Generic Vibe Coded Space Game

GVCSG is a procedural browser-based space combat simulator built with Three.js. Pilot the Valkyrie assault frigate out of the Kaltos system, engage Corsair raiders, navigate asteroid fields, warp between landmarks, and jump through gates to chart thirty star systems, each with its own star, planets, moons, stations and belts. Land at planetary city spaceports, domed colonies, mining outposts and cloud-city aerostats, or dock at orbital stations and habitats. Federation systems are patrolled by the Helion Navy; Corsair Clan systems are lawless, and their pirate havens and black-market stations only let you land after a bribe — they also sell Clan hulls (Raider, Cutlass, Reaver, Marauder, Ravager). The Vanta Combine, a megacorporation, owns seven systems outright: its towers and company towns are guarded by Combine Security in cheap, mass-produced hulls (Unit-7, Enforcer, Compliance) that leave you alone, and its job boards sometimes offer a quiet contract to destroy a harmless merchant carrying stolen trade secrets. Dock at stations such as Ardent Relay Station or the high-tech Helion Orbital Shipyard, where you can inspect and buy hulls in a 3D hangar (scouts, fighters, freighters, a passenger liner and warships from the Kestrel interceptor up to the Leviathan superheavy dreadnought) and fit weapons and modules in the outfitter.

Play

Open the GitHub Pages deployment in a desktop browser with WebGL enabled.

• Hold middle mouse and drag: set a heading marker; the ship turns to it and stops there (N toggles mouse flight without holding)
• The reticle compass shows the direction of the target and other ships
• I / K or Arrow Up / Down: thrust and throttle
• J / L or Arrow Left / Right: strafe
• W / S: throttle
• Q / E: roll
• A / D: strafe
• R / B: vertical thrust up / down
• Shift: afterburner
• Primary weapons fire on their own: fixed guns when a hostile is within ~6° of the nose, turrets at the most powerful hostile they can reach
• Left mouse or U (or O): fire secondary guns, turrets and missile bays — only the mounts that can hit the target fire
• Y: primary turrets hold fire (they keep tracking)
• Hold right Ctrl: lock the ship nearest the pointer
• Hold /: set the planet, station, gate or belt nearest the pointer as the nav destination
• T: lock target near the pointer / reticle
• Tab: cycle hostiles
• Right mouse, ; or F: fire missile bays only (needs a lock)
• 1–9: select navigation destination
• Space: warp to the selected destination
• H: jump through a gate within 3.5 km (plays a jump cutscene); otherwise warp to the selected gate and jump on arrival. With a route plotted on the map, H autopilots the whole route (warp, jump, repeat) until you arrive; H again stops it
• M: star map (only charted systems are shown; click a system to plot a route)
• P: collapse / expand overview
• F1: help
• G: dock or land at the nearest port (at a pirate port the first G shows the bribe, the second pays it; plays a docking cutscene; Space or Esc skips docking, undocking and jump cutscenes)
• V: cycle cameras: chase, bridge (cockpit view from inside your ship, with the canopy frame and consoles) and tactical
• Esc: pause and show controls
• H: help

Fitting

Every hull has three capacities, shown in the outfitter and shipyard:

• Outfit space: the total size of everything fitted (weapons, engines and systems).
• Weapon capacity: the total size of fitted guns, turrets and missile bays.
• Engine capacity: the total size of fitted engines.

Weapons and engines use their own capacity and outfit space, so a small hull cannot carry the heaviest weapons, and big guns leave less room for systems. Guns, turrets and missile bays still need a matching mount; engines and systems need only capacity. Engine thrust sets acceleration and top speed, and steering sets turn rate, relative to the hull's stock engines. A ship with no engines cannot undock.

The outfitter sells guns, turrets, missile bays, engines, reactors, shields, armour, batteries, sensors and other systems. High-tech items are sold at high-tech stations, and Clan or Combine gear only at their own ports. Each maker's gear looks like it: Helion high-tech kit has white fairings with glowing seams, Clan gear is welded scrap with spikes and hazard tape, Combine gear is boxed in slab armour with vents, warning beacons and hazard chevrons, and civilian kit is plain stock hardware.

Saving

Storyline: a chain of linked missions starts at Ardent Relay Station in Kaltos. Missions are offered in text conversations where you pick your replies (press 1–9 or click); some choices change which mission comes next. Each mission sends you to a station or to destroy a target, and the Job Board shows your current objective and where the next mission is offered.

Side missions: four side storylines (The Wheel's Children, Ghost Signal, Company Town, Pilgrims of the Blue Star) and a handful of odd jobs are offered at stations around the map. They don't pop up on their own: when someone at a station is asking for a pilot, the Services tab says so and the Job Board lists them under Side missions with a Talk button. Side missions run alongside the main storyline, and several have choices that change how they end.

Every port has a job board: freight and passenger contracts to other ports (freighters like the Mule and Atlas have big cargo holds, the Aurora liner has 160 bunks, and cargo pods or passenger modules add space), sometimes at high risk of Clan hijackers who will board you and steal the load if your shields drop, plus bounties on Clan warlords flying Reavers and Ravager battleships. Accepted jobs mark their destination on the star map and have a jump deadline.

The game auto-saves to browser local storage whenever you are docked (on docking and after every purchase, fitting or repair). Reloading resumes from that save. If your ship is destroyed, everything — ships, fittings, credits, ammo, kills and charted systems — reverts to your last docked save. Use New Game on the start menu to wipe the save.

Graphics

The start menu and pause screen have a Graphics preset, a Frame cap (30 or 60 fps; 30 roughly halves GPU work, so laptops run cooler and quieter) and a Show FPS toggle (frame rate and current render scale, bottom-right). All are remembered in the browser.

• Min: for low-end hardware. Renders the scene at 50–75% scale and upscales it to full screen with edge smoothing (FXAA-style) and sharpening; no shadows or MSAA, simpler planet shading, no cloud layers, thinner asteroid belts and dust.
• Normal: balance of looks and speed. Native render scale up to 1×, 4× MSAA, 1024 shadows, 1024 sky, light sharpening.
• Max: full display resolution (up to 2×), 8× MSAA, soft 2048 shadows, 2048 sky, light sharpening, extra planet detail, full belts.

Render scale also adapts automatically within each preset's range to hold the frame cap. The final image is always drawn at the display's resolution, so lower render scales are sharpened rather than stretched; if MSAA has to be switched off, edge smoothing takes over.

Local development

This is a build-free static site. Serve the repository root with any local HTTP server:

python3 -m http.server 8000

Then open http://localhost:8000.