# Reactor Maintenance Art Bible

This document defines the visual style for generated and hand-authored art. Include the prompt block when generating image assets, then add the asset-specific notes for the object being created.

## Prompt Block

Create readable top-down 2D game art for Reactor Maintenance: modern, elegant, stylized, and playful sci-fi with a scrappy industrial reactor-maintenance tone. Use crisp simplified shapes, functional machinery with charm, selective dark outlines, restrained lighting, and cool steel or graphite base materials with clear semantic accent colors. Preserve readability at small tile and icon sizes. Use sparse material texture based on hue variation, panel color shifts, subtle oxidation, heat tinting, and worn paint color changes instead of noisy luminance contrast. Avoid photorealism, excessive grime, tiny mechanical clutter, heavy glow, CRT effects, cyberpunk neon overload, and high-frequency scratches or speckles.

## Core Style

- Perspective: readable top-down tactical game view.
- Rendering: crisp stylized 2D, flat-to-soft shading, clean silhouettes, minimal atmospheric effects.
- Mood: scrappy industrial sci-fi, tense but approachable, not sterile and not horror.
- Shape language: chunky readable machinery, rounded bevels, practical handles, thick pipes, oversized state lights, and mild asymmetry.
- Edge treatment: selective dark outlines around gameplay-critical silhouettes, openings, and layered components. Do not outline every tiny surface detail.
- Detail density: large forms first, medium details second, small details only as accents.

## Color System

- Base materials: cool graphite, blue-gray steel, muted charcoal, dark desaturated teal.
- Neutral contrast: keep major surfaces in grouped value bands so details do not sparkle or flicker when downscaled.
- Fuel: saturated red accents and warning stains.
- Coolant: cyan or blue accents, slightly clean and cold.
- Electricity: yellow accents, sharp and high-energy.
- Heat: orange to white-hot accents, used sparingly.
- Ready or won: bright green-white accents.
- Lost or critical: red with limited orange heat support.

Use accent colors as gameplay information, not decoration. Do not let background panels compete with hazards, robot position, or reactor state.

## Texture Rules

- Prefer hue variation over luminance variation.
- Show wear through shifted paint colors, oxidized edges, faint coolant discoloration, heat-blued metal, and mismatched replacement panels.
- Keep texture marks broad enough to read at 64px and 32px.
- Use 1-3 controlled texture zones per asset, not all-over noise.
- Avoid fine scratches, random speckles, dense grime, noisy rust, photographic stains, and texture that changes the silhouette.
- If an asset must look dirty, make the dirt a clear shape with a distinct hue, not a field of dark dots.

## Downscale Readability

- Design every prop to remain recognizable at tile size before adding surface detail.
- Use 2-3 dominant shape groups per asset.
- Keep the outer silhouette simple and distinctive.
- Reserve the highest contrast for the object boundary, key interaction point, and state indicator.
- Leave quiet space inside each asset so icons, badges, and selection highlights can sit on top.
- Test mentally at 128px, 64px, and 32px. If the asset becomes a noisy blob, remove detail before adding more contrast.

## Asset Guidance

### Floors And Walls

Floors should be quiet, matte, and grid-readable: graphite plates, cool steel panels, rubberized seams, or worn maintenance decking. Use subtle hue shifts between plates instead of strong light/dark checkerboarding.

Walls should be heavier than floors with strong silhouettes and clear blocking. They may use darker steel, reinforced ribs, conduit hints, and warning trim, but must not look like interactable props.

### Pipes And Underground Networks

Pipes should be thick, continuous, and readable as routes. Use carrier color accents along otherwise muted metal forms:

- fuel pipes: red bands, valve marks, or inner glow kept low,
- coolant pipes: cyan-blue bands, cold tinting, condensation shapes,
- electricity conduits: yellow hazard marks, angular housings, insulated cable cues.

Avoid tiny pipe bundles. Junctions, sources, leaks, and breaks need larger silhouettes than ordinary pipe segments.

### Props

Props should look functional and slightly overbuilt. Each prop needs one obvious interaction feature: lever, screen, port, valve, hatch, supply cap, or activation core. State lights should be large enough to read at icon size.

Common prop rules:

- control terminals: screen-first silhouette, teal or green display, chunky base,
- diagnostic terminals: stronger sensor or scanner identity, purple-blue secondary accents allowed,
- cooling pumps: round tank or impeller identity, coolant accent,
- generators: coil, flywheel, or battery silhouette, electricity accent,
- pressure regulators: gauge and valve identity, simple face markings,
- reactor controls: largest authority object, central core or keyed activation surface.

### Robot

The robot should be compact, practical, and likable without becoming comedic. Use a strong top-down body shape, small tool arms or maintenance appendages, a visible direction cue, and one clear status light. Keep the robot brighter than floor tiles but less saturated than hazards.

### Hazards And Failures

Hazards must be immediately distinct from props and terrain:

- fuel: red slicks with smooth pooling shapes,
- coolant: blue-cyan spill shapes with colder edges,
- electricity: angular yellow arcs or charged patches,
- heat/fire: orange-white cores with simple flame or shimmer shapes.

Failure images may be more dramatic than gameplay tiles, but must keep a single readable focal point and avoid painterly chaos. Use large hazard shapes, clear silhouettes, and limited supporting debris.

### UI Icons And Badges

UI art should be flatter and cleaner than world props. Use the same semantic colors, simple pictograms, and selective outlines. Icons must remain readable at 24px. Avoid mini illustrations inside UI controls.

## Composition For Generated Images

- Use transparent or simple neutral backgrounds for props, icons, tiles, and pipe pieces.
- Center the asset with enough padding for selection outlines and Godot import cropping.
- Avoid dramatic camera angles for gameplay assets.
- Do not add labels, text, watermarks, borders, frames, or UI chrome unless the prompt asks for a UI asset.
- For tilemaps, keep lighting direction consistent and avoid shadows that imply non-grid depth.

## Negative Prompt

no photorealism, no noisy texture, no high-frequency detail, no dense grime, no random speckles, no tiny wires everywhere, no excessive scratches, no low-contrast muddy silhouette, no unreadable clutter, no dramatic perspective, no generic cyberpunk city neon, no heavy bloom, no CRT scanlines, no glitch effect, no horror gore, no text, no watermark

## Existing Asset Note

The current Win2D PNGs are useful subject references for the required asset categories, but they are not the target style. Future assets should be simpler, cleaner, more silhouette-driven, and more readable when scaled down.
