Adding Content and a Batch of Small Bugfixes

spacecow -

Hey everyone!
Summer’s over, and I’m finally back to working on Hackero and its already 4 months since the last post?? 🤨

Over the past few months, I’ve been juggling a lot — other projects, life, and everything in between — so Hackero had to take a short break. Progress slowed down for a while, but the last few weeks have been great: things are moving again!

This is a small update for now. Since I did not add any new content and focus on wrapping things up this is just a short update

Content Expansion

When developing a game like this, there are two major sides to the work: building the mechanics and bringing the world to life.
Lately, I’ve spent way more time on the latter — specifically on how content (like missions) is created and handled.

Mission generation turned out to be far more complex than expected. It doesn’t make sense, for example, for a bank NPC to attack an e-commerce website. But an e-commerce site targeting a competitor? That’s much more believable.
To make the world feel more coherent and alive, I’ve added more rules and logic like this. The result: a more dynamic, sensible world that reacts in believable ways.

Small fixes and stuff

I’ve also been playtesting quite a bit, which naturally revealed smaller issues that needed fixing.

Things like:

  • Autocomplete for file paths not working correctly
  • Rendering issues on certain websites
  • The page just sometimes not connecting to the backend at all
  • A nasty race condition in the websocket stack crashing the server 👀
  • Mission briefing missing crucial information

These aren’t “polish” features yet, but they’re essential for a smooth playthrough.

Updated Release Timeline

Now, about the big question: when will it be released?
Originally, I aimed for Q3, but let’s be honest — that ship has sailed. 😅

The good news: things start to conclude, I do not add any more features but fixing and working on the things that are there.
My new goal is to release before Christmas. It might not be as polished as I’d hoped, but it’ll be in a state that’s fun, functional, and ready to play. From that point on I'll monitor and see how it behaves.

Thats all for now - spacecow