fertig-classic-games/src/games/mastervega/sprites.md

Master of Vega — art spec

Every sheet below is optional. Each one starts with "path": null in data/mastervega-artwork.json, and VegaArt.js paints a procedural stand-in with the identical frame layout — the game is fully playable with zero art files. To use real art: drop the PNG in assets/images/vega/ and set its path in the artwork JSON. No code changes are needed.

Frame indexes are APPEND-ONLY. Never renumber an existing frame — the indexes are baked into data/mastervega-rules.json and shifting them silently mismaps every piece of artwork already drawn.

Status: ⬜ = not painted yet (procedural fallback in use).

Two different pictures of a planet are used and they are not interchangeable: the planets sheet (§2) is a transparent 192 px disc for the orrery, and the world backdrops (§2b) are opaque 1920 × 1080 scenes for the colony screen.

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1. ships — ✅ assets/images/vega/ships.png

Sheet size	1536 × 1920
Frame	192 × 192
Grid	8 cols × 10 rows = 80 frames

One row per species, one column per hull. Frame = species.shipFrame × 8 + hull.frame.

Columns (hull):

Col	Hull	Notes
0	Scout	Small, fast, unarmed
1	Colony Ship	Bulbous, carries a habitat pod
2	Troop Transport	Boxy, no guns
3	Frigate	Smallest warship
4	Destroyer	Mid warship
5	Cruiser	Heavy warship
6	Battleship	The big one — should read as huge even at 24px
7	Star Base	Immobile orbital fortress; a ring/station, not a ship

Rows (species): 0 Human, 1 Kestrelli, 2 Ursaal, 3 Umbrix, 4 Kkrix, 5 Mekhan, 6 Rrashaa, 7 Cerebrai, 8 Ssakar, 9 Lithox.

Ships face UP. The battle screen rotates them ±90° so the two sides face each other. Each species has a colour in the rules file — art can ignore it (the sprite is used as-is) or lean into it.

Only the human row is painted so far; the other nine fall back to the procedural stand-in, which is cut at the same 192px geometry.

The thumbnails and the detail window turn the hull a full 180° — a deliberate look, not a correction. makeShipIcon in VegaShipMedia.js is the one place that does it, with setAngle(180) rather than setFlipY: a flip would mirror the hull's asymmetries, a rotation does not.

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1b. Ship commander videos — 🟨 assets/videos/vega/ship-<species>-<hull>.mp4

Not part of the sheet. One looping 256 × 256 muted clip per species per hull — the officer who flies that class — shown beside the hull on every ship row and at full size in the detail window.

Declared in shipVideos in data/mastervega-artwork.json, nested species → hull id → { key, path }. A species with none recorded is a single null. Same drop-in contract as everything else: drop the files, add the lines, no code changes.

The fallback ladder is one tier deeper than the species portraits:

1. this species' clip for this hull — shipVideos[species][hull]
2. the species' own portrait video — portraitVideos[species] (§ below)
3. its 1024px still — portraitStills[species]
4. a frame on the procedural portraits sheet

So a gap is never a hole: every row shows a moving face from day one, and each new race lights up one clip at a time. starbase has no clip for anyone and is expected to keep falling through.

Hull id	File suffix	Human
scout	ship-human-scout.mp4	✅
colonyship	⚠️ ship-human-**colony**.mp4	✅
transport	ship-human-transport.mp4	✅
frigate	ship-human-frigate.mp4	✅
destroyer	ship-human-destroyer.mp4	✅
cruiser	ship-human-cruiser.mp4	✅
battleship	ship-human-battleship.mp4	✅
starbase	—	⬜ falls back

⚠️ The colony ship's file is ship-human-colony.mp4 while its hull id is colonyship. Same class of mismatch as char-cerebai.mp4: the manifest points at the real filename and the verifier confirms both the file and the derived texture key, so wiring it the wrong way round fails immediately rather than 404ing in the browser.

Rows: kestrelli, ursaal, umbrix, kkrix, mekhan, rrashaa, cerebrai, ssakar and lithox are all ⬜ — nine species × seven hulls outstanding.

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2. planets — ⬜ assets/images/vega/planets.png

Sheet size	960 × 576
Frame	192 × 192
Grid	5 cols × 3 rows = 15 frames

One frame per planet type, in rules order. Draw the planet as a centred disc filling ~84% of the frame, transparent outside it — the orrery and system view both place these on a black background and scale them.

Frame	Type	Look
0	Terran	Blue oceans, green continents, white cloud
1	Ocean	Almost entirely water, scattered islands
2	Jungle	Deep green, permanent cloud banding
3	Steppe	Olive grassland, thin atmosphere
4	Arid	Tan, dry riverbeds
5	Desert	Orange sand seas, no water
6	Tundra	Pale blue-grey, heavy ice caps
7	Minimal	Grey-green, very thin air
8	Barren	Airless grey rock, craters
9	Dead	Darker, cracked, lifeless
10	Inferno	Molten orange, volcanic
11	Toxic	Sickly yellow-green fog
12	Radiated	Livid yellow-green, glowing
13	Gas Giant	Banded, a storm spot — not colonisable
14	Asteroid Belt	Scattered rocks, no disc — not colonisable

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2b. World backdrops — ✅ mostly painted, assets/images/vega/world-<type>-01.png

Not part of the planets sheet. These are full-screen 1920 × 1080 opaque backdrops for the colony screen (VegaColonyView.js) — the same worlds seen from the ground rather than from orbit. The sheet above stays what it is: transparent 192 px discs for the orrery.

Declared per planet type in worldBackgrounds in data/mastervega-artwork.json, exactly like the species stills. A null path is a legitimate "not painted yet" and falls back to a gradient built from that type's color in the rules file, so the set can be finished one world at a time with no code change.

The -01 suffix is a variant slot — nothing reads a variant index yet, but the naming leaves room for world-terran-02.png and a roll.

Type	File
Terran	world-terran-01.png	✅
Ocean	world-ocean-01.png	✅
Jungle	—	⬜ outstanding
Steppe	world-steppe-01.png	✅
Arid	world-arid-01.png	✅
Desert	world-desert-01.png	✅
Tundra	world-tundra-01.png	✅
Minimal	world-minimal-01.png	✅
Barren	world-barren-01.png	✅
Dead	world-dead-01.png	✅
Inferno	world-inferno-01.png	✅
Toxic	world-toxic-01.png	✅
Radiated	world-radiated-01.png	✅
Gas Giant	⚠️ world-gas-**giant**-01.png	✅
Asteroid Belt	—	⬜ not needed — neither type is colonisable, so the colony screen never opens on one

⚠️ The gas giant's filename is world-gas-giant-01.png with a hyphen while its rules id is gasgiant. Same class of mismatch as char-kestralli.png: the manifest points at the real filename, and the verifier fails immediately if a declared path stops resolving.

Text is drawn over the top-left of these (name, owner, world details) with a drop shadow, and the right ~500 px sits under a semi-transparent panel — so keep the top-left readable and do not put the subject of the picture on the far right.

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3. stars — ⬜ assets/images/vega/stars.png

Sheet size	576 × 576
Frame	192 × 192
Grid	3 cols × 3 rows = 9 frames

One frame per star class, in rules order: 0 Blue, 1 White, 2 Yellow, 3 Orange, 4 Red, 5 Brown Dwarf, 6 Binary, 7 Pulsar, 8 Black Hole.

Drawn with ADD blending on the star map (except the black hole, which is drawn normally) — so paint them glowing on transparent black, with the corona fading to fully transparent at the frame edge. The star map rotates the pulsar frame continuously and orbits a scaled copy of the binary frame, so keep the pulsar's beam axis vertical and the binary's companion at the frame centre.

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4. Species portraits — video, with a sheet fallback

Portraits are looping, muted 256 × 256 videos, one per species, at assets/videos/vega/char-<speciesId>.mp4. They play silently on a loop wherever a species portrait appears — the setup screen's species cards (84 px), the species detail pop-over (full 256 px), and the diplomacy screen (96 px).

Clicking a card grows it into a centred pop-over showing the portrait at native resolution. The card's portrait is reparented into the pop-over rather than a second one being created, so there is only ever one video object per species.

To add one: drop the file in, then change that species' path from null to it in portraitVideos in data/mastervega-artwork.json. Nothing else. The verifier checks every species has an entry, that the key matches, and that every non-null path points at a file that exists.

All ten species have both a video and a still. ✅

Species	Video (256 × 256)	Still (1024 × 1024)
Human	char-human.mp4	char-human.png
Kestrelli	char-kestrelli.mp4	⚠️ char-kestr**a**lli.png
Ursaal	char-ursaal.mp4	char-ursaal.png
Umbrix	char-umbrix.mp4	char-umbrix.png
Kkrix	char-kkrix.mp4	char-kkrix.png
Mekhan	char-mekhan.mp4	char-mekhan.png
Rrashaa	char-rrashaa.mp4	char-rrashaa.png
Cerebrai	⚠️ char-cereb**a**i.mp4	char-cerebrai.png
Ssakar	char-ssakar.mp4	char-ssakar.png
Lithox	char-lithox.mp4	char-lithox.png

Fallback order

Three tiers, best first — no caller knows which it got, so the roster can be finished a species at a time with no code changes:

1. Video — assets/videos/vega/char-<id>.mp4, listed in portraitVideos.
2. Still — assets/images/vega/char-<id>.png (1024 × 1024), listed in portraitStills. Used when there is no video, and as the recovery path if a video is present but the browser refuses to decode it.
3. Painted sheet — the optional ⬜ assets/images/vega/portraits.png (1280 × 512, 256 × 256 frames, 5 × 2, one per species.portraitFrame in the ship-row order), which itself falls back to a procedural painting.

⚠️ Two filenames do not match their species id, each with a correctly spelled counterpart: the kestrelli still is char-kestralli.png, and the cerebrai video is char-cerebai.mp4 (no r). The manifest points at the real filenames so both work as-is — rename a file and its one path together if you want the spelling fixed. The verifier fails immediately if a declared path stops resolving, so a rename cannot go unnoticed.

These are species portraits, not characters — this game deliberately does not use the data/opponents.json roster or its videos.

Frame	Species	Identity
0	Human	Traders and diplomats
1	Kestrelli	Avian aristocrats, superb pilots
2	Ursaal	Ursine heavy-worlders
3	Umbrix	Shapeshifters, spies, universally distrusted
4	Kkrix	Insect hive, tireless industry
5	Mekhan	Cyborgs, factories everywhere, filthy
6	Rrashaa	Feline gunners
7	Cerebrai	Vast fragile intellects
8	Ssakar	Reptilian broodmothers
9	Lithox	Crystalline, breathe nothing, colonise anywhere

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5. leaders — ⬜ assets/images/vega/leaders.png

Sheet size	640 × 640
Frame	160 × 160
Grid	4 cols × 4 rows = 16 frames

One frame per leader (leader.portraitFrame), rules order. Frames 0–7 are colony administrators, 8–15 are ship captains. Shown at 40–60 px.

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6. buildings — ⬜ assets/images/vega/buildings.png

Sheet size	512 × 128
Frame	64 × 64
Grid	8 cols × 2 rows = 16 frames

One frame per building (building.frame), rules order: Automated Factory, Research Laboratory, Missile Base, Pollution Processor, Space Port, Cloning Center, Ground Battery, Spy Center, Planetary Shield, Terraforming Plant, Stock Exchange, Holo Simulator, Robotic Miners, Super Computer, Artemis System Net, Enrichment Facility.

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7a. techfields — ⬜ assets/images/vega/techfields.png

Sheet size	144 × 96
Frame	48 × 48
Grid	3 cols × 2 rows = 6 frames

One frame per tech field (techFields[].iconFrame), rules order: Computers, Construction, Force Fields, Planetology, Propulsion, Weapons. Exact fit, no spares.

Split out of the old combined techicons sheet (§7b) so the six field icons — larger, simpler glyphs meant to read at a glance on the research screen — can be painted and sized independently of the ~90 individual tech icons. Nothing in the game draws a field icon yet; this sheet exists for whenever that lands.

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7b. techicons — ⬜ assets/images/vega/techicons.png

Sheet size	480 × 480
Frame	48 × 48
Grid	10 cols × 10 rows = 100 frames

One frame per individual tech (techs[].iconFrame), 0–90, in the order techs appear in data/mastervega-rules.json — the original 60 plus two later MOO1-branching passes. 91–99 spare (the tech list has grown once already; expect it to again). Drawn today by VegaGnnScreen.js's tech-breakthrough story page.

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8. Menu icon — ✅ assets/images/game-icons.png frame 92

The shared 660 × 660 sheet, 44 × 44 cells, 15 per row. Frame 92 is row 6, column 2 → pixel origin (88, 264). Painted.

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Already supplied

File	Size	Used for
assets/images/vega/background-menu.png	1920 × 1080	Backdrop for both menus — dimmed 34% on the landing screen, 62% on the setup screen so the species cards stay legible
assets/images/vega/menu-title.png	1368 × 768	Title logo. Large on the left of the landing screen (contained in 900 × 560 → 900 × 505), and small as the setup screen's header (contained in 760 × 132). Always contained, never stretched.
assets/images/vega/world-*-01.png	1920 × 1080	Colony-screen backdrops, one per planet type — see §2b.

Speech — ✅ assets/speech/vega/

Clip	When it plays
ui-choose-start.mp3	On arriving at the choose-a-species screen
char-<speciesId>.mp3	Once, when that species' detail pop-over opens

All ten species lines are present and correctly named.

Unlike the portraits, speech is not declared in the artwork manifest: ui/SpeechQueue.js streams it straight from assets/speech/<clip>.mp3 without going through Phaser's loader, so the filename convention is the wiring. Drop in a replacement and it plays — the verifier checks every species resolves.

Each new line cuts off whatever was playing rather than letting two voices overlap — so opening a species interrupts the greeting, opening a second species interrupts the first, and closing the window stops playback.

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Sound

Menu clicks use the shared 8bit-activate cue (already preloaded globally as sfx-8bit-activate) — every button on the landing and species screens, the species cards, and the detail pop-over.

Combat effects already wired, no new audio needed: laser-zap.mp3, scifi-explode.mp3, ta-rocket-1.mp3, ta-rocket-2.mp3.

Soundtrack is the game's own set, data/masterofvega-music.json → assets/music/vega/, at volume 0.6. Four tracks are declared: Power Down (DV-8-2303), High Orbit (Klaxon), Master of Vega Main Theme (Aiko), Defend the Colony (Cy-Bro).

⚠️ assets/music/vega/track-05.mp3 is on disk but not listed in masterofvega-music.json, so it never plays. Add an entry for it if that was not deliberate. The verifier checks every declared track exists, but cannot know about files you meant to declare.