Post by thePalindrome in hackware: prototype comments

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A pretty fun little hacking game, rather similar to hacknet, but going its own way in a manner which is actually pretty fun. Figuring out the commands needed were... a bit wonky ("peek" was one I managed to forget pretty quickly, "jobs" and "accept" doesn't seem to be listed anywhere, and I kept trying to use "cat" instead of 'read'. In addition the download and upload commands weren't obvious to me. That might be some translation thing though, I don't really know.

As for the question you asked in the secret: I think it's a *bit* much with that timer, at least unless you have the ability to stall or extend the timer. Even with the tab completion I only barely made the timer on the second go around. Some form of mild automation would also be rather nice, like the ability to chain the command to configure and execute in one go.

As it is, the atmosphere was rather nice, and I was very amused to see a Fifth Element reference crop up even before the Matrix one!

unconnected2 years ago

Thank you for the feedback! I really appreciate it and it's awesome for me if you had fun and amazing that you spotted Fifth Element since no one else has noticed so far. It's been so long I had forgotten about it.

I'm sorry about the wonky learning curve. The test servers are there to show the 'core' commands I want to use in the game play loop and see if they can use them and bug fix if anything comes up.

The commands are not going to be up to Linux standard because I am not including piping or other things non technical people might consider difficult. So that is why certain commands you may be familiar with are different / simplified. 'open' is used instead of 'cat' for example. 'peek' is a reference to the commodore basic language. When a tutorial is fleshed out I hope it gets more use so people don't forget. Aside from directories I want it to be the main way players can explore a computer and see cool art.

I will update the help file to make sure job, accept and check are there. Also will have a look at the download and upload commands to make them clearer. I'd love to include chain command as well and will have a look to see how feasible it could be to include.

Thanks again!

thePalindrome2 years ago(+1)

Oh, I understand, and I was mainly just hoping to get "cat" as an alias for "open", just so my initial instinct opens up the files :P

I did really appreciate the art and felt it added quite a bit to things! And the output of "dprint" (which is only really mentioned with the helpme screen) works well enough to introduce the various exploit programs. Heck, once you get far enough, you can (ab)use tab completion so you don't have to remember which does what, or even look into what a given exploit wants in the first place! I'm imagining some of the future exploits might end up being things derived from the information already present, like "third letter in the superuser" or something. The wonky learning curve works well enough for now given the near-zero current penalty for failing, it's just a bit frustrating to be spamming various commands to figure out what you want for download (I was under the assumption that the "helpme" was supposed to be a hint system rather than documentation).

As it is, Looking forward to seeing how this goes!

unconnected2 years ago

As an alias it is no problem, I was just afraid of using some commands when they miss certain additional functionality. In case that annoys people. It can be added in easily otherwise.

Think of the 'helpme' as a stopgap to avoid writing a story / real introduction. When I changed mechanics before it meant scrapping a lot of dialogue as well.

Tab is meant to be abused. It is to help give off that speed hacker feel. How you see them in the movies just typing instinctively. That is why long strings like superuser are unique after the first 1 or 2 characters.

Thanks again!

itch.io

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