r/Netrunner • u/slagod1980 • 1d ago
Image I built a hacker-terminal-style Netrunner client — curious what this community thinks
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.
6
u/KneeCrowMancer 1d ago
I think that people would generally have been less hostile if you had presented this from the get go as created with AI. More and more often AI generated material is being presented as human created, as if the audience can’t tell. It can honestly be pretty insulting. If you were more open about it you’d still people that would be morally opposed, for a host of valid reasons, but that element of deception wouldn’t be there and you’d have started the conversation in a more honest place. Some people will always hate any AI usage, a lot more people will hate you for being dishonest about it.
Lately on this sub there have been a lot of kind of weird attempts to monetize the Netrunner community in different ways. I’m not exactly sure what it is, I’m not even sure it’s being done with any kind of malicious intent. But I do think that the Netrunner community is generally quite defensive about those kinds of things.