[HN Gopher] The fun factor of the video game Uplink
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The fun factor of the video game Uplink
Author : syx
Score : 331 points
Date : 2023-10-28 07:16 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (vertette.github.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (vertette.github.io)
| peteforde wrote:
| The author will lose their mind when they discover Papers Please.
| danpalmer wrote:
| Papers Please is an excellent game, but really quite different
| to Uplink. I'd say that Papers Please's entertainment comes
| from a simple task with an increasing rule set, and needing to
| stay within those rules. Whereas Uplink's entertainment is a
| fair bit more problem solving and resource management (e.g.
| upgrades) if I remember correctly (I did play it many years
| ago).
|
| They're both great indie games, with a great ambiance from the
| graphics and music, but otherwise I see them as fairly
| different in terms of gameplay.
| gattilorenz wrote:
| The implication of the OP is not that they are the same game,
| but that "if you think Uplink's focus is more on 'exploring
| emotions' and less on 'fun', Papers Please will blow your
| mind (as that has very little fun in the traditional sense,
| and a much stronger focus on exploring deeper emotions)".
| Vertette wrote:
| I absolutely love that game.
| MrRolleyes wrote:
| To my eye Papers Please is a completely different sort of game.
| the_af wrote:
| I don't think the comment you're replying to is saying
| _Uplink_ and _Papers, Please_ are the same kind of game.
|
| I think it's addressing the fact both could be described as
| "boring" and "not fun" due to their somewhat dry UIs but also
| their subject matter ("hacking and networking" and "borders
| admission & stamping passports", respectively), but _in
| practice_ they are both innovative and very engrossing games,
| rightly lauded as gems by gamers.
| therein wrote:
| I remember playing Uplink as a child as well. Pretty great game.
|
| I wonder if it inspired the creation of imgui at all. Or what
| kind of engine the game had because it had pretty compelling UI
| capabilities, stuff I hoped to see on UI frameworks of the
| future.
| gattilorenz wrote:
| I think it was coded in Borland C and used SDL for video? The
| source is available: https://archive.org/details/uplink-
| developer-cd
| Kyuuketsuki wrote:
| Visual C++ 6.0 for the compiler. I remember doing the
| "upgrade" to .NET 2003.
|
| SDL was used for mac and linux versions, windows used glut.
| gattilorenz wrote:
| You're right: https://ia802308.us.archive.org/view_archive.
| php?archive=/11...
|
| I quickly scrolled through then ISO content and saw it's C
| files, and a spurious mention of Borland (from SDL) got me
| :)
| somerandomhn wrote:
| Omar made imgui while working on his Sega Master System
| emulator Meka back in 1999, well before Uplink ever came out.
| It was easily the best UI of any emulator at the time and
| completely unsurprising that he found fame turning that work
| into a library.
| rahkiin wrote:
| I do not think most games are 'fun': they give you dopamine
| rushes through achievements. In a horror game it is survival to
| the end, same with survival games. In an fps it is achieving a
| level or part and staying alive or being very efficient. With an
| rpg it can be discovery of new things or abilities. What for one
| person is fun for another can be tedious. It is exactly this
| balance you need to find for your target audience. The wider the
| target audience often the less in-depth a game goes to prevent
| tediousness.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| This game has a couple of interesting notes for me:
|
| 1. It's kinda what helped me find a career. I had trouble
| tolerating work for long enough, and while I could do it, it
| would get to me. I realized a LOT of the play patterns in this
| game are mostly optimization and data entry, so decided to take a
| start there and eventually wound up in tech.
|
| 2. It has a really cool, if possibly impossible to now play, fan
| made version called onlink. To memory it's not a mod so much as a
| separate application and has a lot more depth (annnnd
| unfortunately bugs). I know they were working on trying to make a
| standalone "movie hacking" simulator, but I don't know if that
| ever got off the ground (Cerberus I believe)
| Kyuuketsuki wrote:
| There hasn't been a release in a while, but onlink is still in
| active development.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Last update: March 2019. Not really active
| Kyuuketsuki wrote:
| Like I said, no release in a while.
|
| I'm the original author. There's one other that works on
| code, and Vert (this blog) has been a tremendous help with
| asset updates.
|
| Turns out however that rewriting the graphical engine takes
| a while.
| drexlspivey wrote:
| Ever considered open sourcing it? Pretty sure some people
| will contribute, it's an iconic game
| Kyuuketsuki wrote:
| Considered, yes, but Uplink is not open source, and it's
| not my right to do it either. I know the source is
| generally "out there" but the legality of that is murky.
| chongli wrote:
| Have you tried reaching out to Chris DeLay and asking him
| about it? He might be okay with it!
| stavros wrote:
| Does Onlink use any of the Uplink source, or is it
| written entirely from scratch? If the latter, it's
| definitely within your rights to open-source.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| Already said it to vert, but just wanted to say I wish
| you luck. Onlink was tapping into a niche that I think is
| super under explored and you clearly understood what was
| actually fun about it.
| suby wrote:
| Apparently the author of the article worked on onlink,
| https://vertette.github.io/post/helloworld.
| Vertette wrote:
| Yeah, I'm still working on that! It's making lots of exciting
| progress we can't wait to show people.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| Holy shit i'm super excited to hear that. I remember
| joining the forums (ferrous moon?) forever ago just to see
| if I could get help with some bugs and figure out how to
| get past the harder hacking missions.
|
| From there when the game only sorta worked for me I figured
| "well someone else has to have made a quality movie hacking
| simulator" and the answer was "not really no". It seemed
| really clear that Onlink really understood what made these
| things fun, and gave them depth, so I hope you can pull it
| off.
| flemhans wrote:
| How To Play?
| jslakro wrote:
| Never got how to do it
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I used to play a lot of Angband.
|
| An important mechanic in that game is that monsters have
| different types of attacks, and you need to be wearing equipment
| and/or maintaining temporary buffs that make you resistant or
| immune to those attack types. There are 30-40 relevant player
| flags, and as you collect stronger equipment more resistances
| will be available to you, making it safe to adventure deeper
| within the dungeon.
|
| You have to fit those few dozen player flags into your actual
| equipment, which is one helm, one amulet, two rings, a pair of
| gloves, a chestpiece, a cloak, a weapon, a shield (if your weapon
| isn't two-handed), a pair of boots, and maybe a ranged weapon.
|
| You also need a lot of stat point pluses, which are another thing
| you get from your equipment.
|
| One of the things I found most enjoyable in the game was sitting
| parked in my home in town, looking at the pieces of equipment I'd
| collected and saved, and thinking about how I might shuffle my
| equipment around for a better overall setup.
| h0l0cube wrote:
| I used to play a graphical version of Moria. I've just recently
| started playing Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup online (there's
| offline playable builds as well). If you like classical Rogue-
| likes, you might enjoy it too.
| anta40 wrote:
| Well, Uplink was certainly a very fun game for me. Played it
| around 2003-2006ish.
|
| I remember a quick way to increase your rank was by hacking the
| international crime database and put many hackers into prison.
| Hehe good old times.
|
| Definitely want to play another game like this (an updated
| graphics is certainly nice addition).
| acupofnope wrote:
| If you haven't tried yet, there's Hacknet that's similar to
| Uplink albeit a bit simpler, but still fun.
| stavros wrote:
| Some commenters here say Onlink is an improved version of
| Uplink.
| ChrisSD wrote:
| > While the game is a bit on the short side, there's enough depth
| to its mechanics to feel satisfying to master, and the
| realization that a game that gave you so much trouble at first
| has turned into a total cakewalk can't be matched.
|
| Yeah, if I recall, once you figure out all its mechanics you are
| able to hack anything in about a month of game time. This is
| marvelous once but obviously does hurt replayability.
|
| It is fun to think I can never really replay uplink, short of
| some rather severe amnesia.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| > It is fun to think I can never really replay uplink, short of
| some rather severe amnesia.
|
| Maybe I suffer onset dementia or something, but I enjoyed that
| game back then, but absolutely remember shit about it. Like,
| absolutely nothing. Maybe it would all come back 5 minutes
| after firing it up again, but I doubt it.
| zoky wrote:
| Once you figure out you can pretty easily hack top level bank
| accounts for effectively unlimited money, the game loses a
| lot of its replay value.
|
| I absolutely loved this game when it first came out and I
| played it on my Snow iBook G3. I subsequently re-bought it on
| Steam, and it's had about five minutes of playtime since
| then. I want to replay it, but every time I start it back up
| again I'm just like, "Nahhh."
| Xelbair wrote:
| It will, as it was relatively simple.
| pdpi wrote:
| > It is fun to think I can never really replay uplink, short of
| some rather severe amnesia.
|
| That's the feeling I got out of Return of the Obra Dinn. Turns
| out that a carefully crafted whodunnits becomes a lot less
| interesting when you already know who's who what the "it" is
| that they've dun.
| wavemode wrote:
| lol I guessed so much on my playthrough of Obra Dinn, that I
| imagine a second playthrough would not be particularly smooth
| either
| dymk wrote:
| I absolutely adore Obra Dinn, but its got the replay ability
| of a really, really good crossword puzzle.
|
| But not all is lost - I get almost as much enjoyment out of
| watching other people play through it and uncover the
| mystery.
| ozim wrote:
| For me it would be like 20 years ago last time I opened it. It
| would take me some time to get back but of course not as much
| as when I played it as a teenager. But I don't think I remember
| it in such detail to just plow through.
| noufalibrahim wrote:
| I bought a box version of this game on a CD and played it on
| Linux back in around 2002/2003. That was extremely rare. It had a
| black card with codes to prevent piracy.
|
| I absolutely loved the game. Really made you feel like a "hacker"
| in some sense.
| ysleepy wrote:
| Loved to play this way back. The aesthetic is awesome and it
| really lets you experience the vibes from the hacker movies at
| the time.
|
| I really enjoyed upgrading my workstation to 40Ghz and such,
| optimizing for attack time and stealth.
|
| Darwinia is great as well, I really dig their style.
| cryptoz wrote:
| Just chiming in to say I was super into Uplink for a bit around
| 2003 as well. Absolutely loved that game and couldn't ever really
| put a finger on why I loved it so much.
| armitage wrote:
| I bought this game via Steam and GOG a couple of weeks ago to
| nostalgia play it, but it doesn't open on Mac unfortunately.
| Shame, had a lot of good memories with this one (and it was
| ironically one of the first games I pirated to boot!)
| tronster wrote:
| There is a great semi-recent, two part Podcast interview of Chris
| DeLay, the creator of Uplink at: http://www.designer-
| notes.com/designer-notes-68-chris-delay-... and
| http://www.designer-notes.com/designer-notes-69-chris-delay-...
| davikr wrote:
| If you like Uplink, there is a free (you don't require the
| original game) fan-made modification called Onlink that heavily
| extends and improves the game.
| Prickle wrote:
| Thank you for that information. This will be a fun dive into
| one of my more favorite games.
| AaronM wrote:
| You can find the lastest version here
| https://www.ferrousmoon.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=55&t=2777
| mmcclure wrote:
| I clicked into this one sincerely hoping I'd find something
| like this! Thanks for the share.
|
| Unrelated to the game, but hitting on this after 36 pages of
| public updates made me sad about the state of forums.
|
| >> I know it's a 2 years bump. But I hope development is not
| completely dead :roll:
|
| > Actually more active lately than more recent history, but
| most discussion is taking place in Discord these days.
| gzalo wrote:
| Excelent game. Odd that no one mentioned Uplink OS, it's a
| graphic mod that makes it support higher resolution and has
| various qol improvements: https://www.moddb.com/mods/uplink-os It
| does lose a bit of the 90s aestethics though
| BrightOne wrote:
| I especially enjoyed how relatively open Uplink was. Putting
| other hackers behind bars through International Crime Database,
| stealing millions of dollars from an account where a "trace a
| huge payment" contract ended up - things like these shaped up my
| love for open world games, and immersive sims alike.
| helloplanets wrote:
| One of the classic introductory game design books (Theory Of Fun
| For Game Design by Raph Koster [0]) attempts to tackle the
| question of what fun is, and what a game is. It's a breezy read,
| with every second page an illustration. (Especially the chapter
| Different Fun For Different Folks is really close to what the
| original post is about.) It's tricky to define when you get in
| the weeds.
|
| Here's a snippet from the book:
|
| > Many simple things can be made complex when you dig into them,
| but having fun is something so fundamental that surely we can
| find a more basic concept?
|
| > I found my answer in reading about how the brain works. Based
| on my reading, the human brain is mostly a voracious consumer of
| patterns, a soft pudgy gray Pac-Man of concepts. Games are just
| exceptionally tasty patterns to eat up.
|
| I do think that Uplink has some super tasty patterns in there,
| which is exactly what the author is talking about when he's
| talking about the feeling of noticing how much better you've
| gotten when you start the game over. Of course, fun isn't a
| binary classification, and there's definitely a bunch games that
| are very heavy on the 'juice-factor' and other such things in an
| attempt to bump up the fun.
|
| [0]:
| https://archive.org/details/theoryoffunforgamedesign2ndediti...
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Are there any games that aren't pattern-based, in some sense?
|
| I'm struggling to think of any examples that are arguably
| random.
| lubujackson wrote:
| Slot machines?
| smogcutter wrote:
| I think part of a useful line between "game" and "not game"
| whether the player can make decisions that influence the
| outcome.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| Candyland, chutes and ladders, Life. All games, all have
| no player agency (Life does have _one_ decision iirc).
| majormajor wrote:
| At a slightly-less-elementary level: Monopoly. Lots of
| decisions, but a lot of them are kinda "fake" - very
| rarely do you _want_ to decline to buy that property you
| just landed on. And the game is often effectively over
| even before any trading or such. The pattern is little
| more than "land on the right spots, don't land on the
| wrong spots have other people land on the wrong spots,
| win."
|
| Games with fewer meaningful choices and less exploitable
| patterns tend to be games that game enthusiasts move away
| from pretty quickly.
|
| But they stay interesting as casual diversions or ways to
| spend time with kids for people who are less-game-
| oriented.
|
| So I think there's two types of ways games are fun, and
| the latter one is simply "something to do together with
| friends and family" where the game itself is a diversion,
| not the primary enjoyment source.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| I was also going to add monopoly, but wanted to avoid the
| potential of dispute. Even though really monopoly is just
| rolling dice.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| > the feeling of noticing how much better you've gotten when
| you start the game over.
|
| There's nothing like your second playthrough of a game like
| Factorio, Cities Skylines, Stellaris, etc. All of the
| experience and knowledge you've gained feels like a superpower
| when you start fresh.
| Rury wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the theory of flow and how dopamine and the
| brain works completely explains what makes video games fun. In
| short, to make a video game fun it needs to balance a person's
| flow state (particularly in regards to learning). The
| difficulty lies in that a person learns and therefore their
| skill improves over time, and so this "curve" needs changing to
| compensate to keep them in the state of flow, but it needs to
| be done in a way that doesn't alienate unskilled newcomers and
| provides something truly "new" to learn. This is why you see
| some games that are either super difficult or complicated,
| which appeal to a small subset of gamers, but not to the
| masses, and vice versa.
| shmichael wrote:
| The "not fun" mentioned by the author is the same principle as
| good children's movies have to be genuinely scary or sad. See
| Disney/Pixar classics like Lion King.
|
| The larger amplitude of emotions makes the positive ending stand
| out.
| everyone wrote:
| Uplink is a contender for the most immersive game ever as you
| play it sitting at a computer, playing the role of a person
| sitting at a computer.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I enjoyed Uplink very much, but had a hard time getting started
| because I approached it like a real hacker would.
|
| Got stuck for over an hour because I could not figure out how to
| hack a node to route my connection through it. The Eureka moment:
| You just click on it! No hacking needed, it is magic.
|
| The impossible IP addresses were anusing too.
| ghostDancer wrote:
| One of the thing I recall from Uplink, apart from the game, it
| was the modem ringing sound and as soon as i heard it extending
| my hand to unplug the modem, then realizing the sound was in
| game. That was an immersive experience.
| BoiledCabbage wrote:
| I've never been more shocked by any game intro than the intro
| to that game. So simple, but so incredibly well done.
|
| Looking back now the intro is so simplistic, and no way anyone
| now would have the same experience (it's a different tech world
| now) but at the time I was really amazed at the thought behind
| the design choice.
| markx2 wrote:
| Whoever developed this (1) had perfect eyesight and (2) never
| gave any thought whatsoever to anyone who would try to play this
| in any other way.
|
| This game is not 'fun'. Well, it might be if I could read it.
|
| This game, like so very many others, should be a lesson in
| accessibility.
|
| Disagree? Fine. Bookmark this and come back in 10 / 20 years.
|
| Six years ago:
| https://steamcommunity.com/app/1510/discussions/0/1474221865...
| stavros wrote:
| Unfortunately, you're right. I can read it fine on my computer,
| but it's tiring to read on the Steam Deck. Tons of whitespace
| and a tiny font.
| phh wrote:
| Well, I think we're not far away from having NN upscaling
| options in our window manager, which should be able to solve
| the issues for that game
| Stagnant wrote:
| It was originally released in 2001, hardly the only game from
| that era that doesn't scale that well with higher resolutions.
| Falkon1313 wrote:
| Or whoever wrote this comment ran it in the wrong resolution.
| It wasn't designed to be played on an 8K billboard because no
| one had those back then. Try 800x600 and you should be able to
| see the text much clearer.
|
| It does have other UI quirks though. IIRC, focus was determined
| by mouseover so if you bumped the mouse while trying to type in
| a textbox the keys would get lost. I found that significantly
| more of a problem (without an easy fix) than the screen
| resolution.
| nickdothutton wrote:
| If you enjoyed uplink, you might have liked Cholo, a game from
| the mid 1980s which had exploration, a hacker feel, post-
| apocalyptic scenario, and non-linear gameplay with the odd
| puzzle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cholo_(video_game)
| Kim_Bruning wrote:
| Apparantly there was an authorized free remake (!), but the
| site it was published on is now also down, and the internet
| archive doesn't seem to have the download link. :(
|
| Maybe someone on HN still has the game, or a clue how to get
| it?
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20120212100603/http://cholo.ovin...
| Avshalom wrote:
| I just checked it, seems to work fine under Wine, no clue
| about windows
|
| https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/3r649q0mij35sbwooufih/cholo.z.
| ..
| mgaunard wrote:
| As a fellow European most likely older than the poster, I find
| the retelling quite jarring and inaccurate.
| Vertette wrote:
| What's inaccurate? I'm almost 28 and describing what was true
| for me at the time as a Dutch citizen, between international
| online payments being harder to make until 2010 or so and PC
| games not getting much space at nearby toy stores.
| jgavris wrote:
| Cyberarmy was pretty fun too
| jebarker wrote:
| > That might sound silly to a lot of players, because "if the
| game's not fun, why bother", right?
|
| Games are no different in this regard to books or movies. The
| bulk of the market is looking for escapist entertainment
| generally associated with positive emotions, but there are many
| others that are looking for other things like learning something
| new or exploring darker emotions. Video games have a unique
| challenge though in that it's very difficult for those niches to
| be served with games of the scale and quality of AAA. Movies have
| that to some extent, but not nearly as extreme.
| epalm wrote:
| My favorite part of Uplink was the module you could buy to talk
| to other hackers. Which of course turned out to be an actual IRC
| channel with actual people! I hung out in the channel for a year
| or two (via real IRC client, probably mIRC), and after the game's
| popularity faded a bit it was a running joke when players would
| once in a while still join from the game and be pleasantly
| surprised to find "real people" in the game.
|
| PS I remember now someone (Scaevolous? WolfLord? Rkiver? Zaptan?)
| had written an irc bot in python, and it was the first time I'd
| ever contributed to an open source project :)
| aftergibson wrote:
| Loved this game as a teenager, one of those influences on my
| future life choices. Darwinia was also a really fun concept.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwinia_(video_game)
| trhr wrote:
| If you liked Uplink, you'll like Bitburner.
| axxl wrote:
| Somewhat of a spiritual successor is Midnight Protocol. It evokes
| a lot of similar feelings for me.
|
| https://www.midnightprotocol.net/
| maxbond wrote:
| For your consideration for Uplink successors, the BBS era visual
| novel Digital: A Love Story by Christine Love.
|
| https://scoutshonour.com/digital/
|
| Excellent visual novel you can finish over a weekend or two.
| hackan wrote:
| I LOVED THAT GAME!!!
|
| I remember downloading it at the local cyber-coffee, for which I
| bought 2 boxes of diskettes! The owner saw me trying very hard to
| split apart the zipped game and told me "do you want me to burn a
| CD?". That's how I got my first CD game :D
| shever73 wrote:
| Reminiscent of the Activision game, Hacker, which I bought for
| the ZX Spectrum. It shipped with no instructions, you had
| accidentally got access to a computer system and needed to work
| things out from there.
|
| For a kid with no modem, it was revolutionary.
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