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Beginner Handbook

Welcome to the main documentation handbook for the Gwanyan Interactive Grassland project.

If you are a complete beginner and want the fastest path to a working app, read the getting started guide next.

If you are working from the repository root in a terminal, the simplest beginner path is:

pwsh ./scripts/check-prerequisites.ps1
pwsh ./scripts/install-project-dependencies.ps1
pwsh ./scripts/run-development-application.ps1

This project has three teaching layers:

  1. The beginner wiki, which explains ideas slowly and conversationally.
  2. This handbook, which explains the system in a more structured engineering format.
  3. The API reference, which is generated from source comments and is meant for detailed implementation lookup.

What You Are Looking At​

The app renders a large square patch of dirt and grass in the browser. The mouse acts like a moving wind emitter:

  • The mouse position decides where the gust originates.
  • The mouse movement speed decides how strong the gust is.
  • A damped spring simulation decides how each patch of grass bends and relaxes.

How To Read The Codebase​

If you are a complete beginner, read these in order:

  1. tutorials/getting-started.md
  2. documentation/wiki/content/Home.md
  3. documentation/wiki/content/How-Mouse-Wind-Becomes-Physics.md
  4. documentation/wiki/content/How-Grass-Is-Rendered.md
  5. src/input/PointerWindTracker.ts
  6. src/simulation/WindFieldModel.ts
  7. src/simulation/GrassPatchPhysicsSimulation.ts
  8. src/application/InteractiveGrasslandExperience.ts

Example Learning Goal​

If your goal is "I want to understand why the grass bends when I move my mouse," the shortest path is:

  1. Learn how the pointer becomes a world-space point.
  2. Learn how that point becomes a wind force.
  3. Learn how a wind force updates a spring simulation.
  4. Learn how the renderer turns the simulated displacement into visible blade geometry.