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Author Topic: Future of the Crime Squad  (Read 22696 times)

Jonathan S. Fox

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Future of the Crime Squad
« on: May 18, 2008, 05:29:00 pm »

By request, this thread is specifically devoted to future development, speculation, etc. for Liberal Crime Squad, modeled after the Future of the Fortress threads for Dwarf Fortress.

Here's where we stand now.

The current primary emphasis of my own efforts are in rewriting a lot of the code to make it more object-oriented and maintainable. This is a big project and won't see a lot of payoff to the player, so the next release is likely to be a bit further off without a lot of proportional reward. That's temporary though. The good side of this is that it'll make the game easier for new developers to work on, will make future development faster and easier for me with less propensity for bugs, and will lay the foundations for being able to make the game moddable using text files to define weapons and such in the future.

Puzzlemaker is also on the project and is working on a separate set of features LCS, but I'll let him talk about it if he'd like to. ^_^

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Torak

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Re: Future of the Crime Squad
« Reply #1 on: May 18, 2008, 06:16:00 pm »

The JSF versions of LCS need to be put into the downloads section of LCS.


Edit: A separate forum would be swell, too.

[ May 18, 2008: Message edited by: Torak ]

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JT

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Re: Future of the Crime Squad
« Reply #2 on: May 18, 2008, 06:20:00 pm »

It might be nice to include visible genders in all of the people you interact with (possibly when moving from structs to classes).  Successfully seducing a person of the same sex would be a crime in an Ultra-Conservative state, and/or would make a political statement towards allowing same sex rights and privileges.  Mixed-sex encounters should have no effect (I'd be wary of making mixed-sex seductions force a shift towards Conservatism, since it's merely status quo, not undermining the fabric of gay marriage).

Visible genders would also allow more prudish players a choice in the gender of their love slaves.

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Little

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Re: Future of the Crime Squad
« Reply #3 on: May 18, 2008, 06:24:00 pm »

Will there be any way to kill tanks?
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Jonathan S. Fox

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Re: Future of the Crime Squad
« Reply #4 on: May 18, 2008, 06:36:00 pm »

Download section of LCS -- I asked Toady last night if he'd put a link to the Curses forum with mention of future development going on, and he was kind enough to agree to do that. The link should be added to the LCS page in the next day or so.

Character Gender -- I am willing to add character gender if you can go into their profile and change it manually from Male to Female to This Liberal Needs No Conservative Gender. Although perhaps adding a hidden unchangable variable as well would govern how Conservatives, and in darker times, moderates, would respond, regardless of your setting. Liberals would always respect your choice.

Tanks -- Yes, eventually. Someday. When molotovs are added. They keep getting pushed back, but never canceled. The addition will probably come after creatures are overhauled, as I'm planning on splitting armor and clothing, and perhaps giving a secondary weapon, which could be a throwable or perhaps a melee weapon for when you're out of ammo. However, I have to note, you aren't really supposed to be able to win the high end sieges, and you can expect to see other difficult to handle issues, like soldiers throwing grenades at the start of combat and helicopter strikes on your compound.

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BishopX

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Re: Future of the Crime Squad
« Reply #5 on: May 18, 2008, 06:48:00 pm »

I would really like that, at the moment sieges aren't really a concern if you have more than 18 armed members in the same location, most of the time they never even get a shot off. Some sort of mechanism that would let them get the first shot in (maybe stub grenades or some use of the tactics skill?) would really help balance that out.
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Jonathan S. Fox

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Re: Future of the Crime Squad
« Reply #6 on: May 18, 2008, 07:23:00 pm »

Yes, I was thinking that SWAT teams will use stun grenades to steal initiative, while soldiers would go ahead and lob frag grenades that would do fairly major damage to the whole party. Both of these could be mitigated with tactics skill, which would enable your squad to move more carefully, take cover, and perhaps ambush them and prevent them from getting their opening move off. But you can't learn tactics except when fighting tactically skilled enemies, so there's a bit of a catch-22 there...
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BishopX

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Re: Future of the Crime Squad
« Reply #7 on: May 18, 2008, 10:31:00 pm »

You can always just recruit a soldier or an agent, that's generally how I start my combat wing.

What sort of creatures should be added?

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JT

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Re: Future of the Crime Squad
« Reply #8 on: May 19, 2008, 01:01:00 am »

quote:
Originally posted by Jonathan S. Fox:
<STRONG>Character Gender -- I am willing to add character gender if you can go into their profile and change it manually from Male to Female to This Liberal Needs No Conservative Gender. Although perhaps adding a hidden unchangable variable as well would govern how Conservatives, and in darker times, moderates, would respond, regardless of your setting. Liberals would always respect your choice.</STRONG>

Free sex changes?

I was actually referring more to the idea that when you see:

code:
Radio Personality  Corporate Manager
Teenager           Security Guard

 You would instead see:
code:
♂ Radio Personality  ♀ Corporate Manager
♀ Teenager           ♀ Security Guard

Also, you could possibly choose to play as either a male or female upon commencement of the game, since that's a classic roguelikeism (something which is based on something which is based on something).

What's the rationale behind allowing changing between one, the other, or none?

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BishopX

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Re: Future of the Crime Squad
« Reply #9 on: May 19, 2008, 01:10:00 am »

It's more liberal :P

[ May 19, 2008: Message edited by: BishopX ]

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Jonathan S. Fox

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Re: Future of the Crime Squad
« Reply #10 on: May 19, 2008, 01:30:00 am »

It'll probably just have a mention of M/F/NA for everyone when you go into try to drop a pickup line. (The gender symbols are not in the ASCII table, and LCS does not use Unicode for display, so they aren't really an option.) Not really important otherwise -- the LCS doesn't concern itself with identifying people by race or gender.  ;)

Allowing you to change is because, as BishopX says, it's more Liberal. Thematically, the game currently ignores gender entirely, not for simple oversight but because it's more Liberal to do so. If we're going to change that, I want to at least make the implementation of gender done in a very Liberal fashion. It's not a "free sex change", just that your Liberals need not adhere to Conservative Ideas about gender and identity. Of course, if you're dropping pick up lines on Conservatives, said Conservative dates might disagree with this, but that's their problem...

[ May 19, 2008: Message edited by: Jonathan S. Fox ]

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a1s

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Re: Future of the Crime Squad
« Reply #11 on: May 19, 2008, 05:15:00 am »

hm... It's kind of interesting to think that your liberal male seducer would  seduce straight female conservatives while pretending to be a female lesbian . It's that much more interesting from their perspective too.
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mainiac

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Re: Future of the Crime Squad
« Reply #12 on: May 19, 2008, 10:41:00 am »

Make it so that the 5% of the population that's gay will stay liberal no matter how conservative the country becomes.  God made us liberal, there's no use resisting it.
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Jonathan S. Fox

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Re: Future of the Crime Squad
« Reply #13 on: May 19, 2008, 01:14:00 pm »

Oh, there's plenty of gay Conservatives and moderates. Log cabin Republicans, closeted GOP politicians, ex-gay ministries, etc. etc.. It is the position of the Liberal Crime Squad that these people have merely been polluted by Wrong Conservative Thought, and that with the right prodding they could awaken to their True Liberal Nature. But then, that's the Liberal Crime Squad's position on everyone they don't decide to shoot, so...
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Twerty

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Re: Future of the Crime Squad
« Reply #14 on: May 19, 2008, 04:44:00 pm »

You guys are taking this issue way too seriously, gender shouldn't have any real impact on the game except ornamental and perhaps a very minor effect in seduction. Gay people don't get 'supar liberal powurz' as mainiac suggested. Let's take a step back here.

Liberal Crime Squad is a game that doesn't make sense. It's not supposed to make sense. It just happens to coincide with most conservative perceptions. This is a game where you seduce people and convince them to fight off the national guard. Where Janitors start out with experience in medieval weapons. Where Soldiers walk around in apartments with their Army Bodyarmour on and M16 in hand. Where playing a guitar will cause people to try to kill you, or, if you happen to be good, will cause people to kill others.

This is a game where you can vastly change an entire nation through mass slaughtering and other felonies.

Gender doesn't matter. This isn't a dating sim, for fark's sake, it's the world through the eyes of a lunatic. Though the eyes of a lunatic, doing 'liberal-oriented crimes' will cause you to become smarter, stronger, better, faster, more charming, and more confident. (juice) And through the eyes of a lunatic, gender doesn't matter.

[ May 19, 2008: Message edited by: Twerty ]

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