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adrien 49613f2a1c Made training gather materials, fixed the trade graph, and banked money gifts

Unit orders now gather steel and high-tech over the days before training, exactly as buildings do, and clicking a queued order reveals what it is gathering, its reserved budget and the soldiers it will draw.

The trade graph cached a producer-less node list under a stamp that already reflected the producers' stores, so every seeded mine stayed invisible to buyers and rare-good prices settled at a huge multiple of base; the storage nodes are now re-read after production.

Money gifts draw the giver's central-bank reserves in the denomination first, buy the rest from the issuing bank at the market rate, convert into the receiver's currency, and cannot buy from a bank their nation is at war with.

Pruned the finished design briefs (intelligence, stacks, air movement, politics performance, economy balance, training UI and FIXME) and refreshed the index and cross-references.

2026-09-24 21:20:47 +02:00

6.8 KiB

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Icons / art — design brief

A working document for a session on replacing the placeholder "dummy icon" SVGs with real art.

1. Shared project context (read this first)

Battle for 'Tismo is an HTML5 port of a turn-of-the-millennium strategy game. Pure JavaScript, no build step, no runtime dependencies.

Server-authoritative, but art is purely client-side: SVGs live in client/assets/ and are referenced by filename from shared/data/*.js (icon: "icon_<name>.svg") and a few client/assets/ references in JS.
No build step and no image pipeline — dropping an .svg in client/assets/ and referencing its filename is the whole process. The nix/package.nix web output copies client/ and shared/ verbatim.
Data lives in shared/data/ (barrel: shared/data.js).

Commands

Install once: npm install.
One suite: node tests/run_tests.js --file <name>.js. Never the full suite during development — the commit hook runs it.
Server + client: node server/server.js --port 27015 --bind 127.0.0.1.

Conventions

A missing icon gets a dummy SVG reading dummy icon - <name> (the standing rule in AGENTS.md/ROADMAP.md).
Visual changes are reviewed by eye before commit. For icons, build a small standalone HTML gallery that links client/css/style.css and shows the icons at the sizes the UI actually uses, then open it in Firefox (firefox <path>). Do not screenshot and do not just print the path.
2-space indent for .js; no new libraries.
Commit only when asked; one imperative sentence; the hook runs the full suite.

2. Requirement (from `ROADMAP.md`)

Real art for the placeholder "dummy icon" SVGs.

The roadmap names a specific set of files, but most of those have since been drawn; re-derive the live list with the command below before starting.

3. Current placeholders

Find them with:

rg -il "dummy" client/assets/*.svg

As of this writing that lists (subject to change):

icon_computer.svg, icon_human.svg — player-list control icons (diplomacy tab; used at 20px).
icon_geothermal_plant.svg, icon_offshore_wind_turbines.svg — power plants.
icon_icbm.svg, icon_missile.svg — missiles.
icon_submarine.svg — the submarine.
icon_uranium_enrichment.svg — the nuclear building.
icon_space_launch_center.svg — the spy-satellite building.

icon_spy.svg and the roadside icon_radar.svg, icon_coastal_cannon.svg, icon_chip_foundry.svg, icon_wind_turbines.svg have already been drawn.

The dummy template (all of them share it):

<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 512 512" style="height:512px;width:512px">
  <rect x="8" y="8" width="496" height="496" rx="24" fill="#2b3550" stroke="#ffffff" stroke-width="12"/>
  <text x="256" y="266" fill="#ffffff" font-family="sans-serif" font-size="40" font-weight="700" text-anchor="middle">dummy icon</text>
  <text x="256" y="316" fill="#ffffff" font-family="sans-serif" font-size="40" font-weight="700" text-anchor="middle">spy</text>
</svg>

4. Art direction

Canvas: viewBox="0 0 512 512", square. Keep the style="height:512px;width:512px" attribute the other assets use.
Reads small. Icons render at roughly 20-34 px — .stack-type-icon 22, .stack-unit-icon 26, .bt-top .building-icon 34, .row-card .building-icon 34, .control-icon 20, .value .value-icon 13. A single strong silhouette beats detail; avoid thin strokes, fine text and tiny gradients.
Flat, high-contrast vector in the game's palette (see the existing icons for the house style, e.g. icon_battleship.svg, icon_jet_fighter.svg, icon_modern_infantry.svg). A dark plate behind the subject helps it read on the map and in the panel, as the dummy does.
No text in real icons. Transparent or plate background, consistent with neighbours.
Specifics to capture: a nuclear trefoil for the enrichment centre; a country silhouette / masked figure for the spy; a fish-like hull for the submarine; a rocket with fins for the missile and an intercontinental variant for the ICBM; a globe/bust for human vs. a monitor/chip for computer; a geyser for geothermal; an offshore turbine on its platform vs. an onshore turbine.

5. Workflow per icon

Draw the SVG (any editor; keep it hand-editable, no embedded bitmaps).
Save as client/assets/icon_<name>.svg — same filename, so no data file change is needed. If a filename must change, update the icon field in the matching shared/data/*.js entry (units, buildings, resources, improvements, technologies, ...).
Build a small gallery HTML (below) linking client/css/style.css, showing every changed icon at the real sizes, on the real backgrounds.
Open it in Firefox and show the user; only commit once approved.
Run node tests/run_tests.js --file data_test.js (it asserts some icons are .svg) and any suite that references the icon.

Gallery skeleton

<!doctype html><meta charset="utf-8">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="file:///home/adrien/strategy-game/client/css/style.css">
<body style="background:#05070c;color:#e8eef7;font:14px sans-serif;padding:24px">
  <h1>Sizes: 20 / 22 / 26 / 34 px</h1>
  <div style="display:flex;gap:24px;align-items:flex-end">
    <!-- per icon: <img src="file:///home/.../client/assets/icon_x.svg" style="width:34px"> etc. -->
  </div>
</body>

6. Tests to add / extend

tests/data_test.js already checks a few icon fields end in .svg and are non-empty; extend it to cover the newly drawn assets (units, buildings, resources) so a missing/renamed file is caught.
No pixel tests — icons are reviewed by eye, per the workflow above.

7. Gotchas

The filename is the contract. Most data entries reference the file by string; renaming without editing the data leaves a broken <img> that only shows in the browser, not in tests.
Case and path. Assets are served from the repo root as /client/...; client/js references them as assets/icon_x.svg relative to the page. Keep lowercase snake_case filenames.
Small-size legibility is the acceptance test, not how good it looks at 512px. Zoom the gallery down to 20px before judging.
Nix packaging copies the tree, so no manifest needs updating — but a new file must be committed for the deployed build to include it.
A serving cache may hide a replaced file; hard-reload when checking in-game.

8. Relevant files

client/assets/ — all icons (this is where art goes).
shared/data/units.js, buildings.js, resources.js, improvements.js, technologies.js — the icon: references.
client/css/style.css — icon display sizes.
client/index.html — where icons appear in the HUD/modals.
tests/data_test.js — icon sanity checks.

SIMPLIFICATIONS.md (repo root).

6.8 KiB Raw Blame History