Obsidian Spire
What it is
A pure obsidian-pillar biome rendered as a dark cathedral of tall black shards under a smoky mid-fog. It is not in the player-facing planet rotation — its one attached planet is data-only and used as a stress-test bed for pillar rendering, occlusion, and dev scenarios. The biome holds the only terrain pool in the game made up entirely of obsidian pillars with no asteroid mix, and it is the only planet entry that defaults to no level preset and reuses another planet’s art.
Identity
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Player-facing label | Pure obsidian-pillar field |
| Terrain content | Obsidian pillars only (no asteroids, no buildings) |
| Buildings allowed | No |
| Default level preset | None — uses biome defaults directly |
| Role | Dev stress test for pillar rendering and occlusion |
| Attached planets | One, not in the player rotation |
| Planet art | Placeholder — reuses Voidstar art |
Visual and ambient
The biome runs the dark mastering preset with a light atmospheric fog. The parallax recipe is a layered shard cathedral: a deep starfield, a low-opacity ember-tinted sky in the back slot, three depths of obsidian-shard silhouette stamps (back, mid, near) at increasing parallax with falling tile size, and atmospheric smoke FBM layers between them on the mid, near, and foreground slots. Shadows render at a longer-than-default offset to read against the dark backdrop. The background nebula is drawn from the smooth-nebula shared pool. The preferred level palettes lean noir, amethyst, and cold ember.
| Backdrop and lighting knob | Value |
|---|---|
| Atmospheric fog alpha | 0.05 |
| Post-processing mastering | Dark |
| Shadow offset multiplier | 1.5 |
| Background nebula pool | Smooth-nebula shared pool |
| Preferred level palettes | Noir, Amethyst Drift, Cold Ember |
| Parallax layer | Slot | Parallax | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Deep starfield | Back | 0.04 | Density 4, accent stars 4% |
| Ember-tinted sky FBM | Back | 0.10 | Opacity 0.14, scale 4 |
| Obsidian-shard stamps (far) | Back | 0.22 | Tile 550, density 2.2, opacity 0.26 |
| Mid smoke FBM | Mid | 0.38 | Opacity 0.20, scale 2 |
| Obsidian-shard stamps (mid) | Mid | 0.50 | Tile 450, density 1.4, opacity 0.26 |
| Obsidian-shard stamps (near) | Near | 0.78 | Tile 360, density 0.7, opacity 0.26 |
| Near smoke FBM | Near | 0.80 | Opacity 0.05, scale 2 |
| Foreground smoke FBM | Foreground | 1.50 | Opacity 0.05, scale 2 |
Terrain mix
A pure pillar scatter — every shape in every size layer is an obsidian pillar. Medium pillars dominate the centerpieces, small and medium pillars share the medium layer almost evenly, and small pillars dominate the small-fill layer. The terrain pool is small and medium obsidian pillars only.
| Layer | Shape pool weights |
|---|---|
| Centers | pillar_md 60, pillar_sm 40 |
| Mediums | pillar_md 55, pillar_sm 45 |
| Smalls | pillar_sm 60, pillar_md 40 |
| Topology and density | Value |
|---|---|
| Level radius | 2500 |
| Terrain density | 0.55 |
| Terrain intensity | 0.50 |
| Hub min distance | 500 |
| Hub max distance | 1200 |
| Hubs per ring | 5 |
| Hub clear radius | 200 |
| Spoke width | 150 |
Enemy bias
Uses the bug enemy roster (orb, charger, shooter, mortar) with the default unbiased weighting — no archetype lean. Spawn pressure is set at a moderate above-default count multiplier with a one-second warmup grace, sitting between the Landing Site baseline and the Voidstar’s full-pressure profile. Destructible budget is the same 40 crates as every other planet, with a low debris count.
| Spawn pressure | Value |
|---|---|
| Enemy count multiplier | 1.5 |
| Spawn grace before full pressure (s) | 1 |
| Enemy set | Bug roster (orb / charger / shooter / mortar) |
| Crate density (of 100) | 40 |
| Debris density (of 100) | 8 |
| Event pool weighting | Weight |
|---|---|
| Magnet | 2 |
| Weapon | 1 |
| Artifact | 1 |
Boss-arena default
The attached planet has no boss assignment — the biome ships as a data-only test surface and never reaches a boss encounter through normal play.
| Planet | Boss at T-zero |
|---|---|
| Obsidian Spire | None |
Which planets use it
A single planet attaches to the Obsidian Spire biome. The planet is intentionally excluded from the player-facing planet order and is reachable only via dev scenarios.
| Planet | Numeric ID | Player-facing |
|---|---|---|
| Obsidian Spire | 99 | No |
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: the placeholder planet art (Obsidian Spire reuses the Voidstar planet image) is a one-off shared with no other planet. Worth a “planet art status” callout on planets.md rather than restating per page.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: pillar-content biomes share a shape pool with the Voidstar biome but scope it differently — Obsidian Spire is pure pillars, the Voidstar mixes pillars with asteroids. Same candidate flagged from the Voidstar page; a “pillar-content biomes” callout on biomes.md would canonicalize this.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: this is the only planet entry with no levelPreset field — it uses biome defaults directly for terrain density and intensity rather than overriding via a preset. Pattern is unique and worth a one-line callout on world.md under the biome-vs-preset override rule.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: the smooth-nebula background pool is shared across landing_site, sunrise_city, the_voidstar, obsidian_spire, and two unbuilt biome IDs (jungle_canopy, crystal_cavern). Same candidate flagged from the Voidstar page; lift to biomes.md as a shared backdrop-pool table.
EXTRACT-CANDIDATE: dev-only / test-only biomes form a distinct content tier (Obsidian Spire here, plus dev-scenario-only configurations elsewhere). Worth a “test biomes vs. player-facing biomes” classification on biomes.md.