Content

# BADLANDS

**An open-world action sandbox built from scratch in Vulkan.**

No engine. No shortcuts. Every triangle, every sound, every creature — hand-coded.

---

## The World

Badlands drops you into an infinite procedurally generated landscape stitched together from five blended biomes: coastal oceans, open plains, rolling hills, highland plateaus, and mountain peaks. Rivers carve through valleys. Cropland patches quilt the flatlands. Every chunk streams in asynchronously while you move, so the world never stops or stutters. Highways and dirt roads flatten the terrain as they generate, connecting four distant cities — North, South, East, and West — each a full kilometre from the map centre.

The world is alive. Herds of cows graze the fields. Chickens peck around farmyards. Pigs root through mud. Frogs hop along riverbanks. Snails leave silver trails near the water's edge. Chipmunks dart between trees and scramble up trunks when you get too close. Three distinct forest types — birch, spruce/pine, and oak broadleaf — blend naturally across the terrain, with procedural bushes and wildflowers filling every clearing.

A full day/night cycle (10 minutes of day, 9 of night) shifts the sun and moon across the sky. Twelve weather types sweep through without warning: sunshine, rain, snow, blizzards, monsoons, hail, thunder and lightning, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, dust storms, and freezing rain. Each one changes how the world looks, sounds, and plays.

---

## The Story

You start with a mission briefing: a bomb is hidden in a fortified military airfield to the northeast. The airfield is locked behind armed gates. The hangar is deep inside the perimeter. Getting the bomb is only the beginning — the alien ship that's been circling the countryside needs it to be destroyed before the invasion it's calling in reaches your four cities.

The story plays out through layered objectives that unfold as you explore. Repair four broken wells between the cities to unlock the North town fountain. Fix the nuclear reactor before meltdown — the replacement switch is hidden in one of the other towns. Flip three power station levers to restore electricity across the grid and light up every street lamp in the world. Photograph satellite dish signals to summon a landing UFO, then enter it. Plant the bomb in the alien town ship before it disgorges its twenty invaders. Capture the flag at the stone castle hidden between the northwest cities. Complete all five barn cow-herding quests to earn the knight's armor — and the ricochet ability that comes with it.

A full achievement system tracks your progress and pops banners when you hit milestones. Press F2 anytime for a mission debriefing that shows everything you've done and how far the next objective is.

---

## The Combat

You start with an M16 and a knife. Pick up a shotgun. Throw grenades. Unlock five elemental powers — Tornado, Lightning, Blizzard, Hyper Beam, Flamethrower, Thorn Burst, Frost Nova — that each hit the world differently.

Enemies are not static. Every skeleton, alien, and guard runs a genetic AI: eight behavioural genes (aggression, zigzag evasion, bullet sense, circle-strafing, retreat, jump timing) that evolve across generations. When enough enemies die, the gene pool selects the survivors and crossbreeds their traits. Enemies that live longer pass their tactics on. After a few generations, they're flanking you, reading your tracers, jumping your shots, and seeking cover behind terrain with line-of-sight raycasting.

Foes scale with distance from spawn. Near the start, they're capped at 30% of their gene expression. By the time you're 1800 units out, the gloves are off.

---

## The Vehicles

**Truck** — an AWD pickup with Bullet Physics suspension, a fuel tank, and a tow hitch. Drive it anywhere. Haul mission cargo. Attach the rope to drag objects behind you.

**Paver truck** — a second pickup towing a road-laying trailer. Drive it anywhere in the world and it stamps down solid asphalt, clears all vegetation under the drum, and leaves a physics-solid road behind. You can pave your own highway across the entire map.

**Five motocross bikes** — one parked inside each barn, boardable on approach. Rear-wheel drive, visual lean physics, scramble-ready suspension.

**F-16** — steal it from the airfield. Arm it with six air-to-air missiles and a cannon. Fight a full dogfight against UFOs that cycle through passive, chase, attack, evade, and tractor-beam phases. A friendly AI jet patrols, lands, and launches again on its own schedule. Four additional aircraft (F/A-18, A-10, F-22) are parked on both ends of the tarmac.

**M60 tank** — inside the hangar, boardable. Independent turret, main gun with eight shells, track animation.

---

## The Tools

**Glove tool** — place and wire physical props anywhere in the world. The catalogue includes: buttons, levers, pressure plates, lights (solid or strobe), batteries, keypads with custom 4-digit combos, bruteforcers that crack keypads automatically while keygen music plays, money printers ($8/sec when powered), speakers, and door handles. Wire anything to anything. Chain signals across your base.

**Crowbar** — break boarded doors, smash crates, destroy barricades. Some hold loot.

**Fishing rod** — cast, set power, wait for the bite, then reel with E. Fish from 12cm to 100cm. Bigger fish pay more. Personal records are tracked and uploaded to the leaderboard. Catch a fish, keep it — you'll need it to befriend the cat.

**Rake and torch** — dig farming plots, plant seeds, wait 30 seconds, harvest. Light your torch to explore dark interiors.

---

## The Locations

**Four cities** — multi-block layouts with streets, buildings, interior rooms, locked doors, keypads, and mission items hidden inside.

**Military airfield** — full perimeter fence, guard gate, armed soldiers, two rows of parked jets, a hangar containing the tank and the bomb, and a runway long enough for takeoff and landing.

**Nuclear power plant** — two reactors, a broken control panel, the replacement switch quest, and a graveyard out back where skeletons rise at night.

**Stone castle** — between the northwest cities. A capture-the-flag arena with catacombs beneath.

**Gas station** — fill the gas can at the pump, refuel the truck. The can spawns next to the pumps.

**Fireworks stand** — at the south end of the road. Hit it three times to trigger a burst sequence.

**The alien ship** — 6.4 km north of spawn, permanently docked. Boarding ramp down, green glow inside. Twenty aliens spawn from the door every eight seconds.

**The circus** — outside North city. Three working minigames: bottle knock (throw rocks, 3 chances), ring toss (5 rings, 5 pegs), and the strength tester (hammer the lever, send the puck to the bell). Win prizes. Earn circus tokens.

**The shooting range** — next to the circus. Borrow the pellet gun, shoot sliding silhouette targets, post a score.

**The arcade** — inside North city, powered by the grid. Three playable cabinets: Centipede (mushroom field, shooting, lives), King Kong (platforms, ladders, rolling barrels, rescue the girl), Metal Slug (side-scroller, grenades, tanks, lives).

**Your house** — a two-floor home at spawn with wired lights, a pressure-plate entry sensor, a locked back room (keypad combo: 4291), a money printer, a bruteforcer on the desk, breakable crates, and a water bottle on the table.

---

## The Extras

**Companion dog** — follows you from the start. Detects nearby items and bounces between them and you to show you where they are. Barks. Wags.

**Companion cat** — hidden in a remote corner of the map. Befriend it with a fish. It follows you after.

**Equipment shop** — buy a jetpack (SPACE to thrust, recharges on ground), armor vest (25% damage reduction), energy shield (80 HP absorb, 12 HP/s regen), or rocket boots (30% speed, 50% jump).

**Thirst system** — your water meter drains. Find the bottle, fill it at a well, drink from it. Ignore it long enough and your health follows.

**Fog of war** — the map fills in as you explore.

**In-game console (F3)** — chat, check the leaderboard, teleport, set speed, toggle enemies, enable hardcore mode (999 bullets, every shot counts).

**Multiplayer** — type `/mp host` to start a server on port 7777. Type `/mp connect <ip:port>` to join one. Position, health, score, vehicle state, UFO state, fish catches, PvP hits, and tombstones all sync across clients in real time.

**Leaderboard and accounts** — register a username and password. Progress saves between sessions: wallet, kill count, high score, biggest fish, fishing earnings. Submit your score to the global leaderboard and view rankings in the console.

**Graphics menu** — toggle shadows, adjust shadow map resolution (512 to 4K), set grass draw distance, enable/disable bloom, normal maps, height fog, split-tone color grading, dithering, specular highlights, rim lighting, and vignette. A live benchmark screen shows FPS, frame time, min/max/average, draw call count, and chunk count.

---

**Badlands.** One open world. No loading screens. Built in raw Vulkan.