Astro VFX is the effect group for the astrocyte's help. The user designed the look on 1 November: "open a hole in the ground, an astrocyte tendril pokes out, vfx sparkles, and calming done." No astrocyte body ever appears or travels. Only one process comes up.
How it works#
One set of marks (astro-marks.js) serves two places.
- Link in turn rooms. The opening opens in four whole steps, from the Ranger's touch until the process is out. The sparkle leaves the tip at contact and the linked roots grow. The process then stays up all room with a gentle sway, and the opening stays open. At room end the process withdraws and the opening closes after it.
- The Calming visit at Hearth. The visit comes from the Hearth astrocyte, drawn with its existing sprite. For each calmed resident, one process rises, touches the resident's feet, holds and withdraws once.
- Supported ground and an aiming preview with a ghost footprint are also drawn here.
The rope itself belongs to the grab-and-release session (see Tendrils). This group draws the opening, the sparkle, the linked roots and the ground marks. A temporary stand-in rope was deleted on 2 November once the real rope landed.
Words appear only in hover titles. There is no "Calmed…" line and no dark popup.
Development#
- Blind rounds: three turn rounds. Room end's last step became a one-step release flash, because the old one read as wilting.
- Rejected:
astro-2-calming-refusedwas removed. The shop UI's box shake already covers a refused calming visit. - Look change on 24×20: the linked lobes flip north to stay inside the shorter tile.
- User review, 2 November: nine of ten clips approved, with the refused clip removed.
- In the alpha: pinned at
8ebe24cf3; the process root stays on the pore centre.
Gallery#

See also#
Sources#
8ebe24cf3:docs/vfx/groups/astro.mdb89f778c2:src/main-game/alpha/public/encounter/src/skills/turns/.pinned/vfx/astro-turns.PIN.json- docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-01-claude-workstreams-todo.md (working copy, not in Git)
What links here (30)
- Art direction
- Build VFX
- Care VFX
- Character sprites
- Encounter backgrounds
- Environment art
- Flow
- Hearth podium
- Home art
- Home VFX
- Icon labels
- Inventory HUD
- Movement VFX
- Orders VFX
- Palettes
- Panels VFX
- Places dialog
- Pressure front VFX
- Pull and Glide VFX
- Quest scroll
- Quests VFX
- Run HUD
- Studios interior
- Survey VFX
- Tendrils
- Threadway 3D scene
- Typography
- Vessel VFX
- VFX
- Ward VFX