Day 55. Biker Santa 🎅🏍️
Sometimes a map stops being just a map when movement, timing, and game logic become part of the experience.
For Day 55, I am sharing a playable 3D web game where Santa rides a motorcycle through snowy Romanian terrain and drops gifts at marked locations. It started as a small private project for motorcycle friends, then grew into a portfolio experiment about spatial interaction in the browser.
The terrain is built from Romanian DEM data prepared in QGIS and exported through Qgis2threejs, then used as the world surface for navigation. From there, the project shifts into gameplay: controls, scoring, route decisions, and timing.
The main challenge was balancing responsive bike physics with terrain-following behaviour and stable frame rate. I kept the bike grounded by following a precomputed route with elevation baked into the points, and oriented it using curve tangents/normals, while keeping movement logic simple enough to stay playable.
It is not a polished game engine, and there are still rough edges, but it demonstrates how cartography tools can evolve into interactive spatial storytelling.
Live demo: Biker Santa
The project
| Piece | Role |
|---|---|
| Terrain | Romanian DEM via QGIS + Qgis2threejs |
| Gameplay | Motorcycle controls, gift drops, scoring |
| Physics | Precomputed route with baked elevation; tangent/normal orientation |
| Tone | Portfolio experiment from a private motorcycle friends project |
How to follow
- Blog: blog.maptheclouds.com
- LinkedIn: Day 55 post
- Live demo: Biker Santa
- Hashtag: #100DayMapChallenge
#100DayMapChallenge · Day 55/100 · LinkedIn
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