Detection vs Logging and the road to first public release

Hey all!

It’s been a while—about a month and a half since the last update—so I wanted to share the progress I’ve made over the past few weeks. I also took a short holiday, which was much-needed and helped me recharge a bit.

But before I dive into stories of beautiful nature and time away, let’s talk about what’s been happening with the project!

In my last post, I shared a list of features I wanted to complete before launch. Here’s a quick refresher—with emojis added:

Some features are still under construction:

• Additional mission types – only “asset theft” is implemented so far, but I'm working on more ✅
• Mission improvements – better filtering to ensure missions match player capabilities. ✅
• Bug fixes & stability 🚧
• Shop system – not fully functional anymore due to the new admin backend. ✅

As you can see I made some progress and that feels great!

Some small highlights:

• The shop system bugs have been fixed—it’s working again!
• Stability and bugfixing will always be a continuous process. Expect things to still be a bit rough around the edges when you try Next for the first time.

But lets look into the more interesting changes here:

Mission Updates

As promised, I’ve been working on new mission types. Two new ways to earn money are now implemented:

Bank Balance Missions

This one might feel familiar from Hackero Classic. You gather information about a bank account, hack it, retrieve the current balance, and report it to the client. The mechanics are similar to Classic, but the process to get there is different in Next.

This mission type is repeatable. While I initially said all missions would only be playable once, it made sense to allow grinding for some types.

Vulnerability Missions

This is a new type of one-time mission. You're tasked with retrieving information about how to exploit a specific system and forwarding it to the client. If the intel is correct and useful, you’ll get your reward.

This ties deeply into the new hacking system, especially how vulnerabilities and detection work. If you’re curious about that, one of the recent blog posts explains the hacking mechanics in more detail.

Improved Mission Filtering

One common complaint in Classic was that players sometimes received missions they couldn’t solve. That’s been addressed: Next will only offer missions that are solvable based on your current progress. To make this possible, there's now a system that tracks your progression. I also plan to use this system for achievements, statistics, and score tracking.

Detection and Logging

At this point you might be wondering what this blog post title refers to.

While extending the mission system, I also began implementing log messages on the in-game filesystem—things like "connection opened" or "logged into bank account." This made the game feel more alive, but it still lacked consequences.

So I introduced a new concept: detection.

This means that your actions in the game don’t necessarily go unnoticed. The game now keeps track of what happens and can react to it. This can then result in log entries, but also more serious outcomes—like an NPC or authority becoming aware of your activity.

What this means depends on who is monitoring the system. I won’t go into too much detail now, but this concept links directly to other systems. For example, missions can now vary not only in terms of required tools but also in the level of risk involved, depending on how tightly a system is secured.

This also lays the foundation for more advanced features like authorities that track suspicious behavior and react accordingly.

Filling the world with content

Finally, let’s talk about world content.

In Classic, there were about 70 NPCs, each with servers to hack and files to discover. Keeping that number up to date is a huge amount of work. That’s why Next currently has just a few—three or four NPCs. I plan to bring back many familiar characters for the release, but there's still work to do.

While everything was handcrafted in Classic, I'm now using AI tools to help generate content more efficiently. Still, each NPC needs to be updated and adapted for the new system.

At the moment, I’m focusing on redesigning the look and feel of existing NPCs and strengthening how they are embedded into the game—through missions, files, and the stories built around them. Instead of quantity, I’m aiming for depth. I want each NPC to feel more alive and meaningful than before. That’s ambitious, but once Next is out, I’m looking forward to hearing your feedback.

To close this post, I want to show you some of the redesigned NPC logos. These are the first ones (and where already part of the hacking preview), and more are already in progress.

First one: Simpe Mail

Its maybe one of the first npcs you get into contact with. It will be rebranded to inmail.com and this will look like this:

Second one: Hipsterbank

I think this one is also well known from classic:

Third one: Hardwarepoint

Thats all for now!

It currently is hard for me to give you a timeline since I'm still doing all of this in my free time but I continue to work on these last things and I'm really looking forward to show you this next iteration of hackero!

Thank you so much for still beeing part of this!

spacecow