Progress Report, 2016 Q1 (Winter)
Welcome to the Jinteki.net open-source progress report for Q1 2016. In this quarterly report, we will highlight some of the recent changes to the Jinteki.net Android: Netrunner platform.
Jinteki.net is a service for playing Android: Netrunner in a browser. It requires no installation to play, is compatible with most operating systems and modern browsers, and includes an interactive deck-builder, chat room, and automation of most game rules and cards.
Thanks to the new developers who added to the platform this quarter: bmatsuo, cryogen, haplesshero13, ivandervisevic, jaerme, kevkcc, proland, Saintis, and zaroth!
Interested in contributing? Check out our new Getting Started With Development guide, pieced together by queueseven, JoelCFC25, and mtgred! nealterrell also recorded some "live coding" streams to introduce our engine while implementing new cards.
More interested in simply learning to use the site? We also have a great Jinteki.net guide put together by darlingsensei. Help keep it current by adding new items or removing outdated information.
The five of you who read these reports thoroughly are probably sick of hearing about bandwidth improvements... but all the amazing feature additions over the last 6 months have exploded Jinteki.net's user base, and we need constant improvements to server performance to keep up with the demand. You may remember server announcements in January discouraging people from playing when there were 80+ games active; you may also remember those announcements disappearing shortly thereafter. That lag spike was, once again, a product of sending too much data. But with all the upgrades detailed in last quarter's progress report, where would we turn to squeeze out more performance?
The answer was to apply the same "diff" communication structure (detailed last time) to our game lobby list. A game lobby of 80 active games comes out to 80Kb+ of JSON data; with 160 active players, 20 spectators, and 70 lurkers, we're looking at pushing 250 * 80Kb = 20Mb of game lobby data per second. (That's 1.2 Gb per minute, 72 Gb per hour, completely ignoring the actual game data.) With a "diff" approach, we only push game data games that have been created, updated, or closed in the last 1 second. A game update or closing clocks in around 500 bytes; a new game, around 10Kb for the selected decks. It may be hard to appreciate the difference, but it's huge. Check out this bandwidth graph:
Latest upgrade was in mid-January, and bandwidth has been lower than ever since then, even with site activity at an all-time high.
Jinteki.net has historically been lax with certain game rules, particularly when proper 100% enforcement of those rules slows the game down. We like designing systems that are (hopefully) unobtrusive to use: Scorched Earth won't ask the runner if they want to prevent damage, for example, unless they have a card out that has registered itself as able to prevent meat damage. Without such a card, the damage is simply dealt; with a card like Plascrete Carapace installed, extra UI steps enforce the correct rules timings. This is one of our unofficial goals when implementing features: unobtrusive UI until the intrusion is really necessary.
For that reason, we went a long time without implementing Step 4.3 of the run timing chart, which is the window in which the Corp can rez cards after the Runner to committed to access but before the run is considered successful. We were somewhat satisfied with the workarounds (involving chat), but a brainstorm of ideas helped us design a system to implement Step 4.3 without requiring more work when the step is not needed. The design shaped up simply: if the Runner has passed all ice, then the Corp's standard "No action" prompt gains an additional "Take action before access" button. If this button is selected -- which is not revealed to the Runner -- then the Runner's access routine is paused when the Runner hits "Successful Run". The Runner cannot jack out at this point, and must suffer through whatever trap the Corp has planned -- though it should be noted the Runner can use paid abilities after the Corp has finished rezzing. Access then proceeds as normal.
This system meets our goal for system design: if the Corp doesn't need the step, then no additional work needs to be done. If the step is needed, then each player ends up with 1 extra click for that run. We don't have to ask runners "Will you access or jack out?" during the end of each run -- the Corp just requests the window silently, without giving away any information.
Similarly, we have always merged the Corp Start of Turn and Corp Mandatory Draw steps into one UI action, because 95% of game interactions don't require a strict separation between these two phases. (Likewise for Runner Start of Turn and Runner First Click). But those few interactions deserve the correct rules support, and so nealterrell implemented "Step 1.2" of the turn sequence, which is the period after a turn begins, prior to Corp Mandatory Draw or Runner First Click. In this step, you can manually activate cards that trigger during that step, like Blue Sun, The Supplier, and Drug Dealer. The beauty of the system, though, is that you don't see anything different if you don't have any cards that need the window. If you're Blue Sun and have no rezzed cards, then clicking Start Turn will also trigger your draw. If you have Drug Dealer and no other "drip economy" cards, then clicking Start Turn will make you lose 1 credit and begin your first click. But if you do have some special interactions -- Drug Dealer with Daily Casts; Executive Boot Camp; MaxX with Wyldside; and many others -- then you get the chance to trigger those effects manually, as per the game rules. If you don't care about the order they trigger, then just begin your turn with one extra mouse click; the server will play the effects in a random order.
There's a lot of complexity to the Step 1.2 system -- you can read about it in #1218. We think we've been successful with our goals: strong rules compliance, but easy to use, and unobtrusive when the situation doesn't call for the extra ability.
As MaxX, I can spend my last credit to install Daily Casts off The Supplier; then I can choose to use MaxX or Wyldside first. If I then take my clicks, Drug Dealer will auto-resolve and I will lose 0 credits.
The new FFG Organized Play season brought us a number of curveballs when it came to deckbuilding: the NAPD Most Wanted List, alliances, and future spoilers. zaroth has taken over the deck builder to stay up to date with FFG's latest wild ideas. His sophisticated system can tell you at a glance your deck's legality and the exact reasons why it gets its status:
The deck builder enforces Most Wanted List influence penalties, normal influence limits, special influence cases (The Professor, Custom Biotics), minimum deck sizes, agenda points, Mumbad alliances, and will also flag unreleased cards. More details on legality labels can be found on the help page.
There was a need to discreetly convey information to a single player without spamming the game log and alerting the opponent to things that should remain hidden. After some digging, we found that using JS Toastr library is probably our best bet. Saintis did the work necessary to expose the Toastr API to our game backend and voila, info galore:
New contributor zaroth did a ton of great work for us this quarter, including the deck builder improvements above. His other major task was upgrading the web lobby UI. You'll notice his work in two new ways: first, any game that is already started will now show the faction of each player as an icon in the game list. You can even mouse-hover the icons to see each player's ID, helping you pick out a game to spectate featuring your favorite identity:
You'll also notice his other change in this picture: the split of the game list into Casual and Competitive lists (#1215). This split is to help experienced players find games against other experienced players who are looking for a competitive match. In the absence of a ranking system (which we are reluctant to pursue), this split is one of the ways we can help avoid unfortunate situations where new or inexperienced players join games against experts, leading to slow one-sided matches that no one enjoys.
We've had a lot of questions about what makes a "competitive" match, and we don't have a simple checklist. In general, you should play in Competitive if you:
- Understand all the rules of the game, and know how to look up correct answers to edge cases that you aren't sure about.
- Know the Jineki.net user interface well enough to play fast.
- Know your tournament-legal deck and its general game plan.
- Have enough time to commit to a full game.
- Want an opponent who meets the same criteria.
Does this mean every person in Competitive is going to be a world-class expert? No. But expert players should have a more reliable time in Competitive than with everyone joining games from one list.
We all like fast play, but sometimes you just need to slow down while your opponent resolves some effect. A new simple "waiting prompts" system helps complicated card interactions force a player to wait while some other effect is finished. For example, the Runner needs to wait for the Corp to decide about using Snare! before they can trash it and see any other accessed cards; the Runner also needs to wait for the Corp to mulligan, while the Corp needs to wait until the Runner boosts their link strength before proceeding with their next action after a trace. These interactions and more go a lot smoother now with this very simple UI addition:
Chalk this up to growing pains: with a small community, we could be lax about securing and verifying game states to; but as our user base grew, we got our first griefers causing headaches by spectating games and using an exploit to drag cards belonging to the players. Thankfully we had Saintis who quickly stepped in with fixes in #1048 and the most pressing issue with spectators ruining games got fixed. However, there is still a lot of work to be done in this area, so any contributors knowledgeable on web security are very welcome!
No codebase can survive in a good state without some maintenance. Thanks to some code reorganization by nealterrell and especially Saintis, the code is now easier to browse and modify and is much more fully documented. There have also been a number of convenient functions added to the unit testing framework to speed the process of writing tests. The release lull in between Data & Destiny and Kala Ghoda became an opportunity to flesh out the testing framework with dozens more card tests.
A long-standing PR by queueseven adding some basic drag&drop touch support was refreshed in #1218. Although still not ideal, things should work better on tablets now.
This one was a team effort--finding the reason why the lobby game list kept scrolling to top wasn't an easy task. However, it finally got fixed by domtancredi in #1147 and #1168.
To save ourselves the headache of answering the same questions in chat over and over, zaroth put together a terrific Help page with the most frequently asked questions. Users still don't always think to look at it, but it's still nice having more thorough documentation on the site!
Hey you! Yes, you! Go read the Help page right now!!
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/psi- starts a psi game with a manually-resolved effect. -
/trace n- starts a trace with base strengthn. -
/close-prompt- cancels the currently-showing "prompt". Helpful for working around broken interactions or fixing errors in play. -
/rez- rez a card, ignoring all costs. In case Archer gets incorrectly derezzed, etc. -
/rez-all- rez all cards, ignoring all costs. For showing off your servers at end-of-game.
A full list can be found on the Jinteki.net help page.
JoelCFC25 completed most of the remaining tasks for full ICE subtype handling in #1030 with the implementation of the flip-flopping subtypes of the Weyland Morph ICE. Tinkering, Paintbrush, Sub Boost, Rielle "Kit" Peddler, and Chimera also received improvements related to subtypes and handling ICE strength.
Saintis changed the runner end of turn check to include the hand size in #1053. If the runner's hand size is negative they are now properly flatlined.
To properly implement Cerebral Imaging and Theophilius Bagbiter Saintis split the previous max-hand-size variable into base hand size and hand size modifier (#1133). This means that a runner with Bagbiter and Public Sympathy installed will always have a hand size of their credits plus 2.
- Apocalypse: correctly restores MU and no longer triggers many leave-play effects.
- Chameleon: will return to hand if hosted on another card, thanks to kevkvcc.
- Executive assets: JoelCFC25 tracked down a longtime bug with Executives ending up in the Runner's score area when voluntarily trashed by the Corp... blame your local Film Critic!
- Femme Fatale: Saintis added a visually icon to ICE chosen for bypass with Femme Fatale. Similarly, we added labels to Cyber-Cypher's server selection.
- Gagarin Deep Space: Runners can decline to access a single-card remote against Gagarin.
- Hostile Infrastructure: deals one large chunk of damage during interaction with Apocalypse and Singularity, instead of many 1-damage chunks.
- Leela Patel: two key issues fixed by nealterrell. If a card is added to HQ by Leela in the middle of multi-access on HQ, subsequent access attempts can potentially choose that returned card. A specific interaction with Gang Sign was also fixed, so that Leela can in some situations "store" a use of her ability until Gang Sign finishes resolving.
- Sneakdoor Beta: several key interactions have been fixed, including with Crisium Grid (on Archives, stops the switch to HQ; on HQ, prevents Desperado/other successful run triggers); Security Testing (grants credits if on HQ); Ash 2X3ZB9CY on HQ (trigger Ash before the runner hits Successful Run); and Nerve Agent.
- Sundew: you can stop manually adjusting your credits... Saintis fixed Sundew's credit-gain from runs initiated on its server.
Notable new automations:
- Identities: NEXT Design (JoelCFC25), Chronos Protocol (justinliew), Replicating Perfection (Saintis)
- Agendas: 15 Minutes (zaroth), Eden Fragment (bmatsuo)
- Tricky implementations: Off the Grid (Saintis), Gene Conditioning Shoppe (proland), Deep Red (JoelCFC25), Genetics Pavilion (JoelCFC25)
- Wait... what's that card do: Port Anson Grid (JoelCFC25), Toshiyuki Sakai (JoelCFC25)
- Kala Ghoda cards (18/20)
As of time of this writing, we are at 97.1% card automation through Kala Ghoda!
- More Mumbad Cycle!
- Rebirth (ugh)
Jinteki.net is an open-source project run and paid for by mtgred (recently moved to London, look out UK!) and other volunteers. You can contribute by reporting bugs, submitting fixes, and even adding new implementations on our GitHub page.