HAX News

2012 kick-off!

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

We've been at this for quite a while now. Sometimes it is hard to come up with a positive spin about our progress, or the lack of it. That said, the 2012 kick-off was genuinely good. We met, identified a major obstacle and roadblock that has been dragging us down like a stuck anchor and came up with a solution that will bypass the problem entirely. It means some serious re-design for some of the core mechanics but cuts down a lot of the programming tasks. All in all makes the planned launch version features much more manageable. Even if we are still in the valley of death, I am optimistic. This was a kick in the pants, in a good way. When you are doing garage development on zero budget, that's what you live for.

In other news, it has been revealed that the development budget for Star Wars: The Old Republic was 500 million dollars. For the sake of the entire MMORPG market I sincerely hope it was worth it. If it was not, the public image hit from the SWTOR bursting bubble is not going to spare anybody, including us. And marketing is and will always be our biggest challenge.

Getting the lead programmer back from Florida alive and well (as opposed to him turning into a person-shaped hole in the ground) was good but the progress made by our lead artist has been even better. He has been churning out webcomic strips for the storyline missions and continues to do an amazing job at it. We have to rewrite one of those missions (my foul-up, not his) but other than that content track is doing well. Now, with the roadblock/landmine removed and our assistant programmer showing signs of life, I hope the tech side can catch up.

So, we're back. But that was given.

We're also in a good mood. That's news.

Art Nouveau

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

The summer was quiet but we've been busy since then. Much of the user interface is now complete and the Lead Artist is immersing himself into the storyline mission graphics. There is going to be a change in the graphical style (to facilitate creating more art quicker, we can't afford to fool around) and I am hoping to be able to provide samples of it next week.

We have been very much inspired by other games that have or are about to come out this summer and fall. The biggest of all was obviously Deus Ex: Human Revolution, where especially the hub city of Henghsai made us drool until our keyboards short-circuited. Then there will be Hard Reset, Rage and the just-now announced Syndicate. This is a good time to be a cyberpunk.

I am about to start creating the proper texts and the coding department is fiddling with fine tuning and emergent bugs in what seems to last forever (and it usually does). Then again, we got our second programmer back from ”a personal leave of absence”, so with more coding power that bottleneck should sort itself out soon.

Still, ”nothing new on the western front” and stuff. I can see why other long-lasting projects have year-long radio silences. Our next public office will be at Alternative Party (Oct 21-23). By then I hope we will be testing the gameplay (basically playing the same level over and over again, recording bugs and omissions).

Feels Like Polish Already

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

We are back! From the Summer pastures. The Assembly Demo Event in Helsinki has come to mark the official end of the Wirepunk summer season. With everybody back in the capital area, we will be meeting as often we can and sitting down in the evenings to work on HAX. It will be done when it is done but it is moving forward. Since we don't have investors beyond our own back pockets, there is no one to pull the plug.

So HAX will be done. Sooner or later.

Basically, our immediate goals remains a single, feature-complete level and to that end many things feel like polish, although they are actually content creation, like the minimap graphics. The picture in this entry shows the program icons for the four primary programs you start with. You can level them up to 10 and if that is not enough and you are not short of MEM, buy 8 more.

One major design change has been the cloud-oriented Link and cloud-specific hax-codes. Originally HAX Codes were permanent level-specific upgrades but since our levels consist of "stacks" of similar levels with increasing security ratings, we changed the concept of stacks into clouds and HAX Codes acquired in one network apply to every network in that cloud. For ComNet this is an almost exploit as the security ratings go from 1 to 5. You can now grind ComNet 1 to get all the HAX Codes and they are just as good four security levels up.

Also, the concept of tags has been changed to "gangs" simply because it is much easier to explain. Gangs are interest groups within the HAX subculture. You can join 1 gang for very 1.0 of threat rating you have. There are no restrictions, so belonging in a gang does not make anyone your friend. However, it does enamble runner sync teams and every now and then you come across some loot that is worthless to you but will be uploaded to the gang, so that everybody can see that "Arkangel uploaded sim-porn for 1 cs!" If you are in a big and active gang, those one-stock gains may start to add up.

Clouds and gangs have the side effects that the chat now remains the same in both Link and Hideout modes, except that in the Link you always have the Log channel for system messages, loot lists and stuff. And the Link access page in the hideout now highlights clouds rather than individual levels but that is mostly cosmetic stuff.

So there. Don't worry, we will not change our name to Vaporpunk!

Long, Tropical Summer

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

Another self-imposed deadline missed. This is the downside of garage development: job troubles, family problems, vacation seasons... both myself and our Lead Artist were laid off from our respective dayjobs while the Lead Programmer switched his. Contrary to what one might assume, the increase of free time is not really conducive to spare-time projects when you are looking for your next job. I probably have one in the pipeline but of course nothing is real until its signed.

In short, we are starved of programmer time and nothing, NOTHING, happens without coding. Although it is not going to fix the issue I am planning on taking up some programming course in the Fall and try to make myself more useful to Wirepunk in the future.

What is happening right now is that while the programmers make what I hope are the finishing touches to the mob behaviour, me and the artist will make the assets for the Hideout user interface. When they are done, we can hopefully test the full basic gameplay with all level 1 software in the Link: a situation I would have liked us to be in March, honestly.

Besides playtesting (well, just testing really at this point), I'll start writing a WikiManual for HAX, open to the public from day one. Some chapters will obviously remain "Coming Soon" as things like the design for the system to create avatars is still in flux. But what I can write, I will. If you keep up with it, you'll know how to play HAX long before the game comes out.

As Usual

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

What to do when there hasn't been any dramatic twists or changes? What to blog about? The Wirepunk Team is meeting roughly twice a week plus an occasional 8-hour workshop on the weekends. Jani is close to the end of the Link GFX Asset List and I have to start adding Hideout elements to it soon. Marko trying to make Sysops appear half-way intelligent since they have so many different functions (Sentinels can be dumb as bricks, as long as the pathfinding algorithm does not get them all stuck on a single node). I have began differentiating network maps from the cloud base map (networks within the same cloud have an almost identical structure but portals for each network are different). In retrospect, I really should have created four available portal locations on every map. Oh well, nothing I can do about that right now.

I am never going to give another guesstimate as to when the game will be launched. “When it is done”, to quote another world-famous Finnish game developer. We are making steady progress and the foundation for the game code has already been built. We have a new Outer Circle member who will probably prove invaluable. The only real complaint is the time or lack of it. If we were doing this as our dayjobs we would have been ready a long time ago. Then again, we would not have had this much time to contemplate and refine the design. So it is not all bad.

Hammering

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

While the rest of Finland was busy getting drunk, the pure-minded hardworking Wirepunks were busy hammering away at HAX in a half-day workshop. Well, most of them anyway. Me and the Lead Artist were crossing out items from the graphics asset list. I am fairly pleased with our progress, especially getting those pesky targeting graphics sorted out. Hopefully for once and for all. It was much easier now that we had all the actual object graphics for the game.

Lead Programmer was busy implementing Sysop behaviour and suddenly our nice little test pond turned into a pool of acid and venom. With the group behaviour implemented and a Sysop to back them up, the network defences duly handed our asses to us. To balance it out we reduced the enemy group sizes a little and made sneaking easier. Still, if your sneaking fails, Here Be Monsters. We may have to reduce the difficulty in the beginning levels even further.

Marko also made the game run indefinitely on an external server over the Internet (one of the free Amazon servers). This is for development purposes only, making it easy for us to enter the game at any time and easily group-test new features. Sorry, I am not going to tell you the URL and you need to come from specific external IPs to be allowed in anyway.

In design, we decided on "clouds". We've long had these groups of networks: technically 1-3 networks with identical architecture (different portals, though) but scaling security levels. These are now called "clouds" and HAX Codes will be cloud-specific, not network-specific. This is a major advantage for players. The largest of all clouds, ComNet, has 5 networks. You can grind the easy end for HAX Codes and when you feel you have enough edge over the system you can go running in the higher level networks and still get all the bonuses. At ComNet 5 having that Stalker +5 or Killer +8 code with you can mean the difference between life and death.

Finally, the Outer Circle is growing! For a long time there was just Byproduct, our extremely talented musician and sound guy. Now there is also Mister B, a programmer and front-end specialist. There is a variety of things he could help out with and the one thing we have been thinking about lately are metrics, getting information out of the system so we can tell what is going on and track down the few occasional bugs you guys might run into when playing. I am not saying there will be bugs but hey, you never know...

Closing Statement

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

"Your blood carries our secret. We only let you live because you are a ghost runner. You live in shadows. You are a shadow. But we found you. We know who you are. And if you ever step out of the shadows, we will kill you."

It is done. All launch-time storyline missions are now specced. Next someone just needs to implement them. And draw the webcomics that go with them.

Stories Galore!

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

Garage development is easily affected by dayjob concerns and I could make a list ranging from weddings to job changes that have been messing with our schedule lately. But since the other main developers choose not to write here I am stuck with lamenting my busted knee and how it is eating away both my mobility and my nerves. However, some stuff has been happening, like giving birth to loads of new graphics for our enemies (and coming up with ways to make them even cooler).

Looking at the screenshots you can tell we are going for a style that is a mix between iconic and abstract. The three-pronged Sentinel is not a representation of anything in the physical world but it is not an icon either. It is more like modern art with a clear, minimalist motif. The same holds true with most of our mobile stuff and things you are going to encounter in multiples. However, we are hoping to be a little more decorative with things like Servers or Core Kernels. Some kind of patterning or decorative texturing on solid blocks would liven up our otherwise immobile structures.

I've been writing a HAX-themed novel but that has been on a hiatus as I have tried to finish the storyline missions we will have on the launch version. Sticking to the game format is the biggest challenge as we can't afford to create complex quest-specific mechanics. Therefore the storyline missions are a narrative context to fairly simple mechanics. The primary goal is not only to provide a good story but also drive the player deep into the kind of exploratory gameplay we think is the core of HAX.

Although I am grading myself here I am fairly happy with most of the storyline missions. It is not world literature but it is both functional and cyberpunk. However, the last one (for most players it will probably one of the last three missions they complete, if not necessarily the last one) is giving me trouble. It is fairly easy to go epic with Singularity and Cartel but matching that with a security-10 street network? Looking at the first version of it I have to admit I don't have all the answers yet. But I will. The story part is 99% done.

As a rule of thumb, storyline missions are all about kernels, giving the runner or his client a complete if temporary control over the System Core. If you can hit the right kernels, the story moves forward. Intel missions, available only to VIP players, always point to databases and have no narrative context other than your agent reporting you which particular databases in given networks are holding extra valuable data today.

With 16 storyline missions spread along the player's progression curve and three daily Intel missions (and more if the player buys data points) the player should always have an action goal. Of course those playing for free don't get the daily Intel and have to take their chances with the normal database loot odds.

And speaking of loot, I should be rechecking the calculations and introduce dynamic checks and balances. It is a long story but lets that say that a number of random variables creates a probability curve and that is how most players experience it. However, the law of probabilities dictates that some players at the ends bell-curve will either find the game a cakewalk or a hellish experience. Dynamic checks and balances prevent that from happening. It is true that they compress the entire player base towards the center of the bell curve but if that will save a few souls from a statistical Hell it will be worth it.

Latest Things

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

Oh dear. You should never give out a release estimate, should you. Well, Q1/11 ends pretty soon and we do have an internal first playable but nothing worth showing to the outside world. Over the next few days quite a few things will be coming together. SysOps will appear to support Sentinels by launching deadly virus attacks at players while Sentinels maintain close contact. Killnodes are loaded with viruses, ready to blast them down a connection should anything non-system touch them. Scanners will appear, sweeping particle fans that will undo even the most serious stealth programs. Gates will appear to lock down System Cores away from the rest of the network. And in the cores there will be servers to spawn new programs, databases to hide the treasures and finally Kernels, the objectives of many storyline missions.

Meanwhile the Sentinels are learning to work together as a group. They have a shared control program, constantly resupplied by Security Servers that spawn new programs to replace those lost. When one picks up your signal, others from same group will rush to its aid, even if they are scattered all over the network. You can easily take out one, especially at lower security levels but do not linger. The only way to stop the counterattack is to fade away, in or outside the system, or to destroy the security server that particular group is coming from.

Sounds high and mighty. It is much more fun to right evocative prose than it is to go over persistent user interface issues and control schemes and that is where the real work is. Anyone can make a game. Making it easy to access and fun to play is where the challenge lies. And it takes a lot of time, especially as a garage development project. Once we think it is okay, we will let the closed beta players in. When they think it is okay, we will let the open beta players and while they are probably never completely okay with everything, at some point we slip from beta to launch. Gunshine broke the unwritten rules by promising not to wipe characters when their beta ended. I hope we can match that but no guarantees.

So yeah. Tinkering. Small things. Baby steps. Frustrated nibbling.

We have also been discussing how interested parties might help speed the game development along. At this stage the easiest way is to get one of the programmers on it full time for a month or two. So we have been thinking about a drive via Kickstarter. We will set a funding goal and a time limit. When the time is up, the system checks if the goal was met and if it was, pays out the pledged money, so we can keep our programmers at it full time. Anyone who donates €5 ($8) or more will have VIP membership waiting for him once the game launches. That means three daily missions (the Intel targets) resulting in more rewards and faster progression rate as well as individualized player icons to show your dedication.

I'll let you know when the drive opens.

Give in, get out, put up, post it

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

Working on: sentinel behaviour

OK, I give in. Our designer has been pestering me long enough about how lonely it is on the dev blog. So I will be joining him here to give updates on the progress and maybe go through random related thoughts. Although compared to Ville I'm very much writing and communication challenged I try not to embarrass the team too much...

I'll dedicate this first post to answering a question our designer put out way back: what an earth do programmers get from a small-time indie project like this? A fair question with no simple answer.

To have fun!

Well, I guess that just about covers it then. But let's break it down somewhat. For me this is a combination of self expression, experimentation, learning, unusual team excercise, ownership, sharing a vision. All different aspects I can extract precious fun from. Omitting "getting filthy rich" and "creating the most supah engine ever!" is not an accident.

Self expression

Programming is part engineering, part creative art: every piece of code is your thoughts explained to a computer. Nothing special there, but in a project like this I get a lot more degrees of freedom for this expression than when working for a boss. I can be proud for every shiny bit, but also carry the shame for all smudgy bytes. Especially when a day job has those brain-melting-boring episodes a project like this is a life-saver.

Experimentation

Being wishy-washy and checking out multiple dead-ends is wasting my time, not somebody else's money. See something interesting? Check it out, try it, trash it. In a day job you need to have some kind of consent for wasting time on uncertainties.

Learning

I am a veteran programmer but not in the domain of games. This area holds tons of new stuff to learn. Combined with freedom to experiment allows me to breeze through interesting stuff, delve deep if something looks promising and practice when incorporating it to the project. I have been able to apply experiences gained on HAX for the benefit of my day job and colleagues on multiple occations.

Unusual team exercise

If random team work is not challenging enough at the office, one can always seek hobby projects for a thrill. Each participant has a very personal level of effort they can put in and this changes monthly. Everybody needs to keep involved and motivated. Facetime is a luxury. Money is neither a threath nor an attractor. Compared to an office scrum team the number of variables just exlodes. Self-organization is a necessity and something we all need to work for. There are many topics around this I might post about later.

Ownership

In a day job you are always working for somebody else's dream. It's their product, their investment, their child to do or die. No matter how much you bleed or weep for a [project, product, company, community] somebody else may take it away on a day's notice. Company goes bust, you get the pink slip, the organization is shuffled etc. You may be necessary but you are not important, deep down. Wirepunk is my baby. Hax is my hatchling. Luckily I'm not a single parent, the rest of the team here beside me.

Sharing a vision

The vision we share for Hax/Wirepunk is not grand but it is very interesting. The world will be a better place (at least for me) with this vision realized. I'd like to see that happen, even if I weren't a part of it, which I am.

Enough rambling for now. I hope this gave Ville his answer. :-)

Secret Designs: Synapse

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

Winter Assembly is over and done with. We came out of there with lots more stuff for the user interface plus the early draft for yet another grant application. Although the sum is small this grant does not require the applicant to be a functioning business enterprise so we will present Wirepunk as more of a demo group (which we might very well be, come to think of it).

If we get it, the grant is big enough to buy two man-months of full-time work from the Lead Programmer (since he can then take unpaid leave from his dayjob). Frankly, in garage game development you learn to dream small. Our application is about a second-tier feature in HAX, i.e. something that won't be there when we launch but will have to be added to make HAX feature complete. It is, of course, very cool and all that.

Nah, to hell with the secrecy. We promised you openness. Now we have to deliver.

In short, our second-tier concept is a metagame system that enables players to set up their own networks. These will branch out from the actual game world, connecting and reconnecting with each other until they are a wild, uncontrolled rhyzome surrounding and topping the original Link. Establishing these networks enables players to add new features into their programs and to push the software power limit past the level-10 cap. We call it "Synapse".

Synapse also creates more content. Other players can venture into the Synapse Link as if they were NPC networks and wreak havoc, inflicting the network owners a temporary loss of benefits and occasional expenses while gaining more resources to set up and improve their own networks. Owners can install defences to stop this and finally owners sharing at least a few (probably three but the number has not been decided) tags can connect their networks into clusters where they can move around safely, share resources and perhaps even play a little ”Tic-Tac-Toe” against other players by altering the Synapse Link macroarchitecture.

Finally, if a player stops playing HAX but has networks in the Synapse Link, they begin to degrade and eventually turn into Entropy networks (ghosts in the machine but positively deadly at these Security Levels). After an as-of-yet unspecified time (it could also be dynamic if there are too many) as an Entropy network, the network crashes, disappears and the Synapse Link gets rerouted. This way there can suddenly be wastelands of abandoned data separating you from the networks you want to go to. You can harvest Entropy networks for paydata and benefits just like in the Main Link but as I said, here be monsters. And you have stealth programs.

That's the plan, anyway. We are hoping to have Synapse as a HAX 1.5 upgrade but there is a lot of work to get to 1.0.

We have a bad habit of advertising potential competitors but I just can't pass this one up. Supercell (a new outfit comprised mostly of my ex-colleagues from Sumea and some of the finest people I know) has released an accessible Beta of its upcoming Browser MMORPG ”Gunshine”. And you know what? It is a cyberpunk MMORPG from the mean streets Dawnbreak City! Competitor or not, we prefer more cyberpunk out there, not less. I would have perhaps gone for a more “Syndicate” look and feel but it is a fun game nevertheless (playing a 7^th level Hunter right now).

The Real Deal

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

We've shown you webcomics, we've shown you mock-ups and we've shown you concept art. But what does the game really look like? We don't know yet. But I am about to do something really, really risky.

This is an actual, real, screenshot of the development version.

In this picture, I am just about to get devoured by a horde of Sentinels. The user interface is not quite there yet but we have just made a working chat. Most of the windows will be collapsible, so the player has more grid real-estate to look at. There are no grid decorations or collectibles, the Sentinel attack effect is... lacking and my screenshot just missed the virus I had launched on one of them.

But yes, the game is real. It runs. You can kill the Sentinels. And they can kill you.

A Three Day Workshop Ahead

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

Assembly Winter, a gaming-oriented computer convention at Kaapelitehdas in Helsinki. It is on the
next weekend and both me and the Lead Programmer will be there, having a three-day HAX workshop in the most inspiring environment imaginable. We may be a good 15 years older than the usual AW visitor but I expect a good deal of our customers will be coming from the 20+ demographic. After all, while HAX has time limitations to gameplay in the form of Trace, it is a real-time action/strategy RPG. And it is looking increasingly good, given the last few graphical upgrades.

By then we should have the user interface for Link gameplay in place and the one great task is the in-network Chat System. To give you a quick recap: the chat window is a collapsible and usually shows as a line of channel buttons on the bottom left corner. Clicking any of them springs up a rectangular area with channel buttons on top, the content in the middle and a text entry line on the bottom. Clicking the top right corner of the chat window collapses into the bottom of the screen again.

Channels are Log (game information, status updates, mission objectives, basically non-player communications) and Network (where all runners within the current network can write into). If the player is in a sync gang, the third channel will always by Sync, where all members of that sync gang can write into. Additional channels are private discussions with other players. All channels but Log and Network can be closed at will, although closing Sync will also drop you from the gang and there is a confirmation prompt or doing it.

And no. Unlike in EVE, you can't use the Network channel for an instant scan for runners in the system. If they stay out of sight and keep a low profile, there is almost no way to find them. They don't get called ghost runners for nothing!

I made a major design change to the visibility system. The original Signal Strength system was designed for a somewhat different grid. The grid resolution is now much more coarse so we can simplify those rules quite a bit and make Mask software effects network-independent. In fact, it would be be great if I could remove network security dependencies from all software effects. Hmm. Let's see.

Ball is Rolling

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

Compared to recent world events, our tiny little project seems very tiny indeed. But I am glad to say that we got the ball rolling after our Christmas bottleneck and everything that stands between us and the first beta release is a full implementation of the user interface and a shitload of polish. As I wrote before, I don't want to let even beta players into a game where the core gameplay is unfinished. They will get a bad impression and until we have realized our idea of how it should work their feedback does not have much value either.

The beta will feature a single network. To start with, we need three mobs: Sentinels, the single-minded anti-intrusion programs that will hunt you down to the ends of the Link if they catch a whiff of you. Databases for you to plunder and finally Security Servers that spawn more Sentinels to replace those lost in the line of duty. There is no character progression at this stage but we will have a daily high-score list, measuring the amount of paydata the player can collect. Meanwhile, we will be observing things, asking for feedback and testing out the group AI for Sentinels. New features will then be added until we have a feature complete level.

Then the beta will go offline for a while and we will implement character progression, the hideout and few more levels. Reopen the server, let you play for a month to balance it out. In truth, the balancing will continue throughout the game's lifetime but we will launch the game when we consider the balance at the lower threat ratings ”sufficient”.

I've been thinking about ways to reward beta testers in the actual game but it has to be done in a way that does not unbalance it against new players. I am currently toying with the idea of an invite-only server. All betatesters would automatically have accounts there and new players may enter only by invitation. The upside is that it will filter the quality of other players. The downside is that it is actually useful for newbs that there are veterans present. Few people will ever Read the Fucking Manual anyway.

If you are coming to Assembly Winter 2011, come say hi! There is no stand so we will be hiding among the gamers. However, here are some hints: We are twice as old (oh gods, almost thrice as old...) as the average visitor and four times as hairy. We often something other than games running on our screens. I am much too fond of the cinnamon rolls you can get from the bar and Marko is probably eating some sort of nuts. And finally, we both have black T-shirts with "Wirepunk" on them.

A Day At the Office

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

I’ve been just made a producer in my dayjob, although they did not take my designer hat away. Being a producer often means a full day, although I am not as good as optimizing my time as I ought to be. Precious minutes go by while waiting for answers or endlessly re-prioritizing my own tasks.

By the time I am done for the day, Helsinki is cold and dark. There still only seven hours of daylight even if the days are growing longer by now. I take the subway to the east side of the town and there, in an unmarked apartment hidden deep in the urban wilds of Eastern Helsinki, is the Wirepunk office for tonight. We also have a meeting room disguised as a popular pub in the city center and an alternate office at my place hidden out of town to the northwest. For the next five hours we work on the server-client package, grid graphics, mob behavior models and so forth. Some office evenings are more productive than others but this was a good one. Here are the actual minutes and results from that office, translated from the Finnish office summary email to the rest of the Core Team.

Server test was a success. After following the instructions and extracting the game package, my mini-laptop could easily run both the server and the client, as well as handle Marko playing on the same server.

Contrary to our expectations, in the real size and when applied to the real grid the red-on-red combo worked much better. In the smaller picture the dark blue background works better, in the larger the dark red.

Node coordinates looked not only good but also unintrusive. We can make them optional but in my opinion this is not necessary.

Pulpcore may actually support true-type fonts, Marko will find out.

Even if the background was of just a single colour, we can add off-grid objects by defining them corresponding symbols and putting them in using the level editor. I’ll find out if the symbols can be rotated. This makes it possible for us to have extra graphics floating around and outside the grid and they can be made larger than one node. To start with I was thinking of other networks floating in the distance, resembling the line patters in the Wirepunk logo.

We removed the particle trail from viruses and it actually looked better.

Marko makes some tweaks on the virus position handling to remove the movement anomalies.

Sentinel attack effect has to be replaced with something else. Maybe they too will fire virus-like arrowheads at the player from close range.

Both viruses and hacking need quick options: you don’t have to choose the target but if there is one within range, clicking the program icon selects it automatically and runs the program on it.

Our next big task is cleaning up the grid and finally implementing the user interface. When can we have the next office so that Jani can join us?

And that’s how it goes. Marko gives me a ride home and by the time we get there I’ve been doing game development for 12,5 hours. It is all a bit like being in a garage rock band. You squeeze in band practice whenever you can but it is less regular than you would like. And even if you can practice on some tunes by yourself, you really need the band (or most of it anyway) to make any real progress. There isn’t any less work but it is spread over a long time. It is the dream of the finished product that keeps you going, although sometimes getting to the practice session is therapy after a hard at work.

There is no way around it: garage game development is hard, especially when you are old men with families and stuff. This is where getting even some of that grant money would have really made a difference.

Viral Features

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

This is all speculation at this point but since I know all my colleagues are reading anything with “viral” on the topic with a magnifying glass, here are our plans so far. Wirepunk core team consists of old school hardcore gamers with a deep-seated suspicion for web 2.0 and social media. However, even we have to adapt to the world we live in so yes, we will do our part in digging the cesspool of social media and viral features ever more deep. However, we are hoping to do it in a non-intrusive way and have in-game logic, if not always relevance, for the viral features and social media tie-ins.

First: invitations, an intriguing concept our Beta players will be intimately familiar with in a couple of months. However, ghost runners sell their data to agents, who are always eager to find more promising ghost runners. So if you help them find some, you will get rewarded. All registered players receive 10 invites. Sending an invite to a friend to invite them into HAX makes them your “apprentices”, regardless of the shard they play (this of course requires that they enter your character’s name as their mentor when registering). If they do that, you get 1000 Cartel Stock on the spot. Then, for every 0.1 of Threat Rating they acquire, you will get small fee which add up to 55000 Cartel Stock by the time the apprentice hits Threat Rating 10.0. And as a sugar on top, if any of them become donors (by paying the 5 euro fee entitling them to Intel Reports), that’s an instant bonus of 50,000 Cartel Stock right there.

In short, with up to 10 apprentices, inviting new players into the game can be worth more than a million Cartel Stock. And the apprentices in turn have their own invites which yield them money helping them to level up faster which brings you more money creating a positive feedback loop all the way up to 1050000 Cartel Stock. In truth it is very unlikely that you’ll reach the maximum limit because no matter what we do not all players stay in the game long enough to play it up to rating 10.0. Still, you’d have to be a fool not to take advantage of this feature and you will also be doing your part in helping us to keep HAX online.

Or that’s what the blueprint says. The whole system is yet to be implemented.

Another such feature is the Achievements. Some information about the character is available to all other characters both within the game and from the profile search on the game website. They can also be sent to your Facebook Wall assuming there isn’t anything in the Facebook license to prevent this. This information includes the following, although there might be less detail available within the game, especially if bringing up character information while running the Link.

Character name
Avatar image
Threat rating
Description, if any (twitter-sized)
Tags the character subscribes to
Achievement icons (none, red, grey, golden, white)

Achievements measure certain types of actions and based on the number of such actions performed, the player can have Bronze, Silver, Gold or Diamond level achievements.

Badass – number of runners crashed

Guru – number of software upgraded to level 10

Wizard – number of HAX codes at +9

Terrorist – number of SysOps crashed

Capitalist – highest amount of Cartel Stock owned

Teamplayer – time spent in Sync gangs

Hero – storyline/Event missions completed

Cracker – number of successful hacks

Surfer – hackpoints and portals tagged

Idol – players subscribing to your own Tag

Liked – players who have marked you as a “friend”

Troll – players who have marked you as an “enemy”

Some achievements are easier to get than others and the Bronze level requirements can be quite low. In-game character description could mention just the highest achievement or otherwise be limited to save space. And if you run into a “Diamond Guru”, mind your manners.

Idle Pleasures

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

Wirepunk is having a bit of a hiatus right now. After crunching through the Holidays in his dayjob, the Lead Programmer went abroad to jump out of airplanes (and hover in a vertical wind tunnel, I am told). The Associate Programmer is taking his family to Thailand for a while and the Lead Artist is stranded on some island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. We missed our deadline for having a playable beta, which was the New Year. Regrettable, yes, but can't be helped. I am flying to the United States to visit Pax East (and some family friends) in Boston this March. I hope we have something to show by then.

For me, missing the beta deadline was a bitter pill to swallow. Since there was nothing I could do to help the project, I did the next best thing and began writing a novel set in the HAX universe. I've only just started but I am already amazed at how therapeutic it is. Besides, the novel allows to me explore the setting and characters from angles the game cannot cover. Namely, the whole meatspace thing. Out of all big-name cyberpunk writers I am probably the most fond of Pat Cadigan but I am also a big fan of the old-school pulp-era speculative fiction (R. E. Howard probably rings a bell with most of our readers).

Traditionally cyberpunk novels have been written in an expressionistic, hard-to-follow style, perhaps mimicking the frantic and fragmented lifestyle of the dark future societies. I want to do the polar opposite and write straight-foward dark future action romps that do not skimp on special effects. In effect, it is cyberpulp and if ten pages go buy without someone dying or twenty pages without at least sexual innuendo, I am not doing it right. You can call me shallow but I am in the games industry and believe in entertainment. Art is a desirable byproduct but not a goal in itself.

I am not new writing novels, actually. This one, now under the working title of Dancer, would be my fifth. After writing several roleplaying game books, my literary debut was a pulp-fantasy novel Vanha Koira (transl. "Old Dog") in 2004. I've written three more books since then; one fact book on game design and two semi-autobiographical works about working in the games industry and surviving the Finnish school system. Dancer marks my return to pure fiction and making more use of the extensive backstory and setting we have created for the game.

Nobody knows how or when Dancer will be published. I have connections to the books industry but they are not exactly short of projects right now. The traditional way would be to try marketing it to HAX players via the website but one alternative I've considered is the ransom model via Kickstarter. We'll see.

Backstory: Runners

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

In a networked society, especially one where identity is enforced with brain implants and your status as a person depends on Link recognition and access to virtual accounts, living off-grid seems an impossible feat. Yet some exceptional individuals manage to pull it off. Usually this is done by tampering with the implants and running multiple identities so that the Runner to switch from one “virtual face” to another as necessary. Ghost runners take it all further by rewiring their brain implants into the ghost jacks we know and love. However, they are not the only types of runners out there. There are Blades, Jumpers, Fixers, Gears, Hivers, Wizards…

They are all part of a highly secretive global scene but the Complex is practically the Runner Capital. Between the Cartel and the Microstates there are just too many cracks to slip through here. Authorities regard Runners as class-A criminals and especially the Cartel Security (C-Sec) would have them shot upon detection. Most Runners respond in kind, having either been forced into virtual hiding by some unfortunate chain of events or having some other serious grudge against the System. Some can be contracted for the right price but others are strictly independent or even associated with anti-establishment organizations and terror cells. An angry Ghost Runner helping a terrorist cell can be a force multiplier of Biblical proportions.

Ghost runners are aptly named because they are never present in person. Other Runners see them as a shadowy force hiding behind colorful nicknames and Link avatars and who can do wonders through the omnipresent Link. Some of the Paydata their agents are after are actually identity files and citizen recognition codes that the agents can then sell right then and there to other types of Runners. In a completely networked society it is not possible to hide in the shadows. Instead, the survival of a Runner depends on his ability to fool anyone who might be watching.

All Runners come from semi-legitimate street-cultures. Even Ghost Runners are just the extreme fringe of HAX. While any subculture has to be somewhat at odds with the mainstream to be recognized, there is a fine line between “edgy” and “a Runner” and few people have ever crossed it willingly. When they do, or otherwise get pushed across, they’ll find a point of no return. From that moment on the Runner will lead a life of fear, lies and danger. They have to commit even more offences just to survive. Contacts with family and friends rarely survive the changing identities and flight to stay one step ahead of C-Sec and bounty hunters. Many are eventually killed or caught. Others burn out and either go to hide in the Wastelands or give themselves up. It is a lonely existence and only other Runners can know what they are going through.

Thus the Runner Scene exists, even though it endangers them all.

Backstory: Street

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

As far as the Complex is concerned, Street Sectors are the Old City.

Both Corp and AI Sectors have been redrawn and re-built many times over. The former now have wide streets, clean infra and only a few massive buildings that can be over a kilometer tall. AI Sectors resemble vast omni-industrial facilities of pipes and rectangles, with their relatively low skyline broken by dizzying towers and fragile-looking masts. Starspine rises above it all, like a spider's web of made of glass. Dozens of terminal cables link up in the sky to eventually form the six-rail spine reaching into space. The spine tends to have multiple cloud trails as winds at different heights hit it from different angles.

However, apart from a generous coating of grime, slime and rust, Street Sectors have largely remained as they were since the first few post-Crash decades. As refugees poured into the Complex, old buildings, cargo containers and even ships were re-purposed as construction materials and the pace quickened Singularity began making cheap plastcrete and offering robotic workforce to the refugee communities. Today, they survive as buffer zones between Corp and AI Sectors. While not always be easy on the eye, Street Sectors are not slums. Some places are worse than others but the real slums are to the north, on the slopes what used to be the island of Sao Tome.

Street Sector blocks are big and sprawling, easily 6-12 stories high with 3-8 increasingly rundown street levels as you get nearer to water. Inside the blocks the streets become tunnels as the former alleys were built over when new layers were added on top. There is little symmetry to the shifting corridors and without the graffiti-stained signs, the rude wall-texts and the local Virtual Light Nav services it would be very easy to get lost. Huge chasms lined with walkways and makeshift rappelling separate the blocks from each other, while ventilation tunnels, vertical storm drains and disused elevator shafts can pierce the whole thing the sunlit roofs to the murky canals at the water level.

High-tech and low-tech go hand-in-hand: Poorly regulated Virtual Light advertising assaults all senses and yet lifts or escalators rarely work. A street-vendor might have extra limbs to help them manage his stall while lines of sweating porters trudge past, their backs and shoulders replacing vehicle transportation in the winding alleys. Heat and humidity makes some people opt for partial nudity and others to wear long coats with internal cooling systems. The Link connects everybody and everything but many never leave their home turf; there can be wild superstitions about faraway places that are actually on the other side of the wall.

Besides being a source of cheap (and even expendable) labor for the corps, the primary industries are urban farming, microfacturing, a bewildering array of services and independent corporations doing subcontracting for the Cartel corporations and each other. Productivity is surprisingly good, easily rivaling that of any similar-sized Cartel Hub anywhere in the world. The Complex is also the global mecca for counterfeit goods and cheap knock-offs. Most knock-off copies are made in sweatshops using slave labor and industrial robots held together by duct tape. However, nanoforges can replicate or even improve on any device they have a working sample of, including some of the supertech gadgets made by Singularity.

Drawing a comprehensive political map of the Street Sectors is impossible. While the largest microstates are often stable and have populations of hundreds of thousands, beyond them lies a jigsaw puzzle of gang turfs, radical enclaves, independent corporations and pirate clans. The Link makes issuing new virtual citizenship registry accounts, visas, access permits and even virtual currencies so easy that anyone can create their own nation, currency and government. The virtual Complex keeps expanding while the real one struggles against its physical and practical boundaries.

So what do these hodgepodge Street Sector principalities have in common? Absolutely nothing and there are about a dozen turf wars being fought at any given time. However, do not have the means to operate operate their own networks and thus have to share whatever bandwidth there is. As a result, Street Networks tend to be as labyrinthine and fractured as the Street Sectors themselves. Nevertheless, ghost runners aren't welcome.

By the way, runners in general are a Street Sector thing. But they will have their own entry.

Not All News Can Be Good

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:18:29 +0000

Those who have been following us for a while know that a game project can’t get more Indie than this. We may be professionals but HAX is so far into the Indie you could call us a Punk Developer, really. We are proud of it but it has its downsides. Not all my news can be good.

We were looking forward to having a semi-playable beta by the New Year. To some extent we do. However, it is nothing we would let outsiders into, not even from a closed circle of early beta testers (the likelihood of getting into it increases if you “friend” us in Facebook, btw). Although the beta test will have four types of software and a single labyrinthine level (with Databases to hack and Sentinels to guard them), it has to be a smooth experience. There is no point in letting beta testers into the game if all they are going to report is that basic gameplay is crap and we already know that because we aren't happy with it either.

Instead there is going to be lots of tweaking and polish to do and only when we would be happy with it, it is time to let the beta testers in. After all, the point of having external testing in the first place is to receive observations and ideas we devs have already become blind to.

And this is where the whole Punk thing has come to bite us in the ass. We applied for money from NGF and elsewhere but what we really need are man-hours of work. If we had received even something we would have been able to have a part of the core team (programmers at this stage, I think) work on HAX full-time for a spell. Full-time means 40 hours a week per person. Since we didn’t get any money we are lucky to put in 8. And when duty calls and our day jobs start crunching Wirepunk must accommodate them. I’ll rather take any delay than lose a member of the core team to burn-out but it is still frustrating as hell.

As of now, the new goal for a playable beta is the end of Q1/2011. And remember, it is a goal, not a promise. There is no telling what kind of a curve-ball will be coming our way next.

HAX Beta 0.1 will a non-progression game where all players create an account and try to steal data from databases guarded by angry Sentinels. Players will have the four default programs: Virus, Reboot, Hack and Mask. Paydata will be tallied as a score and while the early testers are fighting for the top positions of the public Beta High Score while we are looking for bugs and feedback. Character profiles are cleared whenever we open new content for testing, while the circle of testers expands from close friends to… well, basically to a motley bunch of volunteers. When the networked hit-run-hide gameplay is where we want it to be; visually, technically etc. will we start adding more features.

Of course, HAX is an MMO. The development and tweaks will continue throughout its lifetime. I'd love to tell you the things we've pushed into “post-launch category”. But that would border on false marketing since we don't even have a launch date yet.