Commit a crime, and the earth is made of
glass. Commit a crime, and it seems as if a coat of snow fell on the
ground, such as reveals in the woods the track of every partridge and fox
and squirrel and mole. You cannot recall the spoken word, you cannot wipe
out the foot-track, you cannot draw up the ladder, so as to leave no
inlet or clew. Some damning circumstance always transpires. The laws and
substances of nature -- water, snow, wind, gravitation -- become
penalties to the thief.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Compensation
News
2005-08-29: The London Law development code now uses gettext for translation. You can help create a
translation into your language by
editing this template
using Ubuntu's Rosetta web-based translation engine.
2005-07-05: London Law 0.2.1 has been released. This is a minor bugfix
version--you need upgrade only if you experience problems connecting to the
server, probably with Twisted 2.0.
2005-02-17: London Law 0.2.0 has been released, with brand new networking code.
(ChangeLog)
Introduction
London Law is an online multiplayer adaptation of the classic
Scotland Yard board game
(also see Wikipedia), first
published by Ravensburger in 1983. The game is unusually asymmetric; one player
controls the movements of the criminal Mr. X as he tries to evade Scotland Yard,
while another one to five players control five detectives trying to track him
down. Mr. X has an advantage in access to transportation routes, and his precise
location remains hidden for most of the game. The detectives have only the
advantage of superior numbers, so they must work in concert to limit the
criminal's options. London Law features an attractive map overlaid on
high-resolution satellite imagery.
London Law is Free Software, released under Version 2 of the GNU General Public
License.
Screenshots:
Requirements
London Law requires Python 2.3 or
greater, as well as wxPython2.4.x
or
2.5.x (Mac users are advised to use wxPython 2.5,
which offers more mature OS X support). In addition, the Twisted networking framework is
required. These packages are all highly cross-platform; as a result, London
Law should run on GNU/Linux (my development platform), *BSD and other Unices,
Mac OS X, and Windows.
All-in-one application bundle (client only, for OS X 10.3.x): londonlaw-0.2.0-osx-client.zip (9.4MB)
Just click and run, no external dependencies. (Thanks to Joshua O'Keefe for
donating this bundle.)
Server-only source tarball: londonlaw-0.2.0-server.tar.gz (81KB)
If you just need the server to go along with the client-only bundle,
use this archive. Python 2.3 and the Twisted framework are required (wxPython is not).
Debian GNU/Linux:
Thanks to Reinhard Tartler for providing a
Debian package.
This project is developed using GNU Arch
for revision control. Interested developers are encouraged to track my public repository;
the archive is named
and is located at
http://www-personal.engin.umich.edu/~pelzlpj/tla/2005.
Primary development is in branch londonlaw--main .
Contact Info
London Law has a mailing list;
this is a good place to report bugs, discuss future development, or even ask for people
to play a game with.
London Law is written primarily by Paul Pelzl (email).
