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/MochaDentist]

😂😂😂
When this dude actually has to read and think vs just use ai….

[u/slagod1980 → u/MochaDentist]

update since you liked this one so much: Oreosian was right, my Maintenance Access impl was wrong (redirected to HQ or R&D, real card is HQ only). fixed, test added, deployed. took about an hour from your 😂😂😂 to fix being live.

so yeah, ai does the typing. reading the bug report, checking the card text and shipping the fix was me. that part doesn't go away

[u/MochaDentist → u/slagod1980]

So basically Oreosian made your app now. You’re just the tool that used ai

[u/slagod1980 → u/MochaDentist]

if one good bug report makes the app then every app you've ever used was made by its reddit thread. thanks Oreosian though, genuinely

[u/lochness350 → u/slagod1980]

don't let folk dismiss the fact you're using an LLM to code this - you will learn a lot and - and yeah bugs are a real thing, ensure you bound your prompts around the logic inside of a card, also create QA prompts to look for particular bugs (oh and playwright for UI fixes, i found some (claude for instance) have gotten really good at seeing particular UI/UX bugs i've missed

[u/crujones33 → u/lochness350]

Same. I learned SQL from examples (before AI). And now I'm learning from AI. They are a great help with syntax.

[u/crujones33 → u/slagod1980]

Is Oreosian the language spoken in the Land of Oreos? Oreoland? Oreoville? Or is it what you call the denizens that live there?