RAISING SUGBU FROM THE SEA…
Sugbu · before the ships
Cebu
— · —
COINS0 DIAMONDS0
0 sheltered · estate 0
Pre-contact era
—
Right-click walk · Left-drag camera · wheel zoom · ? controls
Controls
Right-clickwalk there — hold and drag to keep going
Left-dragturn and tilt the camera
Left-clickplace a structure, or open one you've built
Wheelzoom out and in — turns the building while placing
W A S Dwalk, relative to the camera
Q / Eturn the camera
R / Ftilt up and down
Z / Xrotate the building being placed or selected
Spacegather what you're standing next to
Eboard the boat, and step ashore again
1 – 6pick a structure to place
Enterspeak · Shift+Enter shout
Gget on or off a vehicle or aircraft you own
Vdive under, and surface again
Shiftsink faster · Space rise
Fenter a cave — walk in, or swim into a drowned mouth
Llight or douse your torch
Mshow or hide the small map
Tabopen the full chart — or click the small map
Wheelover either map, zoom it in and out
Esccancel placement, close panels
Graphics
— fps
— draw calls
— chunks
Structure
—
—
Rebuild as
Chart of the Visayan sea
—
you boat your buildings cave mouth  
Region 1 · Sugbu and Mactan

WHO GOES THERE

Sign in to keep your settlement between visits — what you build, gather and sail stays yours.

or
One more thing

CHOOSE A NAME

This is what other settlers on Sugbu will see.

Making landfall

ARRIVING

Loading the island.

Choose your island

WHERE DO YOU BEGIN?

You will come ashore here and build your first settlement. Every other island is reachable by boat, and the world loads whichever one you land on.

The Philippines · 31 islands · streaming world

BEFORE THE SHIPS

The sea is the road

On compressing a country

Real Cebu is 225 km by 45 km. At one unit per metre that would be a 225,000-unit world: a terrain mesh of over 150 million vertices, float precision visibly shaking past 100,000 units, and twelve real hours to walk from end to end.

So every island keeps its shape and proportions and gives up its absolute size. Cebu is the worked example: 2,480 units long and 530 at the widest, a ratio of 1:4.7 against the real 1:5, and about seven minutes to walk end to end — which is the number that actually matters. The same compression carries the whole archipelago, so the world comes to 28,000 units across and roughly 43 million square units of land, and the terrain streams in chunks around you at four levels of detail instead of existing all at once.

Every coastline here is the real one, given in latitude and longitude. Cebu leans west as it runs south, exactly as it does in life; Negros bends around the Tañon Strait on the far side; Bohol sits square across the water to the south-east. Beyond the Visayas the map runs the length of the country — Luzon and the Bicol peninsula north, Mindanao and the Sulu chain south, Palawan reaching south-west, and Batanes alone at the top.

Luzon and Mindanao are the giants, and carry the flattest ground to build a city on. Siargao, Bantayan and Mactan are low and sandy; Camiguin is a steep little volcano with barely a shelf. Sail far enough and the world loads the island you land on.

Controls

Right-clickWalk there. Hold and drag to keep going. W A S DWalk, relative to the camera EBoard the boat when you're beside it · step ashore again SpaceGather what you're standing next to 1 – 4Pick a structure, then left-click to place it Q / ETurn the camera · middle-drag also works WheelZoom

What to try first

Chunks stream as you move, so the first few seconds after you cross a boundary may hitch. The counter top-right shows how many are loaded.