Haker Game Design

Haker is going to be a game about hacking. My idea is for a game that is a cross between Uplink and the programming aspect of 0x10c, the famous DCPU16.

At the core of the game will be the WOPR CPU. It is a simple CPU, with limited memory and few peripherals, but nevertheless with real instructions, interrupts, initialization, stack etc.

At the most basic level, I hope that the people who liked idea of 0x10c can and will write whatever programs they wish, games, operating systems, anything. This should be fun, but more importantly this will give the game richness. If my plans pan out, there will be an online portion which will allow people to discover each others work. So, to some degree, this game can be about what the community makes it.

WOPR CPU is limited in power and memory for a reason. The intention is to simulate 1000 or possibly 10000 CPU’s at the same time, on a normal desktop or laptop computer. Each CPU can execute arbitrary code, written by the player, community or predefined by game.

This is where it gets interesting. The game will basically not be a game. It will be real. You will write real programs, execute real commands, use real assembler and debugger. And most interestingly investigate and hack real computers and software. But still in a safe sandbox.

But this is not only for computing experts. While the CPU’s are “real”, the intention is to make the experience real. In real pen-testing, social engineering is big part of the job. Entry missions will be more about learning about your target, researching open source data, trying to guess their password for example. Or trick them to tell you the password.

I will not be able to explain all possible mission types here, because I expect this is where the community will have a huge influence. My job is to build a sandbox where only your imagination is the limit. We can implement email system, forum or bulletin board. We can implement virtual banks, universities, or police systems.

So, a very simple mission can be investigating a persons on-line presence and guessing his password. A complex one might be using real SQL injection technique to gain access to a DB. While hacking a virtual bank might involve using DoS attack to overload a proxy CPU which will give you access to internal network, where you will have to social engineer user password, infect his computer with a key logger, capture admin password and use it to…

Well, do whatever you want. While the missions will exist, Haker it is foremost a sandbox, and no-one says you have to play by the rules. You are the Haker after all. If you learn enough about this virtual world, why not build an all powerful set of scripts and code to give you ability to control the entire game world.

But how do we get there? I am not fooling myself. What I outlined above is ambitious and will require a lot of work. Furthermore it will rely on the community a lot. So both me and you will have to work quite a bit before it all clicks.

But work is easy when it is fun. So this has to be the first priority for most decisions from now on: keep it all fun.