What latency should I expect during gameplay?

Typical latency is 30-80ms for players in Europe and 80-150ms for other regions. The WebSocket proxy adds approximately 2-5ms overhead compared to native UDP. Game state interpolation in the engine compensates for network jitter.

How many concurrent players can the platform handle?

The current infrastructure supports 20+ simultaneous game servers with up to 16 players each. The API layer can handle thousands of concurrent WebSocket connections. Scaling is horizontal — adding more Docker hosts increases capacity linearly.

Is the game data secure in the browser?

All WebSocket connections use WSS (TLS encrypted). Player credentials are never stored in the browser — sessions use httpOnly cookies. Game binaries are open-source WASM modules with no access to the local filesystem.

How does server allocation work?

When a lobby starts, Rocketic Arena allocates an available isolated game-server slot. Allocation time depends on current capacity and server health.

What happens if a game server fails mid-match?

The platform monitors game-server slots and releases unhealthy or stuck capacity. During the current beta, a failed match may require players to return to the lobby and the organizer to restart it.

RocketicArena

Engineering Deep Dive

Real-Time Gaming Infrastructure

Rocketic Arena runs on a purpose-built stack designed for sub-100ms latency multiplayer in the browser. From WebAssembly game engines to Docker-orchestrated servers and WebSocket proxies, every layer is optimized for real-time competitive play. This page walks through the architecture, technology choices, and engineering tradeoffs that power the platform.

Architecture Overview

The platform is composed of six major layers working together to deliver browser-based multiplayer with minimal latency and maximum reliability.

Next.js SSR Frontend

Server-side rendered React application using Next.js 14 App Router. Handles routing, SEO metadata, i18n, and serves the WebAssembly game modules to players' browsers.

Fastify API + WebSocket

High-performance Fastify server handling REST endpoints for authentication, lobbies, stats, and leaderboard. WebSocket connections manage real-time lobby state, chat, and game server coordination.

PostgreSQL + Redis

PostgreSQL stores player accounts, match history, statistics, and achievements. Redis handles ephemeral state — online presence, lobby data, session tokens, and game slot allocation.

Docker Game Servers

Each game server runs in an isolated Docker container with Yamagi Quake II or Quake III engine. Containers are provisioned on demand and recycled after matches end.

Traefik Reverse Proxy

Traefik handles TLS termination, automatic certificate renewal, domain routing, and load balancing between frontend, API, and game server endpoints.

Operational monitoring

Readiness checks, structured service logs and first-party game analytics cover storage health, server availability, sessions and recoverable failures.

Technology Stack

Next.js 14

Server-side rendering, App Router, React Server Components, and static generation for SEO pages. TypeScript throughout.

Fastify

High-performance Node.js API framework. Handles 50k+ requests/sec with schema validation, hooks, and plugin architecture.

WebSocket

Persistent bidirectional connections for lobby sync, in-game chat, activity feed, and real-time leaderboard updates.

WebAssembly

Game engines compiled to WASM run natively in the browser at near-native speed. No plugins, no downloads — just click and play.

Docker

Container orchestration for game servers. Each match gets an isolated environment with resource limits, automatic cleanup, and health monitoring.

PostgreSQL

Battle-tested relational database for persistent data — player accounts, stats, match records, achievements, and tournament brackets.

Redis

In-memory data store for session management, lobby state, online player tracking, and pub/sub event distribution across services.

First-party analytics

Vendor-neutral observability framework. Collects traces, metrics, and logs from every service layer for end-to-end performance visibility.

Real-Time Communication

Browser-based multiplayer requires bridging the gap between WebSocket connections in the browser and UDP game protocols on the server. Here's how data flows through the system.

Browser connects to game via WebSocket (WSS) — encrypted, firewall-friendly, works on any network without special port configuration.

WebSocket proxy (q2proxy) translates WSS frames to native UDP packets that the Quake engine expects, maintaining packet ordering and timing.

Game server processes UDP traffic at native speed. Player inputs and game state updates travel the reverse path back to the browser at 60+ FPS.

Game Server Slots

Game servers are dynamically allocated Docker containers. When a lobby starts or a player joins a public server, the system finds or provisions a container automatically.

Dynamic allocation — containers spin up when needed and release resources when matches end. No idle servers wasting compute.

Resource isolation — each game server has CPU and memory limits. A rogue process in one container cannot affect other matches.

Observability & Monitoring

Rocketic Arena records game sessions, server availability, product events and recoverable failures in its own data layer. Readiness checks validate PostgreSQL, Redis and object storage.

End-to-end distributed traces from browser click to game server response. Identify bottlenecks and latency spikes in any service layer.

Custom metrics for player count, match duration, server utilization, WebSocket connection health, and API response times.

Multi-Domain & CDN

The platform operates across multiple domains with Cloudflare CDN for static assets, providing fast load times regardless of player location.

Cloudflare CDN caches static assets, WASM binaries, and game data files at edge locations worldwide for fast initial load.

Multi-domain architecture (quake.rocketic.io + quake.rocketic.ru) with automatic locale detection and hreflang tags for SEO.

Frequently Asked Questions

See It in Action

Experience the infrastructure firsthand — join a live server or explore the game server browser.

Browse Game ServersEngineering Blog (Coming Soon)