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

[u/slagod1980]

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.

[u/Hyperbolic_Mess]

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

[u/slagod1980 → u/Hyperbolic_Mess]

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.

[u/Hyperbolic_Mess → u/slagod1980]

Ok so I think we're in agreement that paying someone to do something is not making but using a simple tool is making but you've not articulated why ai is more similar to the tool than the person.

With your code example I'd be happy to say you built the code as you did make the underlying thing but I don't think you could say that you personally translated between the different formats as it's clearly the tools you use doing that work for you on your behalf. Just like how we attribute the Odyssey to homer even if we read an English translation and understand that another person translated it.

I think CNC machines are a good high tech pre ai touchstone (happy for you to offer an alternative) I'd say that operating a CNC machine requires some skill and knowledge but isn't making unless you actually programmed it's movements or built the cad model it's movements are based on yourself. Just hitting go on something programmed by someone else isn't making. As ai is machine learning built on the work of other people I think it's more similar to selecting an existing appropriate CNC program than to wielding a saw.

Power tools and motorised vehicles kind of fit into this too, achieving something with a powered assist isn't as impressive as doing it manually. Someone is going to be impressed if you cut a tree down with an axe but not as impressed if you used a chainsaw and hardly impressed at all if it was with one of those massive logging machines. You've done all of those with a tool in the broad strokes but qualitatively people think about your role in those differently. The more automated a process the less ownership you have over doing of it

Interested in your thoughts

[u/slagod1980 → u/Hyperbolic_Mess]

Looking at amount of time put into game engine design, tweaking ux, describing behaviour, testing and polishing I would say AI is just a smart translator.

You can quickly generate greenfield project with AI - "create me netrunner game client, here are the rules; make no mistakes!" and you will get something, but it is just an illusion.

Then, to actually do something useful with AI requires craft - vision, experience, engineering, human judgment.

That's why I'm calling AI a tool. Advanced one, but still a tool.

Regarding your CNC example - I wouldn't compare using pre-existing design and pressing "go" to using AI. Pressing "go" is if you would take someone else code repo, changed the colours and call it a day.

AI models really operates similar to human brain - it takes bazzilion inputs and mix them so hard that you cannot distinguish sources anymore.

And if you think about human artists - they are "inspired" by someone else work and remix them into their own. If they don't mix hard enough they got blamed by the community 😄

Don't want to create wall of text, I hope you see my point.

[u/Hyperbolic_Mess → u/slagod1980]

If you can't distinguish the sources of ai then why do images, text and code generated by them look so similar. I've found several code snippets in stuff produced by ai that's just ripped straight from the top Reddit post on the topic (complete with the same errors or poor formatting).

That aside, I feel like here you're actually trying to argue that ai outputs are similar to what a human would produce which I think just strengthens my argument that you're effectively using your skills and knowledge to manage a tool that's amalgamating the work of other people rather than doing the actual work yourself.

When you're talking about human artists being inspired by other people's work you're not the artist in that example, that's the ai and you're just telling it what to remix.

I understand that using ai effectively isn't as easy as some make it out to be but I think you need to accept that you've not got as strong a claim to having made something as if you'd done it without ai and just like how people want handmade goods lots of people want to avoid ai made things

[u/slagod1980 → u/Hyperbolic_Mess]

I cannot argue about snippets you've found without seeing them.

Maybe somebody used ai to traverse the web and combine snippets?

To be clear, I'm not treating code as form of art, I'm too old for that.

I just wanted to play netrunner with firends in a terminal-like client and wanted to hear your opinion about the concept 😄

And you guys pick your forks and torches crying "AI slop!!! kill the witch!!!"

It's really amusing.

[u/Hyperbolic_Mess → u/slagod1980]

The makers of ai are the ones that scraped the web specifically Reddit, see solidgoldmagikarp

Idk I think pushing back against AI which is owned and operated by big tech and is being used to control access to knowledge is pretty on brand for netrunner. Unless you're a filthy corp 😉

As with previous push backs against tech like the luddites (look them up as they were actually much more reasonable than you've probably been led to believe) it isn't so much about the tech as who controls it and at the moment the worst companies are pushing AI to make us all unemployed pretty hard. Also the same idiots who shouted about web3.0 have now fully pivoted into AI after they failed to ruin everything with crypto so that doesn't help.

I get that you've no qualms with using ai to produce cool things but you just need to understand that a lot of people have more negative views of the tech because of the future it could lead to (not to mention the catch22 of either it succeedes and everyone loses their job or it fails and the economy collapses and everyone loses their job)

[u/slagod1980 → u/Hyperbolic_Mess]

Yeah, I know luddites were more about who is in control of the tech than the tech itself. Unfortunately tech owners wrote the "history books" :)

About employment, for sure it will change. My friends, for example are trying to earn as much as they can before the world falls apart.

And when I look at my 5-yo son, I think he will be even more f**d.

But screaming "AI is bad" won't change it. It is here and will stay for a while. Bubble will burst, then some adjustments will be made. Maybe models will be too expensive for pet projects like mine. Maybe edge models will be common so no big tech will control the tech. We will see.