An open build log
How we built an arcade ocean you can race.
King Tide is a web-first arcade hover-bike racer — Three.js, WebGPU, and a WASM physics engine running in a browser tab. This is the making-of: each chapter takes one system, explains it in plain language, and hands you an interactive 3D demo wired to the actual game code so you can poke at it yourself.
Most "how it works" write-ups stop at a diagram. We wanted the demos to be honest, so every interactive panel here imports the same modules the shipping game runs. When you drag a slider on the wave page, you are editing the exact sum-of-sines field the bikes float on — not a lookalike rebuilt for the article.
Start anywhere. The chapters are independent, but Wave Mastery is the heart of the game, so it's the natural first read.