The Hacker Project - a free online game

I can't remember the exact steps right now.  But it was something like if you sold some modules in Project: Space Station and then bought them back it would result in the $$$ value being set to a negative number and then resetting to the maximum amount in the game.  From then on there was no worries about the $$$ and just have fun with your massive construction projects and research...

I used to create these massive stations that would wrap completely around the earth and generally fill it up from the top to bottom with just barely room for the EVM to fly around...

I would recommend giving Neuromancer a try...   I would love to see a game like that ported to the web and setup for multi-player.

Not to mention back then it wasn't really considered too bad to be a game pirate.  I used to belong to the local Commodore user group.  We had something like 50 members.  Get this...  The president of our user group was a county Police Officer and we held the user group meetings in the basement of the local court house. 

The user group had a library where we all would bring in our games and programs for others to copy.  Back then copy protection was extreme.  Each month they would come out with a new way to protect games.  We had software that would attempt to disable the protection on copying.  If that didn't work I learned how to hex edit the files themselves to bypass security.  I actually got so good at cracking the protection that I started receiving calls from overseas on different methods.

My all time favorite protection used was, if I recall correctly, on Auto Duel.  Instead of a software approach they actually punched a dimple into the floppy disk.  When the drive head hit the dimple it would cause it to bounce.  This bounce would cause a disk error that the game could detect and then allowed it to proceed past the protection.  If that dimple was not there the code would tell the head to reseat itself back the beginning of the track.  Thus it sounded like the drive was going to break...  Probably was their intention.

I had learned that if I opened the drive bay latch (thus lifting the head) and then closed it quickly it would then do the same thing as the bounce did if I timed it correctly.  I could generally get it working in two-three tries. 

d**n....  That was almost 25 years ago...  I literally had something like 3,500 games.  Back then you could have asked me how to play any one of the games, how to load it, secret codes and I could have gone on for hours...  Now...  I can barely remember how to run a DOS command  Everything has become so automated.

My two Favorite games from the 64 era:
Project: Space Station

Neuromancer
   - Great game and excellent book.  You may have noticed the group named 'Chiba City Hacker Society'.  The book takes place in Chiba City. 

Byzantine Empire

    * Longinus, brother of the deceased Eastern Roman Emperor Zeno I, revolts against Anastasius I in Isauria.

492

Tell them ninja don't wait around in the road, they hide in the trees.

If he still insists that the ninja is in the road, then tell him that they can jump over the car...

I play these types of games with my kids all the time.  Unfortunately, they started asking their teacher.  If my answer didn't match the teacher's then I was wrong...  No matter if I was in the right  the teacher was ALWAYS right.  Stupid school.




Yes, my brother-in-law is a cop.    He says you can tell how bad of mood they are in by how much they tailgate you and follow your every turn.


I remember my Atari 2600 had a troubleshooting section that stated something like

• if the game doesn't work take it out and put it back in.
• if it still doesn't work, take it out and blow gently into it... No spitting.
• if it still doesn't work, use rubbing alcohol on the contacts with a Q-tip
• if it still doesn't work, check to make sure the power is on 
• if it still doesn't work, go outside and play

I've done that and had that done to me...

But it's more of an annoyance than actually destroying the virus.

I always check all my servers before each collect just to make sure that I haven't had one installed on my machines.  It has happened several times, including a nice batch of 4 on one server just in the last few days, but so far no one has taken any of my HPD.

I have been able to take a few HPD from other servers this way though. 

Many of the SGP tagged ones are newbies.  For a while I was feeding small-mid range files to any newbie I came across.  One of those being the SGP adaware.

-lx- files are almost exclusively team linux though.  I did do a test a while back and started infecting servers with -lx- files and either they were just disinfecting their own files or they managed to realize they didn't install them.  They would disinfect and reinfect again with a -lx- file.

I have seen a few of the newer players starting to rename the files as well.

Sad thing is, he would do missions so much faster than me.  I couldn't keep up just doing the one stupid faction...

When you do a mission that targets another faction that faction will then go negative to you for a percentage of the positive faction points you acquire doing the mission.

I've been negative 500k or so against a faction and have crawled myself back to the positive.  What it means to me is that I've done 500k worth of faction point missions that resulted in ZERO gain in ability.

What I really should do, is gain the ability points... switch... and then increase my stats then go back without worrying about trying to dig out of zero...  but I'm too stubborn and insist on clawing my way back out 

It honestly depends if the virus holder (or guild) happens to be baby sitting their virii.  I've gone times against linux when I couldn't do squat without Dev Null hacking me and killing everything.  Then they'd all be gone for a week or so and I'd take down everything in site.

I think it really is a matter of luck.

other 10 mission types?

I like the sound of that...

Now the question is WHEN!

I'm going to mark this under a problem. 

So I got it in my head to start doing some PVP'ing.  The kind that'll irk some people.

Found myself a .5 robber barron and decided to cleanse it.  Well it tells me that it'll take a whopping 2303h 59m 57s.  It takes 260 hours to install it but 2,300 to disinfect it?  No wonder no one worries about changing the IP on their baron servers. 

Guess that will never work out.

Oh, I forgot to mention that.  The player would be required to HIDE the code with a specified version range (i.e. 0-1 for Emerald or 1-5 for Pelican, etc...) 

I think it would just allow for everything to run as is...  Until they or you killed a process then they would need more resources before restarting.

Yeah, I was thinking along the lines of Emerald OS (for example) having it's own list of Delete and Code Recovery missions.  This would prevent a higher level OS with corresponding quicker delete ability from killing off all the lower level delete missions on the newbies and such.

Couple of new mission ideas (yeah, I want more missions) to go along with this:

Encrypt Missions:  New mission type that has one faction asking the hacker to encrypt files of another factions servers.  Must be encrypted by an OS level appropriate encryptor.  This would be similar to a delete mission but would basically prevent that faction from using it's own files as well as tying up its server space.

Decrypt Missions:  New mission type that has one faction asking hackers to help them out by unencrypting files that were encrypted by another faction's hacker.

Code Placement Mission:  Higher level OS hackers would be required to acquire a code from a Bank Access Mission then place that code in the logfile of another server.  The code must then be modified and then hidden (i.e. deleted but recoverable).  This would then create the the necessary Code Recovery mission for another player (of a lower level OS) to recover the code and then submit it.  Thus letting players be the creators of the Code Recovery Missions and not some unnamed master race of hackers.  This mission pays twice with the second part paying more than the first.  Once for the actual completion of the mission and once when another player completes the Code Recovery mission.  --- This mission is a double edged sword.  By completing it you gain money and prestige but in the process another hacker gains from your work as well.

Bank Access Mission:  New server menu option that allows players to hack into the list of bank accounts and retrieve a given bank number for a specified party.  (The hacker has the ability to acquire the bank account number but doesn't have the necessary passwords, etc. to transfer the funds.)  The party asks that the bank account number be completed with the Code Placement mission.  This mission is necessary for the completion of the Code Placement mission.

If you plan on taking down your defenses for any reason do an IP change first then do not connect to anything until you restore your defenses.