TheriapolisV3/theriapolis-tactical-tile-art-request.md

Theriapolis — Tactical Tile Art Request

This document lists every tactical-scale sprite the engine needs. Tiles are streamed in-game from a chunked tactical map; placeholder squares stand in for each tile until you provide the real art.

Roadmap note (post-Phase-4 Wang autotiling). The current renderer uses per-tile sprites with a soft colour-blend edge softening between dissimilar surfaces ("Option B" — see TacticalRenderer.cs). When the final art set is ready, we plan to upgrade to full Wang corner-based autotiling ("Option C") using Pixellab's create_topdown_tileset tool, which produces a 16-tile transition set per terrain pair. At that point each terrain pair (grass↔dirt, grass↔water, sand↔shallowwater, etc.) will need its own 16-tile transition strip, and the per-tile sprites listed below become the base references the transition tiles blend out to. No action needed from artists for that yet — flagged here so the plan isn't lost between phases.

Specifications

• Resolution: 32×32 pixels per tile, exactly. The renderer scales each sprite to one in-engine "world pixel"; at the camera's tactical zoom threshold the sprite displays 1:1, and it upscales (with crisp pixel-art filtering) up to ~3.1× at maximum zoom.
• Format: PNG, 32-bit RGBA.
• Surface tiles: opaque. They tile horizontally and vertically against copies of themselves; please design seamlessly so adjacent tiles don't show visible joins.
• Decoration tiles: transparent background. They composite on top of the underlying surface tile, so anything outside the actual prop should be transparent (alpha 0).
• Variants (optional): if you provide multiple variants for a tile, name them <tile>_0.png, <tile>_1.png, … <tile>_N.png (zero-indexed). The engine picks one per cell from a deterministic per-tile RNG, so the same cell always shows the same variant. If you supply a single <tile>.png with no suffix, every cell uses it.
• Style: chunky, painterly pixel-art is the target. Saturated but earthy colors. No outlines on surface tiles; soft outlines OK on decorations.
• Lighting: assume a top-down view with diffuse overhead light (no strong directional shadow). Decorations may cast a small drop shadow that fades into transparency.

Directory layout

Drop the finished files into the project at:

Content/Gfx/tactical/
    surface/
        grass.png
        grass_0.png  grass_1.png  ...   (optional variants)
        dirt.png
        ...
    deco/
        tree.png
        tree_0.png   tree_1.png   ...   (optional variants)
        bush.png
        ...

Filenames are lowercase and exactly match the names below.

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Surface tiles

Each surface fills an entire 32×32 tile. Decorations and props are NOT part of the surface tile — those are separate, listed under Decorations further down.

Grasslands & light vegetation

Filename	Description
grass.png	Short, healthy meadow grass — the default ground for temperate plains. Mixed greens with subtle blade detail; should feel like trampled, well-grown turf.
tallgrass.png	Knee-high grasses and wild herbs, denser and slightly taller than grass. Still walkable but visibly thicker; muted yellow-green tones suit late-summer scrub.
dirt.png	Bare earth, packed and a little dry. Used for trails, worn ground around settlements, and exposed soil at biome edges.

Forest floor

Filename	Description
(forest floors reuse grass.png and dirt.png)	Forest interiors are a mix of these two surfaces with tree/bush decorations on top — no separate forest-floor surface needed.

Mountains, hills, rocky terrain

Filename	Description
rock.png	Exposed bedrock, weathered grey with cracks and faint moss in the seams. The default surface for alpine and cliff biomes.
gravel.png	Loose, small stones mixed with grit. Used for footpaths, dry creek beds, and rocky scree slopes.

Wetlands & water-edge

Filename	Description
marsh.png	Sodden, half-submerged ground threaded with reedy growth. Dark, mossy greens and standing-water highlights; the default for wetland biomes.
mud.png	Wet, slick mud — the surface of mangrove flats, riverbanks after rain, and tidal pools when the tide is out.
shallowwater.png	Wadeable water perhaps an inch or two deep. The bed should be visible through the water, with small ripple highlights on the surface.
deepwater.png	Open water that the player cannot wade through. Solid blue with subtle wave patterns and no visible bed. Used for river centers, lakes, and the ocean.

Desert & dry biomes

Filename	Description
sand.png	Fine, wind-rippled sand in pale tan — used for beaches, desert flats, and tidal flats below the high-tide line. The ripple pattern should tile cleanly.

Cold biomes

Filename	Description
snow.png	Fresh, undisturbed snowpack with a faint blue cast in the shadows. The default for tundra and high-altitude alpine surfaces.

Built environment (settlements, roads, interiors)

Filename	Description
cobble.png	Rounded paving stones set in mortar — the standard street and plaza surface for towns and cities. Worn smooth in the centers of stones.
floor.png	Interior wood-plank floor for buildings. Simple straight planks with subtle grain; reads as "indoor" at a glance.
wall.png	Building exterior wall, top-down view — looks like the top of a thick stone-and-mortar wall, not the side. Used as the perimeter outline of placeholder building footprints.

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Decorations

Decorations sit on top of a surface tile and have a transparent background. The engine renders them as a single 32×32 sprite centered in their cell.

Vegetation

Filename	Description
tree.png	Single mature tree seen from above — a roughly circular canopy of leaves with a hint of trunk visible through gaps. Color depends on biome but a generic temperate-deciduous green is fine for the base sprite.
bush.png	A low, broad shrub — smaller and lower-canopy than a tree, walkable-but-slow. Reads as a clump of foliage when seen from above.
flower.png	A small cluster of wildflowers — a few bright dots of color (pink/yellow/white) on green stems. Decorative only, no gameplay effect.
crop.png	A patch of cultivated grain or vegetables, neat and orderly compared to wild grass. Used in farmland near settlements.
reed.png	A tuft of tall water-edge reeds, vertical strokes of green and tan. Sits on marsh or shallowwater to suggest a riverbank or pond fringe.
snag.png	A dead, broken tree stump or fallen log — weathered grey wood with no foliage. Adds character to forest edges and old burn scars.

Rocks

Filename	Description
rock.png (deco)	A small loose stone or two scattered together — clearly walkable around or over. Distinct from the rock surface tile (which is bedrock filling the whole cell). Save this in deco/rock.png to disambiguate.
boulder.png	A single large rounded boulder taking up most of the cell. Impassable; the player must walk around it. Add a soft drop shadow on the bottom-right.

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Variant guidance

You don't need to provide variants for everything, but they make the world look hand-crafted instead of stamped. Highest-impact places to add variants:

• grass_0 … grass_3 — even slight color shifts dramatically reduce the "wallpaper" effect in open meadows.
• tallgrass_0 … tallgrass_2 — different blade angles and clumping.
• dirt_0 … dirt_2 — patches of pebbles, faint cart-rut grooves, etc.
• tree_0 … tree_3 — different canopy shapes/sizes; mix of broadleaf and conifer if you want.
• flower_0 … flower_2 — different flower colors.

Anything else can be a single sprite for now.

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Biome reference (which tiles show up where)

This is for context only — you don't need to author per-biome variants. The engine composites surfaces and decorations dynamically based on the biome of each underlying world tile.

Biome	Primary surface	Common decorations
Temperate Grassland	grass, tallgrass	bush, flower
Temperate Deciduous Forest	grass, dirt	tree, bush, occasional snag
Boreal Forest	dirt, grass	tree (read as conifer in art)
Subtropical Forest	grass, tallgrass	tree, bush
Forest Edge	grass	bush, sparse tree
Mountain Forested	rock, dirt	tree, rock (deco)
Mountain Alpine	rock, snow	boulder, rock
Foothills	grass, rock	bush, rock
Cliff	rock	boulder
Tundra	snow, dirt	rock (deco)
Cold Desert	sand, dirt	rock
Scrubland	dirt, grass	bush, rock
Wetland	marsh	reed
Marsh Edge	mud, grass	reed
Mangrove	mud, shallowwater	tree, reed
Tidal Flat	mud	(none)
Beach	sand	(none)
Coastal	grass, sand	bush
River Valley	grass	bush, reed
Settlements (any biome)	cobble, dirt	(none — buildings come later)
Inside buildings	floor	(none)
Settlement perimeter	wall	(none)

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Summary checklist

Surfaces (14): grass, tallgrass, dirt, rock, gravel, marsh, mud, shallowwater, deepwater, sand, snow, cobble, floor, wall

Decorations (8): tree, bush, flower, crop, reed, snag, rock (deco — note the duplicate name; this one goes in deco/), boulder

Total minimum tiles: 22 (one PNG per row above). Variants are bonuses on top of that.