Knowledge Base

PIXL ships with a curated library of pixel art techniques. When the AI generates a tile, it doesn't guess — it pulls in the relevant craft knowledge for the specific task.

What's covered

Color theory

Palette design, color ramps, warm/cool balance, complementary colors

Dithering

Bayer patterns, checkerboard, gradient approximation with limited colors

Shading & lighting

Light direction, shadow placement, cel shading, ambient occlusion

Outlines

When to use them, thickness, selective outlines, color selection

Animation

Frame timing, squash and stretch, walk cycles, idle animations

Tiling

Seamless edges, transition tiles, autotiling rules, WFC constraints

Hardware constraints

NES, SNES, Game Boy, GBA — palette limits, sprite sizes, tile counts

Sprite design

Silhouettes, readability at small sizes, chibi proportions

How it works

When you ask PIXL to generate a "dungeon wall tile," the knowledge base:

  1. Searches for relevant passages about walls, dungeon aesthetics, tiling rules, and shadow placement
  2. Expands using a concept graph — "dungeon wall" connects to stone materials, mortar patterns, WFC edge compatibility
  3. Ranks results by relevance and injects the top passages into the AI's context
  4. Positions strategically — most relevant first, second-most last (where LLMs pay the most attention)
Note

The knowledge base contains 30+ documents with 1,300+ cross-referenced concepts. When you search for one concept, related concepts are automatically discovered.

Concept graph

The knowledge base isn't a flat list. Concepts are linked by relationships:

  • "dithering" → "Bayer matrix", "color reduction", "gradient approximation"
  • "NES palette" → "4 colors per sprite", "background palette sharing"
  • "walk cycle" → "frame count", "bob height", "arm swing"

A query for one concept pulls in its neighbors — so the AI understands the full context, not just isolated facts.

Expandable

Add your own documents to the knowledge base. Write markdown about your game's art style, specific technique notes, or reference material — it gets indexed alongside the built-in knowledge.