mazegame/projects/kissaten_yugure/docs/ART.md

Kissaten Yūgure — Art brief

Pipeline: you generate in PixelLab from the prompts below, drop the PNGs in art/, and I convert them to SCREEN 5 data. I'll write the converter (tools/convert_art.py) once the first real images land — there's working precedent in projects/mazegame/convert_screens.py.

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1. The palette — read this before generating anything

Everything in the game shares one 16-colour palette. It is already in kissaten.c as g_Palette and is what the current build renders with.

• art/palette.png — 16×1 px, one pixel per entry. Machine-readable; use it wherever PixelLab accepts a palette image.
• art/palette_ref.png — 512×64 swatch strip, same order, for eyeballing.

#	Hex	Role	Notes
0	#000000	transparent	Never paint with this. It is the transparent index.
1	#242424	outline	near-black; outlines, dark hair
2	#492424	dark wood	deep shadow, dark brown hair
3	#924924	mid wood	wall panels, doors, deep skin shadow
4	#B66D49	light wood	counter top, skin shadow
5	#FFB649	lamp glow	warm light
6	#FFDB92	cream	glassware, skin highlight
7	#6D4949	muted wall	upper wall, muted cloth
8	#492492	dusk deep	sky only
9	#9249B6	dusk violet	sky only
10	#DB6D6D	dusk rose	sky only
11	#FF9249	horizon amber	sky only
12	#6D2400	coffee	coffee, dark red-brown cloth
13	#496DB6	coat blue	uniforms, coats
14	#FFB692	skin	skin base
15	#FFFFDB	warm white	highlights, cup rims, eye whites

The one non-negotiable rule

Slots 8–11 are sky. Slots 4–7 are wood and warm interior. Nothing else may use 8–11.

This is what makes seasons and time-of-day free: the background bitmap is authored once, and each season/hour is a 32-byte palette swap. If a character's jacket is painted in slot 9, that jacket changes colour every time the sun moves. Getting this wrong is not a cosmetic issue — it silently destroys the whole seasonal system, and you don't find out until M7.

Skin, specifically

There is only one literal "skin" entry, which is too thin for a face. Use these three as a ramp — they're hue-compatible:

• highlight #FFDB92 (6) → base #FFB692 (14) → shadow #B66D49 (4)
• deepest shadow / hair: #924924 (3), #492424 (2), #242424 (1)

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2. What I need back

Asset	Size	Count
Character portrait	48×48	3 per character (neutral / happy / troubled)
Shop background	256×212	1
Customer sprite	16×16	2 layers per character (fill + outline)

PNG, generated natively at the target size — do not downscale a larger image. Downscaling pixel art produces half-pixels and anti-aliased edges that cannot be quantised cleanly.

No anti-aliasing, no gradients, no dithering unless it's deliberate hard checkerboard. If PixelLab can be constrained to the 16 colours, do that; if not, generate close and I'll quantise — but the sky/wood slot rule above still has to hold visually or the quantiser can't fix it.

48×48 is very small — roughly 6 pixels of eye. Faces need a strong silhouette and simplified features. Detail that reads at 200×200 will turn to mud. If a generation looks great zoomed out and illegible at 1:1, it's wrong.

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3. Prompts — Aki (needed now, for M3)

Hoshino Aki, 17, studying for Tokyo entrance exams, cream soda drinker. Character notes in SCRIPT.md §1. Written as a girl there; that's one word to change if you'd rather — the dialogue beats themselves use no gendered pronouns.

Common style stem — prepend to all three:

48x48 pixel art portrait, 1987 Japanese anime style as drawn for MSX2 or PC-88 games, head and shoulders, three-quarter view, hard-edged pixels, no anti-aliasing, limited 16 colour palette of warm browns oranges and creams, flat cel shading, dark navy school uniform, simple readable silhouette, plain dark background

Aki — neutral

...17 year old Japanese high school student, straight dark bob-length hair, tired but polite expression, calm eyes, slight shadows under the eyes, looking slightly off to one side

Aki — happy

...17 year old Japanese high school student, straight dark bob-length hair, small genuine smile, eyes softened and slightly narrowed, faint blush, looking toward the viewer

Aki — troubled

...17 year old Japanese high school student, straight dark bob-length hair, eyes cast downward, faint frown, tense mouth, weary

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4. Prompts — the rest of the cast (M8, not urgent)

Same style stem, swapping the uniform line.

Ōta-san — retired stationmaster, ~70, black coffee, punctual.

elderly Japanese man in his seventies, close-cropped grey hair, deeply lined face, upright bearing, plain dark jacket buttoned to the collar

• neutral: composed, formal · happy: faint dignified smile, eyes crinkled
• troubled: jaw set, looking past the viewer

Fujimoto — manga artist, ~30, exhausted, funny about it.

Japanese manga artist in their thirties, messy shoulder-length hair, heavy shadows under the eyes, round glasses, rumpled shirt with sleeves pushed up

• neutral: wired, sleepless · happy: crooked grin, animated
• troubled: hollow stare, hand near face

Nakajima-san — widow, ~65, orders two coffees.

Japanese woman in her mid-sixties, silver hair pinned back neatly, soft composed face, high-collared blouse under a plain cardigan, small pearl earrings

• neutral: serene, self-possessed · happy: warm gentle smile
• troubled: distant, looking at something not in the room

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5. Prompt — the shop background (M6, longest lead time)

256×212. This one carries the game's whole look and is the hardest to redo, so it's worth several attempts.

Composition is fixed by the code — see DESIGN.md §4 and DrawScene():

• Top 16px is the status bar (drawn over) — keep it empty/dark.
• y=16–148 is the shop scene.
• Bottom 64px is the dialogue window (drawn over) — keep it empty/dark.
• Window on the left (~x16–88), showing dusk sky in slots 8–11 only.
• Door on the right (~x208–244).
• Counter running horizontally at y≈98, its top edge level.
• Hanging lamp above the counter, centre.
• Siphon coffee rig sits on the counter left of centre — I can keep drawing this procedurally if it's easier to leave out.

256x212 pixel art interior of a small 1987 Japanese kissaten coffee shop at dusk, viewed straight on, static single-screen game background, wooden counter running across the lower third, tall window on the left showing a violet and amber dusk sky, wooden door on the right, hanging lamp with warm glow above the counter, wood panelling, shelves with glassware, cosy and quiet, 1987 MSX2 game art, hard-edged pixels, no anti-aliasing, flat cel shading, warm brown and orange interior with the sky in violet and amber

The sky through that window must use only slots 8–11. Everything else in the room must avoid them. That's the whole seasonal system riding on one rule.

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6. Sprites (M6)

16×16, two layers per customer: a fill layer and an outline layer that is the same silhouette dilated by one pixel, drawn behind. Sprite mode 2, so each layer is a single colour — these are shapes, not shaded art. Current placeholders are in kissaten.c as g_SprCustFill / g_SprCustLine.

Worth doing by hand rather than generating; a 16×16 single-colour silhouette is faster to draw than to prompt for.