Building a Space Defender Game with Amazon Q
Relive childhood with this arcade game
Published Jan 11, 2025
I recently developed a browser-based game called Space Defender using React, Three.js, and TypeScript. What made this project particularly interesting was my use of Amazon Q, an AI-powered coding companion, throughout the development process. In this post, I'll share my experience building the game and working with Amazon Q.
Space Defender is a retro-style space game where players control a spaceship, take down incoming asteroids, and try to achieve high scores. The game features:
- Three different playable spaceships
- Progressive difficulty levels
- Real-time score tracking and high scores
- User authentication with AWS Cognito
- Responsive design with Tailwind CSS
- 3D graphics powered by Three.js
- Hosting on AWS Amplify
I started by setting up the project structure with Amazon Q's guidance. The AI helped me configure the necessary dependencies, including React, Three.js, TypeScript, and Tailwind CSS. One of the most valuable aspects was how Amazon Q suggested organizing the project's component structure and state management using Zustand.
Amazon Q proved particularly helpful when implementing the core game mechanics. It provided guidance on:
- Setting up the 3D scene with Three.js
- Implementing collision detection between bullets and asteroids
- Creating smooth spaceship controls
- Managing game state (scores, lives, levels)
- Adding visual effects and animations
For user authentication, we integrated AWS Cognito. Amazon Q helped streamline the implementation of:
- User sign-up and sign-in flows
- Token management
- Protected routes
- User profile handling
While Amazon Q was incredibly helpful, there were some challenges:
- Context Understanding: Sometimes the AI needed additional clarification about the project's context. I learned to provide more detailed descriptions of what I was trying to achieve.
- Code Integration: Occasionally, the suggested code needed adaptation to work with our specific setup. This required understanding the underlying concepts to make necessary adjustments.
- Best Practices: While Amazon Q generally suggested good practices, it was important to validate its recommendations against current React and TypeScript standards.
- Performance Optimization: The game initially had performance issues with multiple moving objects. Amazon Q helped optimize the render cycle and implement efficient collision detection.
- State Management: Coordinating game state between different components was complex. The AI helped implement a clean state management solution using Zustand.
- Responsive Design: Ensuring the game worked well on different screen sizes required careful planning of the UI layout and controls.
AWS Cognito provided a robust authentication system for the game. We implemented:
- Secure token management
- User session handling
Deploying the game on AWS Amplify offered several benefits:
- Automated deployments from Git
- SSL certificate management
- CDN distribution
- Easy environment variable management
- AI as a Collaborative Tool: Amazon Q works best as a coding partner rather than a complete solution provider. It's most effective when you have a clear understanding of what you want to achieve.
- Documentation Importance: While AI can help with code, having good documentation for AWS services and other tools remains crucial.
- Testing Matters: Even with AI-suggested code, thorough testing is essential, especially for game mechanics and user interactions.
Building Space Defender with Amazon Q demonstrated how AI tools can enhance the development process without replacing fundamental programming knowledge. The combination of React, Three.js, and AWS services, along with AI assistance, enabled the creation of an engaging game while maintaining code quality and performance.
The project showcases how modern web technologies, cloud services, and AI tools can work together to create interactive experiences. While AI tools like Amazon Q can significantly speed up development, success still relies on understanding core programming concepts and best practices.
In fact, I used Amazon Q to generate the technical details of this article, and it summed up quite nicely.
In fact, I used Amazon Q to generate the technical details of this article, and it summed up quite nicely.
Though the UI isn't that great, I guess we have to take into consideration that I built this in an hour, and it was made possible by Amazon Q, which sped up most of the boring tasks and did them for me.