The Hacker Project - a free online game

Hi, My name is...
In Game Name: ZacQuicksilver
Real Name: Zac Quicksilver (Well, it's my virtual name)
Age: College
Gender: M
Date Joined: July 15 (+-)
Country: California, USA
Friends in game: Hackers have friends?
Rank Range (ie, top 20, top 50, top 100, etc) or Exact Rank: Top 100 (barely)
Do you vote every day?: No (though I might start: forgot about that 10 HPD/vote)
Rate Hacker Project out of 10: I rate games good/bad. If I'm playing in a year, it's good.

We'll see how those skills translate into being good at this game.

I'm Zac Quicksilver, and I think I'm the foremost 2nd rate hacker in this game.


Good luck, and happy hacking. Make sure to delete your logs: there's a lot of opportunists out there who will make hacking difficult otherwise.

I hate you now: I'm stuck reading them all.

I think I came over from Starpirates or some such thing. Forgot the name of that game because I stopped playing it after a few days.

I don't live by that, but I'm working to adopt it to my life as a gamer. What a hacker is to computers, I am to games: I find out how they work, why they are fun (or aren't), and what makes them good. I am in college, and have already designed games that the people around me play, and think are fun.

And when I am ready. When I have learned what there is to learn. My games will be played by everyone.


This manifesto is the life of a true Nerd. Of a person who has dedicated their life to the study of one thing, whether Computers, or Games, or whatever. Of a person who accepts the scorn of those around them as meaningless compared to the true joy in life: the living of a purpose greater than oneself, of giving oneself to the pursuit of knowledge.

To each, our our own pursuit. To every one, may they have success.

I don't think the software levels should be increased: doing so would make it harder for said new players to get admin access, which is necessary for doing anything.


However, if you give every NPS a small chance to reformat periodically (perhaps 1% each day: each individual server would reset once every three months or so), that would mean that people who had filled a server with their programs would have to re-establish themselves, while giving everyone else a chance to get a foothold.

That's exactly what I meant. In another game (Pardus), if I own a Starbase, I get 1/10 of the mission rewards accepted at my starbase, and the person who does the mission gets the full value of the mission, same as if they took a similar mission at a non-player Starbase.

So, if you do a 1500 HPD mission, the server you got it from gets a CPU upgrade to fix the damage Soviet did to it. You only do a mission for x.xx HPD, and the server gets less than 1 HPD, but it adds up, and eventually it increases it's broadband.

And I don't think that player servers should be upgradeable by anyone other than the person who's server it is. If they're inactive, oh well.

I disagree. I've found that if the social structure is right in a persistent game, newer players can feel a part of the game without climbing to the top by supporting the elder elites. However, there would need to be a way for people to support each other: I'm not sure how doable that is with the current rules.


On the other hand, I dislike games that reset because it means that any work you've put into the game disappears. Partial resets might be an option, where NPSs reinstall, wiping out the virii on them, and changing their IPs. If they were one of the initial True Light servers, the old players would have to find them again (not too difficult, but still annoying), while players coming into the game would get the IPs as normal.

Also, having two games going in parallel, where one game would be periodically reset, while the other (the current one) would be kept going. The issue I see with this is that most new players would tend towards the reset world, where they can grow unimpeded (for the most part), while the persistent server would ultimately stagnate.

I know that if you install a virus onto a public server, you risk them posting your IP for people to attack you.


But, does this also happen if you take over someone else's virus using a Virus Breaker?

I think they should not only repair damage, but get better. Our servers do after all.


My proposed mechanic:

Each Non-Player Server (NPS) gets the following money:

1% of virii income on it, whether or not the income is collected
10% of missions accepted from it that are completed
10 HPD/hour multiplied by the defense level of the server

This money is used first to repair damage, then to upgrade. If it is upgrading, it looks at it's percentage uses, and upgrades whatever systems are closest to 100% usage.


This would make the True Light Software Repositories harder to hurt, because so many people get missions there and there are so many virii there, so the upgrades would come sooner. On the other hand, secret servers would get less, but of course are already more valuable because they have higher defenses.

I have one question about this:


It looks (from the OP) that I can only use this on my own server: I can't use it to take over Virii on remote servers.


Is this correct? If not, how do I go about using it on servers that aren't mine?

So far, I haven't been hacked (as far as I can tell): Most of what I've done is replace my IP on logs with the IPs of other servers (as if I Bounced through them), or with the IPs of hackers who left their IPs where I could find them.


Please don't see this as a challenge: I would really prefer losing the virii I've installed rather than losing programs on my home server.

Having run the experiment myself, I offer the following advise to all:


1) Running Adware on yourself is a way to get a secure stream of money
2) It will eat up bandwidth
3) You do need an appropriate antivirus to remove it
4) Running said antivirus will delete it: Don't use the only copy of your best virus.


If you take all of that into account, go ahead. I highly suggest it for long periods of inactivity, but not for normal use.

I might even consider it for overnight use if there was an easy way to make copies: load it before bed, delete it when I log on in the morning, and collect 6-10 hours of profits. However, the bandwidth required to copy is better spent uploading Adware to foreign servers.

Haven't bought a single secret server IP, but found quite a few. Some of the more experienced players use them to bounce, and tracing bounces can be quite rewarding.

Is there any reason you shouldn't run Adware on your own server? it seems like a good source of HPD, at low risk.