AIsteroids 2026

A top-down space shooter built with Phaser 3, inspired by the classic Asteroids arcade game. Survive escalating waves of asteroids and alien attackers across multiple levels — no installation required.

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Gameplay

• Asteroids spawn at the start of each level. Shoot them to break them apart:
  • Large → 1–3 medium or small fragments
  • Medium → 2 small fragments
  • Small → destroyed completely
• Alien ships periodically warp in and hunt the player. Three variants appear as levels progress:
  • Basic (cyan saucer) — moves toward the player and fires single shots
  • Spread (orange saucer) — fires a 5-bullet fan, appears at level 3+
  • Missile (purple diamond) — fires homing missiles, appears at level 5+
• A level ends when all asteroids and alien ships are destroyed. The player always respawns at screen center on a new level.
• Asteroid speed increases each level (capped at 2× the base speed).

Controls

Input	Action
Mouse movement	Rotate ship toward cursor (360° turn takes 2 seconds)
Left mouse button	Thrust / accelerate
A or Space	Fire weapon

The ship uses zero-gravity physics — it builds speed over ~2 seconds at full thrust and gradually decelerates when thrust is released.

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Tech Stack

Tool	Purpose
Phaser 3.60	HTML5 game framework (WebGL renderer)
JavaScript ES6 Modules	Game logic, entity classes
Phaser Arcade Physics	Collision detection, zero-gravity movement
WebGL PostFX Pipeline	Custom CRT scanline/barrel-distortion shader
Python 3 HTTP server	Local development server (no build step)

There is no bundler, package manager, or build step. Modules are loaded natively by the browser over HTTP using ES6 import/export.

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Project Structure

oc-test/
├── index.html              # Entry point — loads Phaser via CDN and bootstraps main.js
├── start_web.sh            # Helper script: starts python3 -m http.server 8000
├── Software.md             # Authoritative game design specification
│
└── js/
    ├── main.js             # Phaser config, scene list, pipeline registration
    │
    ├── scenes/
    │   ├── BootScene.js    # Procedural texture generation, hands off to MenuScene
    │   ├── MenuScene.js    # Title screen with decorative entities and CRT effect
    │   └── GameScene.js    # Core game loop — owns all entities and collision logic
    │
    ├── entities/
    │   ├── Player.js       # Player ship: mouse-driven rotation, thrust, firing
    │   ├── Asteroid.js     # Asteroid: size variants, rotation, fragmentation data
    │   ├── AlienShip.js    # Alien ship: type variants, AI movement, attack patterns
    │   └── Bullet.js       # Bullets and homing missiles (player, alien, missile types)
    │
    └── pipelines/
        └── CRTPipeline.js  # WebGL PostFXPipeline: scanlines, barrel distortion, vignette

All game graphics are procedurally generated at startup in BootScene — no external image assets are required for the core game.

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Running Locally

Requires Python 3 (for the dev server) and a modern browser with WebGL support.

# Clone the repo
git clone <repo-url>
cd oc-test

# Start the development server
./start_web.sh
# or equivalently:
python3 -m http.server 8000

Then open http://localhost:8000 in your browser.

Note: The game must be served over HTTP (not opened as a file:// URL) because ES6 modules require a server context.

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Architecture Notes

• Scene flow: BootScene → MenuScene → GameScene
• Entity pattern: Each entity class holds an alive flag and attaches itself to its sprite via sprite.gameEntity = this, enabling collision callbacks to look up the owning object.
• Collision detection: Uses Phaser physics groups for overlap detection, backed by plain JS arrays for per-frame update loops.
• CRT effect: Applied as a PostFXPipeline in both MenuScene and GameScene (WebGL only). Features barrel distortion (strength 0.18), alternating scanlines, and a vignette.