Vector Wars

A desktop 3D hovercraft combat game. Drive the VXR-01 through three distinct 2.1 km sectors, breach defended outposts, and destroy armored reactors. The Neon Wastes, Glass Canyon, and Ash Sea have different road networks, terrain, outpost locations, landmarks, and colors.

Use Node.js 24 or 26+ and the pinned pnpm 12 release (Corepack reads packageManager).

pnpm install
pnpm dev

Open the local URL printed by Vite. A current desktop browser with WebGL 2 is required. The wireframe reveal starts automatically and silently. Use Play in the hangar to start the optional opening soundtrack. No account, backend, or remote fonts are required.

Boss and transport armor halves pulse-laser damage; missiles retain full damage, giving ammunition a useful anti-armor role. Face an enemy to acquire a target. Lasers and missiles assist your aim within the forward targeting cone. Missiles track their target in flight. Mines arm behind the craft and detonate when an enemy approaches.

Follow the amber gates at each outpost. Passing 01 starts a 14-second breach window: pass 02, then take the ramp through the airborne JUMP coupler at 90 km/h or faster. The navigation arrow and countdown track the next gate. The minimap stays visible while driving. Press M to enlarge it without pausing. The breach permanently exposes that relay. Boost on the approaches, use drift to tighten the turn, and leave mines when breaking away from pursuers. Destroy the three relays to remove the reactor shield. Relays replenish ammunition and some hull integrity when destroyed. Green supply caches repair the craft and refill ammunition; they recharge after 25 seconds. Escorts are optional score targets. Traveling into new areas triggers announced patrol arrivals, with a delay before enemies engage. Each area sends one wave; a cooldown and nearby-enemy limit keep arrivals spaced apart. The reactor destabilizes for 3.5 seconds, explodes, and leaves another 3.5 seconds of aftermath before the result. You can keep driving or pause during the sequence. Complete the boss encounter to advance. Retrying a sector resets the points earned on that attempt.

A deployed craft stays protected until you press forward/reverse or fire, so reading the cockpit does not cost hull. The craft faces the outgoing road. The outpost stays selected until completed or changed with T; timed breach runs lock the selection. The compact sequence shows gate order, jump readiness, and specific low-speed or grounded coupler feedback.

Deployment keeps the vehicle in place while the camera eases into a close chase view. Speed adds only a small camera pullback. The cockpit has a fixed-width, three-digit speed readout and segmented hull, boost, and speed meters. The minimap and selected weapon remain visible. The compass reads the live heading at display frame rate.

Once exposed, the Sentinel locks its aim before a fan volley, the Architect alternates sweeping volleys, and the Overmind alternates aimed shots with expanding ground pulses. Pink charge lines show the locked shot paths. Drive sideways or circle to evade; jump over the bright amber ground ring with Ctrl. Attacks pause with the game and clear when the battle ends. Boss arenas have 150 m of pillar clearance.

Each sector also has two optional supply convoys. Armored transports follow the road at 90–112 km/h with two escorts each and a defensive gun. Blue squares on the minimap mark their positions. Destroy a transport for 750 points, then drive through its blue cargo cache for another 500 points, 35 hull, six missiles, three mines, and a full boost capacitor (subject to inventory limits). Cargo can be collected once; convoy kills do not change relay shields or end the mission.

The game pauses when its tab loses focus. Sound, music, effects, render quality, and best score persist locally when browser storage is available. Small screens show a desktop keyboard notice; touch driving is not implemented.

• React and TypeScript own the HUD, menus, and accessible native dialogs.
• Three.js renders the terrain, circuit, bosses, particles, and Blender hovercraft.
• The simulation runs at a fixed 120 Hz, independent of rendering. Spring suspension, lateral traction, drag, boost, gravity, solid ramp side/rear contacts, launch momentum, pillar collisions, vehicle contact impulses, and boundary response create the driving behavior.
• Swept segment collisions prevent fast projectiles from passing through targets between simulation steps.
• The hangar offers the bundled “Root Access Granted” track, started explicitly with its Play control. It fades out on deployment, resumes in the hangar, and pauses in hidden tabs. Gameplay music, engine sound, and weapon effects are synthesized with Web Audio.
• The boot sequence reconstructs the world through a grainy wireframe reveal while the full menu assembles from outlined panels and lettering. Skip is always available once the renderer is ready; reduced motion and disabled effects bypass the sweep.
• Actual Afterglow registry Button, Badge, Progress, and theme tokens are included in src/components/ui and src/afterglow.css. Source: Afterglow.
• The scan technique is adapted from MengTo’s wireframe reveal. The visual reference is thebuilder.dk and the supplied screenshot. The VXR-01 was created in Blender for this game and exported as public/models/vxr-01.glb.

pnpm test
pnpm build
pnpm preview

Automated tests cover protected launch, route-aligned headings, stable mission selection, missed-coupler feedback, distinct boss timing and aim locks, jump clearance, armor damage, stationary-player boss pressure, convoy movement in all sectors, escort following, transport collision response, one-time cargo rewards, deployment camera continuity and distance, patrol timing and crowd limits, all nine breach routes and all three road layouts, suspension, boost, drift, ramp side/rear impacts at several speeds, pillar impacts, vehicle momentum transfer, launch trajectories, complete breach routes with continuous driving inputs, gate ordering and expiry, compass wrapping, projectile kills, physical wreckage lifetime, and pause/resume during the delayed result sequence. Engine tests use real Three objects without a GPU constructor; they do not verify rendering or sound output.

With the dev server running, open /tests/combat.html and click Run deterministic combat verification. This uses the actual WebGL engine with fixed simulation steps and controlled test positions. It checks native keyboard events, patrol arrivals, moving transport destruction and cargo recovery, environment switching, all weapons, shield gating, hostile damage, supply pickups, all three sector transitions, defeat, retry, and campaign completion. It restores the previous best score after running. The fixture is excluded from the production build. It verifies combat behavior, not human difficulty balancing.

The original interface was checked at 1280×720, 1440×900, and 390×844. The restored segmented driving HUD, live minimap and expansion, closer deployment transition, distinct canyon and ash environments, outpost roads, armored reactor, and meltdown were inspected in the desktop browser. The full browser combat fixture passed. Road checks verify checkpoint alignment, launch alignment, clear scenery, and intersections of the centerline and road edges. Roads and the radar share the checkpoint-derived route. Automated driving checks prove the breach routes are physically reachable; difficulty and how satisfying they feel still benefit from human play-testing.

Open /tests/hud.html and click Verify telemetry at all speeds to check the actual HUD and CSS. It verifies segmentation and unchanged card dimensions at 0, 9, 15, 99, 100, and 320 km/h, including the airborne label. The desktop card measures 312×220 pixels. This fixture is also excluded from the production build.

The simulated playtest report records independent subagent findings and this iteration’s responses. It is an expert simulation, not research with recruited players.

public/og-image.jpg is the 1200 × 630 social card. Open Graph and Twitter metadata are included in the initial HTML and use https://vector-wars.thebuilder.dk/.

To regenerate the card from the current game model and terrain, run the development server and open /art/social-card.html, then download the rendered image to public/og-image.jpg.