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Byte Enchanters: Legal Crime User's Manual
Table of Contents
General
Requirements
Installing
Quick Tutorial
Messages
Grouping gangsters
Fighting
Economy
Enemies
The objective of the game
The screen
Bribing
Supporting buildings
Keyboard shortcuts
General
Welcome to Legal Crime, a real-time strategy
game by Byte Enchanters, Ltd! In the game you
are the leader of an organized crime gang. The
object of the game is to gain political and
economic control over the city. This will require
force, armed attacks and a clever defense, an
astute mind and trickiness. You must build an
empire of organized crime, crush other families via cleverly timed
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attacks and legal bills. You must bribe the police and the
politicians, sell booze and extort from shopkeepers.
Please do not try anything you see in the game in
real life.
This game functions only in the net - it is intended only for human
opponents. It is not designed for single player mode. No matter
how clever the computer might get, it is still much more fun to beat
human opponents.
We have made every attempt to make the game as challenging and
thrilling as possible but still entertaining. We would be filled with
gratitude for your comments about the game, these pages or
anything else that we might be able to help you with. The game is
also Kali -compatible (you may start the games from Kali), but
Kali is not required for the game to work.
Have fun!
Requirements
A Pentium PC (100 MHz or faster recommended)
● 16 Mb RAM
● Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0 (if using NT you need 32 Mb memory
and a faster processor)
● A video card with at least 1 Mb of memory (2 Mb recommended) and
drivers for DirectX 2.0
● A display and a video card that can do at least 800 x 600 with 256 colors
● 20 Mb hard disk space
● A Windows-compatible sound card
● An Internet connection (a 14.400 modem or faster)
●
Installing
1. Open the GameClient folder and run Setup.exe by double clicking it.
2. You are presented with the License agreement and the Read me file.
Choose the location you want to install the game in and the installer will
do the rest for you. The complete installation should take no longer than
one or two minutes. If you're upgrading, let the installer copy the new
files over the old ones.
3. If you do not have DirectX installed, you need to download it from
Microsoft and install it. Note that Windows NT 4.0 includes DirectX.
4. When you first start the game, you are asked for a license number. Enter
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each 1-6 digit number in a separate box and press OK. If the OK button
does not appear, you have most likely mistyped the license number. Be
sure to enter one 1-6 digit number in each box. There should be a number
in each of the seven boxes. You do not need to re-enter the license
number later when you update the software. Do not lose your number,
however, because you might need it in case of technical problems.
Starting the game
Next you should be presented with an opening screen with the
following buttons:
Button
Function
Enter gaming
network
Starts a new game or joins an existing game against
human opponents.
Practice
Starts a single player mode for experimenting with
the game.
Preferences
Adjust the sound and music volume enter your name.
Credits
View the list of people who have made Legal Crime.
Quit
Quit the game
Opening screen buttons
Press Enter Gaming Network to view the list of games currently
starting or to initiate your own game. The list contains all the
games currently starting anywhere in the world. Please pay
attention to the geographical location of the initiator of the game if he/she is far away from you, you might experience lag which
makes the game less enjoyable.
If there are no games listed, there are no games starting up. There
may be other players just waiting for someone to start a game or
there might be a game in progress - be brave and start a game of
your own.
You can start a new game if you do not wish to join any of the
existing games by pressing the Enter Gaming Network.
In addition to the initiator and his/her location, you may wish to
consider the skill of the player. If he is almost a real organized
crime leader and you are a novice, it might not be wise for you to
join this game. The Skill column is purely for informational
purposes for other players and you can freely adjust your own skill.
The Skill setting has no effect on the game itself - it is as easy or as
hard regardless of the skill level you consider you're on. The game
is made more difficult by other players, not by restrictions in the
rules. You can also see the number of players currently about to
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begin the game and the version of initiator's game client.
If you decide to start up your
own game, a screen similar to
the one on the right appears.
You can adjust the skill level
of the game (this is purely for
informational purposes for
other players; it does not affect
the difficulty of the game or its
rules).
The maximum number of players is the number that is allowed to
enter this screen and the game. You can adjust this number but
cannot make it bigger than the value preadjusted for the map.
Select the appropriate map and wait for other payers to join. When
they do, you can type them messages in the Chat room in the
upper right-hand corner.
If you choose to join a game instead of creating your own, a screen
like the one on the left is presented to you. In the lower half of the
screen you see the adjustments that can only be set by the initiator
of the game. You can chat with other players via the Chat Room
box.
IMPORTANT! Before the game can begin, each player must
check the OK box in the upper left-hand corner to signal that
he/she has accepted the terms. The game will not begin if someone
has not pressed this button. He/she should leave the game or the
initiator can kick him/her out if he/she does not accept the current
rules of the game.
Quick tutorial
At the beginning of the game you have your headquarters (HQ)
and two gangsters - one armed with a baseball bat and one with a
gun. Try moving around a little: click on either of the gangsters,
then click the Go button from the bottom of the screen and then
click on your destination from either the little map or the main
screen. If your gangster encounters an enemy, he automatically
starts to fight. You can also use a shortcut to move: click on your
gangster with the left mouse button, then click somewhere on the
map with the right button. This is the same as giving the Go
command.
You might notice around you some buildings
that have an "open" sign on them. They are
various shops and other businesses owned by
regular citizens. Also, they are the first source
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of your income. Click on a gangster and then give the
Extort command and then select an open business (note: you can
also do this by giving a regular Go command with its destination
an open business). The shopkeeper might not be willing to pay for
your "protection" at first, but your gangster automatically starts to
"negotiate" with him. The bigger the business and the weaker the
gangster, the harder it is to make the shopkeeper pay you. He
might call the cops and then you should run away or the cops will
arrest your gangster and he is gone forever. If you are successful, a
rotating percent (%) sign will appear on top of the building - this
represents that a certain percentage of the income of the business
given to you for your "protection".
After this a man with a briefcase starts to walk
between the business and your headquarters. He is a
collector. His job is to carry the money from the
business to you. His function is fully automatic - you
cannot control him in any way. By clicking on him
you can see the amount of money he is carrying at the moment.
The collectors are very weak and get killed easily. If this happens,
the killer gets the money and it is directly transferred to his
headquarters. So if you have a profitable business far away from
your headquarters, the collector might need some protection or he
might get robbed by your rivals.
When you click on a business you're extorting, you can see the
amount of money the shopkeeper pays you and the amount of
money that sits there, uncollected (this value is reset to zero when
your collector visits the place).
There are several other buttons for upgrading your extorted
business to a real illegal business. You may upgrade to different
branches of illegal business - bootlegging is the manufacture and
sales of liquor, entertainment is a form of prostitution, gambling is
just what it sounds like and troubleshooting is dealing with
troublesome people by shooting them. Also, you may find a
supporting building, which is discussed in detail later.
After choosing the branch you want to invest in, you are presented
with 1-5 possible upgrades to your business. Usually you should
upgrade to the most expensive business you can afford. The bigger
the business and the better its location, and the more money it will
produce.
If the building gets damaged in a fight, its profit is not optimal and
needs to be repaired in order to be fully profitable. Use the repair
button for this.
Note that when you upgrade the business to any other branch than
Support, you are actually founding an illegal business. This usually
costs a few hundred thousand dollars and takes some time, but is
very profitable. Keep in mind that the police do not like illegal
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businesses. You need to bribe them to keep them away. Later it
might be possible to further upgrade the business to make it more
profitable, but this does not apply to all businesses.
Now you might want to have more gangsters, but keep an eye on
your income. Gangsters' salaries are pretty steep and might cause
you to go bankrupt. There are several kinds of gangsters in Legal
Crime. You'll need bribery in various places to be able to recruit
the more advanced gangsters.
Should you run out of funds and not be able to pay your gangsters'
salaries, they will resign and become neutral. In this game
neutrality means everybody's enemy - the resigned gangsters will
attack anybody in the city. The gangster who resigns is determined
by chance. So if your own gangsters are in front of your HQ, some
of them might resign which could cause the destruction of your
crime empire.
You recruit new gangsters with the buttons in the lower right-hand
corner. At the beginning of the game there is just one button
active; later there will be more when you've bribed the army.
Messages
You can send text messages to
other players by pressing either
the Enter or Return key. Now
you can type your message at the bottom of the screen and send it
by pressing either the Enter or Return. Or press Esc to cancel the
message.
You see other players' messages in the top left corner, among other
game messages. By pressing the square beside the message you
can see the headquarters of the player who sent you the message, if
you know where it is (you have seen it earlier in the game). You
can control who you send your messages to via the Menu
command in the upper left-hand corner.
Grouping gangsters
When you've activated a group of gangsters you may wish to make
them a group to make it easier to handle these guys later. Press
Ctrl and a number from 0-9. The number represents the number of
the group - you can have 10 different groups.
To give a command to the whole group, first select it by pressing a
number from 0 to 9 and then give the command in the usual
fashion. You still may command the gangsters individually if you
wish.
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Fighting
At any given moment, a gangster can only be executing one
command. If you give him another command, the first one will be
canceled and replaced by the second one.
Command
Go to
Buttons
Effect
Key(s)
Go -button, then The gangster(s) walk to the
click on the
destination. If they are
destination in the attacked, they answer the fire
large view or
and after the fight is over,
mini map
they wait for a new command.
g
If the destination of this
command is a neutral
business, the gangster will try
to extort money from the
shopkeeper.
Force go to The same as
The gangsters walk to the
above except that destination and do not care
Shift-G
the shift key is about the enemies even if they
down.
fire.
Attack
Kill -button
The gangster walks to the
without shift.
destination. If the destination
Press shift when is a gangster, they follow him
clicking on the and attack when they reach
destination, not him. If the destination is a
the button.
neutral business, they try to
a
extort from him. If it is an
enemy building, they start to
bash it. If the gangsters are
attacked while walking to the
destination, they fight and get
a new command after the fight
is over.
Force
Kill -button with The same as above except that
attack
shift held down. the gangsters do not answer to
Press shift when fire if they are attacked.
Shift-A
clicking on the
destination, not
the button.
Extort
Grd-button
The gangster will try to extort
the destination (the
e
destination must be a neutral
business.)
Commands that can be executed by the gangsters
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Economy
You have to keep a few things in mind to keep you from running
out of funds.
Upgrading is expensive - make sure you have enough
funds for salaries even while upgrading.
Collector' money is usable to you only after it reaches
your headquarters. Make sure they make it there alive
and keep in mind that even if you have very profitable
businesses, you cannot use that money while the
collector is carrying it.
Extorting is free - do it a lot. But do keep in mind
that if you hire gangsters to make businesses pay you,
you have to pay these gangsters' salaries, too.
There are 4 branches of illegal business in Legal Crime:
Bootlegging (manufacture and sale of alcohol), Entertainment
(bordellos etc.), Gambling and Troubleshooting (hit men etc.).
All these can be legalized except Troubleshooting. When you bribe
the police, you may try to legalize alcohol, which makes
Bootlegging businesses much less profitable.
The larger a market share of a business you have, the more money
you will make. If you have a monopoly in that branch, you'll make
double of what you'd ordinarily make. So it is profitable to
specialize in one branch of a business, but keep in mind that if that
branch is legalized, your income will drop dramatically.
Enemies
When you encounter enemies, you'll recognize them, by the color
of their hats (red). Enemies' businesses and headquarters have
similar symbols on them as yours, but enemy buildings always
have red symbols.
Usually your gangsters automatically start to fight when they
encounter an enemy gangster. They do not consider their chances
of winning - they just fight until they win or die. If this should
happen, you of course no longer have to pay your gangster his
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salary.
The objective of the game
What would you expect? :-) The object of the game is to make the
most money, acquire the strongest army of gangsters, gain the most
power and to crush your enemies. The winner of the game is the
one who has survived the longest time, i.e. is the last one to
survive.
The screen
A screen shot of the game
The screen consists of a tool
& status bar and a bird's eye
view of the city. In general,
you first select the object who
performs a command and then
the command. If the command
has no specific performer,
naturally you do not select
one.
In the lower left corner, there
is a mini map of the city.
There is a small rectangle
which shows the part of the
map that is currently visible on the large bird's eye view. By
clicking on the small map you can move the view around. This can
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also be done via the arrow keys.
On the map you see green dots where your own gangsters are.
Enemies are shown in red, the police in blue and your allies in
yellow. Note that when you are giving your gangsters commands,
such as go to, you can click the destination on the mini map as
well as the larger view.
In the middle of the
bottom of the screen
is the status window
of the unit that is
currently selected.
In this example, you
have clicked a
cadillac, which
costs you $240,000
a week. The green
bar under the
picture of the car
represents its
physical condition.
It shortens and first turns yellow and then red when the car is hit in
a fight; after that the car is destroyed (or a gangster is dead). The
gangsters can not be healed nor the cars repaired.
In the lower part of this window there is a help text that tells you
something about the unit/command that you are about to give. For
example, here you have moved the cursor over the bar that you
bribe the army with (your cursor is not visible in this picture
because the bribing happens in another window.)
You control your spending
with the third window. First
you see your funds, that is,
the money you have in your
pocket. In this example, the
gang has $781 380. Next you
see your income, the total
income of all businesses
minus your expenses, such as
the gangsters' salaries. If you
run out of cash, you
automatically borrow money
(with outrageous interest
rate). If you can not pay your
gangsters' salaries, they resign and start to fight against everybody,
including yourself. If you cannot even pay the interest on your
debts, you lose.
Below the income figure there are 5 bars that you use to control
your spending. To gain various benefits, you need to bribe various
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people. The first bar (with the dollar ($) sign) is the money you put
into savings, that is - this money goes directly into your funds to
be used when upgrading a business or recruiting a gangster. Next
(with the picture of a tank) is the army. You bribe the army to get
better weapons. The FBI is bribed to get information about other
gangsters. The public officials and city council (picture of the
city hall) can aid you in passing laws in your favor, such as voting
for abolishing the probationary liquor law or gaining a special
permit to establish a casino. The final bribing bar (with the picture
of a star) is used to bribe the police. You need this to buy the
police - if bribed enough, you can even ask the police to raid your
enemies' businesses.
Note that when the cursor is on the second bar, you see
the percentage of your income used to bribe the army
in the middle window. Note also that the bribing works
only when you have income. In this particular example
it would make no difference to adjust the bribing bars
because the income is negative.100% of $0 is still $0.
However, as soon as the player gets his cash flow
positive, money starts to flow to all the accounts in the
spending window. You can not bribe using money in
funds; bribing is only possible by directing some of
your income to your "friends in public offices".
On the far right there is a bar with several buttons on it.
You use these to recruit new gangsters to your group.
When you click on a button, a vertical bar representing the
recruiting process appears. Each gangster costs a different amount
of money to recruit and their salaries and recruiting times vary.
You can see the direct expense in the bottom of the middle window
when you hold the cursor over a button (without pressing the
mouse button).
Note that all these gangsters are not immediately available to you
at the beginning of the game. Recall that you need to bribe the
army to get better weapons and gangsters. So if you keep bribing
them, sooner or later a better gangster should be available to you.
On the upper left-hand corner of the screen there is a menu and an
area for game messages. By clicking on the menu you can choose
your allies and enemies (of course your allies do not have to ally
with you), choose who you send your messages to and quit the
game.
You get all kinds of
information via the messages,
such as when you start
extorting from a business or when you lose one, when another
player sends you a message or when a shopkeeper calls the cops.
You send messages to other players by pressing the Enter key,
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typing your message and pressing Return.
Bribing
Bribing plays a major role in Legal Crime. To be successful in the
underworld, you need to give money to the right people to gain
certain privileges.
You adjust your income to the various instances. You can not take
bribe money from your (bank) funds, only from your income. If
your income is 0 or less, you have to make it positive to be able to
bribe.
When something has become available to you after bribing, a new
button appears. For example, when you can recruit a new gangster,
a button appears on the right side of the screen where the recruit
buttons are located. Or, when it becomes possible to have the cops
raid an enemy business, the raid-button appears on the screen when
the enemy business is clicked.
Police
You need to bribe the police to be able to found
profitable businesses in the shops you extort from.
The more you bribe, the better businesses you can
found. You may have the police raid an enemy
business by clicking on the enemy building. (If you
have bribed enough, a button will appear that will let
you have the cops raid the place.) Also, you can tell
the police to arrest enemy gangsters.
Army
This is your supply of weapons. By bribing the army
you gain more efficient gangsters, such as pistol men,
shotgun men and Thompson men - and even a
Cadillac for drive-by-shootings.
FBI
The Federal Bureau of Investigation sells you
information - for a price. You may gain knowledge on
the location of an enemy business, the enemy
headquarters, their funds, income or gangsters, allies
etc.
By clicking on the enemy HQ, you see a button (if
you have bribed enough) which allows you to have an
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FBI agent go and talk to the enemy leader - he cannot
do anything for about 10 seconds. You may disguise
your gangster to sneak into the enemy forces.
Politicians
Forget about democracy - it is the money that buys
you power. You may have enemy businesses
demolished (click on the business and then on the
appearing buttons), have the electricity cut off for a
while (this decreases the income on the block) or hire
a thief, who can steal money from enemy businesses.
You may also start evil rumors about the enemy.
If you click on your own HQ, you may start to
legalize a certain business branch, which decreases
the income on that branch. This allows you to
decrease the income of the enemy.
Supporting buildings
Stake out
You may turn your businesses into stake outs, which
are buildings from where your gangsters shoot the
enemies. These "businesses" can be abolished as usual
(by smashing them), or by sending the police to raid
the business. You need not put your gangsters in these
buildings, they automatically contain one gunman.
Training Center
You train new gangsters in training centers. So, if you
own one, you will recruit new gangsters much faster
than without one. The more training centers you own,
the faster the recruiting will be. To have new
gangsters appear in the front of a training center
instead of your HQ, first click on the Training Center
and then the Primary Training Center button.
Collection Center
When your collectors bring the money in from your
businesses, they are very vulnerable to enemy fire.
Collection centers reduce the distance your collectors
have to walk. If there is a Collection center closer to
the collector than the HQ is, he will take his money to
the Collection center, which will speed up the
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collection of money considerably.
Keyboard shortcuts
Create a group
Keyboard
equivalent
Ctrl-[1-0]
Select a group
1-0
Command
Select a group and center to it
Shift-[1-0]
Recruit a thug
t
Recruit a pistol man
p
Recruit a Thompson man
m
Recruit a sniper
s
Recruit a terrorist
b
Recruit a shotgun man
l
Recruit a Cadillac
c
Recruit a thief
i
Go
g
Attack
a
Force Attack (attack only the target
and nobody else who happens to be
on the way)
Extort
shift-A
e
Repair
r
Patrol
o
Disguise
d
Repair or sell a business
r
Update
u
Switch gangster
Tab
Center to your own HQ
h
Keyboard shortcuts
Different Units
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Unit
Thug
Characteristics
Cheap to recruit & to employ, ineffective
Pistol man More expensive and effective. Can attack from
a range. These are especially effective in a
group.
Thompson Very effective and quite expensive. He can
man
shoot your own gangsters by mistake if they
stand too close to the target. These are the only
kinds of gangsters that are able to shoot from a
car (the others have to get out of the car to be
able to shoot).
Terrorist Very, very expensive to recruit, but can blow a
bomb and thus can be very effective in
attacking big groups or businesses. If a car
drives over one, the car is destroyed and
everyone inside dies.
Sniper
Expensive. Can attack from a long range and is
very accurate. Excellent for ambushes etc.
Thief
Can be used to steal money from your enemies'
businesses.
Shotgun Uses a shotgun, which spreads pellets across an
man
area, and can harm your own gangsters, too.
But they can kill more than one enemies with a
single shot.
Hit man
The enemy gangsters do not automatically
attack these fellows until you attack someone.
So these are great for assassinations etc.
Cadillac This can be used to transport gangsters (use the
Go to command and click on the car as the
destination). If you load a Cadillac with
Thompson men, you can do
drive-by-shootings, just like they did in real
life.
Different Units in the game
©1997 Byte Enchanters
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Recruiting
price (&
monthly
salary)
20 000
60 000
130 000
90 000
110 000
150 000
90 000
100 000
240 000