REMLAB Web Mech Designer

BattleTech for the internet age.

REMLAB Web Mech Designer is an online tool for creating Mechs for use in the board game BattleTech®. REMLAB is written entirely in vanilla JavaScript with its source code hosted on GitHub.

REMLAB’s Development History

The first version of REMLAB dates back to 2005 when it was created as an early AJAX and PHP-powered web app. This was a relatively sophisticated and early example of a web app.

The second version I released in 2007 was built upon that same codebase, however, with that version I expanded upon the game rules and features. The mechanism for processing the data was drastically improved from the previous version as well.

The Third version, released in 2010 and never properly finished, was based on the same PHP codebase as previous versions. However, the interface had a complete overhaul. This version was intended to be the most comprehensive version of REMLAB, featuring additions to Mechs, ground vehicles, AeroTech fighters and PhotoMechs. The source code for this version can still be found on SourceForge.

For the fourth version, released in 2018, I chose to go back to the drawing board and I rewrote the entire codebase from scratch. In doing so, I moved from PHP to JavaScript for the logic and JSON to store the data. This version is still in its infancy so it lacks many of the features that previous versions had. The source code for this version is on GitHub.