hackmud is a text-based multiplayer hacking simulator for Intel-compatible personal home computers. Crack protected systems and solve puzzles as you explore the abandoned internet of the future. Write scripts to protect your winnings and trick other players. Lose everything. Get it back.
Hackmud launched on steam September 22nd of 2016 after 22 months (2,376.28 work hrs) of development. The technology is a delicate tapestry of dependencies which has evolved significantly in the many months since launch. Performance and stability continues to improve as complex caveats and usage patterns are identified and supported. -- The front-end client is written in c# using Unity, and the back-end is ruby on rails. Most of the game runs on the server, so a lot of the gameplay can be tested and maintained with unit tests. Deployment is automated with web standard technologies and is zero-downtime. In the first week of launch the game was down on and off for around 6 hours. Since then many dependencies have turned to live locking or lockless strategies, and there have only been 9 instances of game downtime in the last year and a half, three of those being player discovered exploits and the rest database update / ops work. (updated 2nd of April 2018)
hackmud is the best-worst game idea. It is infinitely expressive in play, but also insanely complex to maintain. Since launch it has garnered critical acclaim, broken rules, built friendships, turned those friends into enemies, and those enemies back into friends. Players have explored the farthest reaches of the sandbox, but have yet to discover the deepest depths of the game's puzzles and narrative. There is enough planned in design and features to easily hit 5 years of development. (updated 2nd of April 2018)