Slashdot Mirror
Uplink
miracle69 writes: "Well, it looks like the perfect convergence for the average Slashdot reader. What we've got here is a game that is approaching the Slashdot Enthusiast's Valhalla. It's released under Windows and Linux, costs a mere 25 USDs, and has no middleman to jack prices up. Of course, that means it's not available in stores, nor will it be seen on TV, but according to Newsforge, it's got great gameplay. So, will 25 bucks, a fresh game idea, and a Linux release make others in the gaming world stand up and take notice?"
./uplink: error while loading shared libraries: cannot open shared object file:
cannot load shared object file: No such file or directory
cap@kira:~/uplink$ file
./uplink: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (Linux), statically
Odd. As if it can't make up whether it using statically linked libraries or shared ones.
Shame I can't play the demo, this is a game that would look nice next to my Loki collection.
I grabbed the demo about 2 weeks ago, and I have to say, it's pretty damn fun. After I hacked in and changed some guys social security number, the demo ended because my rating got too high.
Apparently there's a story line which gets quite interesting, and the CD has a password protected zip file on it. You have to crack it to find out what's in it. I don't have the full version yet, but I'm planning on buying it. 2 of my friends just received their copies today.
Just download the demo and try it out, chances are that you'll buy it. I can't stop playing once I sit down in front of it, and I'm not normally into games at all.
Need Free Juniper/NetScreen Support? JuniperForum
The reason there aren't many screen shots is because it's not an FPS and it's not a RTS.. it's more like a text-based SIM. You basically take on the "role" of a hacker for hire. Everything is done in-game and you get emails from the company that hired you containing tasks (ie servers to hack into, jobs to complete).
You download "tools" from the company server and you get paid for jobs you complete. More complex jobs require more expensive tools so you have to save up for them.
It's interesting, but it doesnt exactly reflect the real world. Nothing you learn in-game could help you hack into a bank or anything.
The fact that they have the guts to put these screenshots online (they're boring indeed) can only mean two things: (1) it really has to have great gameplay or (2) they need to replace their marketing department:)
0x or or snor perron?!
It's a very nice game, with sleek graphics though there is nothing more than a few pictures at best.
the game isn't realistic at all (not opengl style cracking like the movie 'hackers' , but not real either)
Though the game gets pretty repetitive, it does have an external plot, and is very nice.
For a nice review check out the home of the underdogs' review
Another game that is being exclusivly published over the net is pontifex, better known as bridge builder 2, which is an awesome and very addictive game.
this is where you can download the windows demo version version:
c obranded/0,1506,42211,00.html
http://www.ciudad.com.ar/ar/portales/juegos/nota_
You can find a positive review (of the Windows version) at gamesdomain.
"The good die first." "Most of us are morally ambiguous, which explains our random dying patterns." --- MST3K
- About
- Latest News
- FAQ
- Demo
- Other Files
Sorry no screenshots, images.google.com doesn't seem to have them. Enjoy!"I don't trust goats," --To Catch a Spy
This game came out months ago!! I got hooked on the demo (which can be clocked in 15mins once u get good). :(
There is however a problem for those of use who don't have a credit card. HOW DO WE BUY THE FULL GAME. No shop will order it in
The music and interface are good for the style of the game.
Though it is one of those Movie OS's which are highly secure till you use the password cracker. It also downloads whole files with one click in seconds.
What we need now is for some aspiring group of hackers to join the interface to real scripts and real servers. Then we will have a whole new generation of script kiddies.
Does playing this game make u l337??
paradox.tydel.com:/pub/games/uplinkdemo_linux.zip
there are no stupid questions, but there are a lot of inquisitive idiots
This is a really cool game, and I haven't been able to put the demo down yet. It's really exhilerating to crack a government system, search their database, and change someone's SSN with precious few seconds remaining before you get caught. Of course, Uplink is movie-style computer cracking, certainly nothing realistic. But that's why it's fun!
;)
However, there are some problems. A lot of people are reporting some glitches, such as the game not responding for a few seconds at random intervals. I personally don't have this problem as much as others, but I have one of my own. The sound lags about 3 seconds behind everything that happens on-screen (I'm thinking it's a problem with ALSA... sigh, isn't it always?).
Anyway, the few flaws I've seen are very minor, and I still think it's a great game. With some patching/tweaking it will undoubtedly get even better. Definitely worth $25, which I'll be coughing up for my full copy soon.
Mozilla's a nice operating system, but it needs a better browser.
The networking feature allows a single player to observe their status (whether that's news or the world map) via multiple screens--i.e. a monitor solely for the bounce points you use to hack a site and a monitor for your general gameplay.
Unfortunately, I've had little success getting the map to display on my two machines, but then again, they're both Pentium 166 systems running Windows.
There is something to be said about being able to play a modern computer game on a Pentium 166, though.
"My God...It's full of ads!" -Fry, about the Internet, Futurama
The site
w ww.introversion.co.uk/uplink/+&hl=en
:)
http://www.introversion.co.uk/ gives a 403 error, but thanks to google we can still do some kind of browsing:
Main site: http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:HF4gZfFTKQQ:
How to browse the site? Easy: just hoover your mouse over a link, copy-paste the URL in google, and click the 'view google's cache' link. Browsing has never been more easy!
--
If code was hard to write, it should be hard to read
often has better looking graphics, and runs on speedier machines, but the idea is basically the same. There's a joke that everything in the computing world was invented in 1962. The only thing funnier than the joke is to see younger folks
"invent" the same thing over and over again.
Uplink sounds basically the same as an early 1980s Activision game called Hacker
which appeared on the Commodore 64 and other personal computer of that era. At that time (to the best of my knowledge), Hacker was a kind of revolutionary game. It offered no explanation, either on-screen or in the game documentation, as to what was going on. You were simly presented with a text login prompt when the game started, and had to take it from there.
Bob
Science, like Nature, must also be tamed, with a view turned towards its preservation.
Here's a link to Fileplanet.com.. A lot easier..
i le =80967
http://www.fileplanet.com/index.asp?section=0&f
i've asked the same question to linux game makers, they ignore me too. so i fixed it myself.
/cdrom.
us mkisofs to make yourself an iso9660 copy of the disk. save it to your hard drive. mount the iso as a loopback interface on
it fooled jagged alliance 2.
oh, you can't do this via nfs either, it checks the filesystem. but, this method is better if you want to play games away from your wireless network.
-------
"don't smoke, don't drink, don't fuck
at least i can fucking think"
Minor Threat
The whole "play hacker" thing has been going on for some time, so this isn't really that new. However, if you're into games that somewhat emulate challeges a hacker would face, at least in style, you should look into the many online hacking challenge sites. The challenges range from breaking encryption, reverse engineering, simulated exploits, to the more mundane logic puzzles. A few I recommend:
http://aspect.l8nite.net - Storyline based set of challenges that require alot of "outside the box thinking".
http://www.slyfx.com - Non-storyline sequential tour of computing challenges.
The Game - Java reverse engineering.
+Ma's Reversing - Reverse engineering.
http://home.cyberarmy.com/w0lfie/ - a bunch of links to others here.
Yeah, it's like every stereotype you've ever seen in movies. Almost as bad as Hugh Jackman spinning little tetris cubes to make a worm and got more goofy computer bleeps to boot. But it's fucking addictive, and the developers have put a lot of time in adding extra shit that actually makes this one worth checking out. You can do stuff like hack into a bank and transfer 10000000 dollars to your own account and then go back and cover your tracks. It's not like it was an assigned mission, but it sure makes the game a lot easier. Or if you ever get caught, you can hack into the police database and remove your own criminal record. Just like real life! There's also some .zip file included in the game where you can decode secret text Secret Decoder Ring style, and some of the servers that you connect to are named from old movies like WarGames, where if you watched the movie you know the password and you can use them to boost your trace time.
Yeah it looks like it was made with Flash 5. But check it out, and remember, it's just a game, it's not Mitnick: The Biography.
It's only 3 megs! Unfortunately the connection is really slow... but it's there.
Have fun, da Lawn
't used to be LawnMOWER, really...
mail received from webmaster@introvision.co.uk:
I'm afraid you've mistaken our intentions. Believe me, nobody at Introversion Software wants our site to be down right now - in fact we are
simply horrified about it since we have lost so many potential visitors.
Our web site service provider shut us down a couple of hours after the slashdot article,
and we haven't been able to contact them since.
I can assure you, we did not "pull the plug". What reason would we have?
Anyway, thanks for your interest. -webmaster
One thing I like about Loki's games is that I install 'em, then the CD can go to whereever-it-is that all my CDs go to, and I can just play the game forever without having to remember where the CD is.
This game, Uplink, is like that too, except for one little thing: whenever you create a user, there's a grid-lookup thing where you have to look up some numbers from a black piece of paper, with black (but different textured) lettering. It is an attempt at copy protection.
It's not something that happens a lot (unless you screw up and forget to pause the game you're interrupted in Real Life while in the game you're being traced ;-) so it's not a big deal, but it is there.
And as usual, it only annoys Introversion's real customers (people like me) who have sent them money, and pirates have undoubtably disabled it in their versions. :-/ I would not have bought the game if I knew it was going to treat me like a criminal. Loki doesn't do that, and I've bought something like 7 or 8 games from them. These guys do it, so they only get my money once (because I didn't know), and never again.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.