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Documentation Index

Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/apursley2012/retro-cosmic-arcade/llms.txt

Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

This page walks through everything you need to get Retro Cosmic Arcade running on your local machine. The project uses Vite as its build tool, so the development experience is fast — cold starts are typically under a second and hot module replacement keeps changes instant. You will need Node.js 18 or later and a package manager (npm, yarn, or pnpm) installed before you begin.

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Prerequisites

  • Node.js 18+
  • npm, yarn, or pnpm
  • Git

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Steps

1

Clone the repository

Pull the source code to your local machine using Git.
git clone https://github.com/apursley2012/retro-cosmic-arcade.git
cd retro-cosmic-arcade
2

Install dependencies

Install all required npm packages. Choose the package manager you prefer:
npm install
This installs React 18, Vite, React Router 6 (react-router-dom), Framer Motion, Tailwind CSS, and all related tooling declared in package.json.
3

Start the development server

Launch the Vite dev server with hot module replacement.
npm run dev
Vite will print the local URL once the server is ready:
  VITE v5.x.x  ready in 312 ms

  ➜  Local:   http://localhost:5173/
  ➜  Network: use --host to expose
4

Open the site in your browser

Navigate to http://localhost:5173 in any modern browser. You should see the Home page with the full Y2K aesthetic — cosmic background, scanline overlay, marquee ticker, and navigation bar.
If the cursor trail or scanline overlay is not visible, check that your browser has hardware acceleration enabled. The CRT overlay uses a CSS repeating-linear-gradient that renders best with GPU compositing active.

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Building for Production

When you are ready to deploy a production-optimised build, run: 
npm run build
Vite compiles and tree-shakes the React app, outputs all HTML entry points and hashed asset files into the dist/ directory, and generates <link rel="modulepreload"> tags in every HTML file so each page pre-fetches its JavaScript before the user navigates.

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Previewing the Production Build Locally

Before pushing to a host, verify the production build looks correct with Vite’s local preview server: 
npm run preview
This serves the dist/ folder at http://localhost:4173 using the same static-file behaviour your production host will use.

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Static Hosting Compatibility

Retro Cosmic Arcade uses hash-based routing (/#/, /#/about, etc.). This means the browser never sends the React route path to the server — every request lands on the HTML file already in dist/. No _redirects file, vercel.json rewrite rule, or .htaccess configuration is needed. The site deploys cleanly to GitHub Pages, Netlify (drag-and-drop), Vercel, Cloudflare Pages, AWS S3, or any plain static host.

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