What's coming next (#6)
Hey all so it's been a while since the last update about Hackero. So in this article, I'd like to give you a short overview on what will come in the next update.
But first of all, thank you to all the first alpha testers for giving all this feedback on hackero. It helped me to understand a lot of what's not going right yet, and I'm working hard on all the little things you have mentioned.
Also, I'd like to talk about my decision to invite people at random. I know that some people were not happy with this decision, but I'd like to explain a little bit what the reasons are, that I made this decision. First of all, I was a little bit worried that the first people on the list will not join since it was about a year since I've opened the waiting list. Gladly this did not happen and also people who joined in the early days used their keys. Second I wasn't sure how the game would work with many players. Would the servers handle the load? Would some people just destroy others? I had no idea, but how many of these things became more clear.
Anyways, now its time to get to the next big update of hackero.
First of all, I will change the way invitations will be sent out. I'm still not sure if I can invite everyone but this wave will be much bigger. Also to the people who joined first: I did not forget you and now it's your time to experience the next increment. To all the others: Good news to you, you also have the chance of being part of this next chapter in the journey.
What's in the next update?
First of all, Hackero was never planned as a perfectly complex hacking simulation. There are many small games in this genre and some of them put a lot of focus on realism and complexity. The problem with this is first of all the audience. You normally have a lot of people with a technical background, who knows how things work in real life and total beginners who expect being explained every step. For people with technical knowledge, an actual hacking game like e.g. Hacks the Box is more fitting as it offers real hacking challenges.
So for hackero, I've set the goal to not overcomplicate the game, but also provide an interesting level of complexity. In my opinion, Renato perfectioned this with hacker experience legacy and still, hackero is heavily inspired by his work. Therefore hackero will not be offering a perfect hacking simulation, but more fun and easy to learn experience you will remember. I want to achieve this by spicing up the original game of Renato with new technologies and concepts, like filesystems, a desktop-like UI, and a set of tools everyone who touched Linux systems once will feel familiar with. In my eyes, it's not about having the perfect simulation what makes a good hacking game but about being immersive and interesting. And that's basically what this update is about.
First of all, I've added small features which extend currently existing features. For example, a system now welcomes you when you connect to it. Diskspace is now a thing and you should keep your things neatly organized so you don't run out of space.
I've also changed how crackers work, a new app now allows you to trace back an onion connection and get an onions server IP Address.
There's a new social network which helps you to connect to other players, contact them or chat with other players online. It might come in handy ;)
The UI also had a huge makeover to make it cleaner and nicer.
As seen in the screenshots above, the browser UI got a small overhaul and is now much cleaner. But not just the Window UI was cleaned up also menus are now nicer.
The same happened in a few other windows like e.g. the files app.
It also has now a new context menu for easy filesystem management
Scripting did not make it back yet since there's still a lot to consider since a users custom code is still a security concern.
But still, stability improved as about 50% of games code is now checked by tests :)
The next update will be released in November, depending on how many more bugs there are to be fixed ;)
What about the future?
In the future, I'd like to invite you all to participate even more in the development progress of hackero. I'm still not quite sure yet how to implement this If you got any ideas, let me know on discord or by sending a mail to hello@hackero.io.
If you want to stay up to date check out the roadmap at https://trello.com/b/OCfEHJVE/feature-roadmap
Also, the survey is still open:
