Ink Tide

Ink Tide is an arcade boat racer where the whole world looks hand-inked: cel-shaded hulls, banded water, dual ink outlines, and a procedural ocean built from six overlapping wave trains that never repeats the same swell twice.

Race three laps against three rivals, drift through checkpoints, and try to hold a clean line across open water. The demo is free and runs straight in your browser, no install. The full TypeScript + Three.js source is included as a paid download for anyone who wants to see how the ocean, the ink lines, and the AI actually work.

What's in the demo

• An infinite ocean built from six summed Gerstner waves, no two laps ripple the same way
• A full cel-shading pipeline: quantized diffuse, banded specular highlights, fresnel rim light
• A dual ink-outline system, inverted-hull silhouettes plus a G-buffer/Sobel pass for interior linework
• Real hull physics with six-point buoyancy sampling, drift, and wake trails
• Three AI racers that follow the checkpoint chain and hold a proper lap count
• Fully synthesized audio, engine tone tracks RPM, no samples used anywhere

What's in the source download

The complete TypeScript source (32 files across boat physics, water, rider rigging, camera, UI and audio), the dev harness used to build it (screenshot capture, a performance profiler, and a behaviour-probe tool), architecture notes, and KNOWN_GAPS.md, the actual internal QA notes on what's solid and what still needs work, included instead of hidden. If you're picking this up to learn from or extend, you'll know exactly where to start.

Controls: WASD or arrow keys to steer, Space to boost, Shift to drift. Fully keyboard, no mouse or gamepad required.