Aetherlab Level Select
======================

12 magitech level select and world map pieces for dark interfaces — lab navy
with aether cyan accents. SVG plus transparent PNG at 1x, 2x and 4x.

Aetherlab Level Select is a set of 12 level select and world map pieces drawn
in the magitech style, where pointed corners and a circuit trace carry arcane
colour — fantasy with wiring under it. It contains four stage node states, a
straight and a curved path, each locked and open, a region name plate, a fog
of war edge, a zoom control and a map legend box.

A level select map is built from two things, nodes and the lines between them,
and the lines are what every free set leaves out. Drawing them in engine is
where the map falls apart: a stroke drawn by code does not match the art
style, and a path that is straight in one style and hand-wobbled in another
cannot be a rectangle.

The pointed corners come from the shape vocabulary rather than from a fantasy
frame, and that is deliberate: this style is the tech half of magitech, not
the carved half. Gradients and outlined compositions alternate through the set
so a spell panel and an instrument panel can share one screen.

Inside that style this is the Aetherlab reading of it: a dark interface on a
lab navy palette with aether cyan accents, built around a single bordered
frame, chamfered buttons at 144x36, hollow-cored bars divided into 22
segments, and two-tone icons on a 24px grid. Those measurements are why two
families can share an art style without being interchangeable: the style
decides how an edge is drawn, the numbers decide what the interface is for.

The paths ship in the same drawing language as the nodes, straight and curved,
each in a locked and an open reading. Locked is dashed and thin, open is solid
and full weight, which means progress along a map is visible as a change in
the connections rather than only in the nodes. The four node states are told
apart by structure: locked is hatched across, available carries a single dot
at its centre, cleared fills solid and perfect adds four corner brackets to
the filled node. The fog edge is drawn as a stepped band rather than a soft
blur, because a blur rasterises differently in every engine and a map edge is
exactly where that shows.

Every sprite ships as an editable SVG and as transparent PNG at 1x, 2x and 4x,
so you can drop the PNGs straight into an engine or open the vector and change
a colour. Built to the same measurements as the rest of the Aetherlab family,
which means this kit and the Aetherlab panel kit line up without either being
resized. A good fit for magitech, alchemy and arcane-science interfaces.

HOW TO USE

  - Place nodes on your own grid and lay the path pieces between them; the
    path sprites are drawn to the node spacing named in the specs box so they
    meet the node edge without overlap.
  - Swap a locked path for its open twin when the stage unlocks rather than
    tinting it. The dash pattern is the signal.
  - Anchor the fog edge to the boundary of the explored region and let it
    overlap the unexplored side; the stepped band is drawn to be tiled
    horizontally.
  - The region plate and the legend box share a corner treatment with the
    panel kit in this family, so a map screen and a menu screen do not look
    like two different games.

License: CC-BY-4.0 — see LICENSE.txt
Page: https://www.colorosse.com/assets/2d/ui/aetherlab-level-select
More free assets: https://www.colorosse.com
