Hack the planet! Hack the planet! Let's Play Uplink

Join the ARC today!

If you recall last time I asked if we should join ARC?


With a one vote margin (the only vote) we decide to sign up with ARC


As soon as we reply we hear back from them:


Okay, for 10k credits all we have to do is upload this file onto Arunmor computers and then run it. Seems simple enough.

But! Before we do that. Let's get rich! Thanks to aturtledoesbite we already have a source of funds!


Doing large scale bank transfers is really risky. So risky that I'd recommend backing up your game before doing it. You can be externally traced in just about a minute and if you don't have gateway protections your files will be seized and you'll be busted.

I'm not going to do that though because I'm a cocky bastard who except for the first time I did this have never been caught!

Mr. Green banks at Virtualink Plc and in order to make the job easier so will we!

While setting up a dummy account we get another unsolicited email:


Looks like we're the belle of the ball and everyone wants to dance with us! Arunmor doesn't want us to ruin their systems instead they'd prefer that we just hand over the revelation file ARC gave us. Hrm... We'll let that sit on the back burner as we're sort of in the middle of something!

We set up a dummy account at Virtualink and we jot down the account number: 5255521
We also jot down the bank's IP: 552.408.233.399
As well as the amount of money in Mr. Green's account: 1403677

Okay, we're ready. I set up a bounce that has 30+ locations in it:


We already have Mr. Green's password, from the earlier mission, so we log into his account:


We punch in the bank IP, our dummy account's number, and all of Mr. Green's funds.

We transfer the money. Now we quickly have to eliminate the trail by deleting from Mr. Green's statements the transfer of the money and the receipt of the money from our dummy account's statements:



Forgive me that second picture is of our dummy account's statements but I seemed to have captured only after deleting the statement. I was a little more focused on not getting caught than documenting the caper! With the statements deleted all that is left is cleaning up our trail at InterNIC. I do. Now we wait. I advance the clock and wait to see if I made it out clean!


minutes pass and I'm not disconnected. I think we're in the clear. I do get an email from Uplink though:


Yeah, doing a bank hack gives you made props with the hacker crowd.


We won't have to worry about money any more!

But! We do need to decide whether to follow through with ARC or betray them and their software over to Arunmor?

Let me know!

PS - And just because I'm paranoid I ran the clock for five days and no Government officials came knocking. So, we good.

*SPOILERS* kinda

I could do both the ARC and Arunmor storylines.

But, I don't like doing the ARC missions mostly cause the last one is a bitch and once you finish it you've destroyed the internet and you can't enjoy the post game randomy hackery and exploraton.

ARC are the bad guys

Arunmor are the good guys

If you try to do both the most you can get are all the ARC missions and missions 2,3, and 4 of Arunmor.

I might be convinced to do both because I can back up my save.

Let me know!

Yeah, sure, let's go with ARC, because why not. It's not like the fate of the internet's on the line or anything.

EDIT: Or yeah, you could do both by backing up saves. ARC first, though.

Nah, let's go for the maximum possible story content instead. Which seems to involved not destroying the Internet.

I suppose Police Quest II can wait while I give you guys/gals both story arcs...

I say back up your save, do ARC, then do Arunmor after you've destroyed everything you've known and loved.

Ugh! I forgot what a mess LAN hacking is.

Oh hey! I got found out on the second to last mission of the ARC storyline...

Good thing I backed up my save!

LAN hacking is lovely. I don't know why you're complaining.

Here's a tip: With the Voice Analyzer V2, after you record a voice, click an empty gigaquad in your storage and you can save that voice, so you don't need to leave the Voice Analyzer open while you're hacking. Then, once you reach the main server, simply start up Voice Analyzer and left-click your saved file.

For the rest, just remember that LAN Force is a completely useless program if you have a half-decent CPU to crack passwords.

Yeah, it just took me a while to remember how things worked. Lost the game on the second to last ARC mission (wiping Aranmor's LAN) because the way the LAN was set up I only ever had a few seconds on the mainserver before the sys admin would trace me and bump me off. I got sloppy and reconnected to the LAN multiple times before erasing my trail. One of those times an external trace must have finished before I noticed.

Sad thing is I had a motion sensor alert and it went off but I didn't have my nuke program running...

You'll all find out more in the next update!

Does running the ARC program locally end the game, too?

I've never done that before.

My guess is it trashes your gateway, but you can always buy a new gateway, even if you dont have money because you can get a loan from your bank to buy one.

I could try it and we could see?

It actually trashes your personal computer, not your gateway. That is, it's a game over button.

Maybe. It might just break the gateway, but I'm willing to bet on breaking the PC.

Last time we hacked a bank and saw all of our money troubles go away. If you remember ARC wants us to work for it and their competitor wants us to work with them instead. ARC are the bad guys and Arunmor are the good guys. What are they fighting over? The existence of the internet... Oh, and we're #1 now!


Finding Arunmor's machine is a joke. You just do a simple search on Arunmor:


With that we bounce our signal around ending it at a public terminal and then their internal services machine and copy the file over. This is a really simple mission


Once we've copyed revelation1.0 over we run it from the console and are immediately kicked from the server


Also, Arunmor's internal service machine is out of commission! No one can connect to it, This is indicated by a big, angry red flashing box on the map


We wait a few hours and then watch the news:

It'll be a couple of days before ARC contacts us again. And, since we've got all this money lying around we might as well splurge!


Best Gateway GET! You don't see it here but I also bought a new modem, more RAM, and new CPUs


Arunmor comes out and says they'll have their revenge!

Also, Arunmor's internal service machine is out of commission! No one can connect to it, This is indicated by a big, angry red flashing box on the map


And here is Uplink's internal tracking system:


Now back to shopping:


See all those emails down in the bottom right? That's all my orders and the notification of their installation


And above you can see the total specs of the system and a graphical representation of it. I also installed the motion sensor and the explosive program.


In this image, if you see the little box the cursor is pointing at, you can see the motion sensor warning. It flashes yellow and then red to indicate someone is checking out your stuff... I decided not to run the Nuke software. A decision I will soon regret.

Getting ready for LAN

The only software we're lacking at this point are the ones associated with exploring and exploiting LANS, lets rectify that now:


I pick up the HUD upgrade


I then pick up the four pieces of software that will let me work through a LAN


So, now we know what is at stake here in the competition between ARC and Arunmor. Our decision to stick with ARC isn't going to make us too popular.


And because they were feeling left out the Federal authorities put out a press release too

While I wait for the story line how about I show you an Easter Egg?


Tell me if you recognize any of this?

A LAN mission! Not yay. I'm not a fan of LAN missions. Mostly because the game does a poor job of telling you how to navigate through them. Despite having a training LAN server in the game. The problem is that what LAN software does isn't really clear and how to manipulate the LAN itself is pretty opaque. To make it worse actual LANs will have a lot of units that are never shown in the test LAN... Anyway we better get started we've got a lot of stuff to steal!


Blah blah blah


So this is a LAN?


Oh, there's a lot more here... In order to connect it all together we have to probe each node/unit:


The Main Server is what we're trying to connect to! But we can't. Turns out it's being protected by some other nodes on the LAN... So let's continue exploring:


In that last image you can see that the lock is controlled by the controller above it.


An isolation bridge opens one lock while it closes the next. It'll be important for us to put this in the right state later once we've finished mapping out the LAN


So if I trigger this Isolation bridge it'll cut me off from the rest of the LAN but it will open the connection to the LAN from the phone below it (I think) if only we knew the phone number...


Okay the main server has three locks we'll have to break through first... Again, we have to connect to them first

I do some more probing. Especially of the four terminals at the bottom of the LAN to discover the phone number and a lock connection:


See now I can connect through the phone line!


And I have access to two of the three locks protecting the main server! With a little more probing I find the last one

Now I'm going to have to disconnect and reconnect to the LAN a couple of times in order to unlock everything. The nice thing is that once a lock is unlocked it stays that way so being kicked or logging out doesn't reset the LAN. Once all three are unlocked I log into the main server and then start DLing the data for the mission. It will take more more than one trip to copy it all...


Once I have the data I upload it to the ARC server as requested:


And then I go back in for the rest of it! The image below shows the LAN administrator tracing me across the LAN. As you can see he comes in through the phone line and though once he gets to where I am (the main server I'll be kicked) this doesn't give me much time to dl these large files and it takes a few tries to get everything. Remember that each time I'm kicked I need to clean up my trail by wiping the log at InterNIC... this is an annoying and time consuming process to say the least.


I get the rest of the data, bug out, clean up, and transfer it to the ARC server:


In other news it looks like ARC has become the target of anyone who calls themselves a hacker:


A Revelation VS Faith update:


A few days later we get our next mission from ARC:


This is a simple frame person mission, they show up on the job board pretty often I just haven't done them because I'm lazy...

All we need to do is break into the bank, using a short chain of connections! We want to get caught remember? Or, we want that other guy to and the shorter the chain the quicker he'll get picked up!


Well that got their attention! We log off and then log onto InterNIC. This time though we don't delete our log we just modify it to point to Arunmor's employee:


It makes me wonder why they need me if they can check these things themselves...


Take that Arunmor!


Oh no! Our boss just got busted too!

Another LAN mission... sigh. Okay, we can do this. To find the LAN we log into Arunmor's internal services machine, which I guess they fixed, and check the links:


And then connect to the LAN:


Oh wow, this is big... So we start working out way through the thing. We've got three locks to undo before we can get to the Main server:


We'll discover the frequencies we need on random terminals on the LAN in order to connect to the 3 wireless subLANs


With that we can use the radio transmitter:


we make our way through it and eventually unlock it:


Now we connect to the next one:


On this terminal we find the phone number we'll need to connect to the final subLAN to disable the final lock


We disconnect and reconnect through the dial up number we got:


And with that we can disable the final lock, re log into the Main Server and then try to mess everything up! Easy right?


WRONG!

See that map? See my dotted line connection to the main server? Two nodes until the Main Server. That means it will only take the SysAdmin a few seconds or so to trace me down and kick me off the LAN. Which means I'm going to have to log in multiple times just to try and delete everything and then kill the main server completely. This sucks


Here I am ten game minutes later (and around 30-40 minutes real world time still bringing down the server. Remember every time I get kicked by the SysAdmin I have to clean up my trail and then re log in...


Finally I complete the mission.


While I wait for my next mission, with the time running at triple speed. A second before I get a black screen I noticed my motion sensor blink red...

"What the...?!"


Turns out during the mission to destroy Arunmor I got impatient and didn't cover my tracks each time I got disconnected and waited to do it. During that time I must have been traced and reported...

So, game over!

Thanks for reading this Let's Play of Uplink! I'll see you next time with Police Quest 2: The Vengeance



what?!


It's game over!







oh, all right! Sheesh!


Next time, I try this again as the good guys and, hopefully, won't get caught!

Oh...huh.

LANs got a buff. It used to be as simple as finding the main server. I guess you have a different version than I do.

Oh well. Still your fault you died.

Well, you still have to find the Main Server but now they have protective locks on them that prevent you from accessing them.

It's hard to explain with some images. I might go through the Test LAN and try to explain the process in more detail.

And yeah, I know its my fault. I thought I had enough time to make a few consecutive runs between covering my trails. I didn't. I was getting frustrated and impatient with how little time I had each time I logged in to do what the mission required...

You know what the solution for that is? Take over an ISS to use as your backup program storage then run the nuke immediately after finishing the mission. Then, when you buy your new gateway, just go pick up all the software from the ISS like normal. I recommend using one that doesn't have firewalls or proxies.

Aw. I feel kind of bad about putting you through that now.

(More missions soon, please!)

My fault! The Arunmor missions are very similar to the ARC ones if I remember correctly.

Next update will probably come next weekend!

Well, that was weird... As you recall last time I got caught as an ARC partisan while trying to bring down Arunmor who were working to stop ARC's Revelation virus that would have wiped out the internet. This time I was going to pursue the Arunmor storyline. That starts shortly after ARC sends you your first mission. Shortly after Arunmor send you an email asking you to instead of infecting their machine to just give them a copy of revelation:


Okay, first mission done. Now what is supposed to happen is that I'm supposed to get another mission from Arunmor in a few days, usually before the end of April. But I didn't!

Instead as I waited for a mission to come in the news started coming in...


Remember when we did that last time?


I was supposed to get this mission from Arunmor! The job was to sneak into the ARC server, copy a tracer file over, then run it, and clear the logs.


This is another ARC mission we did last time.


This is just a story event, it was right after this last time that we got busted.


This is the ARC mission that got us busted last time...


This is the Arunmor mission I also should have done. It requires busting into ARCs LAN network and stealing data a lot like the Darwin ARC mission mentioned above


Penultimate news story for the narrative and then the fallout when Arunmor wins... Again, I was supposed to get this mission but didn't? I don't know why. Perhaps the save scumming I did before the bank heist messed things up? Anyway the final mission involves hacking into systems infected with revelation and installing and running faith the counter virus. This also involves destroying ARCs main server and then snuffing out every revelation infected system... the ARC final mission is just like this one except you're infecting the systems instead of cleaning them...


Final news story.

And that's the game. I'm not so keen on going through this a third time just to get it to work. If you complete the ARC missions the internet is destroyed and you have to start a new game. A successful Arunmor game keeps the game open as a sand box for you to play in. You can even ignore all the story line missions and just hack systems to your heart's content.

Hate to end it on a downer but outside of starting a new game and playing through again I don't know how to get the game to trigger sending me the missions...

Thanks for reading and stayed tuned for my next LP, Police Quest 2: The Vengeance

(we have been given a salutary lesson in why save-scumming is bad)

Thanks for the LP anyway, Falselogic.

The weird thing is I've copied and replaced my save files multiple times playing this game! Unless the version I have on CD is different than the one through STEAM or STEAM messes with things. I don't know what went wrong...

It's vexing.

I am vexed.