving a machine again starts from the rotation it already had.
If a placement is ever left running, opening the creator cancels it — you can never be stuck in placement mode.
Create Machine needs a name, a model, a position and at least one product — the error says which is missing. The machine appears for every player at once. A machine flagged For sale may be created without products, but its owner can only restock and reprice what it already sells, so give it a product list first.
Save on an existing machine never touches what players did with it: the owner and the uncollected earnings stay, and stock is carried over product by product, matched by item name. A product you add starts at zero stock; a product you remove takes its stock with it.
Config.MachineTypes does three jobs at once: it is the list of templates in the creator, the list of models a machine can use, and the product list of every map machine with that model.
Config.MachineTypes = {
drinks = {
label = 'Drink Machine', -- shown in the creator and the prompt
prop = 'prop_vend_soda_01', -- the world model
account = 'money', -- money · bank · black_money
items = {
{ item = 'water_bottle', label = 'Water', price = 5, prop = 'prop_ld_can_01' },
{ item = 'cola', label = 'Cola', price = 10, prop = 'prop_ecola_can' },
},
},
}item is the inventory name, label and price are what the menu shows and charges, and prop is the object the character holds during the buying animation. Products added in the creator hold a can.
To sell your server's own items, change the item names to them. To offer another model, add an entry with that prop: it appears in the creator's model list, and every copy of it on the map starts selling its products.
Placed machines keep their own product list in the database. Editing
Config.MachineTypeschanges the map machines and the templates, never a machine you already placed — edit that one in the creator.
Config.CreatorMoneyTypes fills the creator's Payment Account list. Each value must be an account your framework knows:
Config.CreatorMoneyTypes = {
{ label = 'Cash', value = 'money' },
{ label = 'Bank', value = 'bank' },
{ label = 'Black Money', value = 'black_money' },
}On QBCore and QBox, money is read as the cash account. Black Money is an ESX account: on QBCore and QBox, sell for Cash or Bank.
[E] - Use <machine> opens the product menu. Picking a product checks the money and — on ESX — whether the character can carry it, before anything moves. Then the character walks up to the front of the machine, plays the vending animation with the product in hand, and the item lands in the inventory.
The server reads the price from the machine itself; the player's game never sends one. A refusal — not enough money, a full inventory, a product out of stock — is shown as a notification.
Turn on For sale in the creator and set the purchase price. Until somebody buys it, the machine sells nothing: nearby players see [E] - Buy machine ($price), which opens the purchase panel. The price is charged to Config.Ownable.purchaseAccount, the buyer becomes the owner, and for them the prompt turns into [E] - Manage <machine> straight away.
Ownership belongs to the character: on QBCore and QBox it is the citizen id, on ESX the character's identifier.
Section | What it does |
|---|---|
Earnings | What the machine has made since the last collection. Collect pays it into |
Your share · Total stock | The percentage of every sale that is yours, and the units inside across all products. |
Products & Stock | Per product: its price with Save, what you earn per sale, the stock, and Restock — which moves units from your own inventory into the machine and shows how many you carry. |
Sell machine | Hands the machine back for |
An owned machine sells real stock: every unit was put in by its owner, other players see the stock beside each price, and a product at zero is greyed out in the menu. A slot holds up to maxStockPerItem units, and a price can be set to anything from 1 up. Which products the machine sells is decided in the creator; the owner restocks and reprices them.
The customer always pays the full price. ownerShare percent of it builds up as the owner's earnings and the rest is removed from the economy as tax — and since the owner pays for stock with their own items, a machine is a business, not a money printer.
Config.Ownable = {
enabled = true, -- machines can be bought by players
purchaseAccount = 'bank', -- account charged when buying a machine
payoutAccount = 'bank', -- account credited with earnings and resale
ownerShare = 80, -- % of each sale the owner keeps, 0-100
maxStockPerItem = 200, -- units one product slot can hold
resaleRatio = 0.5, -- refund when selling back; 0 disables it
}Machines with Can be robbed on show [G] - Force machine to anyone carrying Config.Robbery.item. No lockpick, no prompt — and an owner never sees it on their own machine.
A progress bar runs for duration seconds with the character working the lock. Backing out here costs nothing: no lockpick at risk and no cooldown.
An ox_lib skill check, one round per entry in skillCheck.difficulty, on the keys in skillCheck.inputs.
From an owned machine, stealPercent of every stocked product — at least one unit, at most maxPerItem — and the owner is told how many units went. From a machine nobody owns, a random unownedLoot number of units from its product list. Whatever the thief cannot carry stays inside.
Outcome | What happens |
|---|---|
Success | Loot handed over, the lockpick breaks |
Failed skill check | Nothing taken, the lockpick breaks |
Empty owned machine | "This machine is empty" — before the lock is touched. |
The lockpick is only used up when it breaks. The police alert goes out when a robbery starts, alert.chance% of the time, to every online player whose job is in alert.jobs: a notification and a flashing blip with an 80-metre area that fades after blipTime seconds.
Config.Robbery = {
enabled = true,
item = 'lockpick', -- no item, no prompt
key = 47, -- G
useItem = false, -- also start it by using the item
allowSelfRobbery = false, -- testing only: rob your own machine
duration = 6, -- seconds forcing the lock
skillCheck = {
difficulty = { 'easy', 'medium', 'medium' }, -- one round each
inputs = { 'w', 'a', 's', 'd' },
},
breakChance = 15, -- % the lockpick breaks after succeeding
breakChanceFail = 50, -- ...and after failing
stealPercent = 50, -- % of each stocked product taken
maxPerItem = 10, -- most units of one product per robbery
unownedLoot = { min = 1, max = 4 },
cooldown = 1800, -- seconds shut after a successful robbery
cooldownFailed = 60, -- ...after a failed attempt
alert = {
enabled = true,
chance = 70, -- % the alert goes out
jobs = { 'police', 'sheriff' },
blipTime = 60, -- seconds the blip stays
},
}Cooldowns are kept in memory: players who join late still see a forced machine as shut, but a restart of the resource clears them all.
With Quasar Smartphone and its phone-vendingmachine addon running, players install VendGo from the phone's App Store. It shows:
Placed machines, nearest first, with their distance, their products and a button that sets a GPS waypoint.
City catalogs — every machine type in Config.MachineTypes with its products.
A cart for several products from one machine in a single payment, and the player's cash balance.
Config.Phone = {
enabled = true, -- the app can read machines at all
allowRemotePurchase = true, -- buy from the phone, anywhere on the map
}A purchase from the phone is delivered straight to the inventory and charged from the machine's own account. On an owned machine it takes stock and pays the owner exactly as if the customer stood in front of it. Set allowRemotePurchase = false to keep VendGo as a finder: players browse and set a waypoint, and buy in person.
Setting | What it does |
|---|---|
| The language, by file name in |
| How prices are written in the panels — for example |
| Machines sent per batch to a player who joins (15). Lower it on a busy server with many machines. |
| How high the |
| Mutes the panels' interface sounds. |
| Extra console output — including why a robbery prompt is not showing. Off on a live server. |