SpaceshipsOnline

SpaceshipsOnline is a simple multiplayer space game implemented from scratch with Node.JS and Socket.io. Both client and server are written in Typescript. We use browserify to bundle the client into a javascript file. We use ESLint and prettier to keep the code clean.

I was inspired to write this game after reading excellent articles by Glenn Fiedler and Yahn W. Bernier:

• Networked Physics
• What Every Programmer Needs To Know About Game Networking
• Snapshot Interpolation
• Latency Compensating Methods

Setup

• Install node.js and NPM
• In the root directory, run npm install

Build

For now, I just wrote several scripts in package.json. These scripts are made cross-platform through the shx NPM package.

• npm run lint: Run the linter and quietly fix any fixable warnings
• npm run clean: Deletes the dist folder, if it exists
• npm run pre-build: Creates the dist folder structure
• npm run build-server: Use tsc to transpile the server code. Also copies the assets folder into dist
• npm run build-client: Use tsc and browserify to transpile the client code and package it into a single Javascript file

I often combine these commands for convenience:

npm run clean && npm run pre-build && npm run build-server && npm run build-client && npm start

This will create a dist folder with the following structure:

• server: transpiled server code
• shared: transpiled "shared" code used by the server
• assets: assets (e.g. images) used by the client
• client: transpiled client code (contains "client.js")
• index.html: the HTML file served by the backend. Simply creates an HTML5 canvas and loads the client/client.js script from the server

Run

In the root directory, run npm start

You can now join the game at http://localhost:8081