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Hacking

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Dan:
Per this, and this.

Any thoughts also welcome and very much appreciated here.

BaronVonMonster:
It's a tricky dilemma...personally I think it can help immerse you in a game world but I can see why after the millionth time people can get frustrated. Still....a steam-punk game in which you are a thief really SHOULD have something and there's got to be plenty of scope in the genre to do something really cool which works in the world and with the main protagonist.

I liked the lock picking in Splinter Cell mostly because of the force feedback to the controller helping you on your way, unfortunately people on a pc more often than not will not be able to enjoy this kind of feature. The mini-game thing itself did also become pretty tedious :( (as did Oblivions)

It's also interesting that Mass Effect had the hit buttons quickly and accurately in sequence style hacking (amongst a couple of other mini-games) which at the time got quite a lot of stick BUT I did like the fact that if you couldn't be bothered with manually doing it you could exchange some of your omni-gel (collectable mcguffin) to auto-open. Which meant later on when you had plenty of supplies you didn't mind using some to auto-open and avoid the tedious hacking mini-game thingy.

So maybe some way of letting people exchange collectable something or rather for skipping might help people further on in the game skip what might have originally been good fun for the first dozen or so times. Ooooooh or maybe after half a dozen times you 'upgrade' and then have the ability to auto open basic doors or something? Sorry my brain is just having a bit of a brain dump!?

Hmmmm. Although more work I guess you could also have different types of lock and therefore different kinds of mini-game? Helps mix things up but unless they are all pretty awesome it might still get repetitive.

Ok. I'll stop rambling now...If I think of anything else I'll mention it!

the_dancing_spy:
I like the idea of being able to use credits or whatsoever to auto unlock- that way if you want to save the random collectable you can do it manually, or just be lazy and skip it. Might not make a lot of sense within the game world to be bribing a lock however...

kirrus:
I would love a hacking mini-game to at least somewhat resemble actual, well, hacking. The type where you write a program to test an exploit. Failing that, just cracking it (scanning for exploits, deploying exploit code someone else has written) would be nice..

But that would be horrible to make, and boring to play, so ignore me ;)

Bob Chambers:
The two options most commonly presented are; 1. Minigame, 2. Condensed form of proper hacking and 3. Progress bar. To give my opinions on each one:

1. I'm not too keen on this one; I find it ruins pacing and quite often clashes with the bigger game, regardless of quality; I liked Bioshock's hacking minigame, but hated hacking in Bioshock if you get my drift.

2. Does this style merge well with a stealthy platformer in a steampunk aesthetic? I'm finding it hard to visualise port forwarding in a world of valves and gears. You might be able to, and more power to you. Personal opinion here, that's all.

3. I can kinda see this working if done right. You activate your magic handy wavy gloves at the terminal, and have to stay hidden until it's done. Go too far and you break the connection (which could reset the progress, or cause all sorts of weirdness since it's part done), stay too close and a guard may stumble in when checking why weird things are happening in an area related to the terminal. Lots more potential to keep it "in game", if you will. Deffo my preferred option.

Regardless of what you pick, I'd also pitch a vote for having some method to circumvent it. Maybe not just a "press button, lose item/currency, win at hacks" bypass. Someone in the blog mentioned social engineering, and that could be great. You can hack it right here and now, or sneak to the other side of the building and see if there's a password written on a note left in the kitchen bin. Equal risk, equal reward, two different gamestyles.

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