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 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 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:

Opening screen 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

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 begin the game and the version of initiator's game client.

If you decide to start up your own game, you will be asked for some specifications. 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 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 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.

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.

Commands that can be executed by the gangsters

Command	Buttons	Effect	Key(s)
Go to	Go -button, then click on the destination in the large view or mini map	The gangster(s) walk to the destination. If they are attacked, they answer the fire and after the fight is over, they wait for a new command. If the destination of this command is a neutral business, the gangster will try to extort money from the shopkeeper.	g
Force go to	The same as above except that the shift key is down.	The gangsters walk to the destination and do not care about the enemies even if they fire.	Shift-G
Attack	Kill -button without shift. Press shift when clicking on the destination, not the button.	The gangster walks to the destination. If the destination is a gangster, they follow him and attack when they reach him. If the destination is a neutral business, they try to 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.	a
Force attack	Kill -button with shift held down. Press shift when clicking on the destination, not the button.	The same as above except that the gangsters do not answer to fire if they are attacked.	Shift-A
Extort	Grd-button	The gangster will try to extort the destination (the destination must be a neutral business.)	e

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 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

 

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 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 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, 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 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 collection of money considerably.

Keyboard shortcuts

Keyboard shortcuts

Command	Keyboard equivalent
Create a group	Ctrl-[1-0]
Select a group	1-0
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)	shift-A
Extort	e
Repair	r
Patrol	o
Disguise	d
Repair or sell a business	r
Update	u
Switch gangster	Tab
Center to your own HQ	h

Different Units