Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5
7a32370ccb
Three blind reviews over the first-person arc, every finding verified against the source. History-narrating comments made timeless or cut; the stacked BUDDY comment collapsed to one voice. Dead code out: the orphaned FACE copy, the DIR_ANGLE duplicate, the dead loop-counter poke, the impossible-state sentinel. The never-produced "warp" hit kind resolved the right way — warp mouths now hang a translucent veil of the painted warp texture, so art that never rendered finally does. Types tightened (SlabStrike named once, ShareData rides CatchUpStep, botTier loses its casts), the gallery reads MATERIALS instead of a hand-copied list, the chronicle resets through one helper, a superseded share mint rejects instead of stranding, and the conjured safe gains the growth key its siblings had. Tests lose a triple assignment, a tautology, and two self-swallowing regex alternatives. The sprite spec — which still told the artist to paint for additive compositing the renderer no longer uses — now describes the renderer that exists. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
91 lines
5.1 KiB
Markdown
91 lines
5.1 KiB
Markdown
# The conjuration sprites — a spec for the artist
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The first-person view (`/?fpv`, and the replay's "your eyes" mode) throws
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spell moments through the air as **billboard sprites**: flat images that
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always face the camera, drawn in mid-air, occluded by walls, and scaled
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by distance. The sprites in `FX_ART` (fpv/fx3d.ts) cover every spell
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moment in the game. Each lives at `packages/web/public/fx3d/<name>.png`
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— replace the file, refresh, done. Missing files fall back to built-in
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procedural glows; the whole set is shown side by side at `/?tokens`
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under "The conjurations."
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## Technical requirements
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- **Format:** PNG with a transparent background. The transparent area is
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essential — whatever is opaque is what flies.
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- **Size:** square, any resolution; 128×128 or 256×256 recommended. The
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renderer scales freely and pixelates on magnification (the whole view
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is deliberately chunky, like the wall textures).
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- **Compositing:** painted sprites draw normally — inks stay true, dark
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outlines hold. (Only `warpglow` in terrain3d is drawn additively, as
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light.) Impacts fade out by alpha as they swell.
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- **No animation frames.** Each sprite is a single still. Motion comes
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from the renderer: projectiles streak across the room, impacts swell
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from small to large while fading out. Radially symmetric (or nearly so)
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designs work best since the image does not rotate.
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- **Fills most of the canvas.** Leave only a small transparent margin;
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the renderer sizes the sprite by its canvas, not its painted extent.
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## The nine sprites and where they appear
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| file | flies as | moment |
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| --- | --- | --- |
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| `fireball.png` | projectile | Fireball, Sudden Death, Blaster Wand — a ball of fire streaking caster → target |
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| `bolt.png` | projectile | Lightning Blast, Power Drain — a crackling bolt |
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| `waterbolt.png` | projectile | Waterbolt — a hurled gout of water |
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| `spark.png` | projectile | anything else that travels: thrown objects, bodies knocked back, dragged things — a neutral streak of force |
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| `burst.png` | impact | a fireball landing; victory fireworks — swells and fades |
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| `splash.png` | impact | waterbolt landing, stone turned to water |
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| `hit.png` | impact | damage landing on someone you can see; punches, claws |
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| `shimmer.png` | impact | teleports, warps, illusions, minds touched — the general "magic happened here" glimmer, violet by tradition |
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| `shield.png` | impact | an attack fully stopped; absorbed spells |
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| `rubble.png` | prop | a destroyed wall's remains: bursts on the kill, then stands stretched across the fallen edge's whole gap for the rest of the reel — piles painted at the canvas's lower corners land at the two posts |
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Projectiles hold their size in flight (about a third of a wizard's
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height). Impacts start small and swell past triple while fading — so an
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impact painted as a ring or burst reads especially well.
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What the sprites do NOT need to carry: screen-wide flashes when YOU are
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hit (red), healed (green), or teleported (violet), the camera shake, the
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door slide (doors animate by sliding `door.png` along its own edge — no
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separate art), and the jammed-lock seethe (a pulsing rust glow the
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renderer lays over the door) — those are renderer effects, not images.
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## The terrain, in two families
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**Floor decals** — `public/textures/pit.png`, `slime.png`, `tacks.png`,
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`dimwarp.png` — are painted INTO the flagstones by the floor caster,
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alpha-blended texel by texel like the home tile: transparent wherever
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plain floor should show. The pit can carry its own painted label if
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wanted. Square, any size.
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**Standing volumes** — `public/terrain3d/thornbush.png`, `rosebush.png`,
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`jello.png`, `dust.png`, `warpglow.png` — are billboards in the room.
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The hedges render CELL-WIDE at half wall height (paint them twice as
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wide as tall; a wizard in the square peeks over the top). The jello
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cube fills the whole square and is drawn ~60% opaque — paint it solid,
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the renderer supplies the translucency. Dust likewise. `warpglow` is a
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pillar of light drawn ADDITIVELY (like the old glow sprites): bright
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means bright, black vanishes. Rehearse any of them in place:
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`/?fpv&terrain=thornbush@3,7;jello@4,7;dimwarp@2,7`.
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## Walls' dressing and damage
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`public/textures/doorframe.png` dresses OPEN doorways: paint an empty
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stone doorway on transparency — posts in the outer ~8% columns, the
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lintel in the top ~16% rows, nothing in the middle (the way through).
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`public/textures/cracks.png` is battle damage: dark fractures on
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transparency, laid over any damaged wall with opacity rising as the
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harm mounts. `public/textures/underbrush.png` is the ground beneath a
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hedge — leaf litter to the square's edges, a floor decal like the pit.
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`public/terrain3d/safe.png` is the wall safe, standing as an opaque
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strongbox (square, transparent ground).
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## One more paintable surface: the home tile
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`public/textures/home.png` is a floor overlay for home-base cells,
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drawn over the flagstones and TINTED by the owning wizard's color at
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draw time. Paint it near-white/neutral with transparency wherever the
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plain floor should show through; the tint does the rest. Square, any
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size, same as the other textures.
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