Aloft

A serene, low-poly browser gliding game about reading the air and staying up. The tone for everything: calm, gentle, zen (see CLAUDE.md).

Phases 0–3 passed (gliding feels good · lift is satisfying · the air is legible · face and voice landed). This repo is currently Phase 4, which answers exactly one question:

Can you name a place you love?

You fly a low-poly soaring bird over seeded procedural country — lakes with wind-ripples, forests whose trees lean downwind, sun-baked dry land where the thermals are born (marked by dust and circling birds), ridge lift on every windward slope, a cairn on the summit, a dawn-to-dusk day cycle, and meditative generative chimes that quicken gently with speed. A seed is a map: the "newWorld" button deals a fresh countryside, and keeping a seed means you can always fly back. The flight model is one idea: total energy = altitude + airspeed, bleeding to drag — and lift, found in the world, is the only way to top the tank back up.

• Design doc: docs/design-doc.html (living document)
• Phase 0 brief: docs/phase0-kickoff.md

Run it

npm install
npm run dev     # Vite dev server
npm run build   # typecheck + production build

Controls

Key	Action
W / ↑	pitch down (dive — gain speed)
S / ↓	pitch up (climb — spend speed)
A / ←, D / →	roll / banked turn
R	reset to launch
M	mute / unmute the ambient bed
H	toggle the debug/tuning readout (flight instruments are always on)

On touch devices: touch anywhere and drag — your touch point becomes a floating stick (drag up = nose down). Round buttons replace R and M.

Every feel constant is a live slider in the lil-gui panel (top right). The canonical values live in src/sim/config.ts — when a tuned value feels right in the panel, write it back there.

Architecture

The simulation is completely separate from rendering — src/sim/ never imports Three.js, so the flight feel is testable and renderers/terrain sources are swappable.

src/
  sim/        pure logic — config (all feel constants), state, flight model,
              seeded noise, TerrainProvider (Flat, Hill, Procedural) and
              LiftProvider (ThermalField, RidgeLift, CompositeLift)
  render/     Three.js scene (vertex-colored terrain, the player bird, dust,
              tell-birds, wind streaks, day cycle) + chase cam
  audio/      ambient bed (wind follows airspeed) — routed for adaptive later
  input/      keyboard -> normalized { pitch, roll } (input-agnostic sim)
  ui/         flight instruments + stick guide + hidden debug readout
  main.ts     fixed-timestep (60Hz) loop with render interpolation

Still out of scope, on purpose: goals/collectibles, the boost meter, flocks, landing & perches, persistence, touch/gamepad (all slotted in the design doc's phases and parking lot).