A Brief Introduction to Decker, Part 3: Radio Shack Attack

Part 1 of this series introduces Decker and how it relates to the roguelike game genre.

Part 2 considers the part of the game the supports the action: character development, examining the cyberdeck, and obtaining or building new hardware and software.

In this post, we’ll carry out a typical cyberhit against a future version of Radio Shack, and snatch a little bit of something for ourselves in the process. First, however, let’s review our mission.

The Mission

We’ll rejoin our fledgling hacker at the hub. Click on “View Contracts” to review the mission.

When we’re looking for a mission, this shows a list of available missions. If we accept a mission (which we have), it shows the details for the current mission. Our contract states that all we have to do is break into the Radio Shack computer system, and disable the alarm systems. We’re probably facilitating a robbery or corporate espionage. Contracts can have more complex requirements, such as not setting off alarms, or even completely trashing a system. For now, we’ll be satisfied with something this simple, and the lousy payment of 105 credits.

Note that the deadline is in one day. If we disconnect for any reason, that’s a day’s work done. Reconnecting can only be done on the following day, so we better be done by the deadline, or our reputation will suffer.

Well, what are we waiting for, let’s indirectly hurt some people!

A Brief Introduction to Decker, Part 2 (cyberpunk hacking roguelike)

In my previous post, I introduced the graphical roguelike Decker, and how to obtain it and soften the harsh graphics a bit. Here, we’ll get into Decker’s actual gameplay.

Next to the graphics, the toughest part about getting into Decker is figuring out how to make a living as a hacker in the cyberpunk world of the future. Fortunately, the game itself has a decent helpfile, though you’ll be using the search function quite a bit at first. As this introduction continues, we’ll familiarize ourselves with the interface, and go on a quick mission. Then, you’ll be on your own!

Nerding Out: Watching Tron, Playing Decker (a cyberpunk hacking roguelike)

Acting like it’s a rainy day in 1986. Watching a young and smug Jeff Bridges in Disney’s Tron, and playing Decker, a roguelike game based roughly on an old tabletop RPG called Shadowrun. In Decker, you play a William Gibson-style hacker, taking illicit contracts to hack into corporate systems and steal data, fight intrusion countermeasures, and cause general havoc. More fun than it looks, and it looks terrible.

Spelunky hits version .99.9b

Oh, so close to 1.0. My personal pick for tiny game of the year, Spelunky, has been released at version .99.9b, after a slightly bumpy .99.9 version. The most noticable change is that the player character is now somewhat zippier than before, which may take some getting used to. Flares seem to have disappeared from the game, or perhaps they automatically show up in dark levels. Much as I hate dark levels, I did enjoy the challenge of getting through them with only three flares, and flares made good missiles in a pinch. Finally, the config is separated from the game executable, which means only a double-click to gameplay.

Grab gun, shoot shopkeeper, steal bombs, laugh maniacally, die hilariously.

Best update: Bombs now blow through two horizontal blocks more accurately. No more “almost” getting through two-block-thick walls! My second favorite change is that trees are now CLIMBABLE. No more getting stuck at the base of a too-tall tree with no option but to bomb your way out! Still waiting for a few other features, such as a high score/ progress saving system not reliant on the Windows Registry.

Get it here.

Freeware: ManicTime micromanages your day

It looks like a file defragmenter, but really it’s a way to see how very fragmented your day is. ManicTime is a fat, but free .NET app that snoops on all your window titles and creates a series of charts that describe the applications that take up your day. It’s a good way to augment your timecard, or just see how long you’ve spent playing Team Fortress 2 versus World of Warcraft. I’ve been using it for about eight hours now and I already feel terribly, terribly guilty.

ManicTime main screen

Pluses:

• Free and professional-looking
• Silently records your doings with no interaction
• Unobtrusive – unlike a PDA-type app, it won’t remind you what to do, it passively records what you’re doing
• Accurate enough out of the box, better with a little personal configuration
• Can export graphs (to PNG) and data (to CSV)
• Does not share or upload your data with a 3rd party source, all info is store locally

Negatives:

• Induces guilt
• Requires .NET (and therefore not native to Mac or Linux machines)
• Grossly overweight (its two runtimes exceed 50MB when minimized)
• Without user interaction, cannot differentiate between different activities using the same app (bad if you use your browser for multiple tasks: watching YouTube, checking email, writing a blog post)
• Weird, fuzzy display of some text (some .NET issue, maybe?)

Download!

(found via Lifehacker)

Spelunky updates again, .99.5

The tireless Derek Yu offers another minor release, includes some bugfixes and play improvement. Perhaps not that worthy of an entire post, but this game is really, really good. (Explore a system of caves! Die in hilarious ways!)

Placeholder site.

Direct download.

Eegra also fumbles his way through a profanity-laced half-description of Spelunky on his latest podcast. Bless him, though, his depiction of a bemonacled octopod is ten tons of wonderful: