About
Armagetron Advanced in your web browser.
What this is
Retrocycles.io runs Armagetron Advanced, the open-source lightcycle game, in a web browser. It is not a remake: the game's original client, including its engine, netcode, prediction and lag compensation, is compiled to WebAssembly and connects to the same servers as the desktop version. There is nothing to install, and you don't need an account to play.
Retrocycles is the name Armagetron Advanced goes by on Steam. The servers, the community and the game itself still use the Armagetron name.
Made by the Armagetron Advanced project
The game is the work of the Armagetron Advanced project, started by Manuel Moos in 2000 and developed since then by its developers, contributors and translators. Retrocycles.io adds the browser port and an optional platform; the game itself is their work.
armagetronad.org · source code · wiki · forums
The development team- Manuel Moos
- z-man
- Dave Fancella
- davidfancella, Lucifer
- Fred
- guru3, Tank Program
- epsy
- epsy
- Jochen Darley
- jarrt, joda.bot
- Peter
- klaxnek, klax
- Kurt Johnson
- k_at_work, K
- Luke-Jr
- luke-jr
- Daniel Harple
- dlh3
- Philippe Villeneuve
- philippeqc
- Mathias Plichta
- wrtlprnft
- Alex E. Kelly
- former project administrator
- subby
- honored former member
- Ben Hines
- the first working Mac OS X port
- Fabrice Holbe
- the original Moviepack and font
- Tomas Birraux
- French accents in the font
- Christian Reitwiessner
- names above the cycles
- Edd Keefe
- the Mac OS X icon and the title screen
- hang3r
- a more accurate timer on Windows
- Jonathan
- the headlight and the overhead map
- Meriton
- the Lag-O-Meter
- Oscilloscope
- most of the default instant chats
- Belenus
- OpenBSD support
- hoop
- zone rendering settings
- fman23
- console commands
- Rafal Cieslak
- Polish translation
- mygal, tang322
- French translation
- id Software
- the first version of the low-level networking code
- David McAllister
- the particle system API
- Aladdin Enterprises
- the MD5 implementation (L. Peter Deutsch)
Taken from the project's AUTHORS file, which has the full list. These pages use the game's own font, converted from textures/font.png.
Licence and platform
Armagetron Advanced is free software under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or (at your option) any later version. The same licence covers the browser client served here, this website, and the changes that make the game run in a browser.
Retrocycles.io also runs an optional hosted platform: guest and account sign-in, Quick Play, progress and levels, moderation of its official rooms, and later cosmetics. The platform is a separate service and not part of the game. It is not required to play, run the game or host a server. Community servers work as before, and the game communicates with the platform through a published, open protocol that anyone can implement.
Source code
The game client on this site was built from commit 8d247ef23a1aae304a738681dad7b8ea540859a8 on 2026-10-14.
The public repository of the browser port is not published yet. Until it is, we will send the complete corresponding source code of this exact build (the game, the browser port, this page and the scripts that build them) to anyone who asks, free of charge: write to support@retrocycles.io and name the commit above. This offer is valid for at least three years after we last serve this build.
The upstream game is public at gitlab.com/armagetronad/armagetronad.
Third-party software
In the game client- Armagetron Advanced
- GPL-2.0-or-later
- Particle System API
- David McAllister, used under the GPL by his permission
- MD5
- L. Peter Deutsch, Aladdin Enterprises; zlib-style licence
- libxml2
- MIT licence
- libpng
- PNG Reference Library License v2
- zlib
- zlib licence
- Emscripten
- MIT or University of Illinois/NCSA; with musl libc (MIT) and LLVM libc++, libc++abi and compiler-rt (Apache 2.0 with LLVM exception)
- React
- MIT licence
- Overpass
- The Overpass Project Authors; SIL Open Font License 1.1
- Armagetron (font)
- the game's own font, converted for the web; GPL as part of the game
- libdatachannel
- MPL 2.0: WebRTC for the browser-enabled game servers
- Monocypher
- BSD-2-Clause or CC0: login token checks in official rooms
- nlohmann/json
- MIT licence
The servers also run Caddy, coturn and PostgreSQL. None of the server software is sent to your browser.
Names
The code's licence does not cover the names and logos.
Contact
Retrocycles.io is run by Velvet Innovations LLC. Write to support@retrocycles.io.
For questions about the game itself, please use the community forums or the project's Discord.