aetherbound-guild/docs/presentation/PHASE6_UI_DIRECTION.md

Phase 6 Formal UI Direction

Date: 2026-08-12 Status: FORMAL_UI_MASTERS_OWNER_REVIEW_OPEN Product baseline: b13a026e52cfb1b1bade77c658eba1302745cf6e

Purpose

Phase 6 turns the verified interaction prototype into a production-facing visual system before engine development. Batch 01 is a direction gate, not final art. It contains four review images:

1. live automatic battle;
2. integrated Market;
3. Party Line and equipment planning; and
4. generated-Recruit, enemy, equipment and UI-component language.

The battle is reviewed first because it must communicate the product fantasy in three seconds. Market and Party Line then prove that repeated planning decisions belong to the same game. The element board proves that the direction can expand beyond one attractive screenshot.

Visual Identity

A practical Japanese hand-drawn fantasy guild assembles a changing line of ordinary adventurers at the edge of a bright, unstable world.

• World and actors occupy the main surface; UI attaches to field ledgers, enamel plates, canvas straps, tool rails and screen edges.
• Recruits are generated, replaceable run participants. No figure is presented as a permanent protagonist or narrative lead.
• Actors use mature five-and-a-half to six-head proportions, readable tools, strong profession silhouettes and restrained cel shading over painted space.
• Materials combine chalk-white ceramic, charcoal ink, repaired canvas, weathered brass, enamel color plates and mineral pigments.
• The semantic palette is multihue: paper white, charcoal, aether cyan, repair gold, danger coral, safe green and focus cobalt. Region art may add local colors but cannot replace semantic state cues.
• UI corners remain square or lightly rounded. Repeated offers and inventory cells may be bounded; the screen must never become a nested card wall.
• Text, numbers and final icons remain engine-rendered. Generated direction images may show text-safe rails and blank label lines, but their pseudo-text is not product copy or implementation authority.

Batch 01 Focal Contracts

Asset	First read	Second read	Third read
UI06-01 Battle	imminent enemy event and affected front Recruit	one ordered Company line and profession actions	objective plus pause/speed/inspect edge tools
UI06-02 Market	three materially different Recruit offers	current Company and open line capacity	inventory, Coin, refresh, lock and review consequence
UI06-03 Party Line	protected rear-left to exposed front-right order	selected Recruit and changed protection/reach	equipment comparison and Save Order
UI06-04 Element board	generated Recruit variety	profession-readable enemies	reusable windows, controls, equipment and state language

Generation Contract

• Provider/model: API Mart GPT-Image-2 through the installed image-gen skill.
• Call ceiling: exactly four accepted paid outputs and total provider cost ceiling USD 5 equivalent under the workspace standing authorization. Owner decision on 2026-08-12 authorizes retrying transient image-service failures. A transport failure with no task ID may be resubmitted after reachability returns; a known task ID must be resumed rather than submitted again.
• Full-screen concepts: 2048x1152, opaque PNG, 16:9.
• Element board: 2048x2048, opaque PNG, regular 2x2 review grid.
• Existing Aetherbound images control only original line/material/color direction. Existing HTML captures control only information topology. Neither is copied as a final layout.
• No third-party commercial screenshot, art, audio, code, name or prose is used as an image reference or stored in this batch.
• Preserve prompt, task ID, cost response, output SHA-256 and agent/Owner review status. All four outputs begin as concept_direction.

Hard Rejections

• fixed named hero cast, relationship framing or gacha rarity presentation;
• tiny actors, portrait-card walls, generic dark dashboards or floating glass;
• manual attack/skill buttons that contradict automatic battle;
• multi-lane or grid combat that contradicts the single horizontal Party Line;
• copied commercial layout, recognizable third-party character or logo;
• illegible pseudo-text treated as final UI, text baked into production assets;
• photorealism, 3D render, chibi proportions, pixel art, beige parchment monoculture, neon-purple wash, excessive bloom, bokeh or decorative orbs.

Gate

Batch 01 advances only after the Owner selects or rejects the visual direction for all four images. Approval authorizes applying the system to the 50-page prototype; it does not authorize engine development or bulk final asset production.

Owner Review 01

Owner review on 2026-08-12 rejected UI06-01 and UI06-02 as visual direction. Both outputs remain provenance history only.

• The rendering reads as Western cel-shaded steampunk illustration rather than the required light 2D Japanese hand-drawn game presentation.
• Ordinary allied figures occupy roughly 28-35% of screen height. Reference gameplay evidence supports approximately 10-15% for ordinary units so a full ten-member Company and large enemy group remain legible together.
• UI06-01 behaves like a six-hero showcase rather than a continuous small-unit battle line. The repaired target is eight to ten visible allied units, room for materially larger enemy groups, and stronger horizontal travel space.
• UI06-02 also inherits the superseded fixed-character identities from its old concept-board reference. Its integrated Market topology may inform later layout, but its people and art style are rejected.

The next paid output is one corrected battle calibration image. No other page expands until the Owner accepts its unit scale and Japanese 2D rendering.

Owner Review 02

Owner review on 2026-08-12 accepted UI06-05 as the formal visual and battle scale baseline. It is the only accepted image from Batch 01.

• Japanese 2D thin-line, cel-color actor rendering and softly painted environment are approved.
• Ordinary unit height of approximately 10-14% of the landscape canvas is approved.
• A complete ten-member Company, materially larger enemy group, continuous horizontal entry space and compact top/bottom HUD are approved.
• UI06-01 and UI06-02 remain rejected and may not be used as style or character identity references.

The next stage is formal UI master composition, followed by one bounded character/enemy/boss animation-pipeline proof. Bulk final asset production remains frozen until both are reviewed.

Formal UI Masters Batch 02

Eight new 2K masters now cover Title/Continue, New Run, integrated Market, Party Line/Equipment, Result/Loss/Recovery, Guild/contract dialogue, Settings/accessibility and the reusable component language. All use UI06-05 as their first style reference. Their prompts, task IDs, exact hashes, costs and agent visual observations are retained under docs/prototype/generation/phase6_ui_masters_02/.

The batch is ready for Owner direction review. Generated lettering, names, currency values and numbers are explicitly non-authoritative. Result density, real Simplified Chinese/English copy, 130% text, responsive layout, input and animation remain open. Motion-pipeline proof and bulk asset production remain frozen until the Owner reviews the masters.