I was just reinstalling an old favourite Uplink, and it occurred that you lot might appreciate it. Basically, it's a game where you play a hacker for hire; a story gradually starts to evolve as you go. There's a demo on the website, and it's actually pretty cheap to buy.

http://www.introversion.co.uk/uplink/

Naff all sound, no fancy graphics - but it swallows hours of my time at a go

Have you figured out how to properly hack the LANs towards the end? I haven't been able to get past the first host, though they're pretty much incapable of actually tracing me while I'm sitting there.

~J

Crap, uh, yeah, damn I can't remember it's been so long... It works a lot like a 1st/2nd Ed Matrix run, you progress through a series of LAN nodes, I just can't quite remember how it works. I think you need to use a LAN Scan utility to see what's there, then a LAN Probe (?) to make your way around. Unless there's no security and you can just go there by clicking on the node.

Try going onto the Introversion forums, somebody on there probably has a LAN FAQ up.

some of the LAN configurations are, as best i can tell, straight-up impossible to hack. you can get yourself more time during a LAN trace by looping your path beforehand. do circuit 10-20 times before going for something you know will alert the sysadmin, and you should have time to do your thang before the admin can trace you all the way.

this one is alllmost a classic allready

and there is a thread on their forum about a big "mod" (they released a dev cd some time ago so people can rewrite the game if they want to) thats going add a lot ot the game if it ever gets completed

and about the lan, you can reset the sysadmins trace somehow (to long ago). you get moved back to your entry point but i belive none of your "hacks" are reset so that you can just move to where you where before they started the lan trace. the net trace on the other hand cant be stopped ones started. it can only be slowed down by doing a ton of high access jumps...