# The conjuration sprites — a spec for the artist

The first-person view (`/?fpv`, and the replay's "your eyes" mode) throws
spell moments through the air as **billboard sprites**: flat images that
always face the camera, drawn glowing in mid-air, occluded by walls, and
scaled by distance. Nine sprites cover every spell moment in the game.
Each lives at `packages/web/public/textures/../fx3d/<name>.png` — replace
the file, refresh, done. The current files are placeholder radial glows;
all nine are shown side by side at `/?tokens` under "The conjurations."

## Technical requirements

- **Format:** PNG with a transparent background. The transparent area is
  essential — whatever is opaque is what flies.
- **Size:** square, any resolution; 128×128 or 256×256 recommended. The
  renderer scales freely and pixelates on magnification (the whole view
  is deliberately chunky, like the wall textures).
- **Drawn additively:** sprites are composited in "lighter" (additive)
  mode over a dark dungeon, so dark pixels vanish and bright pixels glow.
  Paint light-on-transparent; pure black will be invisible. Midtones read
  as translucent light.
- **No animation frames.** Each sprite is a single still. Motion comes
  from the renderer: projectiles streak across the room, impacts swell
  from small to large while fading out. Radially symmetric (or nearly so)
  designs work best since the image does not rotate.
- **Fills most of the canvas.** Leave only a small transparent margin;
  the renderer sizes the sprite by its canvas, not its painted extent.

## The nine sprites and where they appear

| file | flies as | moment |
| --- | --- | --- |
| `fireball.png` | projectile | Fireball, Sudden Death, Blaster Wand — a ball of fire streaking caster → target |
| `bolt.png` | projectile | Lightning Blast, Power Drain — a crackling bolt |
| `waterbolt.png` | projectile | Waterbolt — a hurled gout of water |
| `spark.png` | projectile | anything else that travels: thrown objects, bodies knocked back, dragged things — a neutral streak of force |
| `burst.png` | impact | a fireball landing; victory fireworks — swells and fades |
| `splash.png` | impact | waterbolt landing, stone turned to water |
| `hit.png` | impact | damage landing on someone you can see; punches, claws |
| `shimmer.png` | impact | teleports, warps, illusions, minds touched — the general "magic happened here" glimmer, violet by tradition |
| `shield.png` | impact | an attack fully stopped; absorbed spells |
| `rubble.png` | prop | a destroyed wall's remains: bursts on the kill, then stands as a mound at the fallen edge for the rest of the reel. Unlike the others this is drawn OPAQUE (normal compositing) — paint it as solid debris, not light |

Projectiles hold their size in flight (about a third of a wizard's
height). Impacts start small and swell to roughly double while fading —
so an impact painted as a ring or burst reads especially well.

What the sprites do NOT need to carry: screen-wide flashes when YOU are
hit (red), healed (green), or teleported (violet), the camera shake, the
door slide (doors animate by sliding `door.png` along its own edge — no
separate art), and the jammed-lock seethe (a pulsing rust glow the
renderer lays over the door) — those are renderer effects, not images.

## The terrain, in two families

**Floor decals** — `public/textures/pit.png`, `slime.png`, `tacks.png`,
`dimwarp.png` — are painted INTO the flagstones by the floor caster,
alpha-blended texel by texel like the home tile: transparent wherever
plain floor should show. The pit can carry its own painted label if
wanted. Square, any size.

**Standing volumes** — `public/terrain3d/thornbush.png`, `rosebush.png`,
`jello.png`, `dust.png`, `warpglow.png` — are billboards in the room.
The hedges render CELL-WIDE at half wall height (paint them twice as
wide as tall; a wizard in the square peeks over the top). The jello
cube fills the whole square and is drawn ~60% opaque — paint it solid,
the renderer supplies the translucency. Dust likewise. `warpglow` is a
pillar of light drawn ADDITIVELY (like the old glow sprites): bright
means bright, black vanishes. Rehearse any of them in place:
`/?fpv&terrain=thornbush@3,7;jello@4,7;dimwarp@2,7`.

## One more paintable surface: the home tile

`public/textures/home.png` is a floor overlay for home-base cells,
drawn over the flagstones and TINTED by the owning wizard's color at
draw time. Paint it near-white/neutral with transparency wherever the
plain floor should show through; the tint does the rest. Square, any
size, same as the other textures.