Hackfield by Katamori
Hackfield is a hacker-simulator game, influenced by Deus Ex and Uplink. It takes place on an imaginery future, where Internet has restricted and traced way to use and an open-source professional hacker program was made for people to prevent it.
The question is that: what can you find in the deepest memory blocks?
Features:
- 50 levels, each with procedurally generated maps
- ridiculously simple game mechanics
- 10 difficulty levels
- procedurally generated name for all the computers (it has some silly combinations, though, but hey, what do you expect in 48 hours?)
- minimaldesign for graphics
Game language: LUA
Special libs: LOVE
Graphics: Paint.NET
Sounds: SFXR
Font: Silkscreen Expanded (not my own stuff)
Source contains every files that is used in the game, and even some that isn't.
Trivia: my original idea for LD#27 was dropped, so it was made in ~26 hours only.
Important informations:
- Gameplay is explained in messages at the bottom of the screen while playing on levels.
- Game was finished in hurry, so expect bugs. You have been warned.
- Game is essentially(!) designed for 1280x1024 screen resolution. If you monitor doesn't support this resolution, you won't be able to play Hackfield. I'm sorry.
Known bugs:
- pressing WASD too quickly may make you enter into solid objects
- standing on exit while not all the terminals are visited makes second counter get negative value (in this case levels are not regenerated anymore, which makes some maps impossible to beat)
- awful grammar mistakes. Seriously. Trust me, I know about them.
EDIT 23:31 08/26/2013
Download links updated!
- small tileset colour changes have happened (easier to distinguish elements)
- "second counter goes to negative" bug has fixed (at least it happens in only one noticed circumstance)
- text appearances at terminal is changed to make it more obvious
- somewhere there was an unfinished line. fixed
The question is that: what can you find in the deepest memory blocks?
Features:
- 50 levels, each with procedurally generated maps
- ridiculously simple game mechanics
- 10 difficulty levels
- procedurally generated name for all the computers (it has some silly combinations, though, but hey, what do you expect in 48 hours?)
- minimaldesign for graphics
Game language: LUA
Special libs: LOVE
Graphics: Paint.NET
Sounds: SFXR
Font: Silkscreen Expanded (not my own stuff)
Source contains every files that is used in the game, and even some that isn't.
Trivia: my original idea for LD#27 was dropped, so it was made in ~26 hours only.
Important informations:
- Gameplay is explained in messages at the bottom of the screen while playing on levels.
- Game was finished in hurry, so expect bugs. You have been warned.
- Game is essentially(!) designed for 1280x1024 screen resolution. If you monitor doesn't support this resolution, you won't be able to play Hackfield. I'm sorry.
Known bugs:
- pressing WASD too quickly may make you enter into solid objects
- standing on exit while not all the terminals are visited makes second counter get negative value (in this case levels are not regenerated anymore, which makes some maps impossible to beat)
- awful grammar mistakes. Seriously. Trust me, I know about them.
EDIT 23:31 08/26/2013
Download links updated!
- small tileset colour changes have happened (easier to distinguish elements)
- "second counter goes to negative" bug has fixed (at least it happens in only one noticed circumstance)
- text appearances at terminal is changed to make it more obvious
- somewhere there was an unfinished line. fixed
Ratings
| Coolness | 95% | 2 |
| Overall | 3.04 | 569 |
| Audio | 2.33 | 666 |
| Fun | 2.52 | 879 |
| Graphics | 2.77 | 626 |
| Humor | 2.40 | 466 |
| Innovation | 3.27 | 343 |
| Mood | 3.23 | 227 |
| Theme | 3.28 | 459 |
Got it to finish downloading and I didn't really understand the gameplay. I was somehow teleported to a new area for no real reason..
Damnit, I can't write properly.
The concept of it is good and adds to the mood but the gameplay problems take away from it.
Since you put so much effort in writing a comment to explain your rating on my game I am going to do the same for you. :)
Overall: Stable game, good concept.
Innovation: I have never played anything like this before so it actually is very innovative. ^^
Fun: It gets a little bit monotonous after awhile but it was still fun.
Theme: 10 seconds are included so it fits. :D
Graphics: It was sometimes hard to distinguish the tiles from another since they almost look alike. But I think that is supposed to since this is a haking game and haking is difficult. :P
Audio: Nothing special, but nothing bad :)
Humor: I don't know if it's supposed to be but I think the story was kind of hilarious. xD
Mood: I liked the main menu and the loading sequence. They created a lot of atmosphere.
All in all: Good Entry! :)
@XmmmX: oh, hello Mr. "2d sprites in 3d world"! :D thanks for the reply! About innovation and mood: Uplink have done almost the same things, and that game inspired me, so...I don't know...maybe Hackfield is just a cheap ripoff of Uplink.
Either way, it was worth to create.
I downloaded, installed LOVE and tried to run your game from source as described in here: http://love2d.org/wiki/Getting_Started , but i still got nothing... :C
- Innovation: i can see how you drew a lot of inspiration from Uplink, but this game on its own has a pretty nice concept.
- Fun: kept me playing for quite a while, definitely will come back and try to finish this game.
- Theme: yep... 10 seconds. nuff said.
- Graphics: nice and simplistic. And it really fits this kind of game, more detailed graphics could have made a mess out of this.
- Audio: same here, I think. Nothing special, but really fitting the general tone of the game.
- Humor: well, this game doesn't try to be funny.
- Mood: the loading sequence made me think i'm really hacking something, so i think you achieved what you wanted here.
- Overall: solid game. Like Uplink, made me feel like i'm hacking some high secured data. That is an awesome feeling.
It might be just a bit buggy though; sometimes I had "2 of 0 terminals needed" or "-x seconds left before the modification".
I really wish the login sequence wouldn't take so long or could be skipped.
I like the graphics and idea though - and making a game in 26 hours is always impressive. Congratulations on finishing your first LD entry!
@TobiasW: I tried to do what I could for giving an exact description about game mechanics. I definitely wanted to avoid adding a regular "PLAZ HALP MEH!" menu, so I built it into the story. However, if you get into the game, doesn't matter how hard is it. Or am I wrong? Did if decrease the fun-factor?
The number of logs about your activity shows, how the number of antivirus scanfields increase at the next time when the map is regenerated. It doesn't affect the gameplay seriously, since you get 576 tiles and maximum 200 logpoints can be appeared on the screen.
To make the number of reached terminal go up, you have to go through them. Standing on them isn't enough, you have take another step. It's because of the way as the script is triggered. You may notice that exit works on totally the same way.
I know about bugs too; sadly, there's no way for me to fix the "seconds" bug; it works badly only in the executable. I couldn't even encounter any "2 of 0 terminals needed" bugs. Also, at the end I was in hurry, and I became strongly stressful because of issues about intro triggering and setting "seconds" to zero. At last, I made a quick solution, that seemed to be perfect after compiling.
Anyway, I think I'm gonna ask about these malfunction on LOVE forums.
Some changes have fixed! Refresh your download! (if you didn't delete my game right after first try :D)
You can also advertise this for Mac/Linux if you change the name of the Source.zip file to .love (.love files are just zip files that can be run by people who have the LOVE engine downloaded)
I would release a windowed version, as running it on my dual monitor setup screwed up my display settings (LOVE doesn't seem to handle that situation very well).
The tutorial doesn't give you time to read the instructions. Also, I recommend not making players sit through that very long bootup sequence every time they want to restart.
@BlackBulletIV: you always have time to read the tutorial. The fact that level is changing, doesn't affect you chances to win. Also, map1 tutorial shows the main purpose, map2 the details, map3 too, and so on. What's the problem with it?
Scripting intro was a complete nightmare, there's no way for me to make it skippable. I'm terribly sorry, I know that it can be annoying.
From what I can tell it seems quite promising and well thought out though.
- terminals appear only after level 10. Impossible to encounter them before that.
- the only action I added to spacebar is going to the next level, when you are standing on the exit. Impossible to go to main menu by pressing spacebar. Only W,A,S and D allow that, only if you lose.
Most certainly you went to the antivirus field that drops you back to the main menu, since thats counted as "game over".
The exit is a small monitor, that's even brighter than the surrounded blocks. It is showed in the tutorial of the first map
I like the look of it. I think my colourblindness might hamper my ability to see the playfield.
If you can get past the tutorial (and the tutorial should be shorter and clearer) it's very fun! Also, a better variety of tiles would make it clearer to understand.
Starting at security level 6 the game get really slow since almost every time you will just be stuck and can't go anywhere. But really the game was the same all the time. The only thing you do is wait.
The idea was kind of nice but it focused too much on the theme and turned into a overly complicated waiting game.
Are there any prerequisites to run this game on my machine?
It was tested on my Windows XP 32-bit, and needs 1280x1024 resolution. That's all I can tell. :/
I didn't understand if I was doing well or not at first, but I wanted to keep playing anyway.
I got really lost during the first tries, then I learnt because every info are here, just have to read, and I had fun.
It was nice to look for a path in those levels, well done btw for the procedural generation.
I didn't have the courage to finished it. But I enjoyed how you build a entire universe around this simple gameplay.
I stopped level 30. Security levels 6 and 7 were just waiting ages for it to be possible...
Nice graphics, though more distinction would have been nice. Sometimes spent the whole 10 seconds just looking for the target.