Should I simulate game state on server using Phaser headless?

[dabe_glavins]

Hey guys.

So me and my friend have been hitting the grind on network programming for the server side of our real-time multiplayer game. Our game involves handling collisions with synchronized enemies and projectile/melee-based weapons. We don't really care about player-player collisions, but it might be something we want.

From what I've been understanding, for this game I'd want to have an authoritative server that essentially has a game loop running that simulates the game state. The clients will interject with their desired actions and use client-side predictions to render what they think should be happening, which will be corrected by the server on a tick-based system. Correct me if I'm wrong in thinking this is the best method to use.

But assuming it's a good method, I'm unsure of how to simulate the gamestate on the server. Is it common to use a headless version of your client-side engine to simulate the state on the server? I've heard not fun things about using Phaser-headless on a server. Are we going to have to basically simulate a bare-bones version of our game in NodeJS using vanilla JavaScript? I'm skeptical of this because it feels like reinventing a fairly large wheel.

Thanks.