PORTUGA

Free flight: under water, over the land, up to 12 km done 2 Oct 2026

The game now starts in free flight: move anywhere like a flying character. The map camera is still there (Tab).

• Desktop: click to look with the mouse (Esc frees it, or hold the right button), WASD to move, Space/E up, Q/Ctrl down, Shift to go faster, mouse wheel for cruising speed. Phone: left stick, drag to look, ▲▼ buttons
• Under water: blue-green water that gets darker and murkier with depth; looking up you see the sky through a bright window and the rest of the surface as a mirror, as in real water
• Fly high: the real coast continues all the way to the horizon (16 km of detail, 96 km of surroundings, 400 km of distant relief from satellite data), and the Earth curves away below you

Milestone 1, step 4: the sky, the real sun and time of day done 2 Oct 2026

The sky is now a physical model of Earth's atmosphere, ported from the water project's "Sky Pro" (the same equations and constants). The sun stands where it really is over Kilifi for the chosen date and hour.

• Air scattering: blue sky by day, golden and red skies at sunrise and sunset, the sunlight itself turning orange as it crosses more air
• Everything follows the sun: the light on land and trees, the ambient light, the haze colour, the ocean's reflections and glitter
• The view adapts to the light like an eye, so dawn and dusk stay readable
• Time-of-day slider and a Day cycle switch (one hour every 20 seconds)

Milestone 1, step 3: trees and bush, made in Blender done 2 Oct 2026

The land now has 3D plants: coastal trees, the African wild syringa (Burkea africana) and shrubs. They're placed by habitat: dense in forest, sparse on open bushland, low wind-swept trees near the coast, and none on beaches, creek mud or below the sea level.

• Built with Blender through the AI assistant (Blender MCP): free photoreal models (Poly Haven, CC0) of up to 1.6 million triangles each were turned into game trees of ~700 triangles. The leaves were rendered into leaf-cluster textures, the trunks simplified, and each tree rendered from 8 directions for distant views
• Thousands of plants at once: full 3D near the camera, flat "impostor" cards further away with a smooth cross-fade, gentle wind sway, and sunlight shining through the leaves

First load is now ~24 MB; it will be trimmed later.

Milestone 1, step 2: the first real place, Kilifi Creek (Kenya) done 2 Oct 2026

A 16 × 16 km piece of the real East African coast, built from satellite elevation data. Nearby, at Panga ya Saidi, people have lived continuously for about 78,000 years.

• Real land shape (Copernicus 30 m elevation) and sea floor (NOAA), with the coral reef and lagoon rebuilt from the real coastline
• The water responds to depth: waves calm down behind the reef, shallows are see-through (turquoise, with coral and moving light on the sea floor), surf breaks on the beach and the reef
• Natural land cover with no modern towns: forest, coastal bush, red soil clearings, beaches, creek mud
• Sea-level slider: drag it to around −120 m to see the coast during the last Ice Age

The land is still flat close up: trees and bushes in 3D are next. First load is ~17 MB.

Milestone 1, step 1: the ocean in Godot done 2 Oct 2026

The water's wave simulation is rebuilt inside the game engine and runs in the browser:

• Real ocean physics: an FFT wave simulation at three scales (1 km swells down to 9 m ripples), driven by wind speed and wave length, repeating seamlessly
• Checked against an independent calculation: matches to within 1–3% (centimetres on half-metre waves)
• Ocean to the horizon (~50 km) with seamless detail levels, sky reflections, sun glitter and whitecaps
• Camera for mouse, trackpad and touch

Desktop: left-drag to move, right-drag to rotate/tilt, wheel to zoom, WASD and Q/E. Phone: one finger to move, two fingers to zoom, rotate and tilt. First load is ~10 MB.

Ocean technology extracted and decoded done 2 Oct 2026

The Three.js Water Pro ocean (the water this game will use) was downloaded in full and its protected code decoded, so it can be rebuilt inside the game engine.

• Every file the demo uses, including 8 skies, models, textures and sounds
• 2,269 hidden strings decoded; ~2,300 scrambled names given readable names
• 117 distinct GPU shader programs captured: FFT waves (3 scales), wakes, foam, spray, sky and clouds
• The decoded version was tested in a browser and runs the same as the original

Heavy on the GPU; best on a desktop. This is the reference being ported, not the game yet.

Game engine upgraded: Godot 4.7.2 done 2 Oct 2026

The game is built with Godot 4.7.2 (the latest stable) for desktop and mobile browsers. The other game on this server was tested and moved to the same version too.

3D modelling pipeline (Blender) done 2 Oct 2026

Blender is connected to the AI assistant, so 3D models for the game (buildings, ships, people) can be made and exported directly.

Website, domain and project history done 2 Oct 2026

portuga.pedrolascasas.com with HTTPS, plus a version history of everything we make.

Milestone 1, next steps next

• Iconic species made from scratch in Blender: baobab, doum palm, mangroves in the creek
• Ground detail close up (grass tufts, stones)
• Clouds, stars and the moon at night
• More of the water: spray, wakes, foam that lingers