The Idea
A multiplayer real-time strategy game in the browser, in the Marine Arena lineage. Tiny units, top-down view, fast skirmishes, no installs. Open a URL, you're in a match.
The historical reference is the StarCraft custom map "Marine Arena," which was a small, fast, micro-heavy round-based brawl mode that a generation of players loved. BlipWars is a from-scratch take on that genre rebuilt as a browser-native game with a real authoritative server.
Architecture
- Client: Phaser, TypeScript, Vite. Renders the world, handles input, predicts movement locally for responsiveness.
- Server: Node WebSocket server, authoritative. Holds the true game state. Resolves combat, validates moves, broadcasts ticks. Clients can't lie because the server doesn't trust them.
- Multiplayer-first: the game is designed around real-time net play from day one, not bolted on after a singleplayer mode. Latency compensation, input prediction, and server reconciliation are core, not optional.
What's Live
Client bundle is deployed at /blipwars on this site. Static Vite output, served straight from the portfolio. The multiplayer server runs separately and isn't hosted publicly yet, so the live URL gets you the client front-end without a backend to connect to.
Status
Built, partial deploy. Client shipped publicly, server local-only for now. The interesting work going forward is the netcode (latency compensation, lag-tolerant combat resolution) and the unit roster.