Content and asset pipeline
New items, weapons, enemies, units, levels, sound and music: make them fit the game, and make them the user's way.
1. Respect the user's asset preference (ask once, record it)
Ask before generating anything and record the answer in MODLOG.md:
- Local only: e.g. ComfyUI or other local image/3D/audio models, Blender, hand-made art. No network spend.
- Paid services allowed: e.g. hosted image, 3D, sound or video generation. Ask for the provider, the key's location (environment variable or keyring, never in the repo) and a spending limit, and whether each job needs approval.
- Both: local first, paid only for what local cannot do, under the same limits. Never spend money or upload the user's files to a service without that recorded consent. If no preference is set, use placeholders and ask.
2. Study the game's own assets first
Measure before generating: resolution, pixel scale, palette, outline style, camera angle, facing directions, frame layout, polygon budget, texture format and naming. Content that ignores these looks wrong however good the art is.
3. Content design before art
Define the content in the game's terms: stats, tier, recipes, drop tables, AI behaviour, sounds and balance relative to existing content. Clone and modify an existing entity where the engine allows; it inherits animations and behaviour that are hard to author.
4. Generate or author
- Consistency across many angles or frames: make one concept, turn it into a 3D model, then render every required angle from the game's camera.
- Pixel art: generate on a flat or transparent background, cut out, then scale once with nearest-neighbour to the exact frame size.
- Sound: match sample rate, loudness and length to the game's existing effects.
- Record every generated asset (tool or model, prompt, seed, date, licence terms) in a manifest beside the mod.
5. Convert to what the engine loads
Examples: PNG into tModLoader; AssetBundles for Unity built with the same Unity major version; cooked .uasset in a matching Unreal editor; NIF/DDS for Bethesda; 16x16 PNG and JSON models for Minecraft. Check format, size and naming with a load test.
6. Other games' assets
Never copy assets from another game into a mod. For cross-game content, either recreate a look-alike, or ship a converter that runs on the user's own install and writes a private local pack. The mod must still work with placeholders when that pack is missing.
7. Proof
The asset appears in game at the right scale, facing, pivot and layer in a scripted scene screenshot that was actually inspected, plus a manifest entry for every generated file and a licence check for commercial use.
