Building a Game Engine in Node.js

A developer has successfully built a full-fledged game engine inside Node.js, complete with physics, dual-screen rendering, and procedurally generated maps. The ambitious project, called Nexus, transforms JavaScript into a gaming powerhouse despite the language's inherent limitations like garbage collection and single-threading.

The journey proved more complex than anticipated, with camera systems requiring translation between multiple coordinate systems and physics presenting particularly thorny challenges. After struggling with Matter.js's lack of kinematic body support—essential for moving platforms and AI characters—the developer switched to planck.js, only to discover it uses a bottom-left coordinate system while speaking in meters instead of pixels.

This created a translation nightmare between three different coordinate systems: the renderer's top-left, the camera's center-based, and planck's bottom-left origins. Despite describing the work as "70% boilerplate and 30% real programming," with that 30% being "novel, painful, decision-heavy," the results look remarkably polished for such an unconventional approach to game development.