codyswanngt/phaser-asset-sourcing

Phaser 4 Asset Sourcing

Why this skill exists

The phaser-asset-pipeline skill is packing-only: it assumes raw art already sits in assets/src and turns it into atlases + typed keys. It never says where that art comes from. Left to fill the gap, agents reach for the path of least resistance — this.add.graphics().generateTexture(...) white rectangles — and ship a wireframe that typechecks and boots but looks like programmer art.

Procedural placeholders are art debt, not an art strategy. A shipped game needs real, licensed, cohesive assets. This skill is the missing step: how to get the art before you pack it. Read it before phaser-asset-pipeline.

The sourcing decision, in priority order

Work top-down. Only fall to the next tier when the one above genuinely can't serve the need.

1. Curated CC0 sources (default — reach here first)

Real, cohesive, commercially-usable art exists for free under CC0. These are the recommended starting points; all are CC0 or CC0-equivalent (verify per pack — see the license gate below):

• Kenney.nl — hundreds of packs (top-down, platformer, UI, tiles, isometric, audio), all CC0. The single best first stop for cohesive, atlas-friendly art.
• Pixel-boy & AAA — Ninja Adventure Asset Pack — a full CC0 JRPG kit: characters with directional idle/walk/attack strips, monsters, tilesets, UI, portraits, FX, and music. Ideal for top-down / RPG-shaped games (this is what the reference implementation uses).
• ansimuz (Luis Zuno) — CC0 packs — parallax backdrops, environments, effects. Check each pack's license: the base packs are typically CC0; some have paid add-ons that are not.
• OpenGameArt.org, filtered to CC0 (CC0 in the license facet). Great breadth; licenses are per-submission, so you MUST verify each asset individually — OGA also hosts CC-BY, CC-BY-SA, and GPL art that the license gate rejects.
• itch.io game assets filtered to the CC0 license.

Prefer one or two packs with a shared visual language over a magpie mix — a single Kenney pack reads more cohesive than ten sources stitched together (the art-director persona will flag the mismatch otherwise).

2. Deriving / editing CC0 art (allowed freely)

CC0 waives all rights, so you may recolor, crop, re-slice, retag, upscale (nearest-neighbor for pixel art), and recombine freely. This is usually how a pack becomes this game's assets: slice a sprite sheet into per-frame PNGs, rename frames to your content refs, restitch strips. Record exactly how in the ingest script (below) so the derivation is reproducible.

3. Ask the human (bespoke quality, paid tools, commissioning)

When the art bible demands a bespoke look no CC0 pack delivers — a signature character, a specific illustrated style, licensed audio — stop and ask the human. Do not silently downgrade to placeholders and do not buy/commission on your own. Surface the decision:

"The art direction calls for <X>. No CC0 source covers it. Options: (a) adapt the closest CC0 pack <Y> and accept the style delta, (b) you provide/approve a paid pack or commission, (c) ship a tracked generateTexture placeholder against issue #NNN until real art lands. Which?"

Paid assets, CC-BY with attribution, or any non-CC0 license are allowed only with explicit human approval, recorded in assets/LICENSES.md with the terms.

Hard rules

License gate — CC0 or equivalent only

• Accept: CC0 1.0, public domain dedication, or an explicit "use freely in commercial games, no attribution required" grant equivalent to CC0.
• Reject (unless the human explicitly approves and the terms are recorded): CC-BY (attribution burden), CC-BY-SA / GPL (copyleft — forces your project's license), CC-NC (no commercial), "free for personal use", and anything unlicensed or license-unknown.
• For every pack, record in assets/LICENSES.md: the pack name, author, source URL, the exact license, a verbatim license quote, and the evidence URL where that quote lives (the itch page, the in-pack LICENSE.txt, the OGA submission). "It looked free" is not evidence.

| Pack | Author | Source | License | Evidence |
|------|--------|--------|---------|----------|
| Ninja Adventure – Asset Pack | Pixel-boy & AAA | https://pixel-boy.itch.io/ninja-adventure-asset-pack | CC0 1.0 | In-pack `LICENSE.txt` (full CC0 text); itch page "Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal" |

Provenance — the source must be reproducible

The packs themselves are often large and need not be committed, but how you got from a pack to assets/src must be. Two acceptable patterns:

• Committed ingest script (scripts/ingest-assets.mjs) that records, per frame, which pack / file / cell it came from and re-slices deterministically. Re-running it against a fresh download reproduces assets/src byte-for-byte. This is the provenance record — it documents the source layout (e.g. "Ninja Adventure character Idle.png is 64×16 = 4 direction cells; Walk.png is 64×64 = 4 direction columns × 4 walk rows") and doubles as the derivation log.
• Committed raw sources under assets/src directly, when the art is small, hand-authored, or already per-frame.

Either way: assets/LICENSES.md + a reproducible path from source to assets/src. Adding art from a new source requires both, every time.

Procedural generateTexture placeholders are TRACKED ART DEBT

A scene MAY ship generateTexture / graphics-drawn placeholder art only when it is tracked by a linked art-debt issue. It is never the finished state, and it is never described as a best practice. In particular:

• Never write comments like "zero binary assets, zero licensing risk" as if placeholders were the goal. They are a temporary stand-in, and that framing is exactly what produced wireframe games.
• Keep a visible ledger of the debt (e.g. a LEGACY_GENERATED_TEXTURE_KEYS map in the pack script, or a checklist in the issue) and delete each entry the moment the real asset lands.
• The art-director persona treats a placeholder-only scene as a blocking finding (see its review checklist).

Characters get real animation

Static single-frame sprites are a placeholder smell. A character/creature ships at minimum an idle and a walk cycle; most CC0 character packs already provide directional idle/walk/attack strips, so there is no excuse to ship a frozen frame. Name frames so the pipeline and the official animations skill can build the animation from them (e.g. <ref>/walk-<dir>-<n>), and drive them with anims.create / anims.play, not a static texture. The asset-pipeline skill covers frame naming; the official animations skill covers playback.

Verification

• Every entry in assets/LICENSES.md is CC0-or-equivalent (or human-approved with terms recorded) and carries a verbatim quote + evidence URL.
• assets/src is reproducible from a committed ingest script or is itself committed raw source.
• No scene ships generateTexture placeholder art without a linked art-debt issue; the debt ledger matches reality.
• Characters render with a playing idle/walk animation, not a static frame — confirm in the real browser (the art-director persona reviews rendered screenshots, not code).

Once the art exists in assets/src, hand off to phaser-asset-pipeline to pack it and codegen the typed keys.