The Game :: An online interpretation of Uplink

Ideas for future addons and sequels

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Waaahsabi
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The Game :: An online interpretation of Uplink

Postby Waaahsabi » Mon Jan 10, 2011 4:46 pm

So, i think it's less confusing to have a separate thread for this project and discussion here.
Waaahsabi
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Postby Waaahsabi » Mon Jan 10, 2011 5:00 pm

Keio wrote:Hello,

Although I'm new in this forum I've played the game several times.
If I understand correctly there are two project in this thread:

- the one from Zaita
- the one from Waaahsabi

The project from Zaita already has a homepage where I can follow the progress.
I was wondering about Waaahsabi project instead. Does anyone know how to contact him? Or if his project has a webpage?

Also.. Waaahsabi, if you read this, what did you mean with this phrase?
This is not supposed to be an RPG concept, thus if you have the skill (you, yourself personally), then that's enough.

I don't undersant the "compensation" that any personal skill would offer regarding the RPG style.

But I really like the idea of user created software!

tl;dr Does anyone know the Waaahsabi project name? And/or homepage?

PS: I know he posted the images in his tweet account, I'll try to contact him there also.


As i already wrote in reply to Keio's PM, i haven't created any public visibility for my project yet (ie. no web site, no code repository) except for a mention here in the forums, because i'd like to finish the game first before creating too much of a public impression. There will be no web site for the time being, as i'd like to focus on the project itself rather than building websites. ;)

This is not supposed to be an RPG concept, thus if you have the skill (you, yourself personally), then that's enough.

The compensation for the RPG concept is not about who can click faster, but more about the social interaction part of the game.
It is a multiplayer game for a reason.

Thus, i have focused greatly on player-to-player communication facilities.
The game essentially revolves around obtaining information from others, either by using patience and good combination of hard/software (that would probably be called "solo play style" or whatever), or by social engineering. This creates a more life-like experience imho, yet i have never tried that, so i will see if that works or not.

To facilitate social engineering there will be no fixed user identities in the game. You can deliberately pose as someone else, steal their identities, blackmail them and virtually do all the bad things other online games desperately try to avoid in their gaming experiences. At some point during making the game i realized that TheGame is essentially a (not THAT realistic) internet simulation. So any player in TheGame must be aware of who to trust, and who not, with the default being "noone at all".

With the currently implemented chat/messaging/mail system all of this is entirely possible, even though people might have to get used to the fact that they can pose as anyone.
That's the reason why there are no RPG game elements in TheGame. The player makes the RPG in this case. ;)
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Postby Keio » Tue Jan 11, 2011 10:54 am

First of all it really surprises me how little attention this project has.
I know Waaahsabi has tried to keep it quiet, and maybe fans are tired of all the vapourware around, but I think this is actually going somewhere.

It seems to me that this is a more sophisticated system that Uplink itself, not only because it's a mmo, but because of the way that the already existing features in Uplink are (or will be) implement. Like the mission system. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I understand if you don't want to do a website, and even support that idea, but it would be nice to have an update on this thread from time to time.

I'm guessing you can send PM messages with the messaging system, can you fake those too? (well... it's a hacking game.. of course you can!)
But when you say:
You can deliberately pose as someone else, steal their identities...

it doesn't seem like we need to do any hacking to do it.

It doesn't look like you need/want any contribution, but if you do, say it. :)
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Postby Waaahsabi » Tue Jan 11, 2011 12:01 pm

Keio wrote:I'm guessing you can send PM messages with the messaging system, can you fake those too? (well... it's a hacking game.. of course you can!)
But when you say:
You can deliberately pose as someone else, steal their identities...

it doesn't seem like we need to do any hacking to do it.


Well, we have 3 ways of communication ingame:

Global Usenet Simulation
This serves as a message board that is not bound to a specific location on the world map. Every player can read and post messages here, however they will appear with their real player name, which cannot be faked. The purpose of this board is just normal communication like in a forum. Technically i can activate this kind of board for any of the 5.5k computers on the world map, separately from the global one. Maybe at some point i'll activate that, but for now i don't really see much use in doing that.

Email servers
Every computer on the world map can have its own email server. If you have access to the computer, and it features an email server, you can create an email address on that machine. The player name you use on this computer can be chosen freely, thus the email address does not necessarily reflect the user behind it. Just like in real life. If you trust an email sender or not, is up to the player's judgement.

Chat servers
Similar to email servers, every computer on the world map can feature a chat server. This works just like plain old IRC, with a few things left out. If you have access to a computer that features a chat server, you can use it to chat with others, using a freely chosen irc nickname. If you trust the person on a chat is entirely up to you. For the time being i haven't implemented /whois and similar features to the irc server, but i think i will be *takes note*.

Notice how i always say "if you have access to the computer". The trick here is, that i deviate a bit from the old Uplink concept of accessing a computer. If you hack into some box somewhere, you will have the ability to create an account there, ie. you bypass the server security once, and create a user account. You can then access the computer like any normal user on that box. These "hacked" accounts are temporary however, since the computer's administrator will periodically check for those fake accounts and eliminate them.

There's a lot more to this of course, i'm just writing a bit about the fundamentals here ;)

(one thing i particularly like is the PvP part in this concept, but i'll write about this at another time)
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Postby Waaahsabi » Tue Jan 11, 2011 2:26 pm

Oh yeah, one more thing <stevejobsmode/> ;)

The whole game will be anonymous. No chatlogs, no personal data during registration etc. I found that kinda important.
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Postby Zothen » Sun Jan 23, 2011 6:55 pm

Waaahsabi wrote:To facilitate social engineering there will be no fixed user identities in the game. You can deliberately pose as someone else, steal their identities, blackmail them and virtually do all the bad things other online games desperately try to avoid in their gaming experiences. At some point during making the game i realized that TheGame is essentially a (not THAT realistic) internet simulation. So any player in TheGame must be aware of who to trust, and who not, with the default being "noone at all".


This sums up in a chance of maybe 70% that the game will fail flat from start! In a real world you can social engineer folks that are not from a hacker background. In a game where everybody plays a hacker you will not trust the others if you dont have anything to fix the person to.
You will cater for an atmosphere of distrust and paranoia that nobody can bear.
If you dont believe me play this: http://www.terraoutlands.com/ and tell the other players that you have been playing this before and that you just came back to the game. Enjoy the mistrust, cos thats what you tend to build up.
Good luck anyway! =)
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Postby Waaahsabi » Mon Jan 24, 2011 12:34 am

Zothen wrote:
Waaahsabi wrote:To facilitate social engineering there will be no fixed user identities in the game. You can deliberately pose as someone else, steal their identities, blackmail them and virtually do all the bad things other online games desperately try to avoid in their gaming experiences. At some point during making the game i realized that TheGame is essentially a (not THAT realistic) internet simulation. So any player in TheGame must be aware of who to trust, and who not, with the default being "noone at all".


This sums up in a chance of maybe 70% that the game will fail flat from start! In a real world you can social engineer folks that are not from a hacker background. In a game where everybody plays a hacker you will not trust the others if you dont have anything to fix the person to.
You will cater for an atmosphere of distrust and paranoia that nobody can bear.
If you dont believe me play this: http://www.terraoutlands.com/ and tell the other players that you have been playing this before and that you just came back to the game. Enjoy the mistrust, cos thats what you tend to build up.
Good luck anyway! =)

Let me sum these statements up quickly, maybe i understood something wrong. You pointed me to Terra Outlands as an example of how bad mistrust in the game is, and that it will fail because of that. I can see that Terra Outlands is apparently very alive. So i don't see the logic in your statements...

But anyhow, the mistrust i build into the game design is supposed to be equivalent of the mistrust common to most - if not all - clandestine operations. Players are effectively on their own in the game, and everyone can be an imposter of someone else. If this works, or if people cannot bear that, remains to be seen. But yes, i do cater for an atmosphere of distrust and paranoia. That is exactly the point there. It is intentional.
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Postby Zothen » Mon Jan 24, 2011 12:49 pm

I wont stop you producing vapourware. As I said - good luck and happy coding! :roll:
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Postby Waaahsabi » Mon Jan 24, 2011 7:17 pm

Zothen wrote:I wont stop you producing vapourware. As I said - good luck and happy coding! :roll:

I think you're mixing up things that are called vapourware and things that fail... but whatever. Waste of time...
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Postby Zothen » Tue Jan 25, 2011 2:43 pm

Not really.. I imply that a major failure would show up before release so there wouldnt be a final release thus vapourware.
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Postby orillian » Tue Jan 25, 2011 5:58 pm

look stuff the haters, if you do the project because you want to and you like it, go for it, and see how far you can run with it.

and besides, uplink went through different versions before the version we know love and occasionally swear at came out.
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Postby Waaahsabi » Tue Apr 12, 2011 9:33 am

Sooooo, after quite some time i'm back with a bit of an update.
Since i started a new job end of last year, the time i have available to work on TheGame has decreased to a point where i can not make progress far enough to bring the project forward as much as i'd like. But since i've invested over 1 year of work in it, i won't let it go to waste. Thus i made the decision to publish TheGame as Open Source.

I'm currently looking into ways of doing this properly. After all, a project like this is rather complex (though not complicated), and i feel that it's necessary to also have some documentation on the source code and architecture. I believe that putting the whole project up on GitHub might be feasible. But since i'm using Team Foundation as a source control, i'm also investigating if it would be possible to migrate my whole source control server to Codeplex.

Nevertheless, i will make the whole game available to the public within weeks.

If anyone feels compelled to work on it, here's what's required (on the dev machine):

- Visual Studio 2010 Professional (Ultimate recommended, though that's a bit... rare)
- Expression Blend 4
- Silverlight Toolkit (from Codeplex)
- db4o for C# (That's the database engine being used)

And this is required in the dev's brain:
- Solid knowledge of C# and .NET 3.5 or 4
- Strong knowledge of Silverlight 4
- Strong knowledge how to design things in Expression Blend
- Strong knowledge of WCF 3.5 or 4
- Knowledge about Windows services

I have a range of architecture diagrams here that outline how the whole system is designed. Due to the absence of an SQL based database, it's only necessary to have a basic understanding of how a database works.

I will post some more info as soon as i have figured out how to properly publish the project.

Edit: I managed to transfer all my local source control contents to codeplex, so i presume that is going to be the way to go. I'm currently doing some cleanup work on the project, after which i will publish the most recent check-in of my TFS. The Codeplex project is then ready and the source code can be downloaded. I will post the link as soon as i'm done.
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Postby Waaahsabi » Tue May 10, 2011 10:25 am

I just published the project. It's complete source code is available for download.

The project is hosted on CodePlex: http://thegame.codeplex.com/
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Postby thegenius2009 » Wed May 18, 2011 5:06 am

you should of asked me to help :)
cause i would of gladly helped
but now i am working on my own "uplink online" game
and it is going to be a sequel to the game called "codelink v2" made by a guy called momoguru
but if you are still looking for people to help i am available to help
i know c# really well
i also know asp and php (i could help with the server side stuff)

Thanks
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Postby runthis » Thu May 26, 2011 8:09 am

I am in the process of also making my own for online
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