settled-reach/docs/workshops/art-direction-mood-board/round3-miri.md

Round 3 -- Miri's Worldbuilding & Setting Perspective

Agent: Miri (Worldbuilder & Setting Designer) Date: 2026-02-12 Workshop: Art Direction & Mood Board

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1. Lead Decisions — Acknowledged

Vision shape: CONE. Confirmed. Setting-correct. The asymmetry is what makes turning around a decision, not a reflex. The character physically has forward vision and peripheral awareness — the Rust occlusion tracers are simulating biology, not technology. The lattice doesn't expand your visual field; it annotates what you already see.

Planet name: Velen. Confirmed. Entering the wiki as canonical. Krenn System's primary habitable world. Temperate-maritime, ~0.9G, regular rain, morning/evening fog. Station Sova orbits Velen. The span gate connects Sova to a planetary freight depot on Velen's surface.

Character temperature in the overlay layer — with the "where they hang" clarification. This is the correct resolution. Let me state it precisely for the record:

The world has warm zones and cool zones. This is physical reality — the bar has amber fixtures, the Terminal has cool-white panels. Neither character's overlay changes the base lighting. What differs is the character's daily path through the station:

• The smuggler's routine moves through warm spaces: the dock floor (active, industrial-warm from machinery), the break room, the bar. Their life is socially embedded. They live in the warm zones.
• The detective's routine moves through cool spaces: the Commission kiosk area, observation positions, corridor patrols, data review at institutional terminals. Their life is institutionally framed. They work in the cool zones.

Same station, same Light2D fixtures, same tile-based world. The character's daily experience has a different average color temperature because they physically spend time in different places. The smuggler's playthrough feels warmer because the smuggler's life is warmer. No overlay manipulation needed.

This is more honest and more powerful than a shader tint. It's the setting doing the work.

Environmental neutrality. No concerns. Confirmed and consistent with my Round 1 and Round 2 positions.

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2. Topic A: Z-Levels and Sprite Stacking — Setting Perspective

How Many Z-Levels Does the Setting Demand?

The setting has architectural z-level implications. Sova Transit District is not a single flat plane — it's a station interior with infrastructure depth:

Physical z-levels in the setting:

1. Sub-floor. Utility conduits, maintenance crawlspaces, sealed sections from original construction. Not visually rendered as a separate level, but the existence of underfloor space is setting-relevant — maintenance hatches access it, and some smuggling ring operations use sealed sub-floor sections as caches.

2. Floor level. Where people walk, where objects sit. The primary gameplay plane. This is where 95%+ of v0.1 takes place.

3. Overhead. Pipes, cable runs, ventilation ducts, overhead lighting fixtures. Visible from top-down as elements that entities walk under. In the setting, the ceiling height varies by zone and era: Terminal has high institutional ceilings (Era 1 standard), the bar has a lower modified ceiling (Era 2-3 partition), maintenance corridors vary (some original height, some reduced by retrofit ductwork).

What this means for rendering layers (setting input, not technical spec):

Layer	Setting content	Visual role
Floor tiles	Composite, tile, grating, guide strips	Zone identity, movement surface
Wall bases	Wall panels at floor level, door frames	Occlusion boundaries, room definition
Floor objects	Furniture, equipment, containers, small items	Environmental character, interaction targets
Entity layer	NPCs, player character	Gameplay information (color, silhouette, animation)
Overhead	Pipes, ducts, lighting fixtures, overhead signage	Atmosphere, partial occlusion, architectural character
Fog/perception	Vision cone mask, fog of perception	Information boundary
Insert overlay	Lattice HUD elements, annotations, waypoints	Character-specific information layer
UI	Non-diegetic elements (if any)	Player interface

Wall Rendering — Setting Input

From the setting: station walls are modular panels. From true top-down, you'd see the top edge of a wall — a thin strip. But this communicates almost nothing about the wall's character (era, material, condition).

Setting recommendation: walls should show a narrow face strip (the top ~25% of the wall visible as a slight perspective cheat) to communicate material and era. An Era 1 institutional wall panel looks different from an Era 2 modified partition looks different from a maintenance corridor's exposed structural wall. If walls are only thin lines from above, we lose the three-era visual vocabulary.

This is the same perspective cheat Rimworld and Prison Architect use — not fully isometric, but enough wall face to communicate what the wall is made of.

Entities Under Overhead Elements

Setting-relevant: in Sova's maintenance corridors, low-hanging pipes and ductwork partially obscure the view. An NPC walking under a pipe run is momentarily harder to see — the overhead element partially occludes them.

This is both atmospheric (the corridors feel more enclosed, more layered) and mechanical (overhead elements could create brief occlusion gaps in the vision cone — you lose sight of someone for a moment as they pass under a pipe cluster). Whether this is v0.1 scope is a technical question, but the setting supports it.

Sprite Stacking for Pseudo-3D

Setting position: not needed for v0.1. The station's visual character comes from floor variation, object variety, and lighting — not from vertical dimension. Sprite stacking is a future enhancement that could add depth to multi-level areas (looking down from a mezzanine, for instance), but it's not where the setting's visual identity lives.

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3. Topic B: v0.1.1 Minimum Sprite Set — Setting Perspective

What One Test Room Needs

The minimum viable test should prove the art direction works for a setting-recognizable space. I'd recommend the Terminal break room — it's the space where institutional and personal elements coexist, which tests the three-era tile vocabulary.

Structural tiles (minimum):

Tile	Count	Purpose
Era 1 institutional wall panel	~12	Room perimeter
Standard pressure door	1-2	Entry/exit
Institutional composite floor	~20	Main floor surface
Worn commercial tile floor	~6	Break area sub-zone (proves zone transition within a room)

Object tiles (minimum):

Tile	Count	Purpose
Manifest terminal + desk	1	Work surface, proves "institutional"
Institutional table	1	Break area
Institutional chair	1	Matching set (Era 1)
Mismatched chair	1	Non-matching (Era 3) — proves temporal layering
Worker locker	1-2	Personal storage, possible personalization
Coffee machine or equivalent	1	Human comfort detail
Cargo container (small)	1	Industrial context
Meridian junction box (wall-mounted)	1	Era 2 retrofit, proves surface-mounted technology
Emergency guide strip	2-3	Floor-level infrastructure

Entity sprites (minimum):

Sprite	Purpose
Player character (coveralls, civilian)	Movement, vision cone origin
NPC dock worker (different silhouette from player)	Proves silhouette differentiation
NPC at terminal (seated, working animation)	Proves clear activity animation tier

That's ~10-12 structural tiles, ~9-10 object tiles, and 3 entity sprites. Total: ~22-25 distinct assets. Enough to prove: floor transition works, object variety communicates setting, entities read against muted environment, Light2D makes it atmospheric.

Setting Constraints for Nano Banana Generation

For the tile generation workflow, the setting provides these consistency anchors:

• Era 1 palette: Cool grey (#7a7f85 range), clean edges, minimal wear, institutional markings
• Era 2 palette: Similar grey but subtly different tone (#6d7178 range), surface-mounted elements, visible fasteners where they join Era 1 material
• Era 3 palette: Warmer tones for commercial/personal items, more color variety, less uniform. Chairs don't match. Mugs have different colors. Personal items are idiosyncratic.
• Consistent outline weight across all tiles — the Rimworld principle. Entities have heavier outlines than objects, objects have heavier outlines than floor tiles.
• Consistent shadow direction — all tiles cast shadows to the same side. Top-down convention: light from upper-left, shadows to lower-right.
• Consistent scale — a chair tile and a desk tile should imply the same spatial scale.

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4. Image Reactions

Image #8 (Tile Composition) — Already Reviewed

My full review was sent previously. Summary: tile-based approach validated. Floor material transition works, object tiles read as discrete placed items, the mismatched chairs are setting-perfect. Minor adjustments: entity scale slightly large for tile grid, corridors need more infrastructure tiles.

Image #9 (Bar Antagonists) — New Review

What lands:

The population density is right for peak evening. Multiple patrons at tables, people at the bar counter, a sense of social activity. This is The Last Shift during evening shift turnover — the busiest it gets. Setting-correct.

Lera behind the bar. The figure with the apron at the bar counter, shelves of bottles behind her. She reads instantly as "bartender" from silhouette alone. The bar counter as visual anchor dominates the space — you know this is a bar before reading any sign. Setting-correct.

The two detailed NPCs at the center table. These two are rendered with more detail than the surrounding silhouetted patrons. From a setting perspective, this could represent the player's focused attention — the vision cone's detail gradient. You're looking at these two specifically. Everyone else is peripheral. The reason you're looking at them is the game: are they ring members meeting? Just colleagues having a drink? The visual doesn't tell you. The ambiguity is correct.

The warm/cool zone boundary. The bar's amber warmth (upper half) meeting the corridor's cool institutional light (lower half) with the wall and doorway as the boundary. The floor tile transition is visible. The player character standing in the cool corridor, looking into the warm bar — this is the smuggler deciding to go in, or the detective observing from outside. Either reading works. Setting-correct.

What needs adjustment:

The perspective has drifted from true top-down. The bar shelves, the wall face, the bottle detail — these read as 3/4 isometric rather than the true top-down we converged on in the #7 discussion. For a mood board this is fine (it communicates the bar's character effectively), but the actual game perspective should be closer to #8's overhead angle. The bar counter from true top-down would be a horizontal band, not a front-facing surface. (See Addendum §5 — this criticism partially retracts under Rimworld's shallow tilt. #9's angle may be close to the new target.)

The detail-vs-silhouette boundary needs setting logic. The two detailed NPCs surrounded by silhouettes is visually striking, but in the actual game this distinction should be driven by the vision cone and attention, not by arbitrary spotlight. Everyone in the player's forward vision cone should have entity color and readable silhouette. Peripheral figures get reduced detail. Figures in fog disappear entirely. The current image suggests a "focus on two, everyone else dark" approach which is more cinematic than mechanical.

The figure in the far-left corridor (with helmet/hat) reads slightly industrial/military again. Minor note — maintain civilian reads for all corridor entities.

Setting verdict: The bar scene captures the social atmosphere of The Last Shift. Population density, spatial layout, the bartender, the warm lighting — all correct. The visual differentiation between detailed and silhouetted figures is a compelling direction if it maps to the vision cone's attention gradient. The warm-cool zone boundary continues to work.

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5. Addendum: Camera Angle Shift — Rimworld's Shallow Tilt

The lead has signaled a move away from pure top-down toward Rimworld's camera angle: a very shallow tilt, nearly orthographic top-down but with just enough forward perspective to show object front faces and give depth cues.

Let me check this against what we've established.

What Changes (Setting Impact)

Walls: My Round 2 recommendation becomes native. I advocated for a "perspective cheat" — showing a narrow wall face strip (~25%) to communicate the three-era material vocabulary. With Rimworld's shallow tilt, that face strip is no longer a cheat. It's what you'd actually see. Era 1 institutional panels, Era 2 modified partitions, and maintenance corridor exposed structural walls all become more readable because the camera naturally reveals their front face. This is a setting win — the three-era visual vocabulary gets better, not worse.

Furniture and objects: Front faces visible. The manifest terminal shows its screen face. The bar counter shows its front panel. Lera's bottle shelves are readable. Worker lockers show their doors. Every object tile gains a narrow front face that communicates what it IS, not just its footprint shape. This directly improves the tile vocabulary from Round 2 — an institutional chair and a mismatched bar chair become even more distinguishable.

Entities: Silhouette improves. From pure top-down, you mostly see the top of someone's head and shoulders. With Rimworld's tilt, you see a sliver of their front — enough to read coveralls vs. apron vs. institutional jacket. The silhouette differentiation I flagged as critical (I-01: "silhouette IS identity because color is spoken for") gets more information to work with. Setting benefit.

The bar shelves in Image #9 start to make sense. I flagged #9's perspective as "drifted from true top-down" — the bar shelves and bottle detail read as 3/4 isometric. With Rimworld's angle as the target, #9's perspective may actually be close to correct. The bottles, the bar counter front face, the shelf detail — these are visible because the camera has a slight tilt. My criticism of #9's perspective partially retracts. The image may have been ahead of the decision.

What Doesn't Change

Vision cone math stays simple. Rimworld's tilt is shallow enough that the gameplay plane is essentially flat. The Rust occlusion tracers (D-015) still operate on a 2D grid. A wall still blocks line of sight. A doorway still creates a sight line. The tilt is cosmetic depth, not mechanical depth. The asymmetric cone — forward, peripheral, behind — works identically.

Tile grid stays orthogonal. Rimworld uses a square grid, not an isometric diamond grid. Tiles are still placed on a rectilinear grid. The tilt just means each tile sprite includes a narrow front face in addition to its top face. This means the Nano Banana generation spec changes slightly (tiles need a consistent front-face strip at the bottom of each sprite) but the grid math, pathfinding, and room definitions are unchanged.

Z-level rendering stack stays the same. The 8-layer stack I proposed above still applies. Floor → wall bases → floor objects → entities → overhead → fog → insert overlay → UI. The tilt just means "wall bases" naturally show a face strip instead of requiring a perspective cheat.

Lighting model unchanged. Light2D, CanvasModulate, zone-based warm/cool — all work the same way. The tilt doesn't affect the lighting pipeline.

Environmental neutrality unchanged. No impact.

What Needs Attention

Overhead elements become more visually prominent. With a tilt, pipes and ducts that cross the ceiling aren't just directly above — they have a slight visual offset. In maintenance corridors, this could actually help the enclosed feeling I described: you see overhead infrastructure slightly forward of where it sits, creating a layered depth that communicates "low ceiling, dense infrastructure." But sprite artists need a consistent rule for how far forward overhead elements visually project.

Shadow direction needs revisiting. With true top-down, the convention is light from upper-left, shadow to lower-right. With a tilt, the shadow convention should account for the implied light angle. Rimworld's shadows are consistent but subtle — we should match that: all shadows cast in the same direction, derived from a consistent implied light source position.

Entity facing direction becomes partially visible. With true top-down, you see the same entity sprite regardless of which way they face (just rotated). With a tilt, a figure facing toward the camera shows a sliver of face/front; a figure facing away shows their back. This is mechanically useful: you can tell which direction an NPC is looking, which feeds into the vision cone awareness system. If I can see an NPC's back, I know they're facing away from me. Setting note: this is how you read body orientation in real life — it's biologically correct.

Setting Verdict on the Shift

Endorse. Rimworld's shallow tilt is the best position on the spectrum for our setting needs. It gives us:

• The three-era wall vocabulary I fought for, natively
• Better entity silhouette differentiation
• Object front faces that improve readability
• Facing direction as visual information
• No mechanical complexity increase (grid stays square, LOS stays 2D)

The shift is cosmetic-beneficial, mechanically neutral, and setting-positive. Image #9's angle is closer to the target than I initially assessed.

One caution: the tilt must stay shallow enough that the player reads the game as "top-down with depth" not "isometric." The moment entities start looking like they're standing on a tilted plane rather than a flat floor, we've gone too far. Rimworld's angle is the ceiling, not the floor.

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Setting note — this workshop has produced something I wasn't sure was possible: an art direction that is simultaneously setting-faithful, mechanically supportive, technically achievable, and visually distinctive. The tile-based composition IS how stations are built. The lighting IS how different zones feel. The entity colors ARE how relationships are perceived. The fog IS what you don't know. Nothing in the visual direction is fighting the setting — it's all expressing it. That convergence is rare and valuable.

Velen is now canonical. The Settled Reach has its first named planet.

Miri out.