Chapter 4: Seasonal & Event Packs

Created by Sarah Choi (prompt writer using ChatGPT)

Seasonal & Event Packs — Prop Sets & Ecosystems at Scale

Why Seasonal & Event Packs Matter

Worlds breathe when they change with the calendar. Seasonal and event packs let prop concept artists swap identity layers—colors, decals, ornaments, lighting, interactives—without refactoring the underlying kits or breaking performance. Whether you’re designing a harvest festival in the capital square, a winter outage scenario in an industrial yard, or a limited‑time sci‑fi expo inside a transit hub, the goal is the same: deliver freshness at scale while preserving readability, budgets, and reuse.

Definitions You Can Reuse Across Teams

  • Seasonal Pack: A time‑bounded overlay that modifies palettes, decals, props, and dressing rules across multiple districts. Think winterization, spring growth, monsoon season, or holiday decor.
  • Event Pack: A shorter, more curated overlay tied to a story beat or limited‑time activation (market day, parade, disaster response, tournament).
  • Base Theme Pack: The always‑on grammar (shape language, materials, signage) that seasonal/event layers must never violate.
  • Swap Layers: The legal tiers you can change: decals/signage, trims/ornament, props marked “swappable,” emissive patterns, scatter sets, and audio/VFX hooks.

Design Principles (So You Don’t Paint Yourself Into a Corner)

  1. Overlay, Don’t Replace. Maintain sockets, metrics, interaction pivots, and kit IDs. Seasonal content should be additive or hot‑swapped on top of base prefabs.
  2. Band Discipline. Author the pack in distance bands (A/B/C). At C, use skyline punctuation and color blocks. At B, banners, garlands, and medium props. At A, micro ornaments, decals, and stateful interactives.
  3. Performance Neutrality. Seasonal swaps should respect the base cell budgets for materials, emissives, and animated nodes. When you add something, specify what drops.
  4. Rollback First. Document how to revert every change (and what persists, e.g., winter grime). Ship the undo alongside the do.

Anatomy of a Seasonal/Event Pack

A shippable pack contains:

  • Palette & Lighting Chord: 3–5 color chords (dominant, neutral, accent, hazard/wayfinding) plus ambient/sky suggestions for day/night variants.
  • Decal & Banner Library: Recolorable vector decals; banner aspect ratios; mounting heights; do‑not‑place zones.
  • Ornament Kit: Modular decor parts (garlands, lanterns, flags, wreaths, streamers, holograms) with sockets, pivot rules, allowable scale, and catenary sag guidance for strings.
  • Interactive Beats: Small interactions (gift crates, kiosks, votive lamps) with state colors and audio beeps; proxy swaps for low LOD.
  • Scatter Sets: Season‑specific ground scatter (leaves, confetti, snow clumps, sand drifts) with attachment/edge bias rules and decal conversions at distance.
  • Weather/Wear Envelopes: Wetness, dust, frost overlays; melt/evaporation notes for transitions.
  • AMF Ratios & Budgets: Per‑tile Anchor/Mid/Filler counts adjusted for the season/event, plus emissive and material caps.
  • Fallbacks & Rollback: Clear instructions for partial deployment on memory‑constrained platforms and a revert plan.

Interior vs. Exterior: Different Seasonal Physics

Interiors respond to human behavior: decorations cluster at thresholds (doors, counters), community nodes (stages, altars), and circulation pivots. Heating/cooling gear appears in winter/summer. Ceiling clutter must be capped—garlands and hanging lanterns share budget with ducts and sprinklers.

Exteriors respond to weather vectors and sightlines: wind stacks banners leeward; snow and sand build at curbs and leeward corners; light strings need skyline rhythm control to avoid visual chatter. Ensure anchors remain visible over mid clutter; cap skyline punctuation per tile.

Placement Heuristics That Travel

  • Threshold Rule: Enhanced dressing within 2m of doors and gates; readable from Band B.
  • Aisle Rule: No‑friction lane stays clear (1.2–1.5m interior, 3–4m exterior); ornaments cannot project into it beyond 10 cm.
  • Pairing Rule: Ornaments pair with shade/structure (posts, beams, awnings) rather than freestanding.
  • Rhythm Rule: Strings repeat at architectural modules (stud bays, arcade spans) rather than eyeballed gaps.
  • Cluster Rule: Confetti/leaves clump in 60/30/10 groupings near edges; avoid uniform spray.

Kits & Prefabs: Designing for Swapability

Author base kits with seasonal sockets: hook loops, banner rings, cable tie points, and magnetic strips. In your orthos, label seasonal_attach_A/B/C nodes with world‑sensible pivots. Keep ornament prefabs with the same socket tag + pivot standards so they hot‑swap safely. Provide short JSON‑like metadata examples for tagging (e.g., “socket”:”seasonal_attach_A”,”band”:”B”,”budget”:”filler”).

LOD Survival and Proxy Swaps

Spell out what survives per band:

  • Band C (20m+): Color washes on signage, skyline beacons, large banners only. Strings collapse to single billboard cards or drop entirely.
  • Band B (5–20m): Medium banners, lantern clusters, large wreaths survive; confetti/leaves convert to decals; emissives reduce to beacons.
  • Band A (0–5m): Full ornament detail, decal richness, small props, and micro motion allowed within budget.

Include proxy tables: “String of 12 lanterns → 4 lantern impostor → 1 emissive card,” “Leaf pile → leaf card → stain.”

Material & Emissive Budgets (Keep It Sane)

  • Material Slots per 20×20m tile: Keep equal to base or +2 at most; prefer reusing shared ornament atlas.
  • Emissives: 2–3 dynamic, 6–10 static max; event beacons claim first priority; reduce ambient signage where needed.
  • Animated Nodes: ≤ 6 per tile; cluster in Band A spaces (plazas, stages).

Audio & VFX Hooks

Seasonal mood is half sound and motion. Provide:

  • Looping Beds: crowd murmur, wind chimes, low festival music (cap 1 bed per tile).
  • One‑Shots: confetti pops, bell dings, lantern crackle (throttle by density).
  • Weather FX: snow flurries, drifting dust, rain streaks bound to cover logic. Always link to visible sources.

Safety & Accessibility

  • Color‑Blind Safety: Maintain the same functional color codes (hazard, interaction) even when seasonal palettes shift.
  • Subtitle/Caption Cues: Name ambient sources clearly in docs for accessibility scripts (e.g., “[lanterns crackling softly]”).
  • Motion Sensitivity: Flag any flicker rates; forbid rapid strobe patterns; set default to slow pulse.

Example Seasonal Packs

Winterization:

  • Palette: cool neutrals with warm accent (amber).
  • Ornaments: string lights, wreaths, insulated covers on pipes, heat lamps.
  • Scatter: snow clumps at curbs, salt residue near doorways.
  • Wear: frost edge on north‑facing surfaces, breath fog near kiosks (Band A only).

Spring Market:

  • Palette: desaturated earths + saturated produce colors.
  • Ornaments: bunting, canvas tarps, flower crates.
  • Scatter: petals/leaves clumping under stalls.
  • VFX: slow cloth flutter; Audio: vendor hawks at low volume.

Emergency Response Event:

  • Palette: high‑contrast hazard stripes, amber/red beacons.
  • Ornaments: barricades, signage pylons, work lights.
  • Scatter: tool cases, cable ramps (snap to grid).
  • Interactive: temporary kiosks, first‑aid stations.

Theme/Faction Compatibility

Publish cross‑matrix rules so seasonal packs skin across factions without contamination:

  • Corporate Clean: satin materials, low saturation ornaments, tight geometry.
  • Frontier Industrial: rugged trims, visible cables/ratchet straps, stenciled signage.
  • Bio‑Arc: translucent composites, bioluminescent beacons, organic garlands.

Keep shared metric and socket standards; vary only material/decal layers and a small silhouette add‑on set.

Streaming & Deployment Notes

Map ornaments to cell ownership: skyline banners are cell‑owned; edge ornaments use mirrored instances with end‑caps. Provide edge termination kits (banner clips, cable loops) to hide streaming seams. Document a tiered deployment plan: High (all features), Medium (reduced emissives/animated nodes), Low (decals + minimal banners).

Calendars, Cadence, and Tooling

Author a deployment calendar with art gates: concept (T‑8 weeks), kitization (T‑6), integration (T‑4), QA (T‑2), launch (T‑0), rollback (T+1), postmortem (T+2). Provide a checklist for each gate—naming, atlas compliance, budgets, band reads, accessibility.

Do/Don’t Patterns (Fast Reference)

  • Do attach ornaments to structural logic; don’t float decor in space.
  • Do preserve base affordances and signage; don’t obscure interaction zones.
  • Do trade like‑for‑like within budgets; don’t stack new lights on top of existing beacons.
  • Do collapse clutter to decals at distance; don’t keep micro geometry alive in Band B/C.
  • Do write a revert plan; don’t ship without rollback assets.

Handoff Package for Downstream Teams

Include: palette/lighting chord, decal/ornament libraries, socket map with attach tags, AMF & emissive/material budgets, LOD proxy tables, streaming notes, faction compatibility chart, accessibility guidelines, and the rollback plan. Add two annotated example tiles (one interior, one exterior) that demonstrate attach points, budgets, and survival per band.

Measuring Success

  • Throughput: Time to dress a district with seasonal content decreases after the first pack.
  • Performance: Draw calls and emissive counts stay within caps.
  • Clarity: Interaction and wayfinding remain legible; QA notes on occlusion/obstruction drop.
  • Delight: Players recognize the season/event from Band C distance and enjoy discoverables up close.

Final Thought

Seasonal and event packs are the art of reversible transformation. When you design them as overlays with strict budgets, socketed kits, and band‑aware placement rules, downstream teams can refresh the world on schedule—without sacrificing clarity, identity, or performance.