Hacking Games

[DarkSign]

One of the things I want to do is bring hacking games into MMOs. But whatever do you mean? Well, I'll tell you.

Hacker Evolution:




DarkSigns



Uplink



Street Hacker




Anyone here a fan of hacking simulation games?

[UnSub]

Like in Bioshock?   

[schild]

I was thinking the multitool in Deus Ex.

[Yegolev]

System Shock?

[Samwise]

SWG had some sort of hacking minigame for blowing up faction bases.  I never saw it, but I have it on good authority that it existed at some point.

[caladein]

SWG had some sort of hacking minigame for blowing up faction bases.  I never saw it, but I have it on good authority that it existed at some point.

From: http://starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com/players/guides.vm?id=80140

Destroying a Base

Professions Needed to Destroy Bases:

    * Medic
    * Bounty Hunter
    * Officer
    * Commando
    * Smuggler

To destroy a base a series of 5 terminals must be sliced. Once all five terminals are sliced the base will go into a 10 minute countdown. The procedure is as follows:       

Jam the Uplink Terminal - You must be a bounty hunter. To jam this terminal you need to select a bandwidth between 1 and 10. As you choose numbers you will be told if you need to go higher or lower. After the correct bandwidth is chosen, you must choose a channel. To find the channel you repeat the same process you used to find the correct bandwidth.*

Slice the Security Terminal - You must be a smuggler to slice this terminal. To slice this terminal summon the radial menu and hit slice.

DNA Sequence the Override Terminal - You must be a medic to use this terminal. This is definitely the most challenging terminal to use. There is a total of 23 letters displayed that need to be matched with letters from the sample string. The letter A needs to be matched with the letter T and vice versa. The letter C needs to be matched with the letter G and vice versa.

Switch Alignment of the Power Regulator - You must be a commando to use this terminal. Your goal is to get all the switches to an off position. To accomplish this you will need to flip the various switches which will in turn flip one or more switches.

Active Overload at the Primary Terminal - You must be an officer to use this terminal. To activate the overload terminal simply select activate overload from the radial menu.

Countdown Initiated - The base will blow up after 10 minutes. If you're destroying a SF base you will need to guard the base from the opposing factional, which has the ability to abort the countdown. If countdown is aborted, the officer will need to activate the overload again.

Aborting the Countdown (SF Bases Only) - Should someone successfully slice all 5 terminals and set a base in countdown, you have 10 minutes to abort the countdown. This can be accomplished by summoning the radial menu on the primary terminal (directly inside the base) and select abort countdown. You will have to stay in front of the terminal for one minute for the countdown to be aborted. You must also have been special for 5 minutes for the countdown to be aborted.

* Note: All terminals must be sliced in order.

Pre-NGE the professions would have been Bio-Engineer instead of Medic and Squad Leader instead of Officer, but the procedure above is similar to how I remember it.

[Yegolev]

Aren't hacking games just puzzle games with a 1980's styling?

[fuser]

Like in Bioshock?   

Nah, less pipes more life like ;)

[Engels]

Wasn't there an entire class in Anarchy Online based on hacking implants? I forget what the class was called, but his primary skill was being able to equip players with implants and equipment way above their level range.

[Sky]

[DarkSign]

HACKING GAMES ARE NOT MINIGAMES!!!

That's what crappy game designers have made you believe!

The real hacking games (like the ones I've listed) are about avoiding being traced, upgrading parts, doing port scans to find vulnerabilities.

It's killing me that the responders to the thread think that minigames are what I mean by hacking.

Go read some of the gamefaqs for DarkSigns or Uplink :)

[Valmorian]

Go read some of the gamefaqs for DarkSigns or Uplink :)

Um, don't know anything about DarkSigns, but I've played Uplink and it basically IS a minigame of "how fast can you click on buttons?". 
It's about as similar to hacking as the pipe game in Bioshock is as similar to actual plumbing.. actually, come to think of it, they aren't really that dissimilar aside from window dressing.  They're both about performing a relatively simple operation as quickly as possible..

[bhodi]

[Sky]

HACKING GAMES ARE NOT MINIGAMES!!!

I didn't post a minigame!

[bhodi]

There are "real" hacking websites where you learn about flaws of javascript and flash and php.. but I suspect that's not what you had in mind either.

[Morfiend]

If you where to turn it in to a MMOG I think you would need some thing like "the Metaverse" from Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. Where you are a digital representation in an online world. A pure hacking game like Uplink I think would just be a little to bland to play for very long.

[DarkSign]

Love Snowcrash.

I guess I havent really explained the MMOG integration. There's really 2 levels.

The first level is building and using computers to retrieve information, control objects/open doors, disable security and such. Imagine that NPCs had email accounts with quest information, schedules for guards or delieveries - or that you could place incriminating evidence on someones computer for the purpose of framing them of a crime - or of course that you could disable security and send viruses that disrupted operations.

The second level would be along the lines of netrunning an avatar in an abstract "cyberspace" environment where password cracking was visually represented by a hammer or other graphic. Or defense was a huge wall or dogs that had to be dealt with.

The idea is instead of having to hold down a dumbass "e" button to hack something (ala UT2K4 Assault Maps or Splinter Cell games) that there actually be a sophisticated game of identifying servers, cracking passwords, not getting traced, and manipulating the world around you.

Uplink had it's clickfests, but DarkSigns and Hacker Evolution are more "realistic" puzzles with real computer theories behind the game.

[Yegolev]

Why don't you just try to hack World of Warcraft?

[sidereal]

All games are a bunch of timed clicking.

I believe DarkSign is talking about timed clickfests that are complicated and have the audiovisual trappings of 'realistic' hacking*.

Games that call a minigame hacking (like Mass Effect's timed buttonmashing) aren't necessarily providing the trappings of hacking.

*Of course, 'realistic' hacking would involve begging a script off your leet buddies on IRC, hitting execute, going to sleep, and waking up to see if you have any zombies on channel

There's no reason you couldn't port the WoW experience to 'hacking' trappings by, for example, changing skills to scripts and gear to hardware.

[Kitsune]

I have Uplink, fun game, agree that having a similar mechanic as a hacking component of a larger game would be swank.

[Nebu]

I played Uplink for a while (ok, the demo) and felt like it was more of an air traffic controller sim than anything.  Having to bounce my connection all over to avoid getting caught wasn't the part of the game that I wan't to focus on. 

Does anyone remember an old D&D title that had a lockpick mini-game that you had to win in order to unlock doors/chests?  I loved that.  It was like matching a key shape to a lock shape in a fixed amount of time. 

[DarkSign]

Try the Hacker Evolution demo that's even better than Uplink, but kudos for trying UL.  I admit it's the "trappings" of hacking and not really hacking, but there its far from a game of Bejeweled or pipefitting.

[Krakrok]

I liked Syndicate where you could hack people with the persuadatron.

If you want a hacking game just load up your PC with spyware and viruses. Then try to remove them in real time using the command line and Regedit. I had to do that on someone's machine a couple weeks ago. It took six hours of fighting the shit that kept reinstalling itself over and over. Finally beat it though. Ding! Gratz.

[DarkSign]

LOL. No thanks. I might do a "Let's Play!" for Dark Signs though.

[CharlieMopps]

Neocron has hacking. It's a skill and you use it to steal peoples shit... also there's a "Matrix" style world you can hack into and run around in.

[Sky]

System Shock's virtual world hacking was pretty cool. How that turned into Bioshock's lame water pipes? Gah. 

Wish Planetside hacking was more of a minigame rather than just standing around watching a timer bar   

[WindupAtheist]

I don't care if it was only part of the game, this shit was fun.

[UnSub]

Does anyone remember an old D&D title that had a lockpick mini-game that you had to win in order to unlock doors/chests?  I loved that.  It was like matching a key shape to a lock shape in a fixed amount of time. 

Hillsfar? I had a look but couldn't find any pics of that sub-game.

[DarkSign]

Ahhhh.

[sigil]

Sky, was that from hacker2 or the original game. I remember wanting to throw both of those game across the room before I figured them out.

[DarkSign]

Thats from ShadowRun the SegaGenesis version, amirite?

[Nerf]

Indeed, I remember playing that when I was but a wee young thing of 10 or 11, good times.

[WindupAtheist]

Thats from ShadowRun the SegaGenesis version, amirite?

Correct.  One of the best god damned role-playing games ever made.

[Sky]

Sky, was that from hacker2 or the original game. I remember wanting to throw both of those game across the room before I figured them out.

I think it was the original. I used to be into cryptic games when I was a kid, stemming from text-based adventures where you had to be precise with your verbiage.

[cironian]

I wish someone would make an updated version of this: http://www.the-underdogs.info/game.php?id=761

I played the hell out of that back on my old C64 and it's still the most fun I had in a hacking game. The way you move up from chatting up people on the street for passwords to battling AIs in the later stages was a nice mix. Also, every game should offer a chance to sell off your body parts for $$$.