Eric WagonerandClaude Fable 5
cdfae39398
Entertainment polish for the instant replay, all through one wizard's eyes. Doors now slide open along their own edge — Wolf3D style — when anyone steps through in a reel, hold for the crossing, and swing shut; the raycaster takes a per-edge openness map and doors carry their texture with them, leaving a sliver of jamb at the far post. A wall that dies bursts into stone and shakes the camera, then leaves a mound of rubble at the fallen edge for the rest of the reel (a tenth paintable sprite, drawn opaque — debris, not light). Jammed locks seethe: a rusty pulse across the wood, keyed off the view's own door states. Walking THROUGH a wall shimmers on both faces and washes the walker's own screen stone-gray. And every home base wears its owner's emblem on the flagstones — a near-white paintable overlay tinted by wizard color per cell in the floor cast. Testing surfaced a real ghost: a body standing near a far warp mouth also rendered at its virtual position, which can overlap real corridors — the depth buffer alone cannot clip it. Every column now remembers whether its ray bent, and a sprite draws only where its warp side matches the column's; projectile legs carry the same flag. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
3.6 KiB
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.
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.