Telehack is the most interesting game I've played in the last year... a game that most users won't realize is a game at all.Or maybe I've posted about this before. It's a foggy-brained morning.
It's a tour de force hack — an interactive pastiche of 1980s computer history, tying together public archives of Usenet newsgroups, BBS textfiles, software archives, and historical computer networks into a multiplayer adventure game.
Among its features:The entire project was engineered by "Forbin," an anonymous Silicon Valley engineer named after the protagonist of Colossus: The Forbin Project. Like the chief engineer of the film, Forbin's created a networked supercomputer that defies all expectations. (Hopefully it won't gain sentience and enslave the human race.)
- Connect to over 24,000 simulated hosts, with logged-in ghost users with historically-accurate names culled from UUCP network maps.
- Hacking metagames, using simplified wardialers and rootkit tools.
- User classes that act as an achievements system.
- Group chat with
relay, and one-on-one chat withsendortalk.- Reconstructed Usenet archives, including the Wiseman collection.
- A BASIC interpreter with historical programs from the SIMTEL archives.
- Standalone playable games, including Rogue and a Z-code interpreter for text adventure games like Adventure and Zork.
- Hidden hosts and programs, discoverable only by hacking Telehack itself.
I had to know more. With the help of Paul Ford, I interviewed Forbin about the project — using Telehack'ssendutility, naturally. Read on for the full interview about his motivations, how it's built, and why he's chosen to remain anonymous.
Telehack
Old news that's new to me:
