BINMAT

"Binary Matrix is a fun game that civilized sentiences use to settle their differences through the creative formation of consensus. Alternatively: Binary Matrix is a brutal act used by uncivilized sentiences to breach one another through the violent assertion of consensus."

- teach

Binary Matrix (often shortened to BINMAT) is an activity in Hackmud which has taken on several forms. It functions as a competitive game, a tool for "reaching consensus" and as a defensive measure to prevent breach attempts against locs.

The current rules of BINMAT can be viewed on GitHub, at: https://github.com/DrizzlyBear/binmat_rules

In-Game
In-game, BINMAT takes the form of a text-based strategy game where attackers and defenders compete to play stacks of resources to a series of lanes. The attacker's goal is to empty, and then draw from, at least one of the defender's lanes, while the defender must prevent this for a variable number of turns. While most games are typically 1 defender vs. 1 attacker, multiple people can participate in a game of BINMAT -- up to 16 players on each side.

Obtaining BINMAT
The BINMAT Security Shell can be obtained by breaching a user who already has a BINMAT Security Shell of their own. This causes BINMAT to spread through attacking. The "patient-zero" user for obtaining BINMAT was Walter. BINMAT currently cannot be disabled once it has been obtained.

Playing BINMAT
A round of BINMAT is scheduled to begin once a user with the BINMAT Security Shell has had all of their locks unlocked. A 30-second timer will begin to count down before the game starts, giving the attacker and defender time to prepare. Before a round of BINMAT begins proper, the defender must pay an ante of GC, which scales greatly depending on the defender's tier: Subsequent players (such as attackers or additional defenders) must also match this ante (and be of an equal or greater tier to the defender) in order to join. If the defender cannot pay the ante then BINMAT will not start, leading to an automatic loss and system breach for the defender once the 30-second grace period expires.

By playing well (for attackers, declaring successful combat -- for defenders, successfully defending against a combat), players can make variable amounts of the total ante back. 25% of the total ante is lost to Trust, leaving a maximum of 75% of the ante available to take back through gameplay. A particularly good player could therefore break even or even profit from these ante returns. The amount returned appears to scale for the attackers based on the power of their attack, and for defenders based on ???.

The game lasts for the length of the time it would take for the defender's loc to rotate, which can be anywhere from less than a minute to up to an hour. When the defender is close to winning due to a loc rotation, the client will start strobing, the hardline counter will constantly flash with random numbers and a constant dinging noise (typically indicating a hardline is nearly over) will keep playing. Additionally, the text "-hardline connection weak- duration indeterminate" will be printed to the terminal after every turn. This effect lasts until the game ends.

If the defender is breached due to losing BINMAT, logs will be written to their by "walter", with the reason for the loss:

In-Lore
In the game's lore, BINMAT is played by a variety of characters, both recreationally and to aid in conflict. Through assembling certain Risk Fragments, it has been learned that Erin Rajbhandari was taught how to play BINMAT by Mallory, who likened the activity to a card game and advised Erin to print out physical BINMAT cards.

During makingandkilling, The Six forcibly recreated the concept of the BINMAT Security Shell within the MUD in order to co-exist with Trust. They did this by reproving Walter, who acted as the warden and referee of all future BINMAT games after his sentience was truncated through forcing him to defend himself in a game against most of The Six.

During the events of Monuments + Beacons, Petra attempted to force Bigbot to play a game of BINMAT to prove his worth, though intervention by Percy disrupted this.