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[My Name is Immaterial]

Oh, I see. That makes more sense. Sorry.

[Alehkhs]

It's been updated.

Version 2 for Android - fixed the following:
- Crash when entering a footchase without a squad, eg. when dealing.
- Crash (sometimes) when encountering guards, caused by me not being able to spell the names of their guns.
- Crash when using an external keyboard when assigning loot.
- Gathering opinions flew by without stopping.
- Blank screen when running from guard dogs.

Version 3 for Android: captured some guard dogs released for testing.

Bug reports still very much welcome.

[BigD145]

There's a version 9 of this now. I haven't played much but it seems functional.

Trying to get DosBox Turbo and HX Dos Extender with the latest LCS has not worked. I'm probably doing it wrong.

edit: Stars! works under Win3.1 using the Android instructions here: http://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/Stars_vs_OS  but not even the original LCS 3.09 will run with appropriate tweaks. Do I have to get the dll recognized or something? The warning message in windows is "cannot find file: c:\lcs\crimesquad.exe". Warning: I haven't touched even win95 in over a decade.
edit2: Okay, so LCS is now a win2k/nt ish era thing? Good to know.

[Liberal Elitist]

There's a version 9 of this now. I haven't played much but it seems functional.

Trying to get DosBox Turbo and HX Dos Extender with the latest LCS has not worked. I'm probably doing it wrong.

edit: Stars! works under Win3.1 using the Android instructions here: http://wiki.starsautohost.org/wiki/Stars_vs_OS  but not even the original LCS 3.09 will run with appropriate tweaks. Do I have to get the dll recognized or something? The warning message in windows is "cannot find file: c:\lcs\crimesquad.exe". Warning: I haven't touched even win95 in over a decade.
edit2: Okay, so LCS is now a win2k/nt ish era thing? Good to know.

Yes, LCS is a win2k/nt is era thing. Probably. MIGHT also work on Windows 95/98/ME. Not really sure. The thing is, the Windows API for NT series versions of Windows (including Windows 2000, XP, Vista, 7, 8, and future versions) is different from the Windows API for Windows 9x (Windows 95, 98, and ME). Liberal Crime Squad, the Windows version, is a Win32 Console Application. Thus incompatible with 16-bit OSes. Except of course, there is Win32S for Windows 3.1x, 32-bit extensions for Windows 3.1x that come with the demonstration program FreeCell. But Win32S is the worst version of the Win32 API, vastly inferior to the NT series or to Windows 9x, and Liberal Crime Squad, like the vast majority of 32-bit Windows programs, probably makes API calls that aren't supported by Win32s, so running it on Windows 3.1x is highly unlikely to work (BUT NOT IMPOSSIBLE)!

However, HX Dos Extender is there for the rescue! It allows you to run Win32 Console Applications from DOS or a DOS emulator, and HX DOS Extender is compatible with much of the Windows API from NT series operating systems. So running it in DOSBox with HX Dos Extender SHOULD work. If HX Dos Extender ever has problems usually this is because of missing .dll files, and you can simply copy whichever .dll files it demands from a copy of Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7/8. HX Dos Extender is basically a bootstrapping layer that allows you to run a modified version of the Win32 kernel from DOS, and then you can run Win32 .exe files if you have the proper .dlls. And because HX Dos Extender runs on DOS, it can allow you to run Windows programs on anything that can run a DOS emulator. The only major problem is, it doesn't really support graphics, just console applications. But since Liberal Crime Squad IS a console application, that's not a problem! So by running HX Dos Extender with a DOS emulator you can run Liberal Crime Squad on any operating system or console that is capable of running a DOS emulator. I think there are even versions of DOSBox for game consoles. For instance, there is a version of DOSBox made for the Sony PlayStation 3, and one for the XBox, among numerous ports which exist. So you can actually play Liberal Crime Squad on those consoles, although I am quite curious as to how the keyboard interface of DOS is emulated on those consoles (whose game controllers have FAR less buttons than the number of keys on a computer keyboard). Plus with HX Dos Extender you can run Liberal Crime Squad inside a DOS box from ANY version of Windows, even Windows 1.0, the first version Microsoft ever made! Probably. Haven't tested it myself. But it SHOULD be possible, theoretically. And of course there are versions of DOSBox for various tablets like Android and the BlackBerry Playbook, which combined with HX Dos Extender allow you to run Liberal Crime Squad on those.

Of course you can also compile and build Liberal Crime Squad on any POSIX-compliant operating system such as Linux, Mac OS X, FreeBSD, or the other UNIXes, without having to rely on emulation. However this doesn't guarantee it will be able to compile and build on ALL UNIX-like operating systems. For instance, Android is based on Linux, but I don't think it has a console interface or implements all of the POSIX APIs used by the UNIX version of Liberal Crime Squad. But luckily there is a separate project to make an Android version of Liberal Crime Squad. PLUS you can use the DOSBox+HX Dos Extender combo to run it on Android too, most likely.

So basically, Liberal Crime Squad ought to be able to run on almost any operating system, almost any computer, almost any modern game console, almost any tablet, because the DOSBox+HX Dos Extender combo allows you to emulate Win32 Console Applications such as the Win32 version of Liberal Crime Squad from almost any platform. And if you have a 64-bit edition of Windows, 64-bit Windows can run 32-bit Windows programs natively, just not 16-bit Windows or DOS programs. 32-bit Windows, on the other hand, can run 16-bit Windows or DOS programs through its built in 16-bit emulation layer called NTVDM, NT Virtual Device Manager. In fact, you can run the DOSBox+HX Dos Extender combo inside Windows. And since HX Dos Extender can run inside DOSBox and DOSBox can run inside HX Dos Extender, you can actually have MULTIPLE emulation layers... you can run Liberal Crime Squad inside HX Dos Extender inside DOSBox inside HX Dos Extender inside DOSBox on any platform that supports DOSBox, including Windows. Which is utterly pointless, because you can natively run Liberal Crime Squad on Windows, and it runs much faster. But if you like to play around with this kind of stuff... well then go right ahead. Do be warned, though, that in order to emulate a 32-bit Windows environment, the DOS environment you emulate will need to be emulating a 386 or later processor. If you emulate a 286 or earlier, those processors are 16-bit or 8-bit. So 32-bit programs won't work in that environment. This also means that old 8-bit and 16-bit game consoles, like a Nintendo Entertainment System or an Atari 2600 or a Sega Genesis, can't emulate Liberal Crime Squad. Sorry. However, it MIGHT be possible to emulate it on a SUPER Nintendo Entertainment System, because the SNES allowed for custom addon chips. So theoretically if an SNES cartridge included an Intel Pentium CPU on it, it would be able to run 32-bit x86 programs on an SNES. But nobody ever physically made such an addon chip. However, emulating such an addon chip, even though it is a fictional addon chip that was never made, is entirely possible. And then any SNES emulator that supported such an addon chip would be able to emulate DOS and Windows programs, including Liberal Crime Squad.

[FinetalPies]

I somehow managed to understand what you are talking aboot.

And both PS3's and 360's support usb keyboards, so you could circumvent having to use a controller that way.

[Liberal Elitist]

Yes, basically my point was, Liberal Crime Squad is theoretically compatible with any 32-bit system regardless of operating system and whether it's a computer, tablet, game console, or smartphone, as long as that system is capable of displaying an 80 column, 25 row text console and has something akin to a keyboard input mode, and for systems where it can't run natively, it can run through emulation. I forgot to mention Wineconsole with curses backend, that's the standard way to run the Windows binaries on Linux if you have an x86 processor, and it will run at full speed that way (since Wine is a wrapper that implements Windows API calls on POSIX-compliant systems and then natively runs the binaries on your CPU, rather than an emulator that runs the binaries on a virtual machine). It also runs at full speed if you run it under native DOS (NOT DOXBox, I am talking about actual DOS such as MS-DOS, DR-DOS, FreeDOS, PC-DOS, PTS-DOS, etc.) using HX Dos Extender, since that is also a wrapper that implements Windows API calls and then runs binaries natively on the CPU, rather than emulating Windows in a virtual machine. Besides DOSBox+HX Dos Extender there are actually many other virtual machines you can use to emulate Windows Console Applications, like Virtual PC, VMWare, VirtualBox, Bochs, QEMU, etc. But most of those are MUCH slower, and would emulate the entire Windows operating system along with all of the hardware, and require you to have a full Windows installation inside the virtual machine.

Oh, and it is also possible to compile native DOS binaries that wouldn't need the HX Dos Extender, using the DJGPP compiler, if we put in the proper compiler flags and code to support the DJGPP+DOS platform, I was looking into that yesterday. DJGPP is a distribution of the GNU GCC compiler for 32-bit software that allows you to compile programs in languages such as C++ to run on DOS. However, not only would this require modifications to the code (that's the EASY part), but it would requite successfully installing and setting up the DJGPP compiler (which is ridiculously hard, as the guy who maintains the DJGPP project has it set up so you have to download like a dozen different .ZIP files to have all the compiler tools you need, and they are fairly hard to find, especially the latest versions, and the installation process for the DJGPP compiler is like rocket science or brain surgery, almost impossible). Hardly anyone uses DJGPP anymore, it used to be in widespread usage but it fell out of favor, in favor of Cygwin and MinGW, mostly because everyone stopped using DOS and started using Windows instead, but also because DJGPP is so complicated to install. Now you CAN find simple, easy-to-use DJGPP installers online, usually on websites of Computer Science classes. But they are all out of date and have old versions of the GCC compiler. DJGPP is still an active project and you can find DOS ports of the latest GCC compilers, but again, it is quite hard to set up. So even if we added support for DJGPP+DOS to Liberal Crime Squad, the hard part would be making sure that the program maintains compatibility with DOS and testing new revisions on DOS on a regular basis, which would be hard because of the difficulty in getting DJGPP installed. On the bright side, though, DJGPP can run inside Windows in a regular command prompt, and you don't even need real DOS to run it, and programs you make with it likewise work from a command prompt inside Windows. So this means that compiling and testing the DJGPP port to DOS can be done on Windows through its built-in command prompt without even bothering to install any emulators such as DOSBox (unless of course you have a 64-bit edition of Windows, in which case you WILL need DOSBox since the command prompts in those are not DOS compatible). And since DJGPP basically implements a POSIX-compliant system similar to Linux on top of DOS, the DJGPP version would probably require very minimal changes from the Linux version. In fact, it might even work correctly based on the current code and not require any modifications at all, because the DJGPP+DOS environment is very similar to Linux (kinda like Cygwin on Windows, except less advanced). But a native DJGPP port to DOS would probably encounter problems with display of extended characters, because Linux nowadays uses Unicode/UTF-8, which isn't supported on DOS, so correct display of extended characters on DOS would probably require some changes to the code. Maybe later when I have enough time I might see if I can install DJGPP and get it up and running, and compile a native DOS build of Liberal Crime Squad. I think DJGPP can probably even be integrated into the Code::Blocks IDE as one of its compilers with enough effort, most likely. Oh, and DJGPP compiled binaries support Long File Names (LFNs), so those would not be a problem (although under DOS you may need to run a TSR program called DOSLFN for it to work, although if you run the MS-DOS 7.10 that was packaged as part of Windows 98, or are running a DOS box inside Windows, this might be unnecessary, not sure). And DJGPP, like the Linux version, would use ncurses instead of PDCurses as the curses library. So actually, you can probably already compile and build the game without any source code modifications on DJGPP to get it working under DOS, since it is similar enough to Linux, I am guessing. Then again, I doubt there is much interest in native DOS builds of Liberal Crime Squad, except for people who want to play the game through DOSBox more easily without having to use HX Dos Extender. But the number of people who play the game that way is probably very small, so getting it to compile and work properly on DOS using the DJGPP compiler suite would be more of a proof of concept than something people would actually use. Then again, getting this game to run on as many platforms as possible is a worthy ideal. Many programs are cross-platform, and the most extreme example is probably the operating system NetBSD, which gets ported to every single hardware configuration imaginable. And since Liberal Crime Squad can compile and run on POSIX-compliant operating systems like NetBSD, it can run on almost any hardware because NetBSD has been designed that way.