Ground look and levels

client needs-review

repo: land-of-lor (game + director + tools/world-editor + docs/design), and this workspace (epic, deliverables) · depends on: ground-types · updated 2026-08-20

What this is

A workshop between Kris and a laptop session on 2026-08-18, run against two north-star pictures (a cartoony painted coastline; a blockier one with a raised grass cliff over a beach), turned into a build. The record — twelve decisions with their why, the levels rule stated precisely, provisional hexagrams for the engine build, the consequences said out loud — is land-of-lor/docs/design/2026-08-18-ground-look-and-levels-workshop.md. Read it first; this overview does not restate it.

The one-paragraph version: the ground shader goes unshaded so what Claude Design paints is what the player sees; sand sinks an eighth of a cell like water sinks a quarter; every hexagram gains a level (−1/0/+1) and you cross levels only over a ramp hexagram whose slope is derived from its neighbours (one edge rule, in movement.gd for server and client prediction, in the flow field for creatures, and in one shared shell/ground_rules.mjs for the loader’s validation and the editor’s loose ends); the mesh becomes a height field on the lattice it already has (cliff faces where water banks are today, shaded by the shader as an earth wall with a lip); mountains stack only among the same flavour, to a double peak, the Volcano crowning any range, and Earth over Mountain is a rounded-square boulder; water and lava move in the shader behind a toggle with a frame-time readout; and the next tile brief asks for ~30 files (a hexagram points at its tile, several may share one, a hexagram with no meaning shows its flat base colour) from a fresh Claude Design project (became https://claude.ai/design/p/373a1833-0687-48d5-9ee0-70784f613ff3 — Kris reuses this same session for future tile tweaks).

Scope and non-goals

In: everything above, tests, shots, the editor’s palette and loose ends for levels and ramps, the Badlands repainted for the new mountain rules, the brief, and shipping v3 tiles when they come back (APK bump, droplet if the director changes — it shouldn’t; nothing on the wire moves).

Out: which hexagrams finally carry which meaning beyond the provisional four — that is task 005 with Kris, and it comes with a one-off migration of retired flavours in existing paint; passability by nature (water creatures on water) — later, as before; any decor layer (Kris: rocks and plants will be items and complex objects, not decoration); the tile art itself, which Claude Design makes.

Order

001 the look → 002 levels and ramps → 003 mountains → 004 animation → 005 meanings pass + brief (Kris) → 006 v3 tiles in and shipped. 001–004 are engine work a session does alone and shows in shots; 005 needs Kris; 006 waits on Claude Design.

Status

1 ready1 review5 done

Next: 006 waits on Kris's formal sign-off (the v3 tiles are live). 007 — a flank texture for mountains — was TRIED on 2026-08-20 and rolled back: not better enough for its cost. It stays ready, with the experiment written up in its own file; the root cause is that the ground mesh carries no UVs.

Deliverables (3)

Tasks (7)

ready (1)

ground-look-and-levels/007 — A flank texture for mountains — the faces are wearing floor tiles (priority 2, estimate M )

review (1)

ground-look-and-levels/006 — v3 tiles in — kit renders, in-game shots, judged, shipped (priority 3, estimate M , blocked by ground-look-and-levels/005 , delivers #15) · review artifact: deliverables/015-the-v3-tiles-are-in.md

done (5)

ground-look-and-levels/001 — The look — unshaded ground, sink depths, tile pointers with a flat fallback (priority 1, estimate S )
ground-look-and-levels/002 — Three levels and ramp hexagrams — the edge rule, the height-field mesh, the mirrors and the editor (priority 1, estimate M )
ground-look-and-levels/003 — Mountains — same-flavour stacking to a double peak, the Volcano crowning, and the kw 15 boulder (priority 2, estimate S )
ground-look-and-levels/004 — Water and lava move — shader drift, shimmer, glow, shore foam, behind a toggle with a frame-time readout (priority 2, estimate S )
ground-look-and-levels/005 — The meanings pass with Kris, tile pointers, and the new brief for a fresh Claude Design project (priority 3, estimate M )

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