GamesHigh tech computer crime and industrial espionage on the internet of 2010!
Uplink is a computer game released in 2001 by the British software company Introversion software. On 23rd August 2006, it was made available for purchase on Valve’s Steam service.
You play an Uplink Agent who makes a living by performing jobs for major corporations. Your tasks involve hacking into rival computer systems, stealing research data, sabotaging other companies, laundering money, erasing evidence, or framing innocent people. You use the money you earn to upgrade your computer systems, and to buy new software and tools. As your experience level increases you find more dangerous and profitable missions become available. You can speculate on a fully working stock market (and even influence its outcome). You can modify peoples academic or criminal records. You can divert money from bank transfers into your own accounts. You can even take part in the construction of the most deadly computer virus ever designed.
Uplink by Introversion Software, at first glance looks like something you would put back on the shelf at your local game store. This game has no fancy graphics, no thrumming hard hitting soundtrack, no one shot kills, and no massive armies at your disposal to conquer worlds. Do not be decieved!! If you did put it back, you would be missing out on one of the most creative, enticing and compelling games to grace a hard drive. Uplink is simply a game about the player versus the world. Everything is fair game, and anything can be had… if you are good enough. Toss aside those other shallow games that get stale after a few weeks, and get ready for a real challenge!
Uplink focuses on emulating highly stylised, Hollywood-esque hacking, as seen in movies such as Hackers, Sneakers, WarGames and Swordfish. References to these movies can be found throughout the game, including joke servers for companies such as Steve Jackson Games (which appears to have been raided by the Secret Service) and a nuclear missile control system from WarGames. It also features at least two references to the movie Sneakers. One of which can be found in the first version of the game (and was later removed in an update released by Introversion) which is a cheat code in which the user has to enter TooManySecrets as the username thus allowing him to access a cheat menu. This is a reference to the film Sneakers (an anagram to the phrase “Setec Astronomy”)
The game has a certain number of unusual features, including an in-game IRC function to talk to other players and a “multimonitor” function which allows the player to play the game over two screens, using a LAN connection to another computer running the game. This feature is often mistaken for multiplayer by some, due to the fact that in the original versions it was mislabeled ‘Network’.
Changes in version 1.55:
- Fixed : Crashes with invalid floating point operations.
- Fixed : Problem on Linux with .dat files directly in Uplink directory and not in the lib/ sub directory. (Happen when upgrading from some older version of Uplink to a newer version)
- Fixed : A crash with LANs having invalid location.
- Fixed : A crash with LANs having invalid links.
- Fixed : A crash with LANs having modems without phone number.
- Fixed : Crashes with PasswordBreaker/DictionaryHacker if their target screen isn’t there anymore.
- Fixed : Crashes with tasks if their interface isn’t there anymore.
- Added : A code card (codecard.txt) to the online download version of Uplink.
- Added : Software rendering option to the Windows version of Uplink. Also change to software rendering if the game crash during OpenGL initialization.
- Added : Show Bank IP on the Finance interface.
- Changed : Steam Authentication is now done with the help of a external DLL, this should permit new MODs to work with Steam.
- Changed : Much better error handling on Linux and some minor tweaks to error handling on Windows.
- Changed : Loading a corrupted saved game (agent) should now show a message box instead of crashing.
