security-game/docs/npc-visual-review.md

NPC roster visual review — 0.9.9 signoff

Status: awaiting owner visual signoff. This page is the single review point for the Quaternius roster swap that shipped in 0.9.9 (ADR-0017, ADR-0018). Every character name the game ships is captured here at gameplay distance, in three studio views, and in the three animation poses the runtime drives.

Until this page is signed off, the roster swap is reversible: the procedural library and the MakeHuman head are still in the tree and still pass audit, inspect, npc_proportions and the tests (build --source procedural).

1. Full-body roster (12 roles)

One tile per shipped character, neutral studio, camera at 4.2 m.

2. Front and profile per role

Front row set, then profile. Use this to judge the silhouette, the head size and the gear placement without perspective hiding anything.

3. Animation poses (idle / sit / walk contact)

Six representative roles × three poses, driven by the real _animate() path with the FSM frozen. Check: arms hang instead of holding an A-pose, the seated pose puts the forearms on the thighs and keeps the shins down, the walk contact keeps limbs in contralateral opposition, and no limb pinches or detaches at the shoulder, elbow, hip or knee.

4. Crowd distance (8 m)

The distance the player actually sees a passer-by from the sidewalk.

Signoff checklist

Tick each row. Anything you reject is a concrete task rather than an opinion, so it can go straight into TODO.md.

#	Question	Verdict
1	Do the twelve characters read as distinct people at 8 m?	☐ yes ☐ no
2	Is the head size right for the body (no bobblehead, no pinhead)?	☐ yes ☐ no
3	Do the faces hold up at portrait distance?	☐ yes ☐ no
4	Do the hands and the hand-held gear (camera, cup, clipboard, sign) read correctly?	☐ yes ☐ no
5	Does the head gear (cap, hood, sunglasses, firefighter helmet) sit on the skull?	☐ yes ☐ no
6	Are the role outfits believable for a Hollywood-boulevard shift (tourist, delivery, guard, responder)?	☐ yes ☐ no
7	Are the seeded tint palettes acceptable, or too pastel/saturated?	☐ yes ☐ no
8	Do the seated and walking poses hold up?	☐ yes ☐ no

Signoff: ☐ approved as shipped ☐ approved with the follow-ups below ☐ rejected

Issues visible in the captures

Found while building this page; none blocks the swap, all are queued in TODO.md:

1. npc_dress wears the performer cone hat plus the protest sign because the performer props are procedural and scaled for the old body. The dress itself has no geometry anymore — the role is the casual base with a dress tint.
2. npc_coat and npc_hoodie are the hoodie base with a coat/hood tint; the raised hood and the long coat silhouette are gone.
3. The npc_vest clipboard reads oversized at 0.23 × 0.31 m on the shorter Quaternius arm.
4. The firefighter helmet brim is 1.55× the head width — realistic for the helmet, but it reads as a wide-brim hat next to the small head.
5. Skin and cloth read pale on the hoodie and worker bases; the seeded palette was tuned against the procedural library's darker cloth.
6. Roster variety is three meshes for twelve roles. Tint and gear carry the difference; the modular part library is the fix.

Measured facts for this build

Metric	Value
Characters	12, all on the Quaternius 62-joint rig
Triangles per character	4,458 (worker minus vest) … 6,424 (casual)
glTF vertices per character	9,370 … 13,440
Budget	24,000 tris / 24,000 verts per character
Tint slots	skin, cloth, pants, hair, accessory, plus fixed detail
Texel density	73–74 px/m on the 256² maps
Height	1.817–1.881 m
24-NPC frame budget	160,608 tris, 0.84 ms average frame (budget 50 ms)
Gates	inspect clean, audit 12/12, fit OK, Godot 278/278, Python 167/167

Reproducing the captures

godot --path . --script res://src/test/capture_npc_baseline.gd -- --out=res://tmp/npc-signoff
godot --path . --script res://src/test/capture_npc_pose.gd -- --out=res://tmp/npc-signoff-pose \
  --pose=idle          # repeat for sit and walk_contact

Superseded

This page previously carried the 0.9.4 procedural library baseline (eight hand-built characters, the face/hand/neck fixes, the 13-core proportion audit). That mesh no longer ships, so the text is retired; the comparison sheets stay in blender_previews/ as history: sheet_npc_baseline_compare-p1.jpg, -body.jpg, -torso.jpg, -face-detail.jpg, sheet_npc_hands_compare.jpg, sheet_npc_hands_grip_compare.jpg.

The current source evaluation and per-character build table live in npc-model-sourcing.md#shipped-roster-099-owner-chose-the-full-swap; the face options that led to the full swap are in screens/npc-face-gate/.