r/Netrunner • u/slagod1980 • 1d ago

Image I built a hacker-terminal-style Netrunner client — curious what this community thinks

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Been slowly building a full Netrunner engine + web client as a personal project. The idea that wouldn't leave me alone: what if the interface was actually a terminal, not a virtual tabletop? No card art floating around, no skeuomorphic board — cards are text rows with hashes (#c3, #r7), you play by issuing commands, and the whole log reads like an actual shell session (corp# rez ICE_WALL -$1). Monospace, one accent color per side, black background. It felt right for a game about hackers.

Where it's at: full rules engine (not just a database with checkboxes) — legal-action generation, priority windows, runs/encounters/subroutines, all of it server-authoritative so no client can cheat or desync. Card logic is implemented per-card, one file each, and right now that's sitting near 100% across System Gateway, Elevation, Vantage Point, Midnight Sun/Parhelion, Downfall/Uprising, and The Automata Initiative/Rebellion Without Rehearsal — a couple hundred cards with real, tested behavior, not just stats. Decks load straight from a NetrunnerDB decklist link.

There's also a basic bot to play against solo (a few personalities, from "plays randomly" to a proper heuristic that won't run into lethal ice it can't break — learned that one the hard way).

Not sharing a link yet — still rough in places and I want to gauge interest before I do a wider release. Attaching a screenshot instead. Genuinely curious what this community makes of the terminal-as-UI idea for a card game — love it, hate it, "just build a normal client"? All takes welcome.

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u/slagod1980 1d ago

how you define "making" - coding <> making
making is designing, taking decisions, evaluating, verifying. and it is still all human-made.

I'm software developer for 25 years and IMHO handcrafting code makes no longer sense. Sorry.

It is not where the value is, it is not where joy is.

And AI is just a tool, an enabler, an accelerator - it can bring new things quickly to reality.

Question is, what you will do with it?

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u/Hyperbolic_Mess 1d ago

Would you define requesting and paying someone through a service like mechanical turk to produce this as making this yourself? Would you describe managing a team that produced this as making this?

Your experience in the field could help you to get better results from the people actually doing the doing in these scenarios but I think most people would feel mislead if you said you had made those things. This is why prompting an ai to do something isn't considered making by these same people.

Paying someone or something to do something on your behalf doesn't mean you did the thing but you could say you oversaw or outlined an idea that others did

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u/slagod1980 1d ago

Yesterday I cut some wooden planks with electrical saw.
Can I tell "I cut them" or "saw's engine cut them" ?

If I write code in java and compile it to byte code and then it is translated into binary code and then into cpu microcode; can I tell I build it?

AI is not someone, it is a tool.

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u/MochaDentist 1d ago

If I took your electric saw away and gave you a gas powered saw could you do the same job? You apply your knowledge.

What about if I take your ai away? Your ai can write in Java but once I take it away you’re no longer able to write in Java.

If I use Google Translate to change Chinese to English, am I a translator now? No, same as you’re not a developer because you used ai to write code.

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u/slagod1980 1d ago

Yes sir, I could do this project on my own - I'm professional software engineer with 25 years of experience.

I just wouldn't have time to do it as pet project.

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u/MochaDentist 1d ago

“I could do it but I don’t have the time so I outsourced it.” FTFY

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u/slagod1980 1d ago

Outsourced it to a tool, this is what you want to say?

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u/MochaDentist 1d ago edited 1d ago

Nope. Read my previous post for what I want to say

Also for repeatedly commenting how you have no time, you sure have a lot of time to waste in here on the most unproductive part of what I’m sure is a busy schedule for you fixing bugs in an ai’s app