Open questions

Decisions that are Petter's. Each has a recommendation, and the books are written as if the recommendation holds, except where a line says "proposed". Last gathered 2026-10-01 from the three research portfolios and the review.

Decided

Question 4: one design for human folk (Petter, 2026-10-01)

The question was whether outside folk get their own proportions (4.5 heads) while inside folk stay at 3 heads. Petter: "jeg synes 'outside' character design fungerer godt! bruk det på innsiden også".

Decision: one design for human folk in the whole game: the outside design (4.5 heads, children 3.5, stocky, each eye at least 1/5 of the face's width with strong brows, three painted tones, thin coloured line). The 3-head chibi folk are retired as a target. The wall's difference is carried by the place, and on a figure only by the zone's clothing colours (lighter and warmer inside) and the ornament rule (painted rosemaling inside, a woven or carved band outside). Not changed: the princess, the animal villagers already in the game (the Tripo cast), animals and creatures, and Alvheim's elves. The rig and animation cost of two human body types falls away. The book is updated; the first proof image is lineup-folk-inside.

The family look (Eventyrland)

1. How graphic should the land outside be?

Two readings of the same block came back: painterly and detailed (gpt-image, close to the Fortiche and League concept paintings, far more detail than the game can draw) and flat gouache (Krea 2 Turbo with a short prompt: a dozen flat shapes, a paper-cut pine, hills as bands, close to what three.js draws well).

Recommendation: aim the frame (ground, far land, sky, far trees) at the flat gouache, and keep the painterly detail for hero assets seen near (figures, buildings, the one big tree). That is the rulebook's own split between the pass and the assets, and it gives the paint pass a target it can reach. The alternative, chasing the detailed painting everywhere, is more than the iPad budget carries.

2. Which painter for outside assets: Krea 2 or gpt-image-2.5?

gpt-image-2.5 followed head counts, eye size and "mid values only" and gave rendered three-tone figures. Krea 2 Turbo gave a flatter, more graphic look, ignored head counts and needs short prompts with the subject first. The game's own local Krea 2 was not tested.

Recommendation: gpt-image-2.5 for outside figures and buildings, Krea 2 for flat things (flower and tree cards, far cards, sky). Decide after the first meshes are judged: if the gpt-image textures mesh with their brush intact, switch the outside cast to it.

3. Skumlinger: black or deep violet plum? (the review's call is yours)

docs/design.md and the concept frame have them black; the rulebook says no black anywhere. The book draws them deep plum #3B2A4F with yellow eyes and writes "deep violet plum (proposed)".

Recommendation: plum. They read as well against the lilac wood, look funnier, and the "no black" rule keeps no exception. This changes docs/design.md.

4. Decided: one folk design (see Decided above)

5. Does a zone own an hour?

The cards give each zone an hour and weather (Sørmarka late afternoon, Nordalen morning, Skumleskogen twilight, Alvheim dusk). The game has one clock.

Recommendation: keep the clock. Give each zone a bias in the region grade and the haze (Sørmarka warmer and dustier, Nordalen cooler and clearer, Alvheim bluer with more glow, Fjellfoten mistier) and one favoured weather. Only the two canopies (Skumleskogen, Fjellfoten) hold their light at any hour.

6. The compass rule for glow colours

North ember, west cyan, south gold, high violet. It matches what is built (kiln, smokehouse and brazier in Nordalen; glowing mushrooms in Fjellfoten; sun stones in Sørmarka; Alvheim). The one strain: Skumleskogen (inside, north-east) also glows teal.

Recommendation: adopt it. Skumleskogen is the only place inside that glows, so it reads as its own thing.

7. Folk ornament, and what not to borrow

Rule 8 puts painted rosemaling inside the wall and unpainted carving outside. Whether that split is wanted, and where the line goes on Sami dress and pattern: one reviewer reads Nordlys's mountain folk as Sami-like, and Disney made a formal agreement with Sami bodies before Frozen 2.

Recommendation: adopt the split. Keep elves, mountain folk and reindeer herders in generic Norse carving and woven bands. Do not draw gákti, the four-winds hat or Sami band patterns unless Petter chooses to do it properly with someone who knows them.

8. Solengen and Møllebakken are close

Both warm and light; their frames average to nearly the same tan.

Recommendation: let the ground carry it: lawn and turf in Solengen (green at least 40 % of a frame), cobbles and red tile on Møllebakken, no turf roof on the hill. A stronger step (cooling Møllebakken's stone toward grey-blue slate) would also work but changes houses the audit graded B+.

9. The princess in the key art

The girl in a red cape in the images is a stand-in drawn by the prompt. For a published book the key art should show the game's princess.

Recommendation: redo the three key frames through an image-edit model with the game's A-pose reference as the input. Not tried.

10. The colour script's travel order

Assumed: Solengen, Møllebakken, Skumleskogen, Kysten, the wall, Sørvika, Sørmarka, Fjellfoten, Nordalen, Fjellet, Alvheim. The railway runs the other way round the ring.

Recommendation: keep this order, because it puts the gentlest land first outside and the magic last. If the quests send her north first, swap Sørvika and Nordalen and check the strip still swings.

11. Night outside is darker than the rule allows

The night frame has 4.8 % of its pixels under luma 0.08 and Alvheim's dusk 6.8 %, against 3 % for day.

Recommendation: accept 8 % at night, and hold Alvheim to it by lifting its foreground. A child should always see where the path goes.

Alvheim

12. How strange are the elves?

A (the book): people with a few fixed marks: star-freckles, softly glowing irises, moon-white hair with a tint, small ears, a tall bell outline. B: spirits of moonlight with blue-grey skin and pupil-less eyes. C: today's cute elves in the inside style.

Recommendation: A. B's eyes are eerie for a young child and break "eyes visible and bright", and its loose hair cannot be meshed. C reads as Solengen's children in costume and erases the wall's distinction. If A feels too human in the game, raise one mark (bigger freckles, a stronger tint in the hair) before going toward B.

13. How old is Eldrid?

The line-up drew her ageless and young; the A-pose and the night scene drew her old, upright and beautiful.

Recommendation: the old one. An old queen who is tall, straight and bright-eyed is rarer and kinder than a young one; what failed in the stand-in was the borrowed granny body and her glasses.

14. Is Alvheim a third look, or the outside look at 0.6?

Recommendation: keep the paint pass at 0.6 for Alvheim and treat Alvheim as its own column in the rulebook: the outside brush with its own shapes, base colours and glow rule. The book does this.

15. Night as the hero time: should the game steer her there?

Recommendation: leave the clock alone and give day its own look (a quiet, bright, sleeping village). Add a staged night moment for the errand's last step later if wanted. Making the place hold its own time breaks the one sun and sky that tie the zones together.

16. Where does the moonstone gravel start?

Today the path is warm dirt up to Lyktestien. The book moves the change to Taubrua's west rim. It needs a ground bake change and a world rebuild.

Recommendation: do it; the bridge is the one place on the way where she stops anyway.

17. The way stones on the way up

About six knee-high moonstone way stones with one rune each are the first signs of elves. They resemble the waystones she travels by.

Recommendation: keep them clearly smaller (knee-high, 0.5 m), with a crescent notch at the top and no interaction. If still too close, use the silver ribbon with a leaf on a birch as the sign and drop the stones.

18. The eight-petal rose

The most Norwegian motif here, and also a Christmas-jumper pattern abroad.

Recommendation: keep it, woven and flat, in each elf's glow colour on a dark band, never knitted, never red or white. If it still reads as Christmas in the game, swap the hem band for a row of birch leaves.

19. Who stands at the arch, and the new elves

Tinde stands at Alveporten today. The roles of guard, elder, weaver and child are new.

Recommendation: keep the four ids (Eldrid, Tinde, Vilja, Sildre), add the weaver at Veven and the elder at Tingringen first (both places stand empty), then the child, then the guard; move Tinde off the arch only when the guard exists. Names for the new four are Petter's and his daughter's to give.

20. Which model draws the elves that get meshed?

gpt-image-2.5 gives finer figures; Krea 2 Turbo gives bolder, flatter ones. Krea draws the ears long regardless.

Recommendation: decide from the meshes. Expect Krea's bolder shapes to mesh cleaner and sit better beside the outside folk; gpt-image stays the tool for sheets, scenes and edits.

21. Trees inside the ring

Every tree within 80 m of the well should be a giant pale tree. That means replacing the ten dark ancient library trees and the dark stock trees around the square, and opening the crowns so day light reaches the ground.

Recommendation: yes. It is the largest single change to how the place reads, day and night. It belongs with the drawn-trees work.

Grass and flowers

22. Flower cards turned to the camera, or crossed as today?

A card that turns with her has no cross seen from above and costs half, but a drift then looks a little like paper cut-outs facing her.

Recommendation: turn them. Try it in meadow and nordalen first; if the turning shows when she circles a lupin, keep the cross for cards over 0.6 m only.

23. Sprays instead of clumps: repaint all sixteen, and grow the set to thirty-two?

Recommendation: yes to both, in two rounds: first the sixteen kinds that exist, as sprays; then the sixteen new ones (fireweed, foxglove, globeflower, poppy, cornflower, cow parsley, dandelion, wood anemone, thrift, moss campion, mountain avens, seed grass, the two elf flowers and two variants).

24. Let violet and rose flowers count as accents in the paint pass?

Gold and cyan pass the accent test; harebell blue, lupin violet and heather rose do not, and are muted by 30 % outside. One line in the pass changes that.

Recommendation: make the change and look at Blomsterenga and Vassenden with it. If walls shift, leave the pass alone and paint outside blues lighter.

25. How yellow may the inside grass be?

Painted sunlit meadows measure near #BAB240; the rulebook's inside grass is #6DB33F to #8CC84B.

Recommendation: keep the body and move only the tips (#A4CF52) and the dry patches (#B9BE4E). If the meadow still reads as one flat green on the iPad, move the body to #7FB742 rather than raising saturation.

26. Tall flowers outside, and grass height

Fireweed at 0.95 m and foxglove at 1.0 m break the 0.8 m rule written for the old lupins. Seed-grass patches reach 1.4 m today, over her eyes.

Recommendation: allow tall flowers outside only, in threes, at edges; nothing over 0.8 m inside. Cap seed grass at 0.6 m inside and 0.9 to 0.95 m outside (marram 1.2 m).

27. Poppies and cornflowers in Sørmarka; petals and seeds when she runs through a drift

Recommendation: keep the poppies and cornflowers, only along walls, plots and ways. Build the petals and seeds: it is the cheapest piece of "dynamic" and the one a child notices first.

28. The paint pass over inside's far meadows?

Recommendation: no. Inside is "soft, blended, strokes barely visible"; judge the wash on stills first.

Raised while writing the books

29. Alvheim's palette on its zone card

The Eventyrland zone card for Alvheim keeps the family portfolio's seven colours (silver bark, moonstone, dusk blue, deep teal moss, violet, cyan, lantern gold). The Alvheim book's own palette is wider and its roles differ in places (moonstone #9FB0BD, moss #2F5D58).

Recommendation: the Alvheim book wins inside Alvheim; the card stays a summary and points to the book.

30. The research pages are public

The raw portfolios are published at /research/.... Local file paths in them are replaced with "a local file" when the page is built; tool and provider names (the image models, the mesh tool) remain.

Recommendation: leave them up, marked raw, as they show how each rule was found. Remove them from the site if raw notes should not be public.