Not read the whole thread yet, but i'm responding to this.

For the love of God do not remove notepad. The amount of paper i've saved myself by noting down IPs and account numbers etc in that is unmeasurable.

As for interface changes, I don't know how far or what direction it might take, but i've always liked the idea of making it more like an actual desktop environment. Maybe be able to move or resize things like the map and the stored IP list, maybe choose to have several IP lists (One of banks etc, one for mission criticals, one for 'general' things like the academic database and government servers) with folder like links on the 'desktop' to activate these.

Oooh, that is a GREAT idea! I second that suggestion!

==> Third-ed.

ermm.. fourthed!

But adding a suggestion to it: a "default" list, where the IP's gather when you receive them from a mission or the IP lookup (that is, of course, if these IP lists where customizeable. If not, this would be pointless)

Ok, unless a list of names popped up on the right, and you had a MOTD from 2600.net, you need to disconnect and reconnect, until you get the MOTD. 2600 is occasionally a bit arsey in that respect.

And if you had got to that point, then what's your username and did you actually say hello?



I also like the idea of being able to re-arrange the IPs, and second that too.

I'll keep thinking, see if I can get anything else.

Uh, yeah. This was actually one of the better ideas. Very nice.

It would be great for maximum customisation. Being able to have 3 or 4 with total control of what goes in what would greatly streamline the gameplay, especially if you're hitting up Ferrous Moon being able to keep all that stuff aside including phone numbers would be awesome, then bringing up your bank folder to get some moar money. Kinda like malicious project folders

Perhaps being able to save separate trace routes for each one would be cool as well if that's not going too far.

Separate trace routes? That sounds cool.

I'd also like an addon to the ChaosLib's bounce route generator that allows you to set conditions, i.e. defining which bounces should be where, such as making all generated routes start at InterNIC and always having the 17th bounce go through the GCD or something similar.

Actually, on that, here's a more complete idea: Scale down the connection world map, and add a bounce list to one side, which puts in a numbered-list format all your bounces. This list should also be editable, ideally by drag'n'drop and manual entry, and being able to reorder it with both buttons and drag'n'dropping would be a huge boon too. I can make up a quick concept image if that would help clarify. Everyone uses bouncing extensively, so I think something like this would come in really handy.

That would be awesome...

It would be great if we could just drag windows instead of click,move,click.

It would also be great if the text boxes don't deselect when your mouse stop hovering over it, I knock my mouse and I can't type anymore, playing on a touchpad makes it worse.

Here's two more ideas: Clicking on CPU usage bars to manually (and quickly and accurately and all other advantages this method would confer) set how much CPU usage you want to allocate to a certain program. The second is a "lock" button so that the CPU allocation for that program is fixed and will not be altered by other changes.

For instance, I have all bypassers running, I start and run a cracker, and while that's running I want to take out my voice recorder and load a voice in it. Oh, whaddayaknow, after I've done that, I press double-right on the cracker since I don't want it to take forever. But then what happens? Well, the voice recorder's CPU usage drops ridiculously low just like all the bypassers. In this example, we don't really care, since the recorder still does the job of handling ludicrous amounts of audio analysis and simulation and tangential projection data and calculations awesomely well even with only a single Ghz of CPU usage allocated to it (but we give it suspension of disbelief because, hey, we're in the future). However, if in this example the particular connex task was "while the decypher is running, also run an MD5 PC cracker on the ridiculously-long-to-hack admin hash", then we're in for a bit of trouble, because there's no way to tell the game how much CPU should be given to that task, and a single right-arrow-click will definitely throw everything (including your decypher) completely off-balance.

The solution? Once the two programs are started, click near the 80% line for the decypher, click the lock button, then click around the 15% line for the MD5. The bypassers end up sharing the remaining 5% of CPU cycles, since when you clicked on 15% for the MD5 it reallocated cycles there from all other processes as usual, except the decypher because that one was "locked", and rather than just augmenting or reducing by seemingly-random amounts, it was set to exactly how much you wanted (near 15% in this case).

I've also toyed with the idea of having something to remember the CPU allocation setting for locked programs so that when re-launched after closed they come back immediately to that setting, but that would cause too many problems by conflicting with other settings if you've got other locked-allocation programs already running. Maybe someone can come up with a workaround to that issue.

Tbh I think this is more of a fix than an idea. I can't imagine why Uplink was this way.

Seconded.

And as I said, having all ingame input boxes behave like default windows input boxes would make Onlink/Uplink so incredibly smoother and easier to play, mechanics-wise. Y'know, click a box and move away, but still be able to type, and then pressing Tab switches to the next box rather than initiating a new box-selection sequence separate from the mouse highlight selection and restarting all over from the first valid input box on the screen. But just removing the mouse-over-box-to-type-in-and-if-you-move-it-deselects-the-box mechanic would already be a large improvement.

A) Opt Out of Map Interface for setting up bounces. I'd be really happy if I could opt to dispense with the map Graphical interface for setting up bounce paths. Proposed Alternative: Used in conjunction with Chaos Lib, or completely manually, Check boxes on the IP list to "rank" ip's by the order you want to route by default. 1 = Internic, 2 - 4 = Aux Gateways, etc. Anything that's not ranked either Doesn't get connected to (if you don't activate Chaos Lib), or is randomized. Could reserve "0" for the Target IP. Other suggestion is to have Ranks based on Categories of Servers: e.g. Bounce through the longest Trace-Times Last before going to target (ie servers you've got Admin on, Banks, etc.)
Visually I'm looking for another checkbox on one side or the other of each IP.

This sort of sounds like a reduced version of what I'm proposing with a side-list of bounces, instead integrated in the current IP list. I'd prefer having my bounce list separated from the main list(s) of IPs and instead as a numbered and ordered list on its own. However, you did give me the following idea:

The world map could be made into a separate "addon" (upgrade, extension, program, whatever you want), maybe integrated directly into SYS_MapShowTrace. I'd also like to see actual "real-world positions" (but the ingame positions, that is, not *our* real "real-world" xD) play a bigger part in the gameplay. However, I have no idea what anyone could come up with to do that - after all, distance is not really an issue in terms of transfer time or tracking time, since we assume that if they have megaquads of data transfer, they've at least got the equivalent of optic fiber worldwide in terms of delays and response times, and having stuff travel around at the speed of light makes any distance of less than a few hundred thousand kilometers completely negligible. The Earth's equatorial circumference is only slightly over 40 000 kilometers, meaning that any light-based signal would have a hard time taking more than 80ms to reach its destination anywhere on Earth using a direct line (barring very shoddy cable-laying and poor relaying equipment, of course). To make a long story short, having less-than-instant connection times anywhere in the world and distance having any major impact on data transfer is somewhat unrealistic in Uplink/Onlink's sci-fi setting.

However, I would see other types of "real-world" stuff get into play, such as regional political schisms that would affect tracing times and security levels due to mistrust, or availability of certain pieces of technology, software or hardware varying by location in one form or another. I'm mostly just thinking of immersion features, to make the player feel even more like he's in there, hacking computers, risking getting caught, rather than just being some completely anonymous dude on a space station somewhere who is permanently remotely connected to a gateway, the link from the gateway to him completely impossible to trace and whatnot, and the world having no influence on him.

Of course, I'm not saying you have to implement eating food or sleeping or other things like that which would divert the attention from the real gameplay >.>

Just minor stuff similar to the current Uplink News System that help immersing yourself in the game. Since I'm guessing implementing such features would probably require some UI work, you just might want to consider the possibility of adding them later while designing the new UI, instead of locking yourself out of those possibilities.