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[tahujdt]

Taking them on a cheap vacation works better, because then you can't ruin the relationship by mentioning other lovers. You don't have other lovers? Then your high seduction is going to waste. Charisma affects seduction chances as well as the skill cap. What is your charisma?

[tahujdt]

After using my Charisma 14(now 18) seduction level 14 leader to acquire a squad of agents, I realized that agents are lacking in a key skill: street sense. One of my agents (now ex-agent) couldn't escape two run-of-the-mill Death Squad Officers by jumping from rooftop to rooftop. Alternatively, add a special agent or a top secret agent that has Bond-level skills.

That, by the way, gave me an idea. Since certain skills (dodge, martial arts) have easter eggs when you get them to absurdly high levels, such as the matrix dodge, you should add something like that for street sense, cartoon style. For example, "Libby McLiberal escapes the police by stepping behind a lamppost"
"Libby McLiberal puts on a false moustache, and points the police in another direction"
"Libby McLiberal hides under the Police Officer's hat"
"Libby McLiberal evades the police by jumping in a trash can"
"Libby McLiberal pretends to be part of a mural" (more likely if said Liberal has Graffiti skillz too)
"Libby McLiberal tricks the police with reverse Psychology"
An example for the last one:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

C: You are under arrest for selling pot browies!
L: No I'm not!
C: Yes you are!
L: No I'm not!
C: Yes you are!
L: No I'm not!
C: Yes you are!
L: No I'm not!
L: Yes I am!
C: No you're not!
L: Yes I am!
C No you're not, and that's final! Now are you going to go about your business, or will I have to shoot you?
L: All right, have it your way Mac, I'm not under arrest. (Walks off)

[MetalSlimeHunt]

It would be nice to have easter egg descriptions for escaping or dodging related to every skill. I'd say it would have a chance of applying if your skill was above 20, since 20 has thus far been established as the number where LCS skills go into the impossible.
 

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

(Art) "Liberal McLiberal draws a hole in the wall and jumps through it!"

(Axe) "Liberal McLiberal goes Nicholson on a nearby wall!"

(Business) "Liberal McLiberal buys the officer's badge, gun, and clothing with some street junk."

(Club) "Liberal McLiberal splits open the street with a mighty blow and escapes in the confusion!"

(Computers) "Liberal McLiberal hacks the cop's radio and gives him false directions!"

(Disguise) "Liberal McLiberal pretends to be President [Name] and is let go!"

(Dodge) "Liberal McLiberal dodges through a random window and somehow ends up back at the safehouse."

(Driving) "Liberal McLiberal carsurfs away on the officer's cruiser!"

(First Aid) "Liberal McLiberal heals the officer's conservatism!"

(Heavy Weapons) "Officer McConservative is not getting anywhere fucking near this maniac!"

(Knife/Sword) "Liberal McLiberal expertly cuts the officer's badge off and has him arrested!"

(Law) "Liberal McLiberal cites Supreme Court rulings until the officer runs away crying!"

(Music) "Liberal McLiberal performs an improv rendition of "Nothing To See Here" and is ignored!"

(Persuasion) "Liberal McLiberal waves his hand and tells the officer he isn't the Liberal he's looking for."

(Pistol/Rifle/SMG) "Liberal McLiberal shoots the barrel of the officer's gun off and escapes!"

(Psychology) "Liberal McLiberal convinces the officer that his desire to arrest him stems from an unaddressed Oedipus Complex."

(Religion) "Liberal McLiberal distracts the officer by throwing Jesus into him and runs away!"

(Science) "Liberal McLiberal evolves wings and flies away!"

(Street Sense) "Cop? What cop? There ain't no cops here."

(Tailoring) "Liberal McLiberal stitches together a makeshift police uniform and is ignored."

(Teaching) "Liberal McLiberal throws a textbook at the officer and runs!"

(Throwing) "Liberal McLiberal throws a passing car at the officer and runs!"

(Writing) "Liberal McLiberal rewrites the officer's perception of reality and is let go."

[Jonathan S. Fox]

I like the easter egg ideas.

These are all good ideas. Fox, not asking you to use them right now, just asking if it's possible to code those. I'm a bit rusty on C++, but I might try to build those myself.

Yes. I get this question, or see comments every once in awhile, confessing someone doesn't know whether something is possible to do in programming. Honestly, I don't think I've ever seen a suggestion for Liberal Crime Squad that truly wasn't possible to code. Computers are incredibly versatile things, limited in only a few ways, the most prominent of which is human time and imagination.

Taking them on a cheap vacation works better, because then you can't ruin the relationship by mentioning other lovers. You don't have other lovers? Then your high seduction is going to waste.

Mentioning other lovers happens when you're about to succeed, but have hit the cap on the number of people you can seduce. That code should be hit whether you go on a vacation or not, and it doesn't care what you were doing previously, it just checks the recruitment cap.

Seduction is the skill which governs success on dates. Charisma is factored in because it's part of making a seduction check; you get a "natural talent" bonus to many skills equal to half the relevant attribute. But a large seduction is still a huge benefit in having a successful date, it is by no means wasted.

After using my Charisma 14(now 18) seduction level 14 leader to acquire a squad of agents, I realized that agents are lacking in a key skill: street sense. One of my agents (now ex-agent) couldn't escape two run-of-the-mill Death Squad Officers by jumping from rooftop to rooftop. Alternatively, add a special agent or a top secret agent that has Bond-level skills.

Chases are based on Agility and Health. Street Sense can keep you out of trouble when you're selling brownies or something like that, but it won't help you once the police actually show up.

[tahujdt]

I'll take your word for it, but that doesn't seem right. My high agility and health, low Street sense ninjas are always getting caught and not getting away. If they have high street sense then it works a whole lot better.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

This adds a "sort by type" key to the "review equipment" screen

Both patches submitted in this post are applied, tested, committed. I've extended the "show location" thing to dates as well.

Embarrassed this had to be edited in: Thanks, these are great quality-of-life changes!

I'll take your word for it, but that doesn't seem right. My high agility and health, low Street sense ninjas are always getting caught and not getting away. If they have high street sense then it works a whole lot better.

The street sense skill is literally not referenced a single time in the chase code. It is the primary skill for preventing those chases from happening in the first place, however. What's likely occurring is that your high street sense characters get caught in foot chases less often because they get into foot chases less often.

Death Squad officers don't have street sense either, for what it's worth. What they do have is the Conservative equivalent of juice, which raises their attributes significantly. They're usually in the "Revolutionary" juice bracket, which grants them +3 to every stat (except Heart), plus another 20% of the base stat. This gives them a significant advantage over unjuiced Liberals, even ones with high base attributes.

Agents tend to have really strong base stats, much better than the base stats on Death Squad officers, but they'll probably come in with 0 juice, and that can easily close the difference. Even if they still have better stats, you still just need one bad roll to fall behind and be executed. Death Squads are, by design, extremely dangerous in footchases.

[ggamer]

I've been encouraged to play this again by Black Lagoon, of all things, because I want so badly to play a just-in-it-for-the-crime LCS boss who is very frank with his minions

[Grimith]

Just finished my third recorded playthrough of Liberal Crime Squad. The final videos are currently being uploaded to my YouTube channel. A condensed version of my thoughts:

• Anti-Aircraft Guns? Currently useless. Don't bother with them.
• There definitely needs to be a quicker method of moving items between safehouses. Fortunately, one of my YouTube viewers - a codemonkey - mentioned he had made a modification for doing so and submitted it.
• I think the paramaters for resolving a siege should be made clearer. JSF mentioned in the comments of one of my videos that A) at least ten Conservatives must die and B) if they brought tanks, destroy one. I think it'd be cool if the M1 Abrams began paving a way through your base itself to force the meeting.
• Greater penalties for missing an arm should be considered. I had two founders - including my arm - get an arm blown off by a M1 Abrams, and they were able to remain fully functional with their assault rifles.
• Speaking of tanks, I only destroyed four of them in this playthrough, but I kept a backup save so I could return to it to obliterate more if I so chose. The tanks are understandably powerful, but I think the greater threat is how many meatshields come with them. Unfortunately, characters do a bad job of prioritizing targets.
• Another viewer of mine told me that the Fireman/Firefighter issue was resolved via another submission, which is nice, because that was disconcerting to see, just like seeing all of those ENEMY and TRAP icons scattered around on the Nuclear Power Plant map.
• I like the planes that the Conservatives can use against you. Bombs are the most effective tool the Conservatives have of crushing the Liberal Crime Squad. It's just a shame that it's so easy to confuse the government by hopping from safehouse to safehouse.
• Did anything change for the parameters concerning the Elite Liberal Amendments? I couldn't get them to appear this time, while they appeared very fast in 4.04.0 when I played that last year.

The game's still enjoyable, even after all these years. Definitely not a waste of time. Again, thanks for continuing to keep the game running.

[tahujdt]

Just finished my third recorded playthrough of Liberal Crime Squad. The final videos are currently being uploaded to my YouTube channel. A condensed version of my thoughts:

• Anti-Aircraft Guns? Currently useless. Don't bother with them.
• There definitely needs to be a quicker method of moving items between safehouses. Fortunately, one of my YouTube viewers - a codemonkey - mentioned he had made a modification for doing so and submitted it.
• I think the paramaters for resolving a siege should be made clearer. JSF mentioned in the comments of one of my videos that A) at least ten Conservatives must die and B) if they brought tanks, destroy one. I think it'd be cool if the M1 Abrams began paving a way through your base itself to force the meeting.
• Greater penalties for missing an arm should be considered. I had two founders - including my arm - get an arm blown off by a M1 Abrams, and they were able to remain fully functional with their assault rifles.
• Speaking of tanks, I only destroyed four of them in this playthrough, but I kept a backup save so I could return to it to obliterate more if I so chose. The tanks are understandably powerful, but I think the greater threat is how many meatshields come with them. Unfortunately, characters do a bad job of prioritizing targets.
• Another viewer of mine told me that the Fireman/Firefighter issue was resolved via another submission, which is nice, because that was disconcerting to see, just like seeing all of those ENEMY and TRAP icons scattered around on the Nuclear Power Plant map.
• I like the planes that the Conservatives can use against you. Bombs are the most effective tool the Conservatives have of crushing the Liberal Crime Squad. It's just a shame that it's so easy to confuse the government by hopping from safehouse to safehouse.
• Did anything change for the parameters concerning the Elite Liberal Amendments? I couldn't get them to appear this time, while they appeared very fast in 4.04.0 when I played that last year.

The game's still enjoyable, even after all these years. Definitely not a waste of time. Again, thanks for continuing to keep the game running.

At the start, there's an option to turn off those options for a greater challenge. You might have triggered those on accident.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

He didn't. It's all on video.

[tahujdt]

Fox, can you show how to program it so that LCS will only save when you hit the X key and exit? Better yet, it would be great if turning off autosaving were an init option in the nex release.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Fox, can you show how to program it so that LCS will only save when you hit the X key and exit? Better yet, it would be great if turning off autosaving were an init option in the nex release.

Comment out line 44 of daily.cpp (by putting // at the start of it). The code that says:

Code: [Select]

if(!disbanding)save();

• Anti-Aircraft Guns? Currently useless. Don't bother with them.
• There definitely needs to be a quicker method of moving items between safehouses. Fortunately, one of my YouTube viewers - a codemonkey - mentioned he had made a modification for doing so and submitted it.
• Another viewer of mine told me that the Fireman/Firefighter issue was resolved via another submission, which is nice, because that was disconcerting to see, just like seeing all of those ENEMY and TRAP icons scattered around on the Nuclear Power Plant map.

These are already fixed/changed for the next release, thanks to your play through and a couple of contributors.

• I think the paramaters for resolving a siege should be made clearer. JSF mentioned in the comments of one of my videos that A) at least ten Conservatives must die and B) if they brought tanks, destroy one. I think it'd be cool if the M1 Abrams began paving a way through your base itself to force the meeting.
• Greater penalties for missing an arm should be considered. I had two founders - including my arm - get an arm blown off by a M1 Abrams, and they were able to remain fully functional with their assault rifles.
• Speaking of tanks, I only destroyed four of them in this playthrough, but I kept a backup save so I could return to it to obliterate more if I so chose. The tanks are understandably powerful, but I think the greater threat is how many meatshields come with them. Unfortunately, characters do a bad job of prioritizing targets.
• I like the planes that the Conservatives can use against you. Bombs are the most effective tool the Conservatives have of crushing the Liberal Crime Squad. It's just a shame that it's so easy to confuse the government by hopping from safehouse to safehouse.
• Did anything change for the parameters concerning the Elite Liberal Amendments? I couldn't get them to appear this time, while they appeared very fast in 4.04.0 when I played that last year.

I don't know of anything changing for the amendments, but it's something that interests me, since not seeing them at all -- especially with the degree of effectiveness you had in your run -- sounds like a bug. The tank barging through your base, heading directly for you when you hit 10 kills is also pretty good.

I'm not sure if coding the game so your Liberals prefer to focus fire on tanks is necessarily a good idea. While in your case it's probably advantageous to flatten the tank ASAP, a less powerful squad would do better to take out the squishier but still very dangerous squad supporting the tank, before settling in to trade a few rounds with the tank.

[tahujdt]

Fox, can you show how to program it so that LCS will only save when you hit the X key and exit? Better yet, it would be great if turning off autosaving were an init option in the nex release.

Comment out line 44 of daily.cpp (by putting // at the start of it). The code that says:

Code: [Select]

if(!disbanding)save();

• Anti-Aircraft Guns? Currently useless. Don't bother with them.
• There definitely needs to be a quicker method of moving items between safehouses. Fortunately, one of my YouTube viewers - a codemonkey - mentioned he had made a modification for doing so and submitted it.
• Another viewer of mine told me that the Fireman/Firefighter issue was resolved via another submission, which is nice, because that was disconcerting to see, just like seeing all of those ENEMY and TRAP icons scattered around on the Nuclear Power Plant map.

These are already fixed/changed for the next release, thanks to your play through and a couple of contributors.

• I think the paramaters for resolving a siege should be made clearer. JSF mentioned in the comments of one of my videos that A) at least ten Conservatives must die and B) if they brought tanks, destroy one. I think it'd be cool if the M1 Abrams began paving a way through your base itself to force the meeting.
• Greater penalties for missing an arm should be considered. I had two founders - including my arm - get an arm blown off by a M1 Abrams, and they were able to remain fully functional with their assault rifles.
• Speaking of tanks, I only destroyed four of them in this playthrough, but I kept a backup save so I could return to it to obliterate more if I so chose. The tanks are understandably powerful, but I think the greater threat is how many meatshields come with them. Unfortunately, characters do a bad job of prioritizing targets.
• I like the planes that the Conservatives can use against you. Bombs are the most effective tool the Conservatives have of crushing the Liberal Crime Squad. It's just a shame that it's so easy to confuse the government by hopping from safehouse to safehouse.
• Did anything change for the parameters concerning the Elite Liberal Amendments? I couldn't get them to appear this time, while they appeared very fast in 4.04.0 when I played that last year.

I don't know of anything changing for the amendments, but it's something that interests me, since not seeing them at all -- especially with the degree of effectiveness you had in your run -- sounds like a bug. The tank barging through your base, heading directly for you when you hit 10 kills is also pretty good.

I'm not sure if coding the game so your Liberals prefer to focus fire on tanks is necessarily a good idea. While in your case it's probably advantageous to flatten the tank ASAP, a less powerful squad would do better to take out the squishier but still very dangerous squad supporting the tank, before settling in to trade a few rounds with the tank.

What will that do? Will it disable saving period? Or will it save when you quit? If it doesn't save, period, then I won't be able to change it back.

Edit: Can you recommend a good C++ compiler?

[MetalSlimeHunt]

The line says "if disbanding, then save". It won't do anything to saving when you quit, it stops the game from saving when the squad disbands.

Which, for the record, I think is not a good way to play LCS. If you can just save scum there's no risk in playing the game. You won't have as much fun if you can't lose.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

Specifically it's "if not disbanding, then save" -- the ! before "disbanding" is a "not" operator in boolean logic, so it makes true into false, and false into true. The line's purpose is to save the game every day unless the squad is already disbanded (to avoid slowdown while fast-forwarding toward victory).

This whole area of code is run when a day passes. The game used to save to autosave.dat instead of save.dat there, and I personally changed it to make the game more ruthless about keeping your save up to date. So I'm sure you won't break saving entirely by removing that line. The game should still save when you lose, win, or quit the game.

Edit: Can you recommend a good C++ compiler?

Choice of compiler is just personal preference, but if you're on Windows, I would default to Visual Studio Express 2012 for Windows Desktop. It's free, though you need to register (also free) after 30 days. I haven't used that particular version, I use an earlier version of Visual Studio to work on the game.

When you have it installed, you should be able to open the Visual Studio project files in the /workspaces directory. It will probably need to update the project file to the new version, since 2012 is more modern than what the project files were made for. Once it's open, you should be able to browse and edit the source code from within the IDE, and pressing the green arrow along the top (hopefully still there in the new version!) should compile and run the game. Once you know the game is compiling and running correctly, make the changes you want to make to the source code and do it again; your changes should be reflected in the game.