The public build has been updated with the latest available version of the game!
As usual, since the nightly build has merged to the public version, the nightly build has been disabled until the next cycle.
This merge is special because having completed all the main features of the game, we are moving from the Alpha version to the Beta version!
Even though we are now in the Beta version, the development dynamic will continue as always, with Nightly build cycles where new additions and major bug fixes are tested before updating the main branch. The difference is that from now on the Nightly build cycles will be much shorter. The roadmap has been updated with the latest changes.
Here are the main points that have been added in this update.
Extended NPC behavior
The NPC scheduling system has been completely re-implemented, improving and adding certain activities that will allow players to interact with various aspects of their lives.
From Monday to Friday, NPCs will go to work and have their leisure time, while weekends will be mostly dedicated to leisure activities and sleep. Players will be able to check NPC activities through CCTV if the network has available cameras. This can be particularly useful if the network has certain hackable Smart Appliances, as these can cause accidents.
Similarly, players can track an NPC’s license plate to monitor them through traffic cameras during their commutes, perhaps to hack traffic lights and also cause an accident. If the network contains the employee records database, the players will be able to know the full schedule of the NPCs.
These accidents can cause the death of the NPCs, although killing an NPC is not the only way to get rid of an NPC on a network that is preventing us from reaching our goal, like an annoying administrator. We can also use other methods to get the NPC fired, such as changing the alarm clock time on their smartphone so they are late for work several days in a row.
NPCs also communicate with each other through emails with NPCs from their network and also with NPCs from other networks. Besides discussing mundane topics, they will also comment on any problems or peculiar situations involving an NPC, allowing the player to know the context of the NPCs in the network to act accordingly if we want to interfere in their behavior to impact the company, and also to discover hidden missions more organically.
Bank Trace System
On the other hand, NPCs will be more aware of the movements in their bank accounts. Therefore, if an NPC detects that someone has stolen money from their bank account, they will report it to the authorities, who will start tracing the bank transactions to try to catch the perpetrator of the theft.
In a similar way, If an NPC detects an unusual deposit in their account, they can also report it to the authorities, causing a trace of the transfer, or withdraw that money and keep it.
World Impacted by Player Actions
The job performance of all NPCs within a company influences the profits it can generate. Consequently, a company with a workforce of incompetent people will experience losses month after month. Only large companies that sell software and hardware are public and allow players to buy shares.
When a player acquires more than 50% of a company’s shares, they will take control of it, unlocking various management options as well as additional information about each worker’s performance through their employee profiles. If a player is not the majority shareholder, this information will be hidden. However, it can be discovered by reviewing the NPCs’ conversations and emails to learn more if desired.
Once a year, in-game time, companies will offer to distribute dividends among shareholders, allowing them to earn a portion of the company’s profits. The total profits will be distributed proportionally to the success each company is experiencing at that moment.
The companies’ profits will be obtained directly from players’ purchases. For example, when a player buys a piece of hardware in any store, that money will accumulate and can be collected by all the company owners at the end of the year (in-game time) proportionally.
Remember that to gain an advantage over your competitors, you can either do it cleanly or interfere with their networks to create chaos.
Player Shops
Support has been added for players to create their own software and hardware stores. To configure the software for sale, you can set it up in /server/conf/httpd.conf. You can sell your used hardware from your Warehouse or buy a new pre-configured pack to sell in stores. 100% of the revenue from these sales goes to the player who created the store, unlike the percentage received as a shareholder of an NPC store, which is much lower and shared with other shareholders.
Zero-day exploits
The new attack vector is designed with multiplayer mode in mind, specifically for PvP mode. It allows for a more dynamic and balanced PvP between attack and defense.
The 0-day-exploit attack consists of several phases, requiring in the first of them that players collaborate with each other in order to advance. Although if you prefer, you can solve this part on your own, but it will be slower. Upon reaching a certain level, players will be able to obtain limited pieces of information (rumors) which, upon completion, will lead them to a specific network to continue with the discovery of the exploit. This will encourage collaboration among guild members to obtain this privileged information before another group, whether their intention is to attack or protect a specific network or server.
Once this information is obtained, players will still need to do research work to discover and deal with the engineers who have worked on the library that may contain the undiscovered exploit, thus being able to move on to the next step of the attack which will then be more technical for the player.
Changelog
Although these are the main points, more elements have been added as summarized in the changelog, such as symbolic links, superadmins, complete network backup from ConfigLan, UI redesign and more:
- Added Zero-day exploits.
- Extended npc behavior and improved schedule consistence.
- Stocks from store companies can now be purchased. If the majority of stocks are obtained, the company becomes player-owned. At the end of the year, profits can be collected, which is the money players spent in the stores, distributed equally among all player-owned companies based on the company’s overall performance or ranking.
- Improvements in network generation to maintain its consistency based on seeds, even if they are deleted from the database, fixing several bugs, especially in mission generation.
- Now each public IP address has a unique procedurally generated domain. It is no longer necessary to check the database if the domain exists when creating it at the time of network generation, significantly improving performance at the expense of having less natural domain names.
- EmployeesViewer.exe now displays more detailed NPC information, such as their semi-complete schedule and the LAN address of their workspace.
- Unlocked worker performance information from EmployeesViewer if the player is the owner of the company.
- Redesigned UI, including default color theme and wallpaper. (thanks to serdartpkl)
- Added Bank Trace System.
- Added Symlinks and the ln command.
- Desktop icons can now be freely arranged (except for the trash bin).
- You can restart in safe mode from the UI. Menu > Reboot.
- Added backup system in ConfigLan for the entire network of rentals.
- Implemented option to create stores and sell software and hardware. To do this, the http server must be correctly configured from the httpd.conf file.
- If the local libraries init.so, net.so, and kernel_module.so are moved or deleted, along with the necessary files for the computer’s operation, it will not be able to send or receive connections, including Browser and the get_router method.
- Moved traffic camera system to scripting. To obtain the new class, use include_lib with the new library libtrafficnet.so.
- Traffic accidents can be caused through the cameras.
- Implemented smart microwaves and refrigerators, along with a new library libsmartappliance.so. To interact with the new class, use include_lib with the new library.
- NPCs can now die or be fired, affecting the company’s performance. If the NPC is an admin, no traces will be generated until the NPC is replaced.
- Added HireWorker.exe program that spawns in networks with the employee service, where the player who owns a company can hire workers to replace the dead or fired. If the player owns the company, they can also fire workers directly. Hiring an NPC will be more or less expensive depending on their position.
- NPC computers can now generate a maximum of two users, one for the morning shift and one for the night, though not all computers have night workers.
- To hack smart appliances, it’s necessary to obtain the manual for the specific model. These can be found in hardware manufacturing networks. You can find them using the Browser with the terms “electronic” and “tech.”
- Added Smartphones. All workers have one, though only a few connect it to the work network. Smartphones appear and disappear from the network depending on their owner’s schedule.
- Added superadmins who intercept overflows and always force guest-level permissions to be returned. They appear randomly in generated networks.
- Added a warehouse in the hardware installation window where players can store parts they want to sell.
- NPCs send emails to each other discussing the performance of other NPCs. These emails may also contain information pointing to hidden missions or, in the case of zero-day exploits, information about what happened. They can also indicate the presence of a superadmin in the network. Additionally, they can indicate their break times in messages, which is especially useful for synchronizing accidents with smart appliances, although it will be necessary to observe their behavior pattern through cameras to know the correct time to cause the accident.
- Added new scripting objects: debugLibrary, smartAppliance, TrafficNet
- Added new scripting methods in existing objects: metalib.payload, metalib.debug_tools, file.symlink, file.is_symlink
Thank you all for your feedback and testing!