DEADROT — Lore

Comic-Style-Exploration-v01

5 min read

Comic Style Exploration v01

This is a Deadrot exploration lane for comic/cel-shaded game art and UI. It is not a replacement for the locked pixel-art bible yet. The purpose is to test whether comic panels, thick ink outlines, and flat/cel-shaded shapes solve the dotted/stippled texture failure from gritty generated wallpaper art.

XIII Research Notes

Useful reference: XIII works because it treats the whole FPS presentation as comic language, not just toon-shaded characters. The transferable ideas are:

  • cel-shaded characters and weapons with bold contour reads;
  • comic-book sound words and captions as diegetic feedback;
  • top-screen insets for headshots, clues, and tips;
  • pause/menu screens that feel like comic pages instead of generic overlays;
  • off-white paper panels, black ink borders, red highlights, and readable icon blocks.

Do not copy XIII’s exact assets, characters, menus, or screen layouts. Use the grammar for Deadrot: breach dossiers, kill panels, parasite notes, lane-status strips, war-map panels, and loadout cards.

Sources:

Generated Exploration Assets

Master path: packages/assets/masters/art/style-tests/comic-v01/

Comic Splash

Cartoon combat splash v01

Combat Illustrations

Pyre assault comic illustration v01

Warden defense comic illustration v01

Master-Style Lineups

Human character master lineup comic v01

Scourge foe master lineup comic v01

Scourge note: the comic style reads cleanly, but the parasite language needs a stronger next pass. The current monsters still read too much like demon/alien creatures. Next pass should show stolen host bodies, consumed armor plates, infected machinery, rupture seams, and parasite tendrils visibly controlling a host.

UI Exploration

Comic HUD v01

Comic pause menu v01

Comic loadout codex v01

Scourge Survivors Runtime Trial

Playable override path: packages/assets/games/scourge-survivors/

Enable locally:

VITE_DEADROT_COMIC_ASSETS=1 bun run dev

This is not a final promotion. It preserves the current runtime dimensions, enemy animation manifest, and arena texture ids so the style can be tested directly inside Scourge Survivors without replacing the locked pixel runtime pack.

Enemy override status: disabled. The rejected first pass filtered the existing small runtime sprites, then the game scaled them into large billboards. The result was low-quality pixel smear, not cel shading. The rejected second pass used procedural/vector placeholders, not image generation. Proper comic foes need image-model generated high-resolution front/side/back sheets and matching animation-frame folders.

Weapon-view rule: a player-facing Scourge Survivors weapon master is an FPS view-model, not an isolated object. It must show Pyre armored hands/gloves, wrists, and forearms holding the weapon with clear trigger/support contact. No-hands weapons are only valid for loot icons, codex/object sheets, inventory cards, or package art.

Weapon override status: disabled for this runtime trial. The magenta-background held-gun lineup is rejected because it is not a proper per-weapon FPS view-model export: it lacks usable camera framing, grip consistency, bottom-screen crop, and a clean game import contract.

Arena material override status: disabled for this runtime trial. Cropping combat or key art into wall/floor/block/column textures is rejected. Proper arena materials need generated or authored surface-specific texture sheets.

Deadrot UI Grammar

  • HUD: keep gameplay center clear; use comic panels in corners for health, ammo, objective, and kill confirms.
  • Pause: treat pause as a comic-page spread with one large frozen-action panel, one menu column, and a bottom strip for objective/loadout/lane state.
  • Loadout/Codex: use dossier panels; left hero portrait, center gear cards, right enemy or faction notes.
  • Feedback: use short brutal captions and sound words sparingly: BREACH, SEAL, CUT, HOLD, BURN, SPLAT.
  • Shapes: thick black borders, off-white panel fills, red selected state, orange Pyre heat, hazard-yellow Warden marks, toxic-green Scourge notes.

Shared Asset Integration

This exploration should ride the current shared packages rather than create one-off game UI:

  • packages/assets/assets-catalog.json remains the asset source of truth. Canonical entities keep stable ids, with per-game variants resolved through @shipshitgames/assets.
  • packages/assets/shared/ui/* is where shared comic UI marks/chrome should live once promoted beyond exploration.
  • packages/assets/shared/fonts/* already provides shared font custody; any comic-lettering font must be added there and referenced through the catalog.
  • @shipshitgames/assets/lore should feed codex/loadout panels from the same lore JSON used by the games and web hub.
  • packages/ui already owns GamePauseMenu, PauseMenu, GameMenuShell, and CodexScreen; a comic pause screen should be a shared skin or component variant there, not duplicated in each game.
  • Games should pass their slug, run state, loadout, objective, and resolved asset ids into the shared component. The component should choose the comic layout/chrome; the game should not hardcode panel art paths.

Three.js Feasibility

Three.js can support this style. The renderer is not the hard part; the asset discipline is.

Useful runtime techniques:

  • cel/toon shading for 3D meshes or billboard sprites;
  • duplicated/backface outline meshes or postprocess outline passes;
  • flat color ramps and nearest/linear texture choices per asset;
  • comic HUD and pause screens as React/HTML overlays from packages/ui;
  • shared WebP sprite sheets or panel/chrome assets from packages/assets;
  • optional SVG/HTML panel borders for menus, with game state injected as data.

Expected work:

  • Low-medium: comic pause/codex/loadout overlay using current React UI components and shared assets.
  • Medium: comic HUD skin across games, because each game exposes different combat state.
  • Medium-high: replacing runtime enemies/players with comic-style sprites across all camera angles and games.
  • High: full toon-shaded 3D characters/enemies with outlines, animations, and performance tuning.

The safest next step is a shared comic UI skin for GamePauseMenu and CodexScreen, then one game HUD prototype, before touching runtime sprites.

Prompt Recipe

Use:

flat cel-shaded graphic novel game UI, thick clean black ink outlines, smooth solid color fills, off-white comic panels, dark red background, bold readable comic lettering, Deadrot black/gunmetal/bone/red/orange/toxic palette.

Avoid:

copied XIII layout, exact XIII title treatment, halftone dots, stipple, speckles, pixel art, photoreal texture, tiny particles, unreadable text, generic clean sci-fi UI.

Graph View

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