Codelink
Codelink is a Fan Sequel to the Hollywood Hacking simulator Uplink, developed by momoguru. It draws a lot of elements from the game it is inspired from, and brings the whole thing online; one of its strong points is the PvP capability.
Like in the predecessor, the player, who is an anonymous hacker, joins the ranks of Information Warfare Technologies. You make money by performing several task for your wealthy employers, including, but not limited to, illegal breaking and sabotage of systems, cyber bank fraud, and other computer crimes. Save for the multiplayer aspect, most examples match with those of Uplink.
The game is currently[when?] in an open beta phase, with no set final release date and free updates every now and then.
Tropes used in Codelink include:
- Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: Used hardware can be sold back at 75% of the original price. Used software cannot be sold back at all.[1]
- Author Avatar: Presumably the man behind Momo's Software Hub.
- Beef Gate: Security Checkpoints, every single one of them. Theorically any cracker can break a matching security checkpoint given enough time, but if you take too much time you won't get to do what you have to before the active trace detects your connection.
- Beeping Computers
- Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Not exactly a muscle but a concept issue. Many a noob has purchased a Monitor Bypass early expecting to disable active traces (like the Monitor Bypass did in Uplink), but in this game monitors are yet another security checkpoint.
- Death Is a Slap on The Wrist: For PvP only, thankfully. If someone else blows up your rig, IWT will boot you from the system for 5 (real) minutes while they repair your gateway for free.
- Doing It for the Art: momoguro started developing this game out of this trope. In his blog he states that he has only received around sixty bucks from donations in six years. More people joined the project later on.
- Final Death: Like in Uplink, but conditions are more relaxed. You can pile up to 10 convictions or 10 aborted jobs until your account is terminated permanently. However, you want to avoid those happenings, as those hurt your income.
- 555
- Loads and Loads of Loading: The point being that you got to upgrade your hardware to reduce these load screens. You'd think hackers would use fast browsers.
- Noob Cave: The whole game for all players below level 20, who can't attack or be attacked by anyone.
- Player Versus Player: Notable in that there is no kind of game-enforced protection for players[2]: if a player is online, he can be attacked by any number of players at any time. There are scripts and firewall programs used to attack and defend gateways.
- With This Herring: New players begin with the Email security plugin. Its only function is to communicate players and receive receipts of mission acceptance. The earlier is often unneeded until the late game, when you have enough plugin slots for it, and the latter is entirely useless as long as you keep the mission log open.