Shorebreak: More Than an Ocean

Water should not depend on where someone is looking

Shorebreak is being developed to do more than draw convincing waves on the screen. Water also needs to behave properly when players move away, look in another direction or interact with objects outside the camera view.

Recent development has focused on separating the actual water simulation from what the camera happens to show. This is especially important in large worlds where plenty can be happening beyond the player’s view. There are still coverage and performance issues to test.

What about multiplayer?

Floating objects should exist in the shared world, not just for the player who happens to be nearby. Shorebreak has been adding server-side control and multiplayer object handling for buoyancy.

The work is not finished. Making sure separate players see the right objects, in the right places, with consistent water movement still needs proper multiplayer testing.

Not every body of water is an ocean

Shorebreak is also designed for lakes, rivers, streams and pools. Each needs different behavior. A swimming pool should not act like an endless ocean, and a river should have a direction to its flow.

There are already dedicated water profiles and setup tools for different types of water. The remaining work is making the behavior, interactions and visuals reliable across all of them.

Where the ocean meets the land

A shoreline is more than a line where water touches a beach. Shorebreak needs to understand the shape of the land and the depth of the water to place waves and other shoreline effects sensibly.

An optional connection to GroundBreakingTerrain allows Shorebreak to read terrain information without taking over the terrain system.

The coastline tools are also being developed to scan an area and suggest places for shorelines and wave features. The aim is to cut down on hours of manual placement. Complex coasts and unusual terrain still need additional checking.

Making buoyancy setup easier

Getting an object to float properly starts with giving it the right collision shape. A beach ball, a barrel and a strangely shaped pool toy should not all have to use the same rough box.

Shorebreak’s buoyancy setup tool includes options for simple shapes as well as generating more detailed colliders from an object’s mesh. The goal is to let developers choose the shape that makes sense, preview the result and apply it without rebuilding everything by hand.

That tooling is still being refined, including safer scene and prefab changes, collider previews and support for more complicated objects.

Where things stand

The main pieces are coming together, but Shorebreak is still in development. Large-world water coverage, multiplayer behavior, wave interaction spikes and performance remain active testing areas.

The goal is a water system that works across oceans, inland water and pools, responds to objects, and connects cleanly with the rest of the Wipeout Studios ecosystem.