DEADROT — Lore

Style-Bible

34 min read

The Scourge Style Bible

At a glance: the locked art bible · the one render look every creature/operator/machine wears · feeds DESIGN tokens + the assetgen: block · governs all 6 games.

Status: LOCKED. House medium = clean comic-book / cel-shaded ink — decided 2026-06-17 after the pixel pass failed the readability and identity tests. The prior medium-chunky pixel-art target is now historical scaffolding only. This is the most-read art doc in the studio and it is the law. The render look, lighting rig, color discipline, faction grammar, Scourge parasite rule, and per-asset recipes are decided. Build on them — do not relitigate them. Palette and type tokens live in DESIGN (authoritative); this bible is their visual conscience. The machine-readable twin of everything here ships as the assetgen: block in DESIGN’s frontmatter. Edit the bible, the generator changes. One source of truth, no drift.

1. Philosophy — what we are making

One parasite, many games, sixty-plus creatures, and a single world that has to read as one world from a billboard ten feet from a player’s face down to a tower-defense unit the size of a thumbnail. We do not get coherence by hand-tuning each asset. We get it with two cheap, brutal levers — one locked style-reference image per game and one DOOM color grade baked in post — and a prompt skeleton frozen so hard that a noob with no taste can swap one line and get something amazing.

That is the whole bet: amazing by default from a single prompt, forgiving of variance across the roster, reproducible at scale across providers. The void, the rim-light, and the grade homogenize everything else. Optimize for that. Resist the urge to fiddle.

The tone is Scourge-canon: brutal, fast, gallows-humor, streamable. The naming is hard and short — DEADLANE, lanes, breaches, the Rot, Purgers, Perdition. The look matches: blood on gunmetal, lit by furnace fire. If an asset doesn’t feel like that, burn it and reshoot.

The current shorthand is DOOM x Berserk for the Scourge and Berserk x DOOM x Gears of War x God of War for human operators: DOOM supplies the furnace, gunmetal, speed, and gore; Berserk supplies mass, silhouette cruelty, and the sense that the body has become a weapon; Gears-like infantry weight supplies battered practical armor; God-of-War-like mythic brutality supplies the readable heroic shape. These are taste notes, not a license to copy named characters, costumes, or fantasy decoration. No elegant swords, capes, clean white sci-fi, blue hero glow, or ornate paladin armor.

2. The house look (locked)

Clean comic-book / cel-shaded ink game art. Bold black contour lines, graphic flat shadow shapes, hard readable value blocks, controlled grime, and strong silhouette signatures. The target read is a violent playable comic page: DOOM x Berserk x Gears x God of War weight, but game-readable and not buried in texture. A single subject or deliberate sheet layout sits on a plain background, with crisp cutout-friendly edges and one hellfire rim-light from a low side so it pops.

It is comic/cel ink. It is not pixel art, not halftone dots, not stipple, not a field of noisy speckles, not a smooth 3D render, and not photorealistic. Runtime assets still ship as .webp, but production sheets should be high enough resolution to survive close FPS views before they are scaled in game.

Silhouette-first is the law of this medium: in a charging horde the shape carries the read, not surface noise. Keep rank-and-file bold and simple; reserve fine line density for heroes and bosses. Coherence across the roster is pinned by the fixed comic ink treatment + the one fixed DOOM palette family — not by per-asset fiddling.

What DOOM actually means here

DOOM is not “dark fantasy with a red filter.” The founding brief was Evil Dead II crossed with Aliens — realistic, dirty, more dirty than pretty, nothing beautiful — then shoved through a heavy-metal-album-cover, comic-book lens: exaggerated, hero-scaled proportions wearing believable, weathered surface. That tension is the entire look. You must hit both at once, never one without the other — believable grime and anatomy wrapped in an exaggerated heroic silhouette.

  • Silhouette first. The shape must read aggressive and legible in pure black before a single detail lands. Build the power triangle. Give each creature one iconic shape-signature and exaggerate that; let realistic grime do the rest.
  • Anatomy as gore. Bake a mid-damage state into the base design — torn skin, wet muscle, glimpsed bone, lipless maw. Gore is structural and anatomical, never random splatter.
  • Three materials, always juxtaposed. Charred veined flesh; cracked ivory bone worn as armor; rusted hell-metal grafted into living flesh at raw seared seams. The flesh-meets-cold-machine seam is the single most DOOM detail you can add.

3. Silhouette & proportion

The first read is the shape in pure black, before any detail. It must be legible and aggressive as a flat silhouette.

  • Build a top-heavy power triangle: massive slab shoulders, chest, and arms; narrow waist; hunched, forward-leaning, coiled-to-charge posture.
  • Backward-jointed digitigrade legs ending in cloven hooves or splayed claws (for non-human subjects).
  • One iconic shape-signature per subject — a single exaggerated silhouette cue (a bloated bomb-ball, a skeletal rig, a single dominant maw) — then let the rest read as a clean action-figure frame.
  • Keep it readable at FPS billboard distance and tower-defense zoom: bold heads, clear attack limbs, obvious weak-points.

Never: slender / elegant / graceful proportions, symmetrical-pretty anatomy, thin limbs, a static neutral standing pose, or a busy unreadable silhouette.

4. Anatomy & gore — the destructible-demon system, baked in

Gore here is anatomical and structural, never random splatter. Bake a mid-damage state into the base design:

  • Torn skin peels in layers — striated red muscle → white sinew/tendon → cracked yellowed bone. Exposed skull, jaw, ribcage, knuckles.
  • Skeletal subjects wear bone on the outside as armor (horns, plates, spurs, claws).
  • Faces are mostly mouth: oversized lipless maws, too many teeth, multiple deep-set or sunken glowing eyes.
  • Wounds and the maw read emissive (see Lighting).

5. Material language — three materials, always juxtaposed

Every subject puts weathered, heavy materials against each other:

  1. Flesh — wet, veined, blistered, charred-black at the edges; ashen grey-green or bruised oxblood; scarred and leathery.
  2. Bone (bone #e9e3d6) — yellowed, cracked ivory; used as horns, plates, spurs, claws.
  3. Metal / hell-tech — heavy slabs of dark gunmetal, rusted iron, brass pistons and barrels, grafted directly into living flesh at raw, seared, stitched seams.

Add slag, soot, dried blood, sinew bundles, cooling-lava cracks. Materials must look heavy and weathered — no clean, polished, or shiny-new surfaces; no jewels, filigree, or ornate decoration. The flesh-meets-cold-machine seam is the single most on-brand detail you can add.

6. Lighting — the void + the hellfire rim

This is the lighting rig, and it does not change. Two ingredients, both always on for hero renders.

  • Background: flat void #0a0a0a. Empty. No scenery, no floor plane, no props, no second character.
  • Key: one hard rim-light from a low side angle, roughly 35–45° off frontal, on one side only. It runs hellfire #ff6a00 at the hot edge falling to bloodHot #ff2a18 as it wraps toward the body.
  • Shadow side: crushed to near-black, bleeding into the void. No fill. Depth is built from value contrast, not soft ambient bounce.
  • Internal emissive — non-negotiable, this is the DOOM signature: hot orange-red hellfire glowing from inside — the maw, throat, eyes, open wounds, cracks in charred skin, any sigil on the chest — plus subsurface glow lighting the muscle from within. A newly-summoned demon should look like it’s lit from the inside by a furnace. (Toxic-green is the Scourge-only variant of this — see §9.)

Never: soft diffuse light, bright daylight, cool blue/teal hero grade, glossy beauty render, clean white background.

7. Color discipline

The one rule: red + fire + metal + bone as the grade. The roster should not collapse into one unreadable red-green wall. Bodies stay desaturated — ash, charcoal, oxblood, rust, old bone — and then each host family or combat role gets a muted material lane under the same warm tint.

The saturated colors are still controlled: emissive hellfire is hot, and the Scourge alone gets toxic #8bdc1f in breach cores / organs. Additional lanes exist for readability, not prettiness: acid-ochre sacs, bruised-violet membranes, hazard-yellow stencils, verdigris corrosion. They must feel stained into the material after the DOOM grade, never painted on top.

TokenHexUse
void#0a0a0abackground, deepest shadow
coal#121214near-black surfaces
iron#1e1e22raised dark surfaces
gunmetal#34343cmetal, plates, borders
blood#c1121fdanger, blood, kill-reads
bloodHot#ff2a18hot heat lines, rim falloff
hellfire#ff6a00embers, vents, rim key
rust#8a4b2agrime, weathered metal, muted accent
bone#e9e3d6bone, ceramic, stencils, strong reads
ash#9b958adust, faded markings, dim detail
toxic#8bdc1fthe Scourge ONLY — breach-core / node glow, sparingly
acidOchre#b9a83aspore sacs, bile membranes, ranged hazard organs
hazardYellow#d6a21fWarden hazard marks, worn industrial stencils
bruisedViolet#5a3a6fwing membranes / voidship shadow tissue, muted only
verdigris#3f6b5doxidized old metal, voidship corrosion, never clean teal

Forbidden everywhere: neon, magenta, cyan, cyberpunk glow, cool blue/teal grades, pastels, rainbow saturation. If it doesn’t feel like blood on gunmetal, it’s wrong.

Color lanes: same tint, clearer reads

Use lanes to answer “what am I looking at?” from one asset to another:

  • Heavy melee / Ripper lane: blood, oxblood, black chitin, bone blades, tiny toxic core.
  • Ranged / Spitter lane: acidOchre sacs and sick toxic organs, darker limbs, clear projectile anatomy.
  • Airborne lane: bruisedViolet membranes, red-black body, bone tips, small toxic organs.
  • Machine-graft lane: gunmetal, rust, verdigris corrosion, cables as tendrils, toxic engine-organ.
  • Warden lane: gunmetal and worn steel with hazardYellow stencils, ember hardware, square silhouettes.
  • Pyre lane: coal / gunmetal armor, bone ceramic plates, hellfire heat seams, bloodHot furnace reads.

The lane color must sit inside the material. A purple membrane is allowed; a purple monster is not. An ochre acid sac is allowed; yellow body paint is not. A verdigris corroded plate is allowed; clean teal tech glow is not.

Lock the palette in post, not in the model

Models will not hit the DOOM palette reliably on their own, so the palette is locked in post. This is the cheapest coherence win after the style-ref. Apply one shared DOOM grade as the last step on every asset, identically across the whole roster:

  • Soft cinematic (default): one shared .cube DOOM LUT, batch-applied last. Targets value/temperature toward the palette while preserving sculpt detail and emissive hotspots.
  • Hard exact lock (when you need an exact snap): magick in.png -dither None -remap doom_palette.png out.png.

That single deterministic step erases most inter-asset color variance for free.

8. Faction looks

Three readable visual signatures, pinned on six axes — Shape · Material · Light · Surface · Pose · Gear-read — so a unit is identifiable in silhouette alone.

The Pyre — offense

Zealot order that broke from the Wardens; they descend into breaches to cauterize the Scourge at its source. Expendable by choice. The only cure is fire. See The-Pyre.

AxisRead
Shapetriangular, blade-like, flame-split, forward-leaning and aggressive
Materialscorched black gunmetal plates + heat-baked bone-white ceramic panels
Lighthellfire-orange + bloodHot heat lines, furnace-glow visor slit, dim utilitarian (non-neon) diagnostics
Surfacebreach burns, soot, scorch, dried blood; sealed against the Scourge
Posecoiled, charging, descending — a body spent on purpose
Gear-readsealed helmet, air filters, ammo rigs, cauterizer tanks — suicide-run breach kit

Cloth or ash tabards and bone-white sigils appear on the Zealot variant but are never mandatory. The Pyre must read as a fanatic operator built to die close to the source — not a clean military trooper and not Warden engineering gear.

Variation lanes: Tactical (cleaner operator, minimal ritual cloth) · Zealot (sigils, ash cloth, bone-white plates, burn marks) · Perdition (late-game scarred armor, breach corruption, emergency repairs).

The Wardens — defense

Remnant military and engineering corps — the closest thing humanity has to a state. They outlast the Scourge: towers, walls, attrition. Every wall held is a generation bought. See The-Wardens.

AxisRead
Shapesquare / hexagonal, buttressed, modular, reinforced, planted
Materialworn steel + gunmetal slab armor, bone/off-white stencils
Lightember-lit shield and tool hardware; industrial-yellow hazard markings used sparingly
Surfacewear, repair-welds, attrition damage, hazard stripes — kept alive, not new
Posegrounded, braced, defensive — holding a line
Gear-readtool arms, power packs, welders, rangefinders, deployable wall anchors — building & holding

The Warden read is an engineer keeping broken infrastructure alive — methodical, disciplined, less fanatical than the Pyre. Not a paladin, not a knight, not a clean white sci-fi soldier.

Variation lanes: Field Engineer (compact tool rig, tower controller, light armor) · Lane Gunner (heavier armor, stabilized weapon platform, ammo feed) · Wallwright (shield emitter, barricade anchors, reinforced silhouette).

The third faction, The-Listeners, reads visually as battered Warden/Pyre salvage with improvised antennae and breach-listening rigs — no clean signature of its own; lean on the two grammars above and degrade them.

9. The Scourge — the parasite

One parasite wearing many conquered worlds. It has no native form; it wears what it infects. Closest analogue: the Zerg — a swarming, adapting hive-thing with no single general. See Scourge and Scourge-Host-Families.

The Scourge is a PARASITE FIRST. Every Scourge design must show a host or medium being worn and consumed — flesh, armor, machinery, ship hull, fungal colony, or battlefield wreckage. The default parasite grammar, present across the whole army:

  • ruptured host flesh and rupture seams; wet raw tissue, exposed sinew
  • invasive tendrils pulling through joints, ribs, and seams
  • embedded toxic-green #8bdc1f breach cores / nodes (the only place toxic-green appears in the universe)
  • black chitin growing over stolen bone and metal
  • fused wreckage or machinery — host material overwritten, not clean tech
  • weapons grown out of host anatomy: claws, bone blades, throat sacs, arm-lances, spore vents, projectile organs, shield organs

The rule: if a design lacks this grammar, it is not Scourge yet — it is only a monster. Avoid standalone generic demons or clean aliens with no host-corruption read.

Light & color: breach energy reads as toxic-green + sick hellfire at the core; never magenta or cyan. Silhouettes must feel non-human even when roughly bipedal — asymmetrical, grown, lunging.

Readability by tier: swarm units stay simple and bold (parasite anchors must survive zoom); elites add asymmetry, weapon growths, and armor mutations; bosses read as breach anatomy made into a war body, not just a bigger soldier — the chest/head core obvious during movement.

Host families (variety without breaking cohesion)

Same parasite grammar, different host underneath. Pick a host family per batch; the same threat role can ship as several hosts across games.

Host familyVisual readColor laneTypical use
Rot-fleshthe default first-read: humanoid/animal body split open by parasite growth, ruined armor or bone still visible, wet red tissue, black chitin, toxic-green nodesoxblood, black chitin, bone, tiny toxic nodesbase swarm, early Scourge-Survivors enemies, common Deadlane waves
Chitin warhostconquered shell-world race: hard carapace, mandibles, hooked/blade limbs, claw clusters, tendrils through the jointsdark shell, bone hooks, rust-orange edge wearfast melee, elite chargers, armored swarm
Mycelial spore hostfungal colony body: bulging sacs, breathing vents, fibrous root tendrils, spores implied by silhouette, toxic-green nodesacidOchre sacs, sick toxic organs, ash-grey fibersspitters, area denial, Starblight mines, breach growth
Machine-graft hosthijacked machine/weapon/drone: rusted metal shell, cables as tendrils, parasite tissue through the seams, barrels and engines turned into organsgunmetal, rust, verdigris corrosion, toxic engine-organranged units, tower-breakers, Deadlane siege, infected weapons
Bone-titan hosthuge alien megafauna/warrior frame: horns, rib cages, bone plates, massive limbs bound into a war body by parasite tissuebone / ash plates, dark marrow red, toxic corebosses, minibosses, Pactfall neutral objectives, heavy waves
Voidship hostinfected craft / orbital wreckage: hull plates as armor, engines as organs, cables as tendrils, toxic-green breach heartvoid-black hull, gunmetal, bruisedViolet shadow tissue, verdigris scarringStarblight, Scourge-Fighter, Orbital-Breach-Carrier, orbital bosses

For every Scourge batch, record both the threat role (Ripper, Spitter, elite, boss, craft, carrier…) and the host family so the army stays varied but coherent.

10. One look, many cameras — identity never changes

The style-ref pins the rendering style and grade; per-game camera framing changes around it. Same sculpt, same materials, same rim, same DOOM grade — re-shot from the game’s angle. These framing strings are the canon GAME_FRAMING map (mirrored in the assetgen: block):

GameCamera framing
Scourge-Survivorsfirst-person billboard sprite, front-facing, full body
Deadlanetop-down / high-angle, silhouette readable from above
Pactfallisometric 3/4 champion scale
Brawlside-on / 3/4 trench-fighter scale, readable from Duel and arena distance
Starblightside-on / top-down arcade, crisp readable silhouette
Redlineside-on Sonic-like runner profile
Rothulkside-on Mario-like platformer profile

Framing is allowed to change; the creature’s identity — its silhouette signature, its materials, its color — is not. The per-game style-ref is the per-game camera convention made concrete.

11. Two-track background — pick one, never mix

A subject is rendered for one of two jobs. Never request a rim-lit void and a chroma-key in the same prompt — they’re incompatible jobs.

TrackBackgroundWhen
HERO / VOID (the locked look, default)void #0a0a0a + hellfire rim-lightbestiary plates, marketing, the style-ref source, anything seen by a human. Cut out in post with rembg (anime/object model) — never chroma-key, because the subject’s own dark shadows live against near-black.
GAME-CUTOUTflat solid #00ff00 chroma-key, no shadow / gradient / reflection / flooronly when a clean billboard alpha is the explicit deliverable and rembg-on-void won’t do, and only on a native-alpha path (gpt-image-1). Never put #00ff00 anywhere in the subject.

Default to HERO/VOID + rembg. gpt-image-2 cannot output transparency anyway; do not chase native alpha. The transparent background notion refers to the final delivered cutout, produced in post — not to the generated frame.

No separate “hi-fi” or website track. Key art, marketing plates, and website character/bestiary portraits use the same locked comic/cel-ink medium (§1–2) on the HERO/VOID background — not generic concept renders. Any prompt asking for pixel art, halftone dots, stipple, noisy speckled lights, or dotted texture is off-canon unless explicitly marked as legacy scaffolding.

12. The negative-prompt set

Always-on style exclusions. On providers with a real negative prompt these map there; on providers without one, fold them into the positive suffix as only / single / plain constraints. The canonical set (machine twin: DESIGN.md → assetgen.negativePrompts) now treats pixel art and dotted/noisy effects as exclusions:

photorealistic, photographic skin, shallow depth of field, lens bokeh, smooth 3D render,
rendered 3D model, pixel art, visible square pixel grid, ordered dithering, halftone dots,
stipple, dotted light artifacts, noisy speckles, airbrushed,
flat 2D vector illustration, anime, cute, chibi, slender elegant
graceful proportions, symmetrical pretty anatomy, humanoid fantasy knight in clean
plate armor, medieval robes capes or swords, clean minimal sci-fi, superhero
proportions, soft diffuse even lighting, bright daylight, high-key flat lighting,
glossy beauty render, pastel colors, rainbow saturation, cool blue or teal grade,
magenta cyan or any neon glow, clean white background, background scenery or
landscape, floor plane or ground shadow, multiple characters, text watermark or
logo, UI frames or HUD, cropped or close-up framing that hides the silhouette

Drift corrections (apply the matching exclusion when a batch slips)

  • Too generic → add faction-specific scorch / repair / breach / blood / rust.
  • Too neon → strip magenta / cyan / cyberpunk glow.
  • Too fantasy → strip medieval armor / robes / capes / swords.
  • Too human-for-Scourge → push parasite takeover (tendrils, ruptured tissue, chitin over bone/metal, breach cores).
  • Too-generic-monster Scourge → show what host it is wearing/consuming.
  • Too-samey Scourge → keep the grammar, switch host family.

13. Active Comic Prompt Skeleton

Every recipe inherits the same spine — the comic house look (§2), the DOOM grade (§7), and the Scourge parasite rule (§9). Build prompts from these blocks and change only the subject, camera, and deliverable:

[HOUSE LOOK]   clean comic-book / cel-shaded ink game asset, bold black contour
               lines, graphic flat shadow shapes, readable silhouette-first design,
               controlled grime, crisp cutout-friendly edges
[SUBJECT]      {the variable block — creature, character, weapon, UI, arena}
[FRAMING]      the target game's camera / asset job
[LIGHTING]     one hard hellfire rim-light, orange-to-red, deep falloff into
               crushed shadow, internal emissive glow from wounds, vents, eyes,
               or toxic-green Scourge parasite cores
[BACKGROUND]   plain background for runtime sheets, HERO/VOID for lore/marketing,
               never wallpaper scenery for a sprite sheet
[NEGATIVES]    no pixel art, no halftone dots, no stipple, no dotted light artifacts,
               no noisy speckles, no painterly sparkle, no text unless UI type is
               the actual deliverable

FPS enemy sheet clause:

front, true side, and back views of the same design, full body, feet on one
baseline, generous padding, transparent-cutout friendly, clean comic/cel ink,
silhouette readable at first-person combat distance.

FPS weapon sheet clause:

first-person weapon viewmodel with visible armored hands and forearms, hands
gripping correctly, muzzle pointing away from the player into screen space,
not reversed, clean comic/cel ink, transparent-cutout friendly background.

UI / onomatopoeia clause:

comic-page UI board with slanted ink panels, heavy black borders, chunky
hand-lettered display type, readable impact words such as KRAK, CHUNK, THUD,
RIP, BURN, HEADSHOT, RELOAD; no pixel font, no halftone, no noisy speckles.

14. Historical Pixel Recipes

The pixel recipes below are retained for old asset archaeology and temporary scaffolding only. They are not the active target for new Deadrot masters.

Every recipe below inherits the same spine — the house look (§2) and the DOOM grade (§7) — and changes only the camera, scale/anchor, and background track. Build each prompt from five frozen blocks plus one variable block; freeze everything except {...} fields:

[HOUSE LOOK]   high-detail medium-chunky PIXEL ART game sprite, visible square pixel grid,
               hard crisp edges, ordered dithering, exaggerated readable silhouette
[SUBJECT]      {the variable block — the only thing you rewrite per asset}
[FRAMING]      the GAME_FRAMING string for the target game / asset type
[LIGHTING]     one hard hellfire rim-light, orange→red, deep falloff into crushed shadow,
               internal emissive glow from maw / eyes / wounds / breach cores
[BACKGROUND]   one of the two tracks (§11) — never both in one prompt
[GRADE TAIL]   the DOOM grade tail (below) — in the prompt AND re-locked in post via LUT

The grade tail (paste verbatim on every creature/render recipe):

high-detail medium-chunky PIXEL ART, visible square pixel grid, hard crisp edges,
ordered dithered shading, fixed limited DOOM palette, blood and rust and gunmetal,
hellfire ember light, grimy industrial, high contrast, heavy shadows, NO neon, no
text, centered, NOT smooth 3D render, NOT photorealistic, NOT painted concept art.

The HERO/VOID background clause (the default, paste in [BACKGROUND]):

plain near-black void background (#0a0a0a), no scenery, no props, no other creatures,
no floor plane, no cast shadow on a ground, no text, no watermark, no logo.

13.1 FPS billboard — scourge-survivors (multi-view: front / side / back)

  • Framing: first-person game billboard sprite, front-facing, full body. Subject faces camera dead-on (front); side and back views share the identical design so the engine can mirror the side in code.
  • Scale / anchor: single centered full-body figure, feet on one baseline, no cropped boots, generous even padding. Legacy pixel-grid targets after post were rank-and-file ≈ 110 px tall; bosses ≈ 180 px tall. New comic production sheets should keep higher source resolution and clean cutout padding.
  • Look notes: this is the hero of the hero track — seen nose-to-nose. Push the strongest internal emissive. Keep the silhouette legible in pure black at FPS distance. Side view = true profile (mirrorable); back view = rig / backpack / host-rupture readable. All three views are the same design — generate as a set or restate invariants between calls.
high-detail medium-chunky PIXEL ART game sprite on a visible square pixel grid, hard crisp edges,
ordered dithered shading, fixed limited DOOM palette, exaggerated readable silhouette. {SUBJECT —
for Scourge use one host family + parasite grammar; for Pyre/Warden use the faction read}. This is
the {front-facing / true-side profile / rear} view — keep the design identical across all views.
First-person game billboard sprite, front-facing, full body, single centered subject, feet
anchored to one baseline, no cropped boots, generous padding.
Lit by one hard hellfire rim-light, orange-to-red from a low side angle, deep falloff into
crushed near-black shadow, internal emissive hellfire glow from the maw / eyes / open wounds
{and toxic-green breach cores if Scourge}.
plain near-black void background (#0a0a0a), no scenery, no props, no other creatures, no floor
plane, no cast shadow, no text, no watermark, no logo.
high-detail medium-chunky PIXEL ART, blood and rust and gunmetal, hellfire ember light, grimy
industrial, high contrast, heavy shadows, NO neon, no text, centered, NOT smooth 3D render.

13.2 Top-down — deadlane

  • Framing: top-down / high-angle game sprite, silhouette readable from above. High oblique looking down on the crown, shoulders, and weapon footprint.
  • Scale / anchor: centered, full body, baseline at the feet / base footprint. Blockier silhouette than the FPS avatar — units are seen small.
  • Look notes: the head/shoulder mass and the weapon-or-tool footprint are the entire read at TD zoom. Bias the hellfire rim toward the top edges (crown, shoulders, pauldrons). Avoid thin limbs that vanish at scale; thicken silhouette-defining features.
high-detail medium-chunky PIXEL ART game sprite on a visible square pixel grid, hard crisp edges,
ordered dithered shading, exaggerated readable silhouette, bold blocky mass that survives shrinking.
{SUBJECT}.
Seen from a high angle looking down on the crown of the head and shoulders.
Top-down / high-angle game sprite, silhouette readable from above, single centered subject,
full body within frame, ground contact at one baseline.
Lit by one hard hellfire rim-light, orange-to-red, biased toward the top edges (crown,
shoulders), deep crushed shadow, internal emissive glow {and toxic-green breach cores if
Scourge}.
plain near-black void background (#0a0a0a), no scenery, no props, no other creatures, no floor
plane, no cast shadow, no text, no watermark, no logo.
high-detail medium-chunky PIXEL ART, blood and rust and gunmetal, hellfire ember light, grimy
industrial, high contrast, heavy shadows, NO neon, no text, centered, NOT smooth 3D render.

13.3 Isometric 3/4 — pactfall

  • Framing: isometric 3/4-view game sprite, champion scale. Classic MOBA three-quarter down-angle (~30–45°), body turned slightly so depth and the weapon-side read.
  • Scale / anchor: centered full body, feet on one baseline, champion-hero proportions — more heroic than the PvE games.
  • Look notes: the most stylized, most heroic lane. Exaggerate the power-triangle and the team-read shape so opposing teams are told apart at iso distance. Neutral Scourge units must interrupt both human palettes with toxic-green breach corruption, host takeover, and wet bio-gore. Keep the champion grounded — clear contact baseline, no floating.
high-detail medium-chunky PIXEL ART game sprite on a visible square pixel grid, hard crisp edges,
ordered dithered shading, exaggerated heroic champion silhouette. {SUBJECT — push the arena-readable shape;
neutral Scourge must interrupt the human palettes with toxic-green breach corruption and wet
bio-gore}. Body turned slightly into a three-quarter hero pose.
Isometric 3/4-view game sprite, champion scale, single centered subject, full body, feet
anchored to one baseline, generous padding.
Lit by one hard hellfire rim-light, orange-to-red raking across the three-quarter turn to model
volume, deep crushed shadow, internal emissive glow {and toxic-green breach cores if Scourge}.
plain near-black void background (#0a0a0a), no scenery, no props, no other creatures, no floor
plane, no cast shadow, no text, no watermark, no logo.
high-detail medium-chunky PIXEL ART, blood and rust and gunmetal, hellfire ember light, grimy
industrial, high contrast, heavy shadows, NO neon, no text, centered, NOT smooth 3D render.

13.4 Side-on arcade — starblight

  • Framing: side-on / top-down arcade space-shooter sprite, crisp readable silhouette. Pure profile or flat top-down for ships — pick the cleanest arcade read.
  • Scale / anchor: centered, full subject, anchored on its long axis (a ship’s hull line, a pilot’s vertical). Tight, crisp silhouette.
  • Look notes: silhouette-first, detail-second. Infected craft / carriers: parasite grammar wraps the hull (chitin over plates, tendrils gripping from inside, a toxic-green breach heart), never clean sci-fi glow. Pilots: cockpit-sprite / portrait framing with faction visor read. Hard side-rake rim; emissive thruster/breach light is the only saturated color besides the rim.
high-detail medium-chunky PIXEL ART game sprite on a visible square pixel grid, hard crisp edges,
ordered dithered shading, crisp readable arcade silhouette. {SUBJECT — for infected craft wrap the hull in
parasite grammar (chitin over plates, tendrils from inside, toxic-green breach heart), no clean
sci-fi glow; for pilots use cockpit-sprite framing + faction visor read}. Seen in clean profile.
Side-on / top-down arcade space-shooter sprite, crisp readable silhouette, single centered
subject, anchored on its long axis.
Lit by one hard hellfire rim-light, orange-to-red as a hard side-rake, deep crushed shadow,
internal emissive thruster / breach glow {toxic-green if Scourge}.
plain near-black void background (#0a0a0a), no scenery, no props, no other creatures, no floor
plane, no cast shadow, no text, no watermark, no logo.
high-detail medium-chunky PIXEL ART, blood and rust and gunmetal, hellfire ember light, grimy
industrial, high contrast, heavy shadows, NO neon, no text, centered, NOT smooth 3D render.

13.5 Runner — redline

  • Framing: side-on Sonic-like runner sprite, profile silhouette readable at courier-lane speed. Strict left/right profile, running / motion pose, mirrorable in code.
  • Scale / anchor: centered, full body, feet on one baseline, forward-leaning run posture (lead and trailing leg both readable).
  • Look notes: motion silhouette over surface detail. Coiled, forward-driving stance with clear limb extension; the outline must parse in a blur, so simplify fussy noise to one bold shape signature. Profile only. Rim rakes from the rear/side to imply forward thrust; keep emissive marks on the leading edge so they streak readably.
high-detail medium-chunky PIXEL ART game sprite on a visible square pixel grid, hard crisp edges,
ordered dithered shading, exaggerated motion silhouette readable in a blur. {SUBJECT — keep
surface noise low, one bold shape signature}. Strict side profile in a forward-leaning,
mid-stride running pose, lead
and trailing legs both readable.
Side-on Sonic-like runner sprite, profile silhouette readable at courier-lane speed, single
centered subject, feet anchored to one baseline.
Lit by one hard hellfire rim-light, orange-to-red raking from the rear/side to imply forward
thrust, deep crushed shadow, internal emissive glow on the leading edge {toxic-green if Scourge}.
plain near-black void background (#0a0a0a), no scenery, no props, no other creatures, no floor
plane, no cast shadow, no text, no watermark, no logo.
high-detail medium-chunky PIXEL ART, blood and rust and gunmetal, hellfire ember light, grimy
industrial, high contrast, heavy shadows, NO neon, no text, centered, NOT smooth 3D render.

13.6 Platformer — rothulk

  • Framing: side-on Mario-like platformer sprite, profile silhouette, clear readable pose. Side profile, neutral/idle or a clear action pose that reads at small scale, mirrorable.
  • Scale / anchor: centered, full body, feet on one baseline, slightly more compact and chunky than the runner — stable, grounded, instantly-parsed shape at small size. Generous padding for jump/attack frames if the asset is a sheet base.
  • Look notes: clarity and chunkiness at small scale. Keep the pose unambiguous, thicken silhouette-defining features, avoid spindly limbs. Still DOOM-graded — grimy, hellfire-lit, never cute or toy-like despite the genre.
high-detail medium-chunky PIXEL ART game sprite on a visible square pixel grid, hard crisp edges,
ordered dithered shading, chunky readable silhouette legible at small platformer scale. {SUBJECT — thicken
silhouette-defining features, no thin spindly limbs, keep it grimy and DOOM-graded, never cute}.
Strict side profile in a clear, unambiguous platformer pose.
Side-on Mario-like platformer sprite, profile silhouette, clear readable pose, single centered
subject, feet anchored to one baseline, generous padding.
Lit by one hard hellfire rim-light, orange-to-red from the side, deep crushed shadow, internal
emissive glow {toxic-green if Scourge}.
plain near-black void background (#0a0a0a), no scenery, no props, no other creatures, no floor
plane, no cast shadow, no text, no watermark, no logo.
high-detail medium-chunky PIXEL ART, blood and rust and gunmetal, hellfire ember light, grimy
industrial, high contrast, heavy shadows, NO neon, no text, centered, NOT smooth 3D render.

13.7 Boss

  • Framing: use the host game’s framing string — a scourge-survivors boss is a front-facing FPS billboard; a starblight Orbital-Breach-Carrier is a side-on arcade silhouette. The boss recipe is a modifier on the game skeleton, not a separate camera.
  • Scale / anchor: centered, full body, baseline at feet/footprint. Bigger final pixel-grid target (bosses ≈ 180 px tall) and a more complex, asymmetrical silhouette than any base unit — but the chest/head core stays readable during movement.
  • Look notes: a boss is breach anatomy made into a war body, not a bigger soldier. One dominant shape signature (horn/mandible crown, shield-organ ring, fused battlefield wreckage) built around a pulsing toxic-green breach core in the chest. The breach core is the gameplay weak-point — the brightest emissive element, obvious from play distance. Push internal emissive harder than on fodder.
high-detail medium-chunky PIXEL ART game sprite on a visible square pixel grid, hard crisp edges,
ordered dithered shading, monstrous asymmetrical boss silhouette — breach anatomy made into a war body, not a
larger soldier. {SUBJECT — one dominant shape signature (horn/mandible crown, shield-organ ring,
fused battlefield wreckage) built around a pulsing toxic-green breach core in the chest as the
obvious weak-point}.
{paste the host game's framing string}, single centered subject, full body, feet/footprint on
one baseline.
Lit by one hard hellfire rim-light modeling the bulk, deep crushed shadow, strong internal
emissive hellfire glow, and the brightest emissive element is the toxic-green chest breach core
(the weak-point), readable during movement.
plain near-black void background (#0a0a0a), no scenery, no props, no other creatures, no floor
plane, no cast shadow, no text, no watermark, no logo.
high-detail medium-chunky PIXEL ART, blood and rust and gunmetal, hellfire ember light, grimy
industrial, high contrast, heavy shadows, NO neon, no text, centered, NOT smooth 3D render.

13.8 Tiling texture

  • Framing: flat, orthographic, straight-on — no perspective, no rim-light, no single subject. The one asset type that breaks the creature-render framing. The generator already swaps kind to seamless tileable texture; let that drive framing — do not add the hero/void or chroma clauses.
  • Scale / anchor: edge-to-edge seamless tile, no focal subject, no vignette, even flat lighting so it tiles without seams or hotspots. Square, power-of-two friendly.
  • Look notes: material-first, palette-locked. The DOOM material set — blackened/scorched gunmetal, rusted iron, battered alloy, riveted/stencilled plate, cracked basalt, soot, dried blood; Scourge textures add chitin, wet rupture seams, tendril mesh, and toxic-green node specks (the only place toxic-green appears outside a Scourge subject). No hellfire rim, no internal glow, no centered subject — those are creature-only. Grade to the DOOM palette in post like everything else.
seamless tileable texture, flat orthographic straight-on view, edge-to-edge repeating material,
no subject, no focal point, no vignette, even flat lighting so it tiles cleanly with no visible
seam or hotspot. {SUBJECT — material, e.g. scorched riveted gunmetal plate / rusted battered
alloy / cracked basalt with cooling-lava cracks / Scourge chitin with wet rupture seams and
toxic-green node specks}. Weathered, heavy, grimy: soot, dried blood, scraped edges, chipped paint.
DOOM palette only — void / coal / iron / gunmetal / rust / bone, blood-red grime, hellfire embers
sparingly; toxic-green only on Scourge growth; NO neon, no text, no watermark, no logo.
dark, gritty, DOOM-like, high contrast.

13.9 UI icon

  • Framing: flat, centered, single graphic glyph — not a 3D render. Front-on, no perspective, no rim-light, no environment. Reads as a sigil/marker, not a creature.
  • Scale / anchor: centered in a square frame with even padding; must read at small HUD size (~24–32 px). Hard near-square edges, rounded.sm (2px) feel — consistent with DESIGN’s shape language. Ship flat SVG/vector where possible.
  • Look notes: one clear silhouette per icon, palette-locked, ember glow only and sparingly. Pyre = triangular aggressive flame sigil (blood-red + hellfire); Warden = square shield/tower sigil (gunmetal + bone); Scourge = asymmetrical predatory form with a toxic-green breach node; Breach = circular rift with a sickly-green corona; Lane = directional corridor marker. No readable letters, no fine gradients that die small, no soft/large glow.
flat centered UI glyph icon, single bold graphic sigil, front-on, no perspective, no 3D render,
no environment, no character. {SUBJECT — icon concept, e.g. Pyre triangular flame sigil / Warden
square shield-tower sigil / Scourge asymmetrical predatory form with toxic breach node / circular
breach rift / directional lane marker}. Hard near-square edges, one clear silhouette, readable at
small HUD size (~24–32 px), even padding in a square frame.
DOOM palette only — {ICON COLORS, e.g. blood-red + hellfire orange for Pyre / gunmetal + bone for
Warden / toxic-green node for Scourge}; sparse ember glow only, no soft large glow, no neon. No
readable text or letters, no watermark, no logo. Flat solid background for clean vectorization.

13.10 FX — blood / ember / muzzle / breach

  • Framing: flat, centered VFX burst on a plain near-black field, front-on, no subject. Built as a particle/impact sprite (one cell or a sheet).
  • Scale / anchor: centered radial or directional burst with falloff to transparent at the edges, built to composite additively over the void scene. Square frame, generous bleed room. Final delivery on transparent alpha.
  • Look notes: palette discipline is the whole job — colors are locked: blood splatter = #c1121f gore burst on dark; ember burst = #ff6a00 with fading spark trails; muzzle flash = blood-hot red into hellfire orange; breach glow = #8bdc1f radiant pulse (Scourge cores — the only FX that uses toxic-green). High contrast against near-black, hard ember light, no neon, no soft pastel haze.
centered VFX burst sprite on a plain near-black field, front-on, no subject, no character, no
scenery. {SUBJECT — effect, e.g. gore blood-splatter impact burst / hellfire ember projectile
burst with fading spark trails / weapon muzzle flash / toxic-green Scourge breach pulse}. Radial
{or directional} burst with crisp hot core and falloff to dark/transparent at the edges, generous
bleed room, designed to composite additively.
DOOM palette only — {FX COLOR: blood-red #c1121f / hellfire orange #ff6a00 / blood-hot red into
hellfire orange / toxic-green #8bdc1f for Scourge breach only}; high contrast against near-black,
hard ember light, NO neon, no soft pastel haze, no text, no watermark.

14. Consistency at scale — the workflow

Coherence comes from conditioning, not seeds. Seeds are a weak, provider-specific tiebreaker that break the moment an image input is added — never promise reproducibility on a style-ref path. Pin the look with two levers and a discipline.

The style-reference strategy

One locked style-reference image per game — six total — generated on the hero track, hand-approved, and version-pinned. Every generation for that game is passed that ref with the instruction to match the rendering style, lighting, and palette; new subject described below. That is how a new asset inherits the look:

frozen prompt skeleton + swapped {SUBJECT} line + the game’s pinned style-ref.

The reference-image paths are canon in the assetgen: block (referenceImages.<game> → packages/assets/sources/generated/lore-art-style-refs/2026-06-04/<game>.webp). The catalog/provider plumbing to pass them is downstream work, but the paths are now law so providers can wire image_urls later without another bible edit. Until the plumbing ships, generate against the ref manually in the noob loop.

Per provider

  • gpt-image-2 (default — best amazing-from-one-prompt + prompt adherence): pass the ref via the edit/multi-image endpoint (up to 16 refs). No seed exists — do not pass one. No transparent background — opaque/auto only, so generate on void and cut out in post. No negative-prompt field — fold every exclusion into positive only/single/plain phrasing. Fix size across the roster (1024×1536 portrait full-body), quality high, format png.
  • FLUX / fal (reproducible scriptable workhorse): anchor with Redux or IP-Adapter at LOW image_prompt_strength (0.10–0.25) so the ref pins style, not silhouette — push higher and every creature collapses toward the ref’s shape. Real seeds and real negative_prompt here (seed:42, guidance_scale ~3.5, num_inference_steps ~28). For per-creature consistency edits use FLUX Kontext and restate the invariants. Seed reproducibility breaks once an image ref is attached — treat it as a tiebreaker, not a guarantee.
  • codex / ChatGPT image path: same gpt-image family underneath — a no-seed, conversational gpt-image-2. Good for the noob loop, not for deterministic batch.

The noob loop (per asset, fully scriptable)

  1. frozen skeleton + swapped {SUBJECT} line + the pinned per-game style-ref
  2. generate 4 candidates
  3. eye-pick the best — do not tune parameters between picks
  4. rembg cutout (anime/object model variant for stylized subjects)
  5. apply the shared DOOM LUT / remap, last, identically

Batch discipline — change one axis at a time

Freeze the style-ref image, the prompt skeleton, the provider, the model version, the size, and (on FLUX) the seed — these are immutable across the roster. When an asset misses, alter exactly one of {subject line | style-ref | one parameter}, regenerate, and log what you changed in Generation-History (the provenance ledger). Vary the host family or faction read; never rewrite the whole prompt.

15. Pointers — where the rest lives

  • Tokens (authoritative): DESIGN — the 11-color palette, type, UI, shape, and component tokens. Never relitigate them here.
  • Machine twin: the assetgen: block in DESIGN’s frontmatter compiles to style.generated.ts and drives buildPrompt. This bible is its prose conscience; they must agree.
  • Provenance: Generation-History — the per-batch ledger; every generation logs prompt, provider, params, and what one axis changed.
  • Canon to honor: Scourge, Scourge-Host-Families, the Bestiary tier entries, and The-Pyre / The-Wardens / The-Listeners.
  • World & tone: Premise and the per-game pages.

This bible supersedes the old Character-Sprite-Direction.md and Character-Prompt-Library.md — their useful content (faction blocks, host-family blocks, the drift menu, the per-game framing) is folded in above. Point at this file; do not maintain parallel prompt copies.

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