A real map engine in the browser
Deterministic Voronoi-based world generation — biomes, rivers, nations, cultures, religions, settlements — rendered by a unified WebGL/Canvas engine and editable in place.
Case study — Worldbuilding platform
Tera — The Living Codex
A procedural fantasy world with a database for a soul.
- Role
- Architecture, map engine, full-stack build
- Timeline
- 2025 — 2026
- Stack
- Next.js 15 · React 19 · NestJS · Prisma · PostgreSQL · WebGL
RECORDED FROM THE RUNNING PRODUCT
Overview
Tera is a self-hosted worldbuilding platform fusing a full procedural fantasy-map engine (a TypeScript rebuild of Azgaar's generator), an entity codex of thousands of interlinked records, and a cinematic 3D lore experience — all backed by PostgreSQL as the single source of truth.
4,113
canonical entities
11,344
relationships
36
nations on the map
10k
Voronoi cells per world
What made it hard — and good
4,000+ entities, 11,000+ relationships
Characters, nations, species, spells and timelines all live in PostgreSQL, linked to map coordinates and browsable as a knowledge graph.
From heightmap to city plans
Auto-generation chains routes, populations, outposts and religious sites; a seeded generator produces street-level city plans for any settlement.
Lore as an experience
A scroll-driven WebGL landing tells the world's creation myth — molten sun, ley-field particles, and a codex aesthetic in Cinzel and gold.
From the product
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