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A jam submission

hackware: prototypeView game page

A hacking simulation for PC.
Submitted by unconnected (@_unconnected) — 1 day, 6 hours before the deadline
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hackware: prototype's itch.io page

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

ls-ing in empty directory should spit out nothing not a warning that theres nothing in it. Same with nescanning empties etc. its fine if it says No Connections, but would prefer it not be red. Reserve the Red for wrong inputs and unrecognized commands.

Help 4 says help page 3 / 5 instead of 4 / 5, but seems to list contents correctly.

Why does repeat previous command require a LineNumber when there are no linenumbers displayed next to the Lines? Also why use ! for that? Feels like an odd choice.

Bluescreen gave me a Heartattack, screw you, please don't do this.

The Hacking itself is rather nice, good Job, I especially like the initial peeking, and timestop when you breached the security.

I would like it to have the option for multiple filebrowser at the same time, because I forgot how the file to be uploaded was named, so I had to go back and look. Also multiple console windows would be nice as an option, to keep exploit options on screen i.e. until you've learned them by heart.

Are there plans for more manual bypassing if you ever run out of premade exploit software? Like getting to a os not supported by raexec i.e. or just getting to a server without known exploits at all?

at the moment all the exploits seem to break down into looking which are available, listing options to see what data to pick, then executing until you have enough for impcon. A bit more variety in approaches down the line would be nice I guess.

Overall good Job tho, its obviously very short at the moment, but pretty enjoyable already.

Developer

hi, thanks a lot for the feedback. really appreciate it and i will be making some changes from it.

when you type history you get all the line numbers of your previous commands. if you use the arrow keys up and down it will cycle through them. it is just a feature to make everything a bit more real and closer to existing terminals.

i am trying to think of a good solution to viewing your own directories while connected to somewhere else. it might be a variation of ls but "lshome" for example. this is due to the constraints i have with the command class.

i am thinking of a command extension for help. like "help 1 export" which will dump all that text into a side window. i can't really do multiple console windows though because all the main windows are singletons.

i do have plans for certain servers to require snooping in others. related servers networked together to give player that indication what they need is in that network. maybe they hack another server and search through .txt files or peek at some database. you maybe didn't find the secret server?

i plan on more variety for the hacking bit but want to keep it away from the minigame puzzles we see in most AAA stuff and not actual coding either. it is meant to be a somewhat chill experience in the end. right now though, got plenty of things to fix and add. thanks again!

Submitted(+1)

Since you already have file creation up, why not allow editing contents of the files? (Might be already in and I already overlooked it, sorry)

That way the player could just write their own memo files and keep them open on the side.

I'm glad its a more executeable based hacking instead of the minigame puzzles aswell, but maybe you could add some option to having to figure out which exploit to use instead of looking through the ports to see what exploits work on the machine? Or other ways to gather login information, apart from breaking in? Just a few short thoughts.

Developer(+1)

yeah, you can edit text files with "replace" or "append". make your own with "mkfile" and make a directory with "mkdir" but they are in there for the same reason as "history" and "!".

i see what you mean with that. the thing with dprint is i want to keep it consistent for non technical players. when it gets too obscure or clever, they slip up and feel dumb. you may not have had it but there are guys that had trouble getting past mission 1.

i was considering some stuff similar to nite team 4. they had a information gather feature but it might be hard to write. i also want to do something with the log files, maybe ip change or spoofing. or a single reference server with big db style pages to search.

Submitted (1 edit) (+1)

I am extremely smitten with this game, so all of my critique is about the set dressing--not the great game front & center.

This is the only pressing issue I found: the OS button that brings up the dropdown for the terminal, map & everything else is right below the close button on Windows.  I was playing windowed instead of fullscreen and I accidentally closed it once, you might want to move the taskbar somewhere else the screen, or let the user configure its location for those clumsy players such as myself.  Also, in the future I'd like the launcher to save my settings, I had to reset it to windowed each time I launched.  Now everything else is nitpicking, I'd like to be able to ls directories instead of having to cd into the directory I want to ls, I'd like to be able to use semi-colons to split commands without needing to <RET> between each command, I think it'd be cool if bin/ actually contained all the executable commands, and I'd like the mail button to show all the mail instead of closing the mail window if I'm looking at a specific email.  And may I please have neofetch & scrot.

I think I did cause a parsing error  & had to abort the game (happened at roughly the 5 minute mark in the playthrough).  Here's pastebin of what popped up https://pastebin.com/gD2iZ2YM

Overall I think the gameplay is great--it really reminded me of when I installed linux for the first time and I just spent hours going through all the manpages, and the AESTHETIC perfectly captures a /g/ desktop thread. It delivers the fantasy of being a Hollywood hacker expertly. Here's a video of my (second, I forgot to adjust the video resolution for the first) playthrough of Hack[ware].  I'm excited to see what gets added in the future & how development progresses!

Submitted(+1)

Loved the presentation!

The hacking themselves were really simple but figuring out the rules and commands was pretty fun on its own.
I'm very interested to see what a non-tutorial mission plays like.

Developer

thanks a lot!

it is nice to hear someone just enjoyed the experience because i've had a few guys not be able to get past job 1. i plan on focusing on improving the tutorial missions a bit first just to make sure nobody feels like a brainlet. hopefully don't disappoint you when i get the non-tutorials back in.