Shops and economy

Mafia II’s city shops — gunshops, bars, clothes stores — work in multiplayer, but with the single-player purchase logic deliberately cut out. What remains is a clean split: the client runs the shop experience, the server owns the items and the money. Understanding that split is most of this guide.

Money

The server is the only authority on a player’s balance:

server/main.js

player.addMoney(50);
player.removeMoney(25);
const balance = player.getMoney();

The balance is synced to the owning client, where the native HUD cash counter displays it. Nothing client-side can change it.

How a purchase flows

1. The player walks into a shop trigger. playerShopEnter fires with the shop name, its internal script path, whether the native menu actually opened (nativeOpened), and the trigger source.
2. If the native menu opened, playerShopOpen fires. The shopName here is the friendly configuration name (e.g. "Gunshop", "Deli bar") — the same name the item registry and the client’s Shop.open use.
3. The player buys an item. The item is granted natively on the client — but nothing is charged there, because the single-player purchase handler is disabled. Instead playerShopBuy fires server-side, and charging is your job:

server/main.js

Events.on("playerShopBuy", (player, shopName, itemIndex, weaponId, price, secondary) => {
  if (price <= 0) return;

  const balance = player.getMoney();
  if (balance < price) {
    // The native menu gates on the synced balance, so this means the
    // client lied or drifted — log it, and consider it a red flag.
    console.warn(`${player.nickname} bought $${price} with only $${balance}`);
  }
  player.removeMoney(price);
  notify(player, `Purchased for $${price.toFixed(2)} — balance $${player.getMoney().toFixed(2)}.`);
});

secondary is true when the purchase was ammo for a weapon rather than the item itself.

4. Closing the menu fires playerShopClose with a native close-reason code (2 = the player left or pressed ESC, 3 = closed by a buy).

Caution

Skipping the playerShopBuy handler gives everyone free shopping — the native flow happily grants items and never charges. If your game mode uses money at all, this handler is mandatory.

The item registry

The server can override any shop’s item slots globally with the replicated Shop registry. Overrides apply to every player — including a menu that is already open, and late joiners:

server/main.js

// Shop.setItem(shopName, slotIndex, enabled, visible?, price?, ammoPrice?)
Shop.setItem("Gunshop", 3, true, true, 250);   // reprice slot 3 to $250
Shop.setItem("Gunshop", 7, false);             // disable slot 7
Shop.clearItem("Gunshop", 3);                  // back to the retail default
Shop.getItems();                               // every active override

Slot indexes are positions in the shop’s retail item layout. Disabled slots grey out in the native menu; invisible ones disappear.

Opening and closing programmatically

The menu itself is client-side, so the server asks for it with an intent:

client/main.js

CLIENT_CALLS["shop.open"]  = (a) => Shop.open(a.shopName);  // must be streamed in
CLIENT_CALLS["shop.close"] = ()  => Shop.close();

Shop.open(shopName) only works for a shop whose trigger area has streamed in — the player needs to be near it.

Replacing a shop with your own UI

To swap the native menu for a custom interface (a web view, say), veto the synchronous client shopOpen event. This stops the menu before anything is drawn — calling Shop.close() afterwards is too late, the native menu is already fading in:

client/main.js

Events.on("shopOpen", (shop) => {
  console.log(`shopOpen: ${shop.shopName} (source=${shop.source})`);
  openCustomShop(shop.shopName);
  return false;                 // suppress the native menu
});

Server-side, a vetoed open still fires playerShopEnter with nativeOpened === false — so the server always knows the player is at a shop, whichever interface handles it. From there, your custom UI’s purchases flow through your own client events, with the same server-side charging discipline as above.

Jukeboxes

The shops’ seven native jukeboxes are wired too: a player dropping a coin fires jukeboxUse(player, jukeboxId) server-side, with the track already rolled. Jukebox.getState(jukeboxId) reads what is playing (slot, playing, seed, elapsed), and Jukebox.playSong(jukeboxId, seed?) / Jukebox.stop(jukeboxId) drive one directly.

The telephone

The PhoneBook registry mirrors onto every client’s native dial menu at in-world phone booths. Dialing raises a server event:

server/main.js

PhoneBook.addNumber(1234, "Taxi");
PhoneBook.addNumber(911, "Emergency");

Events.on("playerDialNumber", (player, number, name, cost) => {
  if (number === 1234) {
    // dispatch a taxi…
  }
});

addNumber optionally takes a text id, a call cost, and a type; removeNumber, has, clear, and getNumbers manage the book.