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[Yoink]

Yeah, I have two highly-skilled writers in different locations, just in case one dies horribly.
Think I'll buy some new safehouses, round up a bunch of junkies from the slums, arm them to the teeth and send them to attack something... What to attack, I'm not sure yet. *evil Liberal laugh*

[Kay12]

Well, I find the optimal strategy in LCS includes armed people for dealing with CCS only. After that, they're not worth the hassle, and Liberalism is better protected by peaceful ways and silent action.

EDIT: Sorry, a minor tweak... yes, it does include ONE armed person, "The Black Widow" aka a datenapper with a cheap handgun to reduce chances of failing the datenap.

[Carlos Gustavos]

I also just bootstrap, configure and make. On my computer, changes in /usr/ first require my permission as superuser.

What files do you have in /usr/local/share/lcs/? As I read it the game should only look there if newspic.cpc is there. It has a list of paths which it checks for newspic.cpc and uses the first path where newspic.cpc exists for all files, except the xml files.

[Kay12]

LINUX_README does state that the art directory should be copied to /usr/local/share/lcs manually - if it isn't found, the file states that art directory will be looked for in the current directory or the environment variable LCS_ART_DIR. It didn't work for me until I copied the files, so I assume that something has changed about the automatic searching of the sitemaps.txt - I think it's got something to do with the addition of Xml (perhaps automatic creation of /usr/... was added).

My conclusion is that since I allowed the program to create the folder in /usr/... when installing, it installed the Xml files there but for some odd reason left sitemaps.txt behind (or then it was the line ending issue, I don't know why I didn't check if there was a duplicate of the file). If the game does the checks in the order indicated by the LINUX_README file, it checked if I had the /usr/... directory, which I did, but it lacked sitemaps.txt / had the bad line endings, so there was whine a plenty and the game started. Since you didn't write /usr/... I assume the game moved on to the next step, which is checking the current directory, which should work if you're running from lcsgame/trunk.

Would this clarify everything or did I miss something?

[Yannanth]

.

[Kay12]

Well, to be totally honest I'm not going to start the car chase system coding until next week - I'm getting used to coding again by doing small bugfixes and minor additions such as special dodge messages and the locksmith character (check 'em out in the trunk!) - I've also pondered starting work on a new site that would have something to do with car chases. Multiversal Film Studios, a horrible Conservative media juggernaut, producers of the ever-bloating movie-series FlagMan vs Zombie Stalin and Flagburners!

Of course, there will be a FlagMobile introduced (if I ever get to the coding part that is!).

EDIT: Is army uniform supposed to be a non-disguise in the restricted areas of the army base?

[Carlos Gustavos]

I think the installation instructions in LINUX_README are old. The makefile allows you to just do 'make install' if you want install lcs (and not just have it where you checked it out from svn).

I have now fixed so sitemaps.txt and the xml files will also be copied when doing 'make install' and made the game use the proper directory when opening xml files.

I think Ari fixed the issue with the line endings in sitemaps.txt some time ago.

As for the army uniform, it looks like it's only been entered wrong in stealth.cpp. I also spotted that it accepts army bodyarmor as mercenary disguise rather than the civilian bodyarmor.

[Kay12]

Sounds pretty reasonable to me.

About the army uniform... it should have access to the army base, it's only logical. That would be its only use, and it would soon be replaced by the superior army body armor. Perhaps a separate uniform isn't needed, or it could be given some additional bonus like extra intimidation rolls for looking like an actual militant or making it "ok but not perfect" disguise that allows weapons for about every site.

ALSO: Is there a crime in LCS for being caught in a uniform you're not entitled to wear? Mainly the official ones - police and army. I think there should be some extra charge for that, if I assume correctly that it's actually illegal in America.

[Jonathan S. Fox]

It's illegal to wear a military uniform without a good reason (you're a soldier, a veteran, or you're playing one on TV)... police would be state law, but most places probably have laws against impersonating an officer of the peace, or something like that.

The disguise game is pretty underwhelming at the moment. I played some Decker roguelike recently, and I really liked the way occasionally programs would question you, and you'd have to make a bluff check to prevent them from throwing an alarm. If you pass the check, they leave you alone no matter what you do, short of violence or other major disruptions -- they assume you're supposed to be there. If you fail the check, you might get a second chance (assuming you don't fail horribly), but even if you pass it, the entire system will be on yellow alert.

Perhaps instead of just looking at you suspiciously, most characters will always ignore you if you're in disguise. Security guards, police, and archconservatives might question you; if you bluff successfully (which is a disguise roll against their wisdom), they're happy and ignore you. If you fail, the site goes to "conservatives suspicious", and they continue to question you. A failure at "conservatives suspicious" sets off the alarm. Evading when someone is questioning you counts as one failure... so if a Hangin' Judge starts questioning you as you tromp around the courthouse in your expensive suit, you can just walk past and pretend you didn't hear him. But you can only do that once. A second time ignoring someone, and the site will alert...

Without a disguise, anyone can question you, and you are at a significant bluff penalty. Police uniforms and death squad uniforms (if death squads are active) could be used out of place, and negate the disguise penalty, but not the ability of anyone to question you (your dialog responses would be very "Bavarian Fire Drill"). Bluffing while robbing apartments would involve a disguise penalty.

[Kay12]

Decker is awesome, it has plenty of stuff that could be adapted into LCS. Especially the combat system would fit nicely, but I don't think the traditional system of LCS should be abandoned in favor of a system stolen from another game. On the other hand, stuff like mob counter have been proposed - a site would have a finite population which it would spawn in random encounters, varying by the liberals' location and alarm state. Decker also has a lot more bouncers (roadblocks that may be circumvented by stealth, deception, violence or plain ol' trying to find another way that isn't blocked), enemies that concentrate on certain tasks and loot guards (tapeworms that signal an alarm and destroy the loot if they detect an attempt to steal files). Nothing of this is absolutely impossible for LCS (no halting problem detected), so maybe one of these beautiful days...

EDIT: I'm not sure whether this is a bug or not, but I tend to start my games silently which often leads to Arch Conservatives winning the first two elections and having the Congress under their control. Yet, they still seem to be fond of having a Conservative president replace the ginourmously popular C+ one. This reminds me of a *weird* situation ages and versions ago when a nightmarish dystopia voted a moderate president despite being extremely conservative...

[breadbocks]

Hmm... I'm not looking through the thread very hard, but I'm getting a message about sitemaps.txt being missing? How do I fix it?

[Kay12]

I assume you're playing on a compiled version on a Linux or other UNIX-like system, because I think the sitemaps.txt have always worked out of the box on Windows. If I recall correctly, Carlos Gustavos made some fixes to the installation process, so some of these steps are or should be unnecessary, but might work. Try them in order.


First, check if you have sitemaps in your trunk/art directory. Convert it to UNIX line endings - the most common commands for that are "dos2unix" (in most systems, I think) and "fromdos" (in Ubuntu and possibly others). Try whether it works by running crimesquad.

If it didn't, try running crimesquad from the trunk folder. This shouldn't be necessary since CG's changes (at least it's no longer necessary at my end) but if it fixes the problem, at least you get to play while pondering about it. Try whether it works.

If it didn't work either, see if you have an lcs directory at /usr/local/share/lcs . This too should be unnecessary, but if the two previous fixes didn't work, try copying your sitemaps.txt to /usr/local/share/lcs/art/sitemaps.txt (you will probably need to sudo).

[breadbocks]

It's right out of the box windows.

[Kay12]

Oh, that's weird then. Is it the latest release or built from trunk?

EDIT: Has anyone else noticed that we have both "Crackheads" and "Crack Heads"?

[Jonathan S. Fox]

EDIT: Has anyone else noticed that we have both "Crackheads" and "Crack Heads"?

In what context?