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?"
Why's that? Just because it doesn't have cutting-edge 3D graphics? Graphics have nothing to do with quality of gameplay. Zork was one of the all time greatest games ever, and it had *NO* graphics.
-Vercingetorix
"Necessitas non habet legem." -St. Augustine
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.
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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.
And then we get the terrifying situation where thousands of would-be hackers are let loose on the 'net, and destroy civilization as we know it by clicking large buttoned labelled "CRACK PASSWORD" and "DISABLE PROXY".
As far as I can tell, it'd have exactly the opposite effect that you described - instead of 13-year-old wannabes spending all their time attempting (and failing) to hack into their school network, they just fire up Uplink and pretend they're gods. Take it from me, it's more interesting than real hacking anyday.
The traditional way of learning to hack involved hacking into actual computers on the internet.
Actually, the traditional way of learning to hack involves lots of time reading manuals, poring over source code and experimenting with machines under your control. Real computer security experts (both white hat and black hat) have *knowledge*, not "5ki11z". No computer game is going to teach you the volumes of excruciating detail about systems that is required to break into them (or, if it does, it won't be a game that many people find entertaining).
Note that I'm not addressing script kiddies here, who have neither knowledge nor skill, just a set of hack tools they've downloaded and don't understand. I suppose knowing which tool to apply to a particular system might be considered a "skill".
The common view of system hacking as some sort of art or magic is bogus. Social engineering has some art to it, though...
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Sorry no screenshots, images.google.com doesn't seem to have them. Enjoy!"I don't trust goats," --To Catch a Spy
You're absolutely right of course. My years of playing Dungeons and Dragons, and GURPS have honed me into a killing machine. In fact, I once had a character with an ST of 40, so I bet I could pick up a car in real life!
-- This and all my posts are in the public domain. I am a lawyer. I am not your lawyer, and this is not legal advice.
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
Forbidden
You don't have permission to access / on this server.
Apache/1.3.19 Server at www.introversion.co.uk Port 80
Looks like someone played the real life version, and introversion lost.
*Not a Sermon, Just a Thought
*/
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.
So, when is the last time you were beamed up to your starship? Or how 'bout the last time you drove 100MPH through the LA city streets and never caught a single cops eye? How about that robot that keeps nagging you to remove an inhibitor bolt and find his little three wheeled friend so he can deliver a message to some princess?
It's called 'entertainment' people. I've played the game, I own it, and I wanted to know what others thought of it. Almost all the posts I read are ripping on how 'not real' it is. The IPs are so wrong, you don't hack like that, it's so wrong I can't play it... Well, let's think about that for just a sec...if a game were created where you could pretend to hack and it was based upon 'actual' methods and 'real' ip addresses...somebody in big brother's crew might just not like that, ya think?
As it is, it is a very basic representation of hacking. You run a proxy bypass program to get around proxy security. Sure, that's nothing like the real world hacking, but you quickly find yourself tapping your foot watching your time run out and your program not run fast enough. Darn! I didn't bounce off enough public domain servers or a large enough bank. You try again, you get in and steal a file, delete your logs, your home free. IT'S A GAME! And a fun one at that.
Buy it, Play it, Enjoy it...
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