Progress Update & Mission System Preview

Mar 21, 2025

Hey all,

I've been a lot at work on Hackero Next, and I want to give you a detailed look at what's coming in the next version.

The next version of Hackero will be made public once the mission system is complete. While it's not yet feature-complete compared to the classic version, I believe now is a good time to gather feedback. Many core systems have been redesigned, and I want your input before continuing further development. To summarize the current features I'd like to give you an overview of whats currently there:

What's Already Working

  • Servers with filesystems, jobs, hardware, and resources – just like before.
  • Permissions and multiple users per system – new layers of depth.
  • Revamped hacking system – includes scanning, analyzing, and exploiting vulnerabilities.
  • In-game network – with real, editable HTML websites. Yes, they're hackable as well.
  • NPCs – banks, mail servers, shops are back and new join them.
  • Mail system – send files and messages between players.
  • Fully functional terminal – almost everything you can do via the UI can be done here too.

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.

Missions

In a previous update, I mentioned using AI to fully generate missions. That idea’s been scrapped for now.

You may ask why.

Fully procedural missions caused a lot of clutter and confusion. For example, an AI-generated mission asking you to retrieve marketing files might end up cluttering the system with:

/home/admin/documents/marketinginfo.pdf
/var/lib/store/marketing_2023.pdf
/home/m.rodriguez/.personal/marketing_briefing.pdf
/var/lib/mail/marketing_meeting.pdf

The result? Dozens of similar files that made the missions feel messy, repetitive, and unclear.

The New Approach:

I now use AI to draft mission ideas, but refine them by hand to ensure:

  • Logical world-building
  • Clear objectives
  • Meaningful challenges

In the future, I’d love to reintroduce full procedural generation where it makes sense. But I want to focus on other things for now.

How missions work

Each mission begins with a briefing: a general goal and your expected reward.

Mission Briefing

You won't know who is offering it or who the target is but you get an overview over the rewards.

Mission rewards

Once accepted, you’ll receive an in-game mail with full mission details.

Possible Rewards:

  • Cash – credited to a new mission service account.
  • Reputation – influence how others see you and what missions you unlock.
  • XP – based on difficulty and type.

Reward: Cash

Completing a mission will reward you with money, but it doesn’t go straight into your bank account.

Instead, it’s deposited into the account associated with the mission NPC. From there, you can manually transfer the funds to any of your bank accounts whenever you’re ready.

A Payed out mission in your account

But there’s a catch—actually, several:

  • Anyone with access to that service account can claim the payout.
    That means if someone hacks into your account before you do, they can steal your reward. This adds a new layer of strategy—service accounts become just as valuable and attack-worthy as banks.
  • Transfers are traceable.
    Once you transfer money from a service account to a bank, the destination account is logged. That means if someone gets into your service account after you’ve claimed your reward, they might uncover your bank details.
  • Service accounts stick around.
    They can’t be deleted until all payouts have been completed. On top of that, actions taken within these accounts may leave traces in logs—breadcrumbs that can be followed if someone is looking closely.

This whole system makes service accounts a valuable—and risky—asset. It opens up new opportunities for scams, theft, and targeted hacks. It’s no longer just about robbing banks—now it’s also about watching who’s about to get paid and intercepting it at the right moment.

Reward: Reputation

Your actions now affect your public reputation:

  • Black Hat: Completing shady missions shifts your rep toward the dark side. You'll:
    • Be seen as a villain by others.
    • Receive higher payouts for exclusive black hat contracts.
    • But earn less for reporting new vulnerabilities.
  • White Hat: Playing clean has its perks too.

Cancelling and Failing Missions

One of the pain points in Hackero Classic was not being able to cancel missions. That’s fixed!

  • Cancelling or failing a mission is now possible.
  • Each action comes with consequences—usually a reputation loss, or worse.

This system I'm actively working on right now, so expect more balancing.

Replayability

In Classic, missions would repeat endlessly. Not anymore.

  • Every mission is unique and one-time.
  • You choose the mission—you don’t need to compete for it.
  • Multiple players can now work on the same mission simultaneously.

This change eliminates major ways to exploit game mechanics from Classic.

Next Steps

Continue working on missions, adding the things described above and filling the game with content, and yes—it’s taking longer than expected. 😄

That’s it for now! Thanks for reading and following along. I’ll keep you posted with more updates as development continues.

spacecow