Flow

Flow is how the Ranger travels on the overworld side maps. The cell folds its small processes inward, spreads its body, flows forward through an 800 ms membrane wave and gathers into its resting shape. This article covers the look; the travel skill itself is part of the Ranger's kit.

How it works#

• Side views lower the body against a fixed bottom edge while it flows.
• Top-down views stretch along the chosen direction, with a small asymmetric body wave.
• There are no legs, no ground tethers, no slime trail and no bounce.
• The original eight top-down and two side identities stay as separate masters. The 32×32 frame and the (16,24) anchor do not change.
• Each view has an Aseprite master with idle, start, move and stop tags. Face, nucleus and identity marks move only as whole pixel clusters, and the build checks this.

Flow is overworld-only. It never appears in turn rooms, and it never uses Tendrils. The lead's sprite audit repeats this: the older README's idea of "tendril travel" is not approval to change the Flow design.

History#

Development#

• In the alpha: the overworld renderer selects ranger-flow-east and ranger-flow-west on side maps (src/main-game/overworld/public/app.js on Placeholder).
• The lead's audit calls Flow v002 canonical and the cleanup "installed".
• The Movement VFX group adds only a short, light dotted trail behind Flow. The user called the first broad wake "too much for just movement".

Gallery#

See also#

• Character sprites
• Movement VFX
• Tendrils

Sources#

1. 8a6ddb0f7:art/characters/readability/flow/melt/README.mdcopy
2. 8a6ddb0f7:art/characters/readability/flow/README.mdcopy
3. b89f778c2:src/main-game/overworld/public/app.jscopy
4. docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-01-lead-sprite-audit-claude-handoff.md (working copy, not in Git)
5. docs/ops/agent-messages/2026-11-02-lead-full-project-reconciliation-audit.md (working copy, not in Git)