Another bug:
When you take a mission that requires that you email the file to the company, but you have a lot of programs, it will only give you the option to select from one of the programs (it takes up the entire screen) and there is no way to scroll to select anything that isn't displayed on the screen.
Does this make sense?
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Quote
Originally posted by Corvus:
**Another bug:
When you take a mission that requires that you email the file to the company, but you have a lot of programs, it will only give you the option to select from one of the programs (it takes up the entire screen) and there is no way to scroll to select anything that isn't displayed on the screen.
Does this make sense?
**
I think so ... you're saying you have so many programs (etc) that it fills the screen from top to bottom, but still doesn't show them all.
Hmm. what I would try would be to rearrange your files. Chances are that you have your mission file near the bottom of your memory. Perhaps if you
"copy" the programs at the top of your memory card to the bottom,
delete the originals from the top to make some space,
copy your mission file to the top
try to email it again (it may now be visible).
Quote
Originally posted by Corvus:
**Thank's for the note, that's exactly what I did and it worked fine, so this was more of a nuisance than a problem, but it's still a bug:p
**
Oh good!
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r
Game Design weirdness (most of which do not directly relate to Ambrosia):
*The Gateways seem oddly spread around and have features that don't make sense. For instance, what's the point of allowing for three security devices in default configurations? Are you going to have two gateway-nukes? Some of the upper-echelon systems and many of the lower ones have room for only one security device, which is worthless with the default equipment set (a motion sensor is only valuable if you have a nuke, a nuke is only valuable if you have a motion sensor).
*It isn't unusual, in the mission list, to get several of the same sort of mission against the same company in a short period of time.
*The storyline missions and the ratings are just strangely set up. It is virtually impossible to do anything vaugely resembling upgrading your gateway (insufficient funds) and difficult to get the software that you need to do the first arunomor/arc mission by the time it roles around.
*You will attain the rank where you will be offered missions that require ub3r-1337 software long before you actually can afford ub3r-1337 hardware and software (even factoring in that you are eventually going to steal from someone's bank account).
*Some of the missions need to be a little more... explicit in what you are being asked to do before you accept them.
*There are some grammer errors in the emails that get bounced around in the storyline missions (e.g., the first email you get from arunmor seems like it was cut-off mid transmission).
*You shouldn't have such of a time crunch to get involved in the storyline missions, all or nothing.
*Again, some of the LAN's are impossible, even to do them in stages.
*There are a lot of things which consume their share of processor power, but which don't really need any processor power in order to work (bypassers, trace route, etc). It would be wonderful if we could auto "nice" these rather than just "renice" them after we've launched them.
*An autolauncher. When we start Uplink, it would be nice if it could launch a few apps of my choosing automatically.
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Quote
Originally posted by Corvus:
**Another oddity bug.
I got a mission to delete files on someone's server, went in and did my job, and then noticed that my target and my employer were the same company.
Still got paid, but thought that was kind of strange 
**
Maybe they were after insurance money <g>
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r
...and another oddity bug.
Paul Venning, aka Agent Moondawgy, a top ranked uplink agent in this particular game incarnation, was arrested and it made the news.
I decided to be a Nice Guy™ and broke into the Global Criminal Database and cleared his record. Yet his status still marks him as being "in jail" 
So much for helping my fellow agents out.
Another thing, is it my imagination or do people keep ridiculously small bank accounts?
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Quote
Originally posted by Ricia:
**Maybe they were after insurance money <g>
**
That's the only conclusion I can come to
Though money in general is odd in this game. I am routinely asked to run missions to make a donation on the behalf of someone. I am almost always paid far more than they want me to transfer.
Also, I'm not certain, but in one case I think I transfered moeny into my own bank account as part of a mission...
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Quote
Originally posted by Corvus:
I am routinely asked to run missions to make a donation on the behalf of someone. I am almost always paid far more than they want me to transfer.
I always assume the 'donation' missions were offered out of spite. It's not that they want or need the money, they mainly just don't want <insert person> to have it.
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I'm sorry, but i may have explained my problem inaccurately in my previous post, so here it goes again: Sometimes when i play uplink it doesnt save my progress. i'll go in and it'll be say, april 4, i'll do a few hacks speed up time to get replies, etc...so that it's at least a few days later when i quit, right? so then i log on again later as the same character and it's back to april 4, or whatever the date was when i started last time. Nothing has been accomplished, its exactly the same as before. What should i do?
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Gentlemen, boot your gateways.
Quote
Whenever I click on the map, the game quits. Actually, I've never quit, so I don't know what that looks like; but it changes the resolution back, switches to the desktop, the music stops, and there's no icon in the task bar.
It does the same thing when I try to log into the machine you (presumably) buy software from in the test mission.
I had this problem It was remedied by having the game run at a resolution one step below max. (max was 1280x1024@60Hz, step down was 1024x768@75Hz)
It now doesn't crash my game, but it is god-aweful slow to run it at max res. With a GeForce2 and extremely simple graphics, that's a bug in my books. Optimize the Graphics routines.
Now. The real bug I want to talk about is in paying bank overdraft fines. Yeah yeah, I'm a new player and I manage to buy things that exceed the ballance of the account I have selected to use but still have funds in another account. (I'm hoping that's not a bug but a feature.)
Anyway, I grind my teeth about the fine and run off to the bank to pay it and get it out of my hair. Only 500Cr anyway. Transfer money from account that has been overdrawn.
Type in bank IP given: check.
Type in account number given: check
Type in amount: 500 Check and double check.
Send! bank transfer successful. Good. Reply to mission and get it out of my hair: check.... failed.
We have not yet received this payment.
WTF!?
Now it's annoying.
I still haven't managed to pay this fine. Help would be greatly appreciated.
comp stats
OSX.2.6 server
DP 800 G4 Quicksilver
1.25 GB RAM
Very little HD space available
Running Uplink (and some other unimportant programs) v1.32
I of course really want to buy this game, but I feel that would be unfounded until some of the more tick-off'ing bugs are fixed.
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Oh. That's Interesting. I
wonder if I can hack it?
Screen resolution problem when choosing resolution 1600 x 1200 and saving, the next time the games started my mac gives the message UPLINK quit unexpectedly........and the game was never more to be seen.
A workaround was to delete the options.dat file then create a new agent and login normally
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Hi slipperman in terms of game play your quite right it is annoying ther is no copy and paste
but in terms of reality the game is correct ......when your ftping your not using "windows"
fuctionality (you dont have a clipboard) so you cant ctrl c,ctrl v.(copy paste) you could do it
if you had some proprietry connection software....but I hardly think a hacker would be using that!
I think it's more realiszic the way it is....cheers
Quote
Originally posted by Slipperman:
**Uplink Bugs & Interface Flaws
Bugs:
When demanding full payment up front for a mission, the player is actually paid the full amount again upon completion. I don't have information on what happens when you demand half payment. Perhaps the same thing?
Interface Flaws:
The following are only my considered opinion, emphasis on "considered". This is not a rant and I feel that anyone with an ounce of common sense will agree with these observations. I have also worked in software and interface design, so I sort of know a thing or two.
No text selection copy and paste? In a game as heavily dependent on typing as Uplink, this lack stands out glaringly. I realise this is a port from a PC game, but - come on! - not even Windows is that stupid. The "Edit" menu suite is part of the bog standard Mac API, there's nothing to write in order to include those functions. That is, at least under normal circumstances. Other evidence in the game leads me to believe that a lot of reinvention of the wheel went into the interface, which tends to complicate things for subsequent developers. Question: how many game companies who produce first person perspective real time combat games have made their own 3D modeling engines? Answer: all of them. This is a point raised, surprisingly, in Introversion's own "manifesto". So much for manifestos.
Text boxes which say, "fill in the blank" but don't have that text selected so that by merely beginning to type it is overwritten. Again, there's no click-selection of text (nor does Command + A (select all) work) in the interface, so the only recourse is to backspace delete. Very very very very very very very very very very very very annoying when doing, for example, multiple name searches in the Academic Database.
Made a mistake while typing in that name, password or URL? Maybe the very first character? Too bad. Since you can't move the cursor in the text fields, you have backspace delete the entire text to get to the errant section. This can be a source of great anxiety when trying to get into a server (for example InterNIC) in order to head off a trace. Sometimes seconds are precious, and Uplink is not kind to indolent typists.
This naturally leads to an inconsistency in the interface with regard to known passwords on servers. When you visit a server on which you have a valid account, that name and password are displayed and you can quickly enter that information into the fields by clicking the text. On every server except InterNIC. There your password is displayed, but you must type it in. Either have the feature or don't have it, but in having make it consistent.
In the Stock Market, when you purchase a stock, its name is flagged by an asterisk in the main list. However, you cannot filter stock names by this asterisk, which would of course only be all too intuitive and logical. In other words there's no conveient way to examine one's portfolio of holdings, except by filtering their names one at a time, or using the scroll bar, but read on...
In the Stock Market when you scroll down the list and then call up the information for a stock, when you leave that screen back to main list, the main list has defaulted back to the top instead of staying at the point to which you scrolled it. The same happens in the Mission List, but probably makes sense there as the list represents chronological events and the assumption is that most users want to see the fresh jobs.
The map has several things wrong. The squares that pinpoint server locations, their names and the connection lines are all the same colour, making for a real morass when dealing with convoluted link paths. The mouseovers are a nice touch, but the information displayed is insufficient. Only the name of the owning company is listed, whereas it would be highly convenient, again especially when things are getting dense, to have the full name of the server displayed.
When saving an connection route the text "connect" appears to the right of the Load button, where it is obscured by the map zoom controls, which should more proplerly be in the centre of that row of controls.
When the map is zoomed the alignment of solid or dashed borders, on those squares denoting admin level access, is skewed. The squares move out of their borders, or is the other way around? Not the intended behaviour one would think.
In the markets, the 'Purchase' button is just below the downscroll arrow meaning the user has to be extra careful about their aim, or -- Oops! -- you just bought something unintentionally. Move the 'Purchase' button to just above the 'Exit' button.
The goal of all good human interface design is to reduce, not increase the user's workload. To make those tedious repetitive tasks as effortless as possible. The examples above clearly violate this principle, tending to greatly reduce the overall quality of what is otherwise a super game concept.
But - and here's the cool part - it can (and should!) all be fixed. Unless and until these issues are addressed (or at least acknowledged) I will have serious reservations about paying for the game.
I make no apology for the length of this "rant" and I hope the intrepid reader will appreciate the time and thought that went into it.
**
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Quote
Originally posted by celticshadow007:
**I'm sorry, but i may have explained my problem inaccurately in my previous post, so here it goes again: Sometimes when i play uplink it doesnt save my progress. i'll go in and it'll be say, april 4, i'll do a few hacks speed up time to get replies, etc...so that it's at least a few days later when i quit, right? so then i log on again later as the same character and it's back to april 4, or whatever the date was when i started last time. Nothing has been accomplished, its exactly the same as before. What should i do?
**
Have you been backing up your usr file?
That sort of thing only happened to me when I was making backup files and kept the backups in the user directory. If that's the problem, the solution is to move your backups to another directory (I use a directory called "backups")
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r
Sadly, Paul Davies never succeeded as an artist...
I don't know if that counts as a "bug", but it's kind of funny anyway. And I swear that the only thing I changed in that picture was his Electrical Engineering degree... class 2 to class 1.
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char a(16)(33);int main(){int i,j;for(i=0;i<16;i++){for(j=0;j<33;j++){a(i)(j)=((a(i-1)(j-1)!=a(i-1)(j+1)&& j<32&& j>0&& i>0)| |(i==0&& j==16))?'*':' ';printf("%c ",a(i)(j));}printf("n");}}
Quote
Originally posted by Thunderforge:
**Welcome to the boards LouisB3.
Occasionally, when I've just hacked a bank and I transfer money to my Uplink bank account, I can get caught for "hacking". Maybe this isn't a bug, but it sure is annoying.
**
Its not a bug, u need to delete the transfer statements for both yourself and the victim, and of course the system logs.
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In the next update change the map in the following ways, for the sanity and conveniece of all.
-Allow backtracking when jumping, like in the LANs
-Rather than display the long names, show a owner abreviation, when pointer is over the link, then show full info--This would be really useful for those of us who need to break into places with fast traces and like to link through dozens of places, and cant find them in the jumble of the map.
-Allow more saved link strings
-Make them stay even when I log out
-Allow dragging of the jump lines so new servers can be added in the middle of a string
-Make it bigger, it takes up most of the screen any way, why not use the entire screen?
Other stuff
-Add a trace tracker for LANs when the sys admin is after you
-Multiple gateways?
-Make the sample company stuff a practice ground, dont let them catch users if they screw up, instead have it tell them they were caught, and say how
-Folders to organize the link list
-Allow filtering of the Internic link list, I dont need the IP address of server I already have
-Allow higher level players to hack the Uplink server to prevent them from getting booted after being caught by a minor company
-Add a save menu, I backup my usr file before I do anything dumb, this would just be convenient
-Allow purchasing of upgrades, rather than having to pay all the $ to go from version 1 to 2+
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