Uplink

[NewF]

Just bought it today, pretty effin' cool game if I do say so myself. Anyone else ever play/hear/know anything bout it at all?

[MortifiedocAlot]

Never even heard of it, you got some splainen to do.

[Bobbias]

Is that some weird game that involves hacking and all that? I think I know what you're talking about.

[NewF]

Yeah you join this corp. and you need to hack into government files and what not, its pretty friggin' cool.
Heres the link.
http://www.uplink.co.uk/

I just bought it last night.
Ps: The games not as easy as most people would think, its pretty friggin' hard....but fun

[Spectere]

I've been a fanboi of Uplink for years.   I ended up getting it when it was still offered in a jewel case (not the first hand-made run, but the second run).

They ended up putting the source code up for purchase ($50, I think) so people have been making a bunch of mods.  One particularly ambitious mod is Onlink; check it out!

[NewF]

I still need to get used to the game first, i'm always getting game over because I keep messing something up because of not deleting all previous records of me hacking into the databases and what not.
Still not sure what i'm doing wrong, but i'll find out sooner or later lol.

[Spectere]

Uplink uses two types of traces, active and passive traces.  Active traces are the ones that the Trace Tracker pick up; the ones that occur when you're connected.  They tend to occur fairly quickly.  Depending on how much damage you do you might have to contend with passive traces as well.  These tend to be slower (except for banks; holy CRAP) but if you do too big of a mission they'll bust you with it.  If it's not-so-high you might still get fined.

My advice would be to bounce everything through InterNIC first.  Then, when you can afford a v4 Log Deleter, grab it and, after every hack, hack into InterNIC without bounces (it doesn't have any security to speak of, aside from a weak password) and delete all of the logs except for the connect and disconnect logs.  This will prevent you from getting busted by the passive trace.

[NewF]

See I had NO idea about that at all LoL.
Also, it pissed me off cause everytime i've saved up about 40k credits to get that new gateway, buy it, then fast-forward time to get it installed and then..............................you've been caught hacking into some place and your system and id is being revoked.
FUCK SAKES!

[Spectere]

Haha, yeah, I've been around the block quite a few times with Uplink.  I'm to the point now where I have to make a conscious effort if I want to get caught, so a new mod with new challenges is very exciting to me.  LAN hacking bugs me a bit sometimes (like when the system admin starts on a system adjacent to the one I'm on!) but I usually find that with a little bit of patience and perseverance I can get around any major hurdle in that game.

You'll get there soon, after you learn all the little intricacies with it.

Oh, also, make sure you have the latest patch (1.54 is the latest official patch).  It fixes a lot of things and adds some useful new features.

[NewF]

Yeah, just bought it yesterday so go the fullest updated version.

[NewF]

So uhh...anything with connection routed to, made a connection, or connection closed, leave them alone in the interNIC?

[Spectere]

The connection routed to are the ones that you want to get rid of -- that, and the file accessed messages, are gets you nailed during the passive trace.  The ones that report the connection being made to InterNIC (i.e. when you go in and delete the logs and whatever) are okay to keep.

Also, if you find that you don't have a whole lot of time with the active trace (like when you first start having the Global Criminal Database) you can connect to InterNIC and add some computers to your list to bounce through.

[NewF]

K yeah i'm stuck at a point now. I'm at one of those hacking a bank to get someones current bank balance...but the decrypter is god-awful slow and it never completes before I get caught. And i'm broke! And all the other tasks are nothing but bank/money tasks! What the hell can I do now LoL.
I need some money to get the monitor/proxy bypassers.

[Bobbias]

Sadface :< I just began to upgrade my computer, too :/
I thought I erased all the logs pertaining to that. I know I wasn't actively traced, but I thought I got my records from interNIC deleted.

[Spectere]

K yeah i'm stuck at a point now. I'm at one of those hacking a bank to get someones current bank balance...but the decrypter is god-awful slow and it never completes before I get caught. And i'm broke! And all the other tasks are nothing but bank/money tasks! What the hell can I do now LoL.

Heh, yeah, I'd avoid doing those missions for a while; they're very painful at lower levels.

There are no time limits in Uplink so if you don't want to flat-out abandon the mission you could keep it there until you earn enough money.

Sadface :< I just began to upgrade my computer, too :/
I thought I erased all the logs pertaining to that. I know I wasn't actively traced, but I thought I got my records from interNIC deleted.

[lol huge screenshot]

If you see that screen, you've been traced somehow; might have taken too long getting rid of the logs.  Some ISMs (internal service machines) do have pretty decent monitors -- up to level 4 in some cases -- when you get to the higher level missions (and, on some annoying cases, even on lower-level missions, though you only get a fine for getting caught on those, I think).

If you're going to hack, just make sure that InterNIC is your first bounce.  Always.  Also, make sure you have a long enough bounce path so that there's no chance of getting busted.  If you need servers, seed your list with InterNIC.  It comes in handy to have a nice, healthy list of servers available, especially when you start dealing with central mainframes.