Very interesting sim

[FreeER atubeacct]

So found this through a post on the ferrousmoon forums a couple days ago, and have been playing it for several hours now...and I'd like to ask if there's an eta on a 'scripting' documentation (yeah I have read that it's in Groovy, not that the file exts could have given it away) since I found it slightly difficult just to get the oldgames ftp bruteforce script working correctly. Before I get into everything else I'd like to mention that the most annoying portion is that when inside of another computer (in DS campaign) and I need to use a command (even a very common one like cat which works fine on 'my' computer) that I have to type the command and then give the executable input instead of passing it arguments when I execute it, and come like 'ls' don't allow any 'input'...Not sure if that's because the 'commands' are being recoded on each 'server' for flexibility or... though.

I tried to write a scan script for the ips from zrio.org and found that it simply froze Hax (at least my implementation of creating a Datagram and checking for a response to querying does, takes about half a minute to 'scan' a single port on 22 different ips...certainly not useable to scan all 1-1000 ports over an arbitrary number of ips, aka combine the two methods of using scan, like I'd wanted lol), as such I would think that there is a way to use the 'builtin' scan (and read a file of ips instead of copying and pasting as a string[]), I just don't know it.

Also, I'm slightly sad that writing to the terminal only occurs after the script is done executing... there's no way to show any progress :( Probably not a priority in v1 though lol. I will confess that I've tried many times to use ctrl+shift to highlight (not that I should really expect highlighting on a minimal os's console) and change some portion of a command and gotten a bit annoyed at it wiping the command (since it shift+arrow walks through the history), but at least I can use ctrl+backspace... Of course, you've already mentioned that the third party DragonConsole came designed like that (and without configuration settings).

As for the DS campaign itself, I've just managed to dos the fbi and received a message saying 'congrats we'll contact you later'...kind of have to wonder if that's actually the end (I've never actually played the original DS) or if there's more and I just need to find something to do until then (I've uploaded the 'game' to ipgames.com as well, interesting 'ending' there)...

Perhaps I should mention that I have only a tiny bit of programming knowledge (mainly from making a couple mods in lua for Factorio) but am trying to gain a bit more? :)

Great job so far btw, I've definitely enjoyed it (even the tutorials, though a tiny tiny bit annoying that when it wants a blank line to continue it won't accept anything else...)

[Hax Simulator]

Hello,
thank you for your interest and insights. First, to answer some of your comments:

1.) the DS campaign servers are coded mostly like they were in the original DS, that goes for the command arguments as well. In most cases, on the ones where you interact with a command prompt, they are supposed to give you an illusion of running a different OS than you are. In original DS that was even more apparent, as 'your' computer more resembled having a Windows command prompt, so the commands on the servers were completely different. In Hax, you got HaxOS on 'your' computer, which is based on *nix commands, so the difference is not that apparent. So, you basically have a flexible shell version on 'your' computer, and a less flexible one on the remote ones. I hope you get my point :)

2.) send me the scan script you wrote to my mail, i'm very curious what you have come up with without having any documentation available. I'm sure there is just a small glitch that caused it to freeze. Also, as far as I remember, the "builtin" scan script is available in its source form, in "/bin/scan". Feel free to check it out, get inspiration, or experiment around with it.

3.) writing to the terminal incrementally is also a matter of the architecture of the app. I am using Swing for the UI, which is unfortunately single-threaded. Incremental output would be of course nice, but needs quite a lot of planning and designing to get it right.

4.) as for the highlighting, that is still a problem. Modifying the console component to allow to use arrow keys for command history, I also tried to enable the shift+arrow combination for highlighting. It produced some unpretty results, like being able to select and delete the prompt too. Therefore I decided to ditch it for now. I might get back to this in a later release though.

5.) as for the bruteforce script, there is actually another way to get past that, without having to deal with the script altogether... you can try to figure that out too. :)

6.) SPOILER WARNING: the line below contains the answer to the "DS campaign ending" question, which might be considered a spoiler by some. Please highlight to view.
Sadly, that is indeed the end. The main campaign of the original DS also ended there. The zrio server contained the code to send some more emails which were never actually sent, so it appeared that the storyline will be continued, but it never did, and DS was discontinued. There were a few notorious community-created campaigns and misssions, but I did not manage to get the sources of them to implement them in DS.

7.) As for the scripting documentation and a new release, I started working on it, and actually done quite a lot, but progress has gotten slow lately due to some personal issues. I hope that after the summer, I'll be able to pick up the previous pace and finish the next version. I don't want to commit to any ETA.

Anyway, thank you for your support, and keep watching, I will not let this project die despite the current delay.

Cheers

[FreeER atubeacct]

Thank You for the answers,
1) ah, ok. Makes perfect sense, though I'd suggest making it a tiny bit more obvious someday :)
2) I no longer have the original script, I did indeed find the Scan.groovy file and based a new altscan on it (and the MailClient) that's working much better..., I'm sure there are things that could be improved. I'll go ahead and send it :) From what I remember of the old script vs whats in the new, I'd guess that it's the use of channel.publish and then using a while loop to receive responses rather than querying and waiting on a response for each before sending the next (which is what I'd seen in the oldgames and ping scripts)...
3) yeah, thought something like that would be the answer...hm, I suppose I could try to break it up into different scripts that call the next one at the end...but that'd be both a bit annoying, a bit less efficient (data passing), and ugly (from a design pov, if it's short, but more importantly just when using ls to view files, unless the OS has a way to hide files). Well, my current version is fast enough that I don't think such updates are really needed right now.
4) yeah...that would be a bit of an issue lol. A quick solution might be having a separate 'console' for the prompt that can't be selected, but...probably just a bit too much work for such a little thing.
5) really? Hm, I'll have to play through again. I did indeed get the script working, eventually, though if I had a use for it elsewhere I'd want to actually make it use arguments instead of hard coding the target and pass length...
6) Ok, thanks for letting me know :)
7) Well, I can understand that, hope things start going well for you soon. Oh, and I'll definitely keep watching this.
7) Well, I can understand that.
I'll definitely keep watching, it looks like it could be quite useful for learning as well as just having fun :)

[milw0rm]

I want to let you know that I have good news for you. I DO have the alternative missions, scripts, tools and a lot more material of the DS game! I am probably the only one available on the net who has the WHOLE collection! Earlier this year I tried to make DS born again on my own but was unable to find people to help me. I think this is the chance for me to give you all I have so we can implement it to this game; which, by the way, it is awesome.  Contact me at soda...@hotmail.com and I can give you the whole collection.

Cheers

[Hax Simulator]

Hello,
thanks, I have contacted you on the email address you specified.
Kind regards