hi, im working on a 2D Cyberpunk RPG, and ive been thinking about how hacking will work. the game is heavily Shadowrun influenced, and i really liked how they did hacking in the game. (genesis version). anyway, i was just wondering how people thought i should do hacking in the game. the game is a action / RPG set in a futuristic urban decay setting. the player will get jobs that can range from delivering a package to hacking a corporation. the game has real time, action game style combat. i was thinking of doing the hacking system similarly. hacking would be just like the game, only your characters appearence would change, and instead of enemies with guns it was some sort of computer chips with "programs" (like spells that did damage and stuff). you could use your own programs too, that did damage / healed you. there could even be a programming skill that let you make your own programs =). just wondering what you think would be fun / cool. thanks for any advice.

I don't know about Shadowrun, but I think games like Megaman Battle Network have the type of "hacking" you describe; where it's not typing into a command line, but where for some reason the cyberworld closely resembles the real one, with programs acting like people, etc. It's not a bad idea (judging by how prevalent MMBN is among my little sister's friends), but you should be careful with how you balance it within the RPG. Depending on how well you implement it, it could be an entire game by itself, or it could be just an annoyance. I love the idea, but when you talk about making your own programs, it makes me think that this hacking game might be really heavy (i.e., you spend a lot of time on it, there's a lot to it); it may have to be tied closely to the game to justify the effort you're spending.

well, it does tie closesly into the game. hacking will be one of the most common jobs you can take. you can hack into a corp, looking for a piece of data that you have to return to your boss. Or, you can get a job to break into a corp and before you go in, you hack their computers and shut down their alarms, camera's, etc... this is just a little about what hacking can do, but theres more to it then that. since its an RPG, im doing a skill based system rather then a level based system. (Ala UO or SR). one of the skills will definetly be hacking. i was thinking of making a programming skill that would let you create your own programs.

I love SR :) You realize it was PnP first, though, right? ;)

How much game time will the player spend in the matrix? Unless you're going to force the player to play a decker, most of the game time will probably be outside the matrix (I'm assuming you'll support players playing at least the archtypes provided by the Genesis game?). In this case, I wouldn't go much more in depth than the Genesis game did, although a little more wouldn't hurt. If you are going to force the player to be a decker, it could be interesting to have a dual world (make him a mage as well and he'll have to wrap his mind around the astral plane, too! :) ). However, I'd like to see the game play in the matrix differ from the game play outside. Maybe combat takes place differently (real time outside, turn based inside? Different sorts of stats that play off each other in different ways? Lag?).

The ability to make your own programs I'm a little wary of. I wouldn't like it to be a die-rolling thing (the higher the level, the more likely you are to create more powerful programs, etc.). A simple system of "level 5 programmer can make level 5 programs, or level 3 programs that are more space efficient than a level 3 programmer could make" would be easy to balance and is what people are used to. Or maybe you make a sort of component-based-magic system. SR described its programming language as something like dragging objects around (I picture something like LabView :) ), so maybe you give the player some components that they can link together to make their own "program". Obviously, it'd be much simpler than real programming, but could maybe have some intricacies of its own. The better the character is at programming, perhaps the more components you have access to?

May I reccomend you take a look at <a href="http://www.introversion.co.uk>Uplink? At least their demo. It's quite a fun game until you learn fully how to play it. A lot of the game is learning how to play, which is fun. It deliberatly comes with no manual for this reason, and when you buy it, be sure to dismantle your CD case for some extra goodies, and check out the passworded zip file included for you to try and crack, and another .dat file that LOOKS like game data but is actually some encrypted stuff...

I'm rambling. Suffice to say, Uplink is a good hacking game, check it out, maybe swipe some ideas from it. It's also a good HACKING game as it gives you a whole bunch of real things to try and hack for fun.