Alpha · Playable Prototype

Every shell, every wreck,
every watt — simulated.

TORRENT is a large-scale real-time strategy game for the browser, built in the tradition of Total Annihilation, Supreme Commander, and Beyond All Reason. A war of throughput: streaming economies, armies of hundreds, physically simulated projectiles, and a battlefield where every wreck is fuel for the next attack.

▶  Play the Prototype Read the Guides
10,000
live entities budget
~40
units per faction
2
machine networks at war
0
downloads · runs in browser

The four pillars

A different kind of RTS

TORRENT is built on four load-bearing ideas. Each one changes how you think, not just what you click.

PILLAR 01

Flow, not stockpile

Resources stream in and stream out continuously. Construction doesn't demand a lump sum up front — a build order begins instantly and drains metal and energy over its whole build time. Your core skill is managing throughput: income versus expenditure, every second.

Two failure states you can see coming on a pair of bars:

  • Stall — you spend faster than you earn, storage empties, and everything slows proportionally. The game never halts a build; it throttles it.
  • Overflow — you earn faster than you spend, storage fills, and surplus is wasted. Overflowing metal is the cardinal sin.
METAL +18.0/s income −17.4/s spend ENERGY +95/s income −72/s spend spend it as it arrives · keep both bars moving
PILLAR 02

Mass matters

Battles are fought with dozens to hundreds of units, not squads of six. Individual units are cheap and disposable — what you actually own is the army and its composition. The interface, pathfinding, and rendering are built around that from day one.

Flow-field pathing moves whole armies around obstacles as one river of metal. Line-move drag paints a formation. Control groups, double-click select-all-of-type, and area commands keep 200 units under one hand.

cheap · disposable · hundreds strong composition > count
PILLAR 03

The battlefield is the economy

Every destroyed unit leaves wreckage worth about 60% of its metal cost. Front lines become resource fields. Win an engagement and your constructors move in to eat the dead — aggression pays for itself, and reclaiming the enemy's fallen is a central, legitimate strategy.

Constructors reclaim wreckage, trees, rocks, and even standing structures as a continuous stream. Maps ship littered with reclaimable features so the early game has texture beyond metal spots.

METAL wreckage field reclaim +60% M
PILLAR 04

Physical truth, readable at a glance

Projectiles are real objects with travel time, arcs, and collision — not instant hit-scan dice rolls. Fast units dodge slow shells for free. Artillery arcs over walls. Hilltops grant range. Splash punishes clumping, and friendly fire is on. Counters emerge from physics, not an armor-type table.

And it stays legible: 2D top-down, strong silhouettes, faction color coding, and one continuous strategic zoom that swaps sprites for icons. You can read a 200-unit battle in a single second.

dodged travel time · arcs · elevation · splash · friendly fire

Two machine networks

Choose your directive

Herest is a resource world its makers stripped and abandoned. Two autonomous machine networks were left behind to secure the last of its metal for a fleet that will never return. Centuries of divergent self-modification made them enemies. The rosters are ~85% mirrored — every role exists on both sides — but each network fights its own way.

Network 01 · Refinement

Vantage

Angular · pale gunmetal · cyan · precision & range

The network that chose refinement. Vantage units are more expensive per-unit but win straight-up, cost-equal fights at range — and lose when swarmed. A half-step toward quality.

  • Laser & railgun weapons — bright, thin, near-instant but still simulated
  • Hover-capable specialists and the strongest static defense line
  • Signature tech: mobile shield domes, hover railgun snipers, the Archon walking fortress
FabberConstructor
OpticScout
BladeRaider
WardenAssault
LancerRocket
Ray ◆Sniper
Network 02 · Proliferation

Feral

Rounded · rust & bronze · red · speed & numbers

The network that chose proliferation. Feral units are cheaper, faster to build, and more numerous. A half-step toward quantity and mobility: raid, flank, and drown the enemy in metal.

  • Ballistic & plasma weapons — visible shells, arcs, and splash
  • The fastest raiders in the game, crawling bombs, the best mobile artillery
  • Signature tech: drone-fabricating carriers, the Behemoth ram-mech, the Locust Engine
WelderConstructor
FleaScout
PupRaider
BruteAssault
Lobber ◆Artillery
Tick ◆Crawler bomb

◆ = signature unit with no direct mirror. See the full T1 roster tables in the guides.

From the battlefield

What a war of throughput looks like

Prototype scenes. Explosions and tracers always render — even zoomed all the way out to strategic icons, the battle stays alive-looking from orbit.

Tactical zoom A T1 army clash over a contested metal spot — physical tracers, arcing plasma, and splash-lit impacts.
STORAGE
Reclaim The winner eats the field. Two Fabbers stream 60% of the dead's metal back into storage.
shape = role · color = player · ring = health
Strategic zoom One continuous camera. Past 40% zoom-out, sprites become icons — but shells and explosions never stop rendering.

Honest status

Roadmap

TORRENT is in active early development. This is the real milestone plan from the design doc — most of it is not built yet. Determinism and mass-scale movement are the riskiest bets, so they come first.

M0
Sim skeleton

Deterministic core & mass movement

Deterministic ECS loop, flow-field movement, camera with continuous icon zoom.

DoD: 500 units marching at 60fps; a replay file reproduces the run bit-identically.
In development
M1
Combat proof

Projectiles, damage & wreckage

Simulated projectiles, damage, wreckage, a 6-unit T1 bot roster, one map.

DoD: two AI-less armies fight; the battle is readable and fun to watch.
Up next
M2
Economy proof

The streaming economy

Metal/energy streaming, extractors, constructors, build queue, reclaim.

DoD: the full T1 economic loop is playable by a human; stall/overflow UX works.
Planned
M3
First real game

A complete 1v1 vs AI

Commander, factories, full T1 roster, victory conditions, skirmish AI v1.

DoD: a complete 1v1 vs AI match is both winnable and losable.
Planned
M4
Depth

Tier 2, intel & faction identity

T2 tier, radar/intel layer, static defense, both factions fully differentiated.

DoD: faction identity is legible across 3 maps.
Planned
M5
Spectacle

The "wow" version

Experimentals, nukes and anti-nukes, team-game economy sharing, AI v2.

DoD: feature-complete v1.
Planned
M6+
Post-v1

Naval, multiplayer & co-op

Naval warfare, lockstep multiplayer, ranked play, and a co-op wave-defense horde mode.

DoD: the determinism groundwork from M0 makes these nearly free to add.
Post-v1

Questions

FAQ

Is it really browser-based?

Yes. TORRENT is written in TypeScript and renders with WebGL2 on an HTML canvas, with the UI chrome in DOM overlaying it. No server is required for v1 — the whole simulation runs locally in your browser against the skirmish AI. No download, no install.

Is it free?

The prototype is free to run from the source repository. TORRENT is an in-development passion project in the Total Annihilation / Beyond All Reason lineage; there is no store page, paywall, or account system.

Can I play multiplayer?

Not yet. v1 ships single-player versus AI. But the simulation is fully deterministic and input-driven by design, which makes lockstep command-broadcast multiplayer — the classic RTS architecture — a post-v1 (M6+) addition rather than a rewrite. Every architectural door for it is kept open from day one.

What do I actually control?

You command an army and an economy, not individual hero abilities. There are no activatable per-unit powers (the only exceptions are cloak, shield, and self-destruct toggles). All depth comes from composition, positioning, and economy. Orders are the RTS classics: move, attack, attack-move, patrol, guard/assist, hold — all shift-queueable, with area commands and control groups.

How do I win a match?

By default, destroy every enemy Commander — a powerful builder-combat unit that's also a walking loss condition. Optional victory modes include annihilation (kill everything) and timed score. Matches target 20–40 minutes.

How big can battles get?

The performance budget targets 10,000 live entities (units + projectiles + wreckage) with a soft unit cap around 1,000 per player. Battles routinely run to the hundreds of units — the whole interface, pathfinding, and renderer assume mass from the start.

Play the prototype

Play in your browser

Launch the prototype — hosted right here, no install. Prefer to hack on it? The prototype is a static TypeScript app with no backend and runs from the source repository with a single dev command.

  terminal
# clone the repository, then from its root:
npm install
npm run dev

# the dev server prints a local URL, e.g.
→ Local:  http://localhost:5173/

# open that in a modern browser and skirmish the AI.

Data files are hot-reloadable in dev mode — all unit balance lives in JSON, so you can tweak stats and watch the change live.

Browser requirements

  • ▶WebGL2 — any current Chrome, Edge, Firefox, or Safari from the last few years.
  • ▶A keyboard & mouse. Strategic zoom is on the mouse wheel; control groups are 0–9. Touch-only isn't supported.
  • ▶A desktop-class GPU helps at high unit counts, but the sim is built to a mid-range-laptop budget.
  • ▶Node.js installed to run the dev server. No other backend or account needed.