Raster unit art handoff

Status: active production contract. PNG art is authoritative for the units listed below. Their old SVG depictions, SVG fixtures, contact sheets, and vector fallback paths have been retired.

Authority boundary

The client intentionally supports both asset types:

• Worker, Golem, Command Car, and Ekat are still SVG-authored units. Buildings are also SVG-authored. Keep the shared SVG schema, importer, animation sampler, Pixi runtime, and those source definitions.
• Rifleman, loaded Panzerfaust, Machine Gunner, Anti-Tank Gun, Mortar Team, Artillery, Scout Car, Scout Plane, and Tank are PNG-backed units. Do not add SVG depictions or SVG fallbacks for them.

PNG-backed units still need normalized rig data for anchors, selection and HP bounds, animation bindings, semantic part routing, recoil, shadows, and native effects. That data lives in client/src/renderer/rigs/raster_rig_definitions.js; it is not generated from or backed by SVG art. The shared animation and Pixi routing machinery consumes both SVG-compiled definitions and raster-native definitions.

A configured PNG unit must have its texture. Missing frame-strip or atlas textures fail closed and surface a renderer error instead of silently displaying obsolete vector art.

Production files

• client/src/renderer/rigs/raster_rig_definitions.js owns normalized metadata for PNG-backed units.
• client/src/renderer/rigs/*_png_strip.js and frame_strip_runtime.js own full-frame strips for Rifleman, loaded Panzerfaust, Machine Gunner, and Scout Plane.
• client/src/renderer/rigs/*_png_atlas.js, png_routing.js, and png_runtime.js own component atlases for Anti-Tank Gun, Mortar Team, Artillery, Scout Car, and Tank.
• client/assets/rigs/<unit>/ keeps generated PNG sources, production derivatives, prompts, and manifests needed to understand or reproduce the checked-in raster art.
• client/src/renderer/rigs/worker_svg.js, vehicle_svg.js, and building_svg.js contain the SVG-authored units and buildings that remain supported.

The Tank’s legacy vector contact-sheet pipeline is deliberately not part of the repository. Its checked-in PNG atlas and explicit raster metadata are the production source.

Raster art rules

• Generate team-colorable paint, uniform, and armor regions as weathered matte white or off-white. Keep outlines, panel seams, equipment, and neutral shading readable before tinting.
• Keep fixed materials such as rubber, dark weapon metal, wood, and skin in their intended colors. Magenta may be used only as a removable background key.
• Keep shadows out of generated unit sprites. Use the deterministic native shadow route.
• Keep independent moving assemblies in separate atlas sprites when recoil, setup, facing, or pivots differ. Full-frame strips are appropriate when component slicing does not add useful motion or tint control.
• Browser-facing textures use 8-bit PNG channels and neither dimension may exceed 2048 pixels. node scripts/check-deploy-assets.mjs enforces that deployment contract.
• Production metadata records explicit frame geometry, origins, pixels-per-unit or world scale, draw order, tint slots, and image versions. Do not infer these values from removed vector art.

Current notable assets

• Tank uses the enabled pass-11 white-painted Tiger I hull, turret/coax, and separate barrel atlas. The track cells are intentionally transparent. Raster metadata preserves separate turret facing, barrel recoil, fuel cues, and muzzle flashes.
• Anti-Tank Gun, Mortar Team, and Artillery use modular atlases so setup and weapon recoil can move assemblies independently.
• Scout Car uses a team-palette atlas selected by owner.
• Rifleman, loaded Panzerfaust, Machine Gunner, and Scout Plane use full-frame strips with explicit runtime scale, facing, animation-frame, and tint metadata.

Validation

For changes to production raster rigs, run the focused contracts that cover the changed asset plus:

node tests/rig_schema.mjs
node tests/rig_runtime.mjs
node tests/client_contracts.mjs
node scripts/check-client-architecture.mjs
node scripts/check-deploy-assets.mjs

Review raster changes at RTS scale in the Lab. A raster unit rendering without its PNG is a defect; do not restore an SVG copy to conceal the texture or metadata failure.