Uplink / Hacking Games

[NiX]

I was talking with a friend who had recently played Uplink and we both agreed that someone should advance the genre, but no one really has. He's a Comp-Sci major, so posed the idea of making one. Was just wondering if anyone else had played Uplink or a variant and what they felt was missing or done right?

For a long time the Uplink crowd pushed Introversion to make a sequel with multiplayer. I've always questioned whether or not multiplayer could work in such a setting and in what capacity. The only options I see are:

Option 1:
Each person is an agent within the hacking company and all compete against each other to be the "top" hacker on the a leaderboard. This is done already, but you're up against the computer who typically gets arrested or is killed (doesn't happen often), never to return. Really defeating the purpose of the leaderboard. Possible problems that would need to be addressed is how to avoid or come back from being arrested. Being killed would be removed.

Option 2:
Players are in teams, part of rival corporations. Problem being that if it were to be left as most hacking games are now and the duration being very long, it would entirely be based on who can spend more time playing rather than actual skill. An alternative to the rival corporations is say Hacker Corporation avoiding the FBI or some sort of agency out to stop cyber crimes.

Option 3:
Each player is just a single person with an agenda. Each person is given differing agendas, but it all eventually leads to them competing against each other. Sabotaging hacking attempts, taunting, framing opponents...etc. would be the focus of this mode with the end being based around something like last man standing.

I've tried thinking of a persistent setting, but that would involve a crazy amount of missions/jobs and a lot of balancing. How to ensure everyone has a fair chance, especially with these types of games being entirely dependent on time invested, for the most part. I'm thinking out loud,  but if anyone has any input!

[Samwise]

I thought Uplink was an interesting idea with a sort of cool UI but a complete failure as a game.  Poor feedback plus harsh penalty for failure does not make fun.

So, to answer your question, I think the important thing would be to avoid the parts of Uplink that made it crappy.

[NiX]

I thought Uplink was an interesting idea with a sort of cool UI but a complete failure as a game.  Poor feedback plus harsh penalty for failure does not make fun.

So, to answer your question, I think the important thing would be to avoid the parts of Uplink that made it crappy.

Feedback on jobs done? I totally agree with the penalty being only one kind of severity. It's especially frustrating when it means the end of your game and having to restart from scratch.

Would adding a physical aspect to your character help? Meaning if there was a way to track down information pertaining to the FBI potentially finding you and you being able to move around as a person rather than being tethered to one console, would that benefit or deter from the gameplay?

[Samwise]

It would benefit the gameplay if it gave you more of a chance to recover from mistakes, but it would actually hurt the "lore" of the game a bit IMO -- one thing I thought was very clever about Uplink (and Darwinia too, actually) was that the game itself was supposed to represent what "you" would see while sitting at your computer in the gameworld.

There are other ways that the game could offer feedback so as to cut down on frustration.  For example, being able to better monitor your impending doom, and having a chance to reverse it, rather than the "oh hi, the FBI tracked you down from that gig you did two days ago because you didn't have an expensive enough log deleter, game over".  Like, say, have those log trails lead to the intermediate nodes rather than you directly, and have them alert you as the FBI starts snooping around in them; then you can escape by cutting off your connections to that node.

Another thing that was annoying about Uplink was having to grind repetitive missions for cash to buy upgrades to advance the story.  And worse, having the repetitive missions run out before you had enough cash (I think that's what made me stop playing the game -- I was forced to take on a job I wasn't equipped for because there were no other jobs available, and then it was game over).  This is really easy to fix, of course; make shit cheaper or make money easier to get.

[Samwise]

You know what else could be interesting?  Having the game use actual (simple) "hacking" techniques rather than "buy upgrade X to unlock quest Y".  Like, say, cracking a less secure email server to read someone's email to get a clue as to their actual password to the corporate family jewels.  Or being able to "write" your own tools -- implement a very simple scripting language that you can implement password guessers and log scrubbers in, and have ingame tutorials that help players piece together their own scripts.  This would make for a very niche game, of course, unless you were able to sell it as edutainment (in which case it could be a gold mine).

[NiX]

You know what else could be interesting?  Having the game use actual (simple) "hacking" techniques rather than "buy upgrade X to unlock quest Y".  Like, say, cracking a less secure email server to read someone's email to get a clue as to their actual password to the corporate family jewels.  Or being able to "write" your own tools -- implement a very simple scripting language that you can implement password guessers and log scrubbers in, and have ingame tutorials that help players piece together their own scripts.  This would make for a very niche game, of course, unless you were able to sell it as edutainment (in which case it could be a gold mine).

With the simple hacking, I could see a lot of potential for more meaningful work. It would actually make each task a bit more important rather than Uplink's style of "get in, get out and move on." As for the simple scripting, it would be good if it used basic C or something, very very simple, but at the same time could be very tedious for some users who actually want to get away from the programming they want to do every day.

Uplink does have the logs lead to intermediates, but they just don't notify you about it. Essentially once you've screwed up there's nothing you can do to reverse their progress. I agree with being able to see their progress on tracking you, having a more intricate logging system where you have to check each connection could lead to a mole program being usable that would notify you when your log is checked (repeatedly). Adding an AI social aspect could work too with having hacker "friends" with different talents, so someone with access to FBI records could inform you of a file being opened on your activity. Something along those lines.

[CmdrSlack]

There's actually a few games out there that do stuff like that.

All of them have their various flaws.

Darksigns

Hacker Evolution which has a sequel, I think.

Street Hacker

Dark Signs has loads of scripting. I suck at scripting as it is, so it was a bit much for me.

Hacker Evolution is like Uplink, but even worse on the cash factor.

Street Hacker apparently has street walking around bits, but I only played the demo and didin't want to pony up dough for the full version.

[Sheepherder]

On Death Penalty:

Assuming that a lot of the assets in this game are zombie nets, and a code base: have the old player's assets meticulously logged and remain in play upon death/arrest, slowly being removed from play by the FBI.  So once you start a new game the initial learning stages can be fast-tracked by cannibalizing the unwatched stuff of the last hacker before the Feds get it all.  A rogue-like where you can loot the corpses of previous play-throughs.