Show HN: Hacker Experience – Online hacking simulation game

by napsterbr • 12 years ago

70 45 12 years ago

napsterbr7• 12 years ago

Hello HN,

I'd like to share my work for the last couple years with you. I just released this web-based game called Hacker Experience, where you play the role of a hacker working for an evil corporation.

You can install viruses, hack servers, develop new softwares, DDoS players, mine bitcoins, and much more!

Love to hear any feedback/thoughts you may have.

Thanks!

DarkTree• 12 years ago

Honestly, the site was designed well enough that despite clicking on the link with little interest, I ended up signing up for it within a minute or so. Now, time to try it out!

codexjourneys• 12 years ago

Hopefully it's not like Ender's Game :-)

Trying it out, though.

jkkorn• 12 years ago

Great idea. Could be a little more intuitive. I admit I struggled at times to figure what to do next. Really liked everything else. Parabens!

elwell• 12 years ago

typo "trainned".

Edit: After reading further, I think you should see if you can get a native English speaker to proofread your text. I would hate to see your work dismissed because of a language barrier.

aqme28• 12 years ago

Only feedback I have from the landing page:

Please please please don't hijack the scroll.

andrey-p• 12 years ago

Seconded. I'm on a netbook and actually can't read one of the paragraphs in the about section.

0x420• 12 years ago

No comment on the game as I haven't tried it yet, but the scroll hijacking on the homepage makes it kind of annoying to read the text, expand/collapse FAQ questions etc., especially in a smaller window. I suggest disabling it once you scroll the top section out of the viewport. This looks like fun though - I'll definitely be trying it out.

chairmankaga• 12 years ago

Getting a scrollbar for the content under "cracker" in Ubuntu firefox 30.0 The scroll hijacking of course breaks the scrollbar there :D

Igglyboo• 12 years ago

One of the better scrollbar hijacking pages I've seen but it's still pretty jerky and it's really hard for me to get it to land on the sign up part.

Im using Chrome Canary on a Macbook Pro, scrolling with the two finger gesture on the trackpad.

goldmar• 12 years ago

The site is broken. First I was getting 404 when I tried to log in. Then, after clicking the link in the email, I got to the tutorial. But whatever I click I always get back to the animation at the start. Using Safari on Yosemite PB2.

ShaneWilton• 12 years ago

I'm running into the same issue. I'm actually really excited to give this a try too - Uplink and Slavehack were incredible games.

oflannabhra• 12 years ago

same issue here on chrome on os x

alexjeffrey3• 12 years ago

looks like fun! I've been holding out for a modern retake on the uplink series or some other fun hacking game.

one UI thing that came up for me - going through the university pages, it wasn't totally clear that the green buttons were actually a "next" button. After I read the software page, I saw the green button said "what if I need help?", thought it was a help button and decided that since I couldn't find a next button, I was free to start playing. Confusion set in when the homepage sent me back to the tutorial.

[edit] in terms of a fix, a simple » or other arrow-icon might fix this

also a few little suggestions that I hope you'll like (as I like this type of game, a lot!):

- Maybe represent the user's balance purely in BTC? the idea of paying hackers in bank transfers seems a little insecure for a security game :)

- You might run into race conditions when editing logs, depending on how it's implemented on the backend - maybe just a checkbox next to each line to quickly delete lines relevant to you? this might ruin some of the fun possibilities re. dropping other people's IPs into logs though.

iamtew• 12 years ago

As long as it can be implemented well I think it's good to have full text edit power on the log file, I can just change my own IP to someone else ;)

alexjeffrey3• 12 years ago

I agree, but the race condition kind of kills it - 2 people editing the same file at the same time.

napsterbr7• 12 years ago

A temporary log is stored on each log edit, so your IP could shown up again even if you deleted it, in the case of race condition.

There's no way to use some sort of lock, though. I accepted it as part of the game.

As iamtew mentioned, having a textarea is nice because you can use your "creativity". ASCII art, "framing" people, etc.

Anyway, really wasn't expecting so many users. Over 800 online now.

pla3rhat3r• 12 years ago

I love the part where it says, "Don't worry. Your computer is safe." This is the same thing they say right before you get a blow dart to your neck, a black bag on your head, and driven to an "undisclosed location." Cool game!

mynameisvlad2• 12 years ago

It failed to send an email verification code, and now I can't resend it, so I'm stuck. :(

napsterbr7• 12 years ago

I'm using AWS SES and many emails are returning. I don't know if it's my rate (5 mails/sec), but I'll try to send again the codes

mynameisvlad2• 12 years ago

Got it now, thanks! I'll play around with it in a while but it looks great! :)

chobo• 12 years ago

This is a very fun game so far. Are there other hacking games people would recommend? The more educational the better.

alexjeffrey3• 12 years ago

uplink is fun, and considered a classic of the genre.

In terms of education, the real thing is more interesting - check out places like hackthissite.org or smashthestack.org for some real life (ish) hacking in a contained environment. Hold your breath though as the smell of teen angst may overpower you on some of these sites.

sp332• 12 years ago

Similar idea https://hack.me/

jiggy2011• 12 years ago

I'd like to be able to try the game, or at least see a video before giving this my email address.

jordsmi• 12 years ago

This so much. Saw I had to sign up to see anything and just closed out.

siddboots• 12 years ago

Clicking the Start Tutorial button on the welcome page does some things ("creating virtual machine..." etc) but then just brings me back to the welcome page.

osazuwa• 12 years ago

I get the same error. But hey, please send me a message when you get it to work. I can't wait to try this out. I've been waiting for something like this for a while.

samjc2• 12 years ago

verifying your email should fix the issue

pragone2• 12 years ago

Not sure if I'm missing some part of the concept here, but after logging in all I see is "Start Tutorial", which goes through some "loading" things, then back to the same page. No other options for any other way to navigate...

Edit: you have to not be logged in (delete cookies if you did), then click the link to verify. There's no where to paste the code that's sent in the email.

napsterbr7• 12 years ago

Hi,

After the animation, you are redirected to a page with some text, right?

Make sure you click the green button.

[edit] Sorry, I broke the header while fixing the AWS SES issue. Should work now.

samjc2• 12 years ago

Once you click on "Start Tutorial", looks like it does an animation thing, but then just takes you back to the screen to where you can click "Start Tutorial" again... I just realized that this keeps on going in a circle until you verify your email... So if you think it's not working for because it is buggy, make sure you check your email and verify your account :)

pragone2• 12 years ago

Verified account, still happens... =/

Edit: you have to not be logged in (delete cookies if you did), then click the link to verify. There's no where to paste the code that's sent in the email.

napsterbr7• 12 years ago

Sorry, I removed the verification but forgot to change the game header.

It should work fine now, no need for verification.

owenversteeg• 12 years ago

Doesn't work for me. I logged in, got redirected to https://hackerexperience.com/welcome, clicked on the button, and it "loaded" and then reloaded the page. Repeat.

napsterbr7• 12 years ago

Just fixed it. Please try again.

Let me know if you have any problem.

bcohen5055• 12 years ago

It's fun but I can't seem to re-visit a "certification" I thought I understood how to steal money but I don't and can't go back. I also can't seem to get any missions so I'm just aimlessly hacking into personal accounts. Don't mean to turn this into a support thread, just letting you know what's going on :)

napsterbr7• 12 years ago

Hey,

Revisiting a certification is still todo, but I probably should've done this before releasing. Anyway, the wiki (wiki.hackerexperience.com) has some information.

To receive mission offers, make sure you hack companies. There are some on the Whois. Pineapple, elgooG and MuderKing, for example.

Feel free to ask any questions here or on the game forums

the4dpatrick• 12 years ago

@napsterbr, just finished my first mission and got some BTC. Yay! I really liked how the on-boarding and the learning of how the game played was so smooth. For example, I was about to go back to the missions tab to see the IP address I needed, when the popup on the right showed it. This is a simple example, but this happened numerous times just in the first mission. By the end, I knew how to play. On-boarding was spot on

munger• 12 years ago

Arg, I think I found a dead-end on mission 1. I had the heartbleed virus v1.2 and the mission called for v1.0 and so after installing v1.2, it no longer allows installation of an additional one or deleting the first one so now I am still stuck with $0 because the wrong version is installed. Any advice?

nikolak• 12 years ago

Requires too much watching of progress bars, for example if I click to download the software from the web just run it in background and once it's done let it show in software tab, going to process then clicking "complete" for each individual file is just too boring and the primary reason why I stopped playing it after few hours.

Some of them seem like they're running only when being watched.

A way to earn money, such as missions, should be available at all times - maybe based on some sort of rank.

Gathering money at the start is very very slow.

Users should be able to "bookmark" IPs both hacked and unhacked and organize them.

Upgrades are too simple and too similar so the whole gameplay is just repeated set of actions, you need to integrate the "multiplayer" aspect more into it.

giancarlostoro• 12 years ago

Maybe missions should give some money up front in some cases, sucks when you don't have any money and you need to upgrade for a mission. Either that or maybe I just suck at hacking others lol.

stvnchn• 12 years ago

Overall, neat idea. As a nontechnical but tech savvy person, I like how you provided the information in a succinct way although the format could have been more digestible. Downloading software is not efficient.

I think this platform could be a great way for teaching people about the Internet. I highly doubt people will learn about servers, IPs, and different forms of hacking software in school.

sbussard2• 12 years ago

Super addictive! The missions are a little wonky though, they're not getting unlocked.

sbussard2• 12 years ago

Where did it go???

Show HN: Hacker Experience – Online hacking simulation game

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