I wanted to play this since i really like the concept of hacking games but i just cant.. figure out any commands or what to do lol. i feel dumb and its probably obvious but i just got stuck in the test job server. i guess it depends on your audience but someone like me had no clue on what to do.
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hackware: prototype's itch.io pageComments
Hey, you aren't dumb. Plenty of people have had trouble, There just isn't a good tutorial yet because it is a prototype but thank you for the feedback. If you want to give it another go here are some pointers.
Type help + command to get a brief description of any command and how it can be used. You can also type help 1 through 5 to check all commands available.
Example: help 3, help jobs, help check, help accept
You will get an email giving you the server ip to attack. When you connect it will have some info on the page mentioning some commands to check out. help dprint and help :impcon
dprint just shows all the info on a server you need to know to hack it.
:impcon is the first hack but needs configuring before you run it. So you do :impcon set_host and the server host name. You can see all available host options with :impcon list.
Look at the host name in dprint and just type the first few letters in lower case. Tab will auto complete it. Then you do :impcon exploit to run it and you should be in.
All the other hacks are similar but need set_port as well. Do them first if available then :impcon as the final one.
Hope this helps if you want to give it another go but if you don't thanks for trying it out. I will be working on it to be friendlier in the future. Right now I am just focused on getting core mechanics in.
I did enjoy Hacknet and Uplink back in the day, but I'm afraid that my collapsing brain simply crumpled under the intellectual weight required by this game. I set :impcon's host, hit exploit, failed the set_host test. After a couple of alternate hosts in list, I was about out of ideas. I also happened upon a couple of crashes after running :impcon config, so maybe my computer is just full of termites.
For actual, tangible feedback that doesn't amount to "please pander to my 70 IQ", the bright gridlines distract from the server icons in the map. Fun to mess with the terminal, though. Good luck with the game.
Thanks for trying. Did you not try dprint to see what the server was set to? Or was it not clear enough on the screen when displayed? You are the second to say they just tried all the hosts in the list so I am wondering if is the instructions saying try dprint or if I need to make the relevant server information easier to notice. If you found the list I could also throw a tip in the help files to say. Get server info using dprint.
The :impcon set_host to nothing and then :impcon config is a known bug I have fixed for the next version. Thanks again.
Aaaaaah, I see now, you're not looking for a direct match.
Once I knew what I was looking for, knocked out the 4 jobs in 10 minutes. Lot of fun. I'd just slap a "MATCH THE SHELL'S DETAILS IN DPRINT TO LIST" on :impcon's help printout under list or something, that should be all you need to point thicky thicky dumb dumbs like me in the right direction.
Good game!
I did! And if you're asking for feedback on the max hack thing: I absolutely disagree. Cleared it with 90 seconds to spare. That's IF you don't decide to cheese it by listing the host/os through :raexec/:impcon and then dcing for extra time. Brother, it's a hacksim. I want that final secret server to be under lockdown with every trick in the book.
would be nice if resolution setting affected the main menu too, I thought it wasn't working at first. Also would be nice to allow fullscreen, it was a bit hard to read sometimes
didn't expect case sensitivity in the terminal.
delete key repeat is quite slow (but its nice you have ctrl delete there)
cool concept and interesting gameplay
Thanks for the feedback. With the menu I wanted it to feel like a bootup program.
Fullscreen should be working, it is an option in the settings. What resolution did you try and what's your native? I could also try putting in a larger font in the future as an option.
You are right about the case sensitivity I will drop the naming conventions to be all lowercase. Thanks again.
This is promising! Good sound design, nice visuals, nice music. The hacking's intense when you have to read out and type complicated text like the superuser or encoding. I can see this being expanded for all sorts of interesting challenges.
One thing I'd suggest for gameplay is resetting the terminal history when you get booted from a server. Right now if I fail to get the exploit in time, I can try again and rapid-fire the commands by going through the terminal history. Maybe that's intentional for the test missions, but some suggestions if it's not:
- Have the remote sessions use a separate terminal history. When you get disconnected, that history is cleared
- For harder missions, maybe some attributes in dprint are randomized
- When the timer hits zero, close the whole terminal window like it crashed or something
I also found the game crashes if you type ":impcon set_host" with no argument, followed by ":impcon config". It seems to work for setting other config in other exploit commands, like :raexec.
Overall, nice work! This is pretty cool so far.
Submitted
Kitty Gets a Burger (Prototype)Thanks for trying it out. I thought I had made the terminal foolproof and was honestly surprised you found that crashing bug. Nice job though, fixed it for v0.43.
I am gonna simplify the hacking a bit by removing set_port. So the player can tab set_ then start typing the value. I want the feel to be like a hacker typing somewhat fluidly. When it came to needing to set_port and the other set_ it felt like an interruption.
I think you are right on killing the terminal history and the terminal itself on the timer hitting zero. That or I could force a system reboot sequence. Will work on it in the future. Thanks again.
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