Hey all,
Quick update on Punch Down, my network engineering sim. It’s at v0.13 now. The last post here was v0.10, so this covers everything since.
The Early Access build is locked, so most of what went into it lately is fixes. A lot of them came from going through the game command by command and checking it against real gear.
In the Early Access build
- Ping times are realistic. A ping across the office LAN takes a fraction of a millisecond, routers and firewalls add a little, and Internet servers sit 20 to 40 ms away. Wi-Fi adds 1 to 3 ms, and more with jitter on a busy channel.
- Pinging 8.8.8.8, 1.1.1.1 and the other public DNS servers works, and so do tracert and nslookup pointed at them.
- A switching loop with spanning tree off is a real broadcast storm: the VLAN stops, port counters race, the switch CPU sits near 100% and MAC flapping gets logged until you break the loop.
- Circuit breakers act like real ones. A small overload trips after a few minutes, a short trips right away, and you can reset a breaker from any outlet on that circuit.
- Stack switchovers keep the stack MAC, so routed traffic is back in seconds.
- Typing an address another computer already uses shows “(Duplicate)” in ipconfig instead of knocking the other computer off.
- CLI: Tab completion, | include / exclude / begin / section with regex, show ip interface, show running-config interface, and default interface.
- Layer 3 switches in the store can route between VLANs and relay DHCP.
- Access points: DFS channels wait 60 seconds for radar with a countdown, shutdown on a radio really turns it off, and link rates show the real negotiated rate.
- tracert, pathping and route print work like the real commands.
- Routers and switches have a factory reset button, for when you forget the enable secret.
- Tutorials: hints tell you which part of a step is left, and “Do it for me” finishes a half-done step instead of failing.
- Career: fixed a soft lock at Northgate’s “A growing team” stage (old saves load where they were), the IT budget no longer freezes during partial outages, and there’s a skip button for nights and weekends.
- A few of my made-up brand names turned out to belong to real companies, so they got new names. The ISP is now Moorhaven, the network OS is CVOS and the SIEM is Signalmast.
- Easier to read: brighter secondary text, and links with errors are dotted as well as amber so you don’t have to rely on colour.
What I’m working on (not in the Early Access build)
- OSPF, EIGRP, RIP and BGP
- Printers that jam, run out of toner and report over SNMP
- A bigger career update: a budget per project, management trust instead of downtime charges, and leasing gear
- Simplified Chinese
- A native Linux build
These stay out of Early Access until they’re ready.
Other news
- There’s a Discord now: https://discord.gg/mpZ3Ds9ww
- I’ve started posting network faults from the game as challenges. Pick A, B, C or D, and the walkthrough comes after.
- Tester sign-ups are open at https://novarafrontier.com
- Also on Instagram and TikTok as u/punchdowngame
Source: r/Punch_Down · by /u/Imaginary-Principle8