aetherbound-guild/docs/plans/M51_JAPANESE_HAND_DRAWN_UI_FOUNDATION.md

M51 Japanese Hand-drawn UI Foundation

Status

• Plan: M51_JAPANESE_HAND_DRAWN_UI_FOUNDATION
• Status: IN_PROGRESS
• Activated: 2026-09-08
• Baseline: 892a7e3
• Owner request: establish one Japanese 2D hand-drawn UI language and prove a readable first-play path before adding content or migrating every page.

Player-visible stopping point

At 760x360, 844x390, and 1280x720, in Chinese and English at 100% text scale, the player can follow Title → Guild → Contract → Market → select → inspect without clipping or unexplained controls. World, actors, current contract state, and the next legal action read in that order. Buttons, boards, recruit cards, status rails and disabled states share one component grammar.

Ordered steps

M51-A — Visual/UI contract and component showroom (COMPLETE)

• Freeze the art direction and responsive policy in one executable contract.
• Define shared tokens, type roles, spacing, safe area, control states and NinePatch source/margins.
• Build a component showroom and geometry assertions at the three MVP viewports.
• No gameplay, Save, route semantics or bulk asset generation.

Closure: e863673. The durable contract and shared component showroom are committed; the normal Metal showroom capture passes at all three MVP viewports.

M51-B — Repair the first-play path (IN_PROGRESS)

• Repair Title/Guild/Contract/Market composition using only shared components.
• Make the next action, disabled reason, selection and inspect path truthful.
• Keep the background, actor and prop layers editable and world-first.
• A bounded hand-drawn element candidate batch (action plate, commission board, recruit card and semantic seals) is now available under runtime/assets/ui_m51; it remains a candidate until engine integration and normal-render review.
• The project-specific taste filter is recorded in docs/design/ABG_GAME_TASTE_REVIEW.md.
• A four-panel Title → Guild → Contract → Market visual direction board is recorded at docs/runtime/m51_first_flow_design_board.png; it is a static composition reference, not a runtime acceptance claim.

M51-C — Runtime visual/feel gate and owner tryout

• Capture normal Metal renders for the fixed path, locales and viewports.
• Verify selection, inspect, receipt, idle breathing and reduced-motion fallback.
• Record agent visual review and handoff for owner tryout; device/audio remain separate gaps.

Acceptance checks

• No visible text or control exits its content/safe bounds.
• No green chroma fringe, nested card wall, opaque dashboard or accidental aspect matte in the fixed path.
• All visible actions use shared component entry points and expose available, focused, pressed, selected, disabled(reason) and committed states.
• Background preserves aspect without distorting focal actors; small widths use an intentional reflow/scroll rule.
• Normal-render evidence is inspected at all three sizes and both locales.
• Existing gameplay, routing, Save/Receipt and strict focused regressions remain green.

Frozen scope

• No content expansion, battle-rule changes, economy changes, Save schema changes, iOS packaging, audio generation or bulk art generation.
• No 130% text work in this MVP slice; fixed baseline is 100% as requested by the owner.
• Preserve untracked .uid, .import and prototype_incremental/ files.

Commit boundaries

• M51-A: contract, shared component showroom and focused geometry checks.
• M51-B: first-play path migration and runtime interaction checks.
• M51-C: normal-render review, evidence ledger and owner handoff.