kronic
89dd155f85
Adopt LANTERN as the operative direction (co-op action-RPG, light-as-territory), superseding the Awakening Engine fiction + the Co-op Hades iteration. Existing code becomes salvage quarry; the mechanical pillars hold. Phase 0 deliverables (doc portions): - DR-048 adoption decision record (0.1) - Lantern_Strip_Mothball_Inventory — system-by-system keep/rework/mothball (0.2) - Lantern_World_Model_Spike — pocket-graph + seed-pinning BRIEF, review-first (0.3) - Art_Direction_Lantern — style bible + material decision + A0 gate (0.4) Docs/skills sweep: Pillars pointers + LANTERN locked decisions; superseded banners on Identity, Iteration_CoopHades, Path_to_Fun, Milestones, Backlog, End_Of_Month (all redirect to the LANTERN roadmap); Home MoC + current-direction callout (and stale serena line fixed); Systems_Index era note; CLAUDE.md core-loop line -> LANTERN direction pointer (verbose co-op-Hades invariants archived to the gotchas archive, net-neutral under the 40 KB budget); dots-dev validation-harness expedition-run recipe flagged era-specific. Two Phase-0 gate items remain OPEN (not doc work): the 0.3 world-model design review and the 0.4 in-engine style-proof scene. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
99 lines
6.2 KiB
Markdown
99 lines
6.2 KiB
Markdown
---
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tags: [vision, art-direction, lantern, style-bible, workstream-a]
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status: draft-binding
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updated: 2026-07-13
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permalink: gamevault/01-vision/art-direction-lantern
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---
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# LANTERN — Art Direction Lock (Workstream A0)
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> The binding one-page style bible for [[Roadmap_Lantern_Slice]]'s art track (Workstream A0, runs inside
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> Phase 0). Adopted under [[DR-048_Lantern_Adoption_Full_Pivot]]. This is the **written** half of A0; the
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> gate is the **in-engine style-proof scene** (below), which is **not yet built** — Phase 0 does not exit
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> until it is approved. The readability law is lifted verbatim from [[Identity_Lantern#Art, audio & the
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> readability law|the identity]] and applies to every asset from day one.
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>
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> **Why this matters more than usual:** one developer, learning Blender, shipping custom creatures. This
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> direction lives or dies on a **repeatable factory**, not on any single beautiful asset. Every rule here is
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> chosen so that creature N+1 is a routine sitting, not a research project.
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## Style bible (binding)
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- **Stylized low-poly, RoR2-lineage.** Silhouette-first; faceted geometry; flat / near-flat shading. Mood is
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carried by **dynamic light in murk**, never by texture detail. A readable blob with a great light beats a
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detailed model nobody can see in the dark.
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- **Poly budgets (hard):** props **≤ ~800 tris** · creatures **≤ ~3k** · hero / boss / suit-frames **≤ ~6k**.
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- **The palette is the ontology** (the fiction rule made visible): **warm gold/amber = light (ours, true) ·
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cold corpse-green/blue = gloam (the deep's counterfeit) · lure-red = bait · white-hot = conversion.**
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- **The readability law (binding, from the three reviews):**
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1. **Value first, hue second.** Every warm/cold distinction is *also* carried by luminance value, shape
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language, and **flicker-cadence** (steady = true, flicker = false — the load-bearing channel; hue is the
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garnish). This is the colorblind answer (gold-vs-green is a worst-case red-green pair).
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2. **Design the dark floor for the video encoder, not the OLED.** Bioluminescent ground-clutter density is
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the streamability dial; dark scenes must survive 6–8 Mbps without macroblocking. A separate **capture /
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photo grade** (lifted, saturated profile) ships for clips and screenshots.
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3. **Screenshot discipline.** Every promotional frame reads at **200 px** with a warm focal light AND a
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legible silhouette.
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## The material decision (the solo-dev keystone)
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**No per-asset texturing, ever.** This is the single most important production rule in the project.
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- **One shared palette / gradient atlas** — Imphenzia-style: a single small texture of colour bands. UVs are
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*placed onto bands*, not unwrapped. Zero texture-painting skill required; perfect style coherence; batches
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hard.
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- **Vertex-colour accents** for per-asset variation on top of the atlas.
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- **Three master shaders — the whole rendering surface of the game:**
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1. **`Lit-Palette`** — statics (props, dressing, environment, station).
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2. **`Emissive-Gloam`** — parameterized warm/cold/lure emissive. **One shader is the entire palette rule:**
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its parameters (hue, **flicker-cadence**, intensity) are *both* the look *and* gameplay information
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(true-vs-false light). Every glow in the game is this shader.
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3. **`Skinned-Palette`** — deformation-aware (the Rukhanka-skinned creatures/suits). Replaces the current
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`AnimatedLitShader` role as the palette-atlas creature material.
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**Every asset in the game shares ~3 materials.** Coherence, batching, and no per-asset UV/texture work — that
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is the amortization that makes a one-person creature factory possible.
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> ⚠ **Carry-over gotcha ([[material-property-body-flash-rukhanka]]):** a per-instance `URPMaterialPropertyBaseColor`
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> tint only renders if the shader declares `_BaseColor` **Hybrid-Per-Instance** (ShaderGraph
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> `overrideHLSLDeclaration:true` + `hlslDeclarationOverride:2`). The three master shaders must be authored
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> Hybrid-Per-Instance if we want per-instance gloam-tint variants (a free variant axis — see A2 variant policy).
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## Reference board
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- **RoR2** — shape language, faceted low-poly, dynamic-light-first in dark ambient.
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- **Dredge** — water mood, dread, the sea-as-atmosphere.
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- **Hollow Knight** — value control in darkness (how to stay legible with almost no light).
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- **Below** — the **cautionary** case: solo dread + screenshot-illegible darkness killed it. The readability
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law exists specifically against this failure.
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## The style-proof scene — THE GATE (not yet built)
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**One prop + one creature + one suit**, in-engine, under murk + dynamic lights, on the capture grade. Judged
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three ways, all of which must pass:
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1. **Full-size** — reads as *this game and no other*.
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2. **At 200 px** — silhouette + warm focal light legible (screenshot-discipline rule).
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3. **In grayscale** — value-first / flicker-cadence carries the true-vs-false read with hue removed.
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**Locked before any mass production.** This gate + [[DR-048_Lantern_Adoption_Full_Pivot]] + the world-model
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review ([[Lantern_World_Model_Spike]]) together are Phase 0's exit. Until this scene is approved, Workstream A
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stays in A0 (no A1 pipeline proof, no A2 factory).
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## Handoff to the deeper pass (A1 recipes)
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The concrete recipe documents are **A1 work** (Phase 1), not A0: the **statics recipe** (Blender → export
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units/scale → collider policy → entity baking → palette material) and the **skinned recipe** (rig → per-action
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clips, Key All Bones, bake-to-pose → FBX → Rukhanka ingest → `Skinned-Palette` → prefab). Both build on the
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project's proven animation pipeline ([[DR-022_Animation_Pipeline_Rukhanka_Synty]] / [[DR-023_Enemy_Animation_MonsterMash]]
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+ the machine-local Blender recipe) and the **three rig families** (Drifter / Crawler / Strider). This doc is
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the constitution; the recipes are the operating manuals.
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## Related
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- [[Identity_Lantern]] — the fiction the palette encodes (the readability law lives there too)
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- [[Roadmap_Lantern_Slice]] — Workstream A (A0 → A1 → A2 → A3) gates
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- [[DR-048_Lantern_Adoption_Full_Pivot]] — the adoption
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- [[Synty_Asset_Inventory]] — placeholder quarry until custom assets land
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- [[DR-022_Animation_Pipeline_Rukhanka_Synty]] — the skinned-material lineage `Skinned-Palette` inherits
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