Hello everyone! I would like to share with you the latest news about the development.
In the last report, we explored some new hacking methods, mainly focused on PvP. In this report, we will explore the extended behavior of NPCs. Note: The Nightly Build is in active development and is not yet available to the public.
The NPC scheduling system has been completely re-implemented, improving and adding certain activities that will allow players to interact with various aspects of their lives.
From Monday to Friday, NPCs will go to work and have their leisure time, while weekends will be mostly dedicated to leisure activities and sleep. Players will be able to check NPC activities through CCTV if the network has available cameras. This can be particularly useful if the network has certain hackable smart appliances, as these can cause accidents.
Similarly, players can track an NPC’s license plate to monitor them through traffic cameras during their commutes, perhaps to hack traffic lights and also cause an accident. If the network contains the employee records database, the players will be able to know the full schedule of the NPCs.
These accidents can cause the death of the NPCs, although killing an NPC it is not the only way to get rid of an NPC on a network that is preventing us from reaching our goal, like an annoying administrator, we can also use other methods to get the NPC fired, such as changing the alarm clock time on their smartphone so they are late for work several days in a row, or similar methods.
If a network loses an administrator (or any other NPC), either due to an accident or being fired, a new NPC will be hired to replace the previous one after several in-game days. Each NPC influences the company’s earnings, so if the player has purchased the company, they can decide which NPCs will be fired or hired from a list of candidates, showing their stats. But this is more specific to the "Impacting world by players” part and we will explore it another day.
Causing an accident that ends up killing an NPC will be taken very seriously by the Police, so covering your tracks will not be an easy task, and if you get caught, it will be a direct Game Over.
NPCs also communicate with each other through emails or phone messages with NPCs from their network and also with NPCs from other networks. Besides discussing mundane topics, they will also comment on any problems or peculiar situations involving an NPC, allowing the player to know the context of the NPCs in the network to act accordingly if we want to interfere in their behavior to impact the company, and also to discover hidden missions more organically.
On the other hand, NPCs will be more aware of the movements in their bank accounts. Therefore, if an NPC detects that someone has stolen money from their bank account, they will report it to the authorities, who will start tracing the bank transactions to try to catch the perpetrator of the theft.
In a similar way, If an NPC detects an unusual deposit in their account, they can also report it to the authorities, causing a trace of the transfer, or withdraw that money and keep it. Depending on some NPC's specific internal stats and the amount of time the money stays in their account, they might never notice the unusual movement in their account.
Although this type of trace can also be avoided, it will be a stricter and more closed trace than conventional network traces and more difficult to avoid, so the player will need to have a cleaning plan ready before making a transfer. The larger the amount to transfer or deposit, the more suspicion it will raise.
In the next developer preview, we will explore the section "Impacting world by players" which is entirely related to the extended behavior of NPCs, where players will also be able to influence the world's economy beyond the use of coins.
Thanks for reading! More news soon!
Update v0.8.5121a
Changelog
- Fixed several crashes related to the Tutorial and the player's mail client.
- Minor update of the "First Steps" section from Manual to prevent possible confusion.
Update v0.8.5120a
- Fixed Bug #1098: Set password at start of game with special characters causes a wrong password saved instead informing the user that it is invalid.
- Fixed bug that caused the ConfigLan tutorial window to not close.
Nightly Build: Developer Preview
Hello everyone!
As you may have noticed, the code for the public version has been closed for a while, which means that no more updates will be published for the public branch of the game (except for serious bugs that may appear) since I have completely focused on the development of the Nightly Build.
This nightly build is special as it will be the last one before entering the beta version of the game and therefore carries significantly more content than other nightly builds from the past. I preferred not to split this nightly build into two or more parts, since that would entail extra time for fixing regression bugs after each merge, which always tends to take several months, so this time it is preferable to introduce all the planned features in the same nightly to fix all those regressions at once and thus save some time.
As this nightly is going to take me more time to develop than what is usually normal, this time I am going to publish updates (Developer Previews) about the state of the development regularly to keep you informed about which feature I am working on at those moments.
This time, being the first update, I still do not want to go into many details since I am working on several features at once and there are certain parts of the design that I want to finish defining first, but I can tell you broadly what the new attack vector will entail.
The new attack vector, which will complement the current buffer overflow, is being designed with multiplayer mode in mind, specifically for PvP mode. It involves 0-day-exploit attacks combined with code injection, which along with buffer overflow will allow for a more dynamic and balanced PvP between attack and defense, especially among more veteran players.
The 0-day-exploit attack will consist of several phases, requiring in the first of them that players collaborate with each other in order to advance. Upon reaching a certain level, players will be able to obtain limited pieces of information (rumors) which, upon completion, will lead them to a specific network to continue with the discovery of the exploit. This will encourage collaboration among guild members to obtain this privileged information before another group, whether their intention is to attack or protect a specific network or server.
Once this information is obtained, players will still need to do research work to discover and deal with the engineers who have worked on the library that may contain the undiscovered exploit, thus being able to move on to the next step of the attack which will then be more technical for the player.
In the next phases, the player will need to create specific code, which will vary depending on the vulnerability of the 0-day-exploit to continue the attack. Therefore, as an exception in the game, this time players without programming knowledge trying to discover the vulnerability will be at a disadvantage compared to players who know how to program. Hence, exploits of this type of vulnerability will not be generated in stores, unlike the current buffer overflow. Although players without programming knowledge can always use them once they are discovered and published by other players.
What I have described would be the first phases of the attack explained in a general way, the attack does not end there. There are also parts that I am currently exploring such as the introduction of an API that can only be accessed temporarily depending on various factors, or the introduction of additional, smaller attack vectors to help with the balancing of this new system.
In the upcoming dev previews, we will be exploring other parts of the nightly that are also being designed, as well as more details about this new vector attack.
More news soon!
Update v0.8.5115a
Changelog
- Fixed bug that caused Active Traces to not perform any action upon completion.
- Fixed bug that caused the player ID not to be saved correctly in the logs for some actions, causing some Passive Traces not to complete.
Update v0.8.5114a
Changelog
- Fixed bug in computer.connect_ethernet when setting the gateway to 0.0.0.0 if the player connected to a router or switch on the local network.
- Fixed bug in computer.connect_ethernet that allowed setting the computer that was going to make the connection as the gateway, causing unexpected behaviors.
- Improved internal internet availability check on devices (2)
Update v0.8.5112a
Changelog
- FIxed regression bug in Browser that could cause scrollbars to not be visible on some web pages.
Server Update
- Fixed exploit in ssh encryption/decryption that allowed bypassing the password when connecting to the server.
- Fixed bug in computer.connect_wifi that caused the gateway to be the invalid address 0.0.0.0 if the player connected to a local network router.
- Improved internal internet availability check on devices.
Update v0.8.5107a
Changelog
- Fixed bug that caused web pages to render with a zoom that was too large at certain screen resolutions and dpi.
- Performance improvements in the network system.
Update v0.8.5102a
Changelog
- Added scripting methods coin.reset_password and general.reset_ctf_password
- The banking address is hidden in the social engineering option "I know it was you" if the streamer mode is enabled.
- Fixed regression bug in the Browser when registering a CTF account, causing the registration to not be completed correctly and preventing access to the CTF management panel until the player restarted the game.
Update v0.8.5077a
Changelog
Fixed bug in ConfigLan that occasionally prevented the deletion of a network, usually after being hacked by another player, returning the message "This action cannot be performed while there are scripts running in this network"
Update v0.8.5076a
Changelog
Added scrollbar to the UI's wifi list when it exceeds a specific size. This ensures that networks previously unselectable when off the desktop view, are now accessible.
