my storyline
story for HBH Game:
==PART 1== Name: XY Age : 17 - 19 ( 18 sounds stupid ) You are a student at a high university, studying computers, maths, … Teachers like to fuck kids up, hate when you know more then they. You are from another country, get abused because of this ( racists, …)
==PART 2== // gameplay starts You hack the whole school system fuck them up really (do something funny).But you got caught by Feds.You have to choose: A: xy years in a jail + restriction to use computers B: being an agent (hacker) for them…
==PART 3== // okay you choosed B In the beginning it seems you are doing okay jobs…Looking through "potentional" terrorist messages, encrypting, stegano, tracing them, being good for the state etc..etc..etc..meanwhile you know they are watching you.Trying to restrict you and so on.
==PART 4== You just think of your new power - being an agent, and are thinking that revenge is sweet. You need contacts in the underground and things like that…friends, mentors, luzers. Do some hacking, learn something by the way…You just got your plan finished (against the Feds) but then something happens: the fucking government makes a big mistake,… (some conspiracy here) president kills someone…they want to cover everything…you seem dangerous to them and they want to kill you ( some very cool hacking mission here like controlling elevators, doorlocks, setting up a fake fire…). You got away and your underground friends help you out (passport, documents, fly to Hawaii). You live the rest of your life in fear…
==THE END== As yo can see from the storyline the character isn't perfect. He makes mistakes (like hacking the school server) and learns from them.
well, i got some ideas from that, such as multiple storylines, you can go down a path of black hattery of white, something like the (just an example) and something like the borne identity (i like that movie) where if you end up working for the government they screw with you so much you go crazy and lose your memory and still have high access in government and ause it then… just ideas shooting out
Making a non-linear story line may be very difficult, on the other hand, forcing them to complete levels in order is impossible. Though of course the only way they'll know what to skip is by reading a walkthrough made by someone else.
As for the age of the protagonist… I feel that a slightly older person allows more background to exist, longer relationships to have been established etc. On the other hand… making the main character in the late teens on early 20s may allow the player to indetify more with the character and therefore maybe empathise more with him.
A problem with you working for the government in the game is that that would quite quickly remove realism and we'd quickly fall back to an uplink style game.
You definately touched on some great issues though, such as making a fallable character. We can certainly arrange for dead ends in game which the player reaches if you misunderstood an email or a note.
Dead ends could always come from random emails from turkish hackers asking you to help deface a site, this would not add to the plot at all, except maybe create more evidence pointing at you (if the game story makes this applicable).
Question to the whole hacking elevators and stuff thing.
First off, as we all know, unrealistic hacking games are far more fun, so I think that would be a great idea :)
I'm wondering, will the game be entirely based on computer screens, or will we be using 3d game engines to have 1st/3rd person movement?
log into: ftp://hbh:riVM$YJd@www.whiteacid.org/planning/ In there you'll find an conversation Mr_Cheese and I had, give it a read.
To read the .xml file, grab the .xml and .xsl, dump them in the same folder and open the .xm file in your browser.
heres my idea for the charachter and storyline.
Your a single male in your mid-late 20's, recently graduated from univercity and been trained as "head of IT Repsonce" at a very large pharamacutical company. This basically means you use your IT skills to "obtain" information from other companies that can be used in your companies research.
Your company… Company A is one of the leading companies in its field, but you rivial with another extrmely large pharamacutical corporation… Company X.
Company A has reason to believe its system was breached a month ago by Company X and has some material and forumula's stolen. So Company A wants you to hack into Company X and investigate and find out what they stole and what they're doing with it.
You soon discover Comany X has indeed stolen information, and this informatin containts words and forumla's that relate to biological weapons, which is worded in a way that makesyou think Company X is evil, as it stole good material from Company A and is now converting it into a biological weapon.
A event happens qhich requires yout o hack your own copmany to look at personal files. In the process information is found about Company X and its development along with further development information from Company A.
After several hacks take place you discover Company A is developing biological weapons which it will sell and Company X stole the forumula so it can mass produce a anti-body.
your last task will be to hack Company A and delete all information on the biological weapon information, but you must make it look like the hack was deon by Company X, because you fear Company A will kill you if they find out it was you.
Now that was my main outline, obvioulsy it needs more indepth details and background to it.
I chose this story for 2 reasons. I have great idea for the web designs of these 2 sites which will make them look absoloutely sweet! Other reason is that pharamacuticals is a large industry and its a slightly believeable storyline as some pharamacutical companies do work with the gouvenrment on projects such as the one mentioned above, so its quite probable.
What are your suggestions on this idea? perhaps you could develop the story?
I also know how we can vaguely break it down into sections, after Company X has their site hacked, you could have a contact over IM who comes on saying "perhaps you could look at your companies website….. giveurl here" etc and she can provide differnt url's at each point, which give hints as to what site to hack next. but ofcourse some sites require second hacks etc with other information gained. so we can keep it kinda linear but give the illusion its a open game :)
Sounds good. A few comments though.
Company A has reason to believe its system was breached a month ago by Company X and has some material and forumula's stolen. They wouldn't wait a month before looking into it. What about there has been a recent hack (by some skiddies who didn't do much), but looking into that you also discover this older hack.
Other than that I like the idea.
Well assuming that this game will be giving points, depending on how far you get into it will give you more or less points. Then to make it more open ended you could have the thing like you said cheese with the IM sayin to hack these other sites and doing those objectives will give you more points but they are not required to complete the main goal of the game.
I think we should make a character who works for company X. He hacks company A and from the beginning of the game is your enemy. The character itself should be a true-hacker type ( no destruction, … ) and he is better than you. He sometimes uses you to perform his hacks. He sends you a fake-mail and says it is company A, do this and this… When it turns out that you're on the wrong side, he helps you to do what you have to.
Im loving the plot ! I think a pharmacuticals company is just right, its a large, big money making buisness, but easily corrupt by the discoveries it makes.
I think a good age for the hacker would be 23, since it's not too much of a youung inexperienced hacker age, but also not a hacker with masses and masses of experience, and although he's pretty good, he still has alot to learn (which he'll learn more and more as the story develops).
Having nice little side-jobs to do will be fun. It keeps the player busy, say if he's a little stuck pn the main plot or wants a change and try hacking something else. Just an idea, but maybe a few could help teach skills needed during the main plot, or to make something more clear.
And maybe it would be better if he wasn't the head of a department, because it makes it more believeable that he doesn't really know much about what the comapnies really up to, and more of a reason to have to hack his own company (he couldhave access to developing a website, etc, but he could have to hack into personal files eg employee profiles.
I'll try and think up some more details if i can :) It's going really well so far :P
edit: Just had a thought. I know a name hasn't been decided for the game, but whne it has, why not make it a HBH Competition to design the best logo for it :) Winner gets their logo used for the game, and maybe some points ?
- AbSoRb
something else that i just thought of…
The game should have multiple ways to begin. Like depending on what you discover first, or after x amount of time if nothing has been found, they get an email(the email can be different from one person to the next) so that not everyone completes the game the same way. Like each choice they make and what not, makes the story unfold a different way. This would make a open ended type game, however this would need alot more coding to be done from us, but i am up for it if you guys want to.
I think it would definatly be worth more coding (hence a longer wait for the game to be finihed) to be done on an open plot. It makes the game more exiting. The player wouldn't really have much of an idea what happens next in the plot, because there will be more than one possibility, eg someone who's played the game can play it again, but this time making different decisions. And, this means it's harder for spoilers to be given out, because not everyone is playing the same game
Good idea :D