I havn't talked much about the 16 gang managment windows that will be in the game, so I'll do that now :-D

I just finished the "Gang Manager" window, where the user will spend a good amount of time. This window allows you to:
- Allocate resources (resources are: Drugs, Money, weapons, armour, cell phones, bags to carry more things, etc.) You'll only be able to drag/drop resources to gang members that are in your territory. If a gangster is outside your territory, their inventory will be grayed out. You'll be able to select more than 1 item at once (mostly for money/drugs where you need to drag/drop 1000s of that type of item at a time) by holding the mouse button down when you select it in the Unused Resource area. The longer you hold the mouse down, the more of the resource you'll grab. There is a number beside the item as you drag it, that tells you how many of it you have selected.
- Quickly see what all your gang members are doing.
- Give "common" orders...such as return to HQ, or sell drugs in the area that the gangster is currently in, etc.
- Adjust the daily wages for the gangster
- View the skills/health/suspicion/wanted levels of the gangster
- Kill a member of your gang (lowers your respect level severly, but frees up an open spot for you to hire a new gangster)
- "Watch" a gangster...the camera follows the gangster through his activities, in a sort of movie mode.

Here's what it's lookin' like:


Next up is the weapons market...this is where you'll buy weapons/ammo for your gang. Anything that you purchase will be sent to your "Unused Resource" pool, and you can give it to your gangsters via the "Gang Manager" window.


The diplomacy window is where you'll set your relations with the other gangs in the city. Through this window you'll be able to:
- Get basic overview info about each of the other gangs.
- Give/Demand a tribute to other gangs, this is helpful to gain favor with the gang, or to sway them to agree to an alliance.
- Propose Neutrality/War/Peace I've still got some figuring about how to do this elegantly...the enemy gang will respond to you by sending you a message.
- Center the camera on any other gang's headquarters. You won't be able to see what they're doing unless you have a gang member in the area (fog of war).
- Set your gang members' reaction upon sight of a member of that gang in each type of territory.

(I'm still not 100% satisfied with the way this window looks)


This is the map screen, you'll be able to toggle various overlays that will tell you different things:
- "Territory" shows you who control what parts of the city.
- "Gangsters" shows you the locations of all of your gangsters.
- "$ Value" overlays the income level of each business in the city, whoever controls the more valuable parts of the city will obviously make more money, legally, on top of their illegal doings.
- "Drug Demand" shows what parts of the city you should try to sell drugs in, there will be a demand in all parts of the city, but if you want to make $1000s of dollars for your gang in single deals...you need to sell in certain parts of the city. Unfortunatly all of the other 6 gangs want to sell their drugs there too...this is the essence of gang war.
- "Police Density" shows the areas of the city that you should avoid performing illegal activities in. Areas that you've "bribed" will not have any police presence. The amount of money that it costs to do this will ensure that you use these areas sparingly, mostly around your headquarters, or safehouses to ensure your gangsters have somewhere to hide from the man.
- You can also use this window to quickly orient the 3D camera by clicking and holding the mouse to rotate the camera to your desired angle.


I've still got to do one of the other main windows, the "Drug Market", I'm gonna knock that out tommorow, I've got some cool ideas for it :-D

Here's a screenshot of the "Action" mode, as well with a small image of a news chopper. The news choppers fly around the city looking for newsworthy events. They mostly function as an interesting camera angle :-)

- Dan