[arudaev]

What and why

You asked for layers like the art. The Hidden Garden had one flat rear layer above the path, so nothing moved at its own depth. It now has docs/04's stack: sky 0.1 · far 0.25 · mid 0.6 · rear, water, path 1.0 · foreground 1.2. No hand-painted masks were used:

1. depth_layers.py key: sunburst repaints the finished chunk as a flat-colour depth key, one colour per band. Masks come from the board's own picture, as AGENTS rule 2 requires.
2. masks:
   • every pixel snaps to the nearest key colour and specks are voted away;
   • near the sky, the real pixel decides. Measured on the chunk: open sky ≈ (40–60, 120–140, 240), hazy far treetops ≈ (80, 120, 180), so "sky" means blue > 200.
   • Leaf fringes of the big near tree go to the rear layer.
   • The path, water and foreground keep their exact rules, which win.
3. fill: for sky, far and mid, the model paints what the nearer layers hide, behind the layer's own skyline. The painting is kept only on pixels the nearer layers own, so at rest the stack still rebuilds the art exactly (export_stage.py --verify). When the camera moves, it reveals painted scenery, never holes.
4. compare.py parallax: renders the region from export.json at several camera positions, the way the game draws it.

The plan diagram, palette and rules are in docs/09 – Parallax layers from a depth key.

Comparison (AGENTS.md rule 4)

hg-0-0-parallax.png shows the chunk at camera x = 0, 440 and 880. The top row is the approved chunk, unchanged; in the next two each layer has moved by its own speed.

Known and accepted: at x = 880 the far forest's left end shows a short vertical edge behind the mid trees. There is no plate past the ends of a tree line on purpose: the model painted sun glow with a flat top there.

Lane B

The loader in Codex's stack places a parallax layer at chunk.x × 2160. On any chunk after the first that puts it off-screen, Rusty Creek included. I commented the fix on #116. This region is one chunk, so it is correct either way until then.

How to test

python scripts/compare.py parallax art/stages/hidden-garden --at 0 300 600 880 --out tmp/parallax.png
python scripts/export_stage.py art/stages/hidden-garden --out tmp/stages --verify

In the game, open ?region=hidden-garden once lane B's stage loader (#116 →) is merged, and walk right: the sky barely moves, the forest drifts and the reeds go by at walking speed.

Stack

• [3/3] art: draw Rusty Creek's parallax layers from region-wide plates #151 [3/3] art: draw Rusty Creek's parallax layers from region-wide plates
• [2/3] art: grow the Hidden Garden into a five-chunk prologue walk #148 [2/3] art: grow the Hidden Garden into a five-chunk prologue walk
• [1/3] art: give the Hidden Garden parallax layers from a depth key #143 [1/3] art: give the Hidden Garden parallax layers from a depth key ← this PR

#148 replaces the per-chunk slow plates with region-wide plates in chunk tiles and moves the fill plates out of git.

Issue

Closes #142

Verification

• python -m unittest discover -s scripts -p "test_*.py": 87 OK (test_depth_layers.py: snapping, specks, the sky edge, hazy treetops, the skyline, which masks are written)
• split_layers.py --check and export_stage.py --verify: exact
• check_docs.py

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