4.07.0 is the last version considered stable by jonathan
4.07.4 is newer, but beta. It more features and bugfixes but it isn't really finished and tested, so things can fail (like you saw)
4.06 from sourceforge is old. Don't use that
The lastest version is in the svn repo at sourceforge, but it's just the source code and you need to compile it before playing. This is where you can see the current state of development
Good advice.
here's what i do...
1.go to http://sourceforge.net/projects/lcsgame/
2.click on code
3.click on download snapshot
4.extract the "art" folder and the "init.txt" file, go into the "workspaces" folder and extract "pdcurses.dll" and the "crimesquad.exe" (from the "release" folder inside the workspaces folder)
5.run "crimesquad.exe"
Also good advice.
If you want the most stable of the recent revisions I suggest revision 829. There's a bug with the House of Representatives introduced in revision 830 that I noticed while making revision 836 but I haven't gotten around to fixing it yet, what with all the other changes in revision 836 to add MIDI music.
Basically, on every bill that Congress votes on, the House of Representatives now rejects it by a unanimous vote, 435 Nay votes and 0 Yea votes, which happens regardless of the political affiliation of anyone in Congress, they ALL vote no. It's like a Do-Nothing Congress on steroids... so right now revisions 830-836 are all afflicted with the Do-Nothing Congress Bug. I hope to get this fixed soon.
So ya, if you want a nice, stable game experience I'd suggest revision 829 from SourceForge... or if this bug gets fixed we might have something a bit more stable again soon. Take it from me folks, revision 829 is the most stable one with the least bugs. Although pretty soon I hope to fix bugs enough so that we have an even stabler revision.
You could also try out revision 836, and with it use the crimesquad.exe from the Debug directory under workspaces instead of Release, and you'll need 3 .dll files that are all in the root/trunk directory: PDCurses.dll, SDL2.dll, and SDL2_mixer.dll. It has MIDI music playing in the background, that's the major difference. The Release build of it randomly crashes (well not actually random, it follows deterministic patterns that can be repeated), so anyway I'll need to use less aggressive optimizations... aggressive optimizations and SDL don't seem to get along. The Debug build of revision 836 works pretty well except for the Do-Nothing Congress Bug.
The next time I put out a revision I'm going to fix both those bugs, of course (the Do-Nothing Congress Bug and the overly aggressive Release build optimizations that don't work with SDL bug). Oh, and in revision 829 and later, the .dll files such as PDCurses.dll are in the main root/trunk directory instead of the workspaces directory. This is because Code::Blocks uses the GNU Debugger GDB and executes the program while debugging and needs a directory to execute it in, and for the program to run correctly, it needs the .dll files in the same directory as it and it needs the art directory as a subdirectory. So if PDCurses.dll is in the workspaces directory, but the art directory is one level lower, then there isn't ANY directory where you can run a debug build in the debugger and have it actually work. So that's why this, among other things, was fixed in revision 829.
So hopefully the next revision I will be able to recommend as a stable one that doesn't have any major bugs. For now I recommend revision 829 for people who want to play the game with a stable experience and not have major bugs or crashes. Revision 829's Release build has exactly the same aggressive optimizations as revision 836 but I am not aware of them making it crash, that's a new thing caused by SDL. But, just to be safe, I would suggest using revision 829's Debug build.
Here is the download link for revision 829.UPDATE:
Revision 840 is out, it fixes all the instabilities and bugs I know of in revisions 830-839. Both the Release and Debug builds are perfectly stable, you can use either one. The House of Representatives bug I mentioned is fixed. Other stuff is also fixed. Compilation on MS Visual C++ (both Debug and Release builds) is fixed and compilation on Linux/Mac OS X/etc. should PROBABLY work again, after being temporarily broken by the addition of SDL2 and SDL2_mixer dependencies in revision 836, and compilation on Code::Blocks works flawlessly too. Now my recommendation is to download revision 840 as the most stable build. I highly recommend revision 840 for everybody. Most of the bugs people encounter in the stable version 4.07.0 or the beta version 4.07.4 beta have been fixed since then, and while there might be new bugs, I don't know about any in revision 840. All known bugs have been fixed. So please play this revision 840 and if you DO find any bugs please report them and then we'll be able to fix them and make the game even more stable.
This is important because if you play an older version, even the latest beta version, and find bugs in it, the bug reports will probably be useless to us because of all the changes to the code since then, and moreover, you'll probably be reporting bugs that we've already fixed in the SVN revisions. If you really want bugs fixed you need to test the latest SVN revisions and report bugs in them. Also, I think revision 840 is quite stable. Just like revision 829 was. Don't use any of the revisions in between those 2 though.
Here is the download link for revision 840.