Experiment 009 · playable comparison
Wake underground. Learn the lock. Find the sky.
One audiovisual brief, three very different ways to build a world.
▶ Play The Still BelowChatGPT 6 Astra
Firelit vaults, a celestial lock and a continuous climb into a pale alpine world. A conventional mesh pipeline with a lot of atmosphere around it.
Three.js · mesh-built worldNewest implementation, followed by crypt and mountain-geometry revisions.
▶ Play ColdlightOpus 5
A held torch, flooded passages and a mechanical floor lock. The crypt is a distance field; the mountains are a separate raymarched heightfield.
Raw WebGL 2 · raymarched worldThe most sustained refinement time: geometry, sound, interaction and performance.
ChatGPT 5.6 Sol
A green-lit crypt, readable tablets and a rune mechanism. Free exploration in the passages gives way to staged puzzle and mountain scenes.
Raw WebGL 2 · React-led chaptersTwo substantive control/puzzle corrections, then small settings changes. Much less refinement.
Implementation notes
All three generate the game’s visuals and sound in the browser. That constraint still leaves a remarkable amount of architectural freedom.
| System | ChatGPT 6 Astra | Opus 5 | ChatGPT 5.6 Sol |
|---|---|---|---|
| World construction | Three.js meshes: extruded crypt shells, instanced details, a generated ridge and mountain terrain. | Signed-distance fields carve the crypt. A separate raymarched heightfield builds the exterior. | A fullscreen WebGL shader raymarches the crypt. React selects the chapter and interaction overlays. |
| The mountain reveal | A mesh landscape with twelve authored peaks, a winding ridge and a rebuilt entrance that joins the rock. | Noise and seven additive peaks shape the heightfield. A CPU mirror supplies the walking height. | Layered mountain silhouettes, snow and haze in screen space. An authored reveal, not a walkable alpine terrain. |
| The lock | Three seals with three symbols each. A fixed solution is explained by an inscription. | Three floor rings with six positions each. The target is randomized; corridor panels teach the combination. | Three clue tablets record the required turns. The mechanism is a separate panel that can be left and revisited. |
| Sound construction | Oscillators, brown noise and a generated convolution reverb. Stereo-panned drips; no recordings. | HRTF positional sources follow the player. Drips share shader timing; outside, the reverb opens into a D-major reveal. | Low drones, filtered noise, stereo-panned drips and synthesized chimes. Chapter transitions crossfade the soundscape. |
| Performance strategy | Rasterization plus reflection and post-processing. Adaptive resolution can step down under load. | Raymarch budgets and noise detail vary with distance. Render resolution can fall and recover, with tighter mobile limits. | A fixed 108-step crypt march and a device-pixel-ratio cap of 1.4. No measured adaptive-resolution loop. |
Actual renderer captures · contains location spoilers
These frames come from the existing Astra/Opus assessment. They are selected viewpoints, not matched camera positions or evidence of frame rate. Sol is playable above; it does not yet have a matching captured scene set.
Astra builds a symmetrical, firelit burial hall. Opus puts a torch in your hand and lets the darkness close around the flooded vaults.
Astra’s three seals are a compact symbolic lock. Opus distributes its randomized combination through the corridor before the player reaches the floor rings.
Astra’s rebuilt polygon terrain and Opus’s raymarched heightfield both trade enclosure for distance. Similar dramatic purpose; very different geometry and lighting pipelines.
Challenge log
The initial version behaved more like a point-and-click page. The first correction asked for walking and looking around; the next caught movement that did not align with the camera. The current build has free camera movement in the crypt and corridor, while other chapters remain staged.
The mechanism appeared before its answer had been taught and could trap the player in its panel. The correction added a discoverable clue trail and a return to the corridor. Tablets, remembered clues and an escapable panel now exist in the source. This is a usability revision, not just visual polish.
The exterior follow-up rebuilt the entrance around its opening and widened the ridge into the surrounding terrain. More mesh detail matters where the player can walk up to a join; shader snow alone cannot repair the silhouette or close a gap.
A shader can display an enormous procedural world without a conventional mesh. It cannot, by itself, tell the CPU where the player can stand. Coldlight mirrors its distance-field collision and exterior height calculations for navigation. Geometry changes have to preserve that agreement.
Captured in the original assessment’s exterior follow-up. This revision is included in the Astra snapshot above.
Process record
can we create a new project, purely webgl based, no external assets, where the protagonast wakes up in spooky ancient crypts, dim lighting, water dripping, mystery horror feel, then has to make his way to some seemingly really ancient corridors to finally find an exit, maybe requiring a small combination of some machinery/ancient mechanics/magic mix, to reveal an exit and when he steps out, he is out on a majestic snowy mountain ridge, in the middle of high epic mountain ranges. this should all be a stunning and astoundingly impressive audiovisual experience.
can,t we have a more free way to navigate and walk around? only forward with w and not even look around is no way to explore ancient corridors?
the wasd controls are not aligned with the camera direction. and that riddle in the hall, that just pops up, cannot be exited, and how should the player know what to enter there when not reading/finding anything about it yet/earlier?
A few settings and mouse-inversion defaults changed afterward. The subsequent refinement time was not equal across projects.
Technical notes are grounded in the game sources and the existing “From Crypt to Ridge” assessment. The captures are selected scenes; they do not establish a complete playthrough, mobile compatibility or comparative frame rate. No numeric winner is assigned.
Local game snapshots imported 2026-09-06. Astra and Sol retain their original client game logic, bundled for static hosting; Opus retains its original local modules. No game art, recorded soundtrack or remote runtime dependency is added by this integration.
Snapshot revisions and file fingerprints ↗