Moss Pond Garden

Hook Approved

A Japanese pond garden with three walkable islands, for trying red drum bridges over two- to five-cell spans.

Premise Approved

A home for a red drum bridge with a high arch (taikobashi), added by a later prompt, and for trying it over short and long spans under engine 0001's bridge rules (GAMEPLAY.md → Bridges; per bridge kind, setback 12 and grade at most 12° unless it sets its own, no maxSpan; the reach is one cell). The map is 20×20 cells (480×480 units), north up, seen from the south. A pond of its own unwalkable tile, `pond`, which the bridge will cross, is 8–12 cells across (192–288 units), its long axis east–west. Three islands 2–3 cells wide (48–72 units), mossy and walkable, stand in it. Between neighbours, bank to island and island to island, the water is 2–4 cells wide, with at least one straight crossing each of 2, 3 and 4 cells (72, 96 and 120 units landing to landing at the default setback); most crossings run east–west, so the opening camera sees each arch side-on, and at least one pair chains two bridges through an island. Placement checks only that both landings stand on landing tiles (every walkable tile the bridge does not cross), that every point between is on a landing or pond tile, that the two landings are at most 12° apart, and that no ground rises more than 1.2 units above the straight line between them. So banks and islands stand 3–6 units above the water and fall toward it between a landing and the water's edge, and two landings of a crossing stay within 3 units of each other (under 2°, where 12° would allow 15–25). A choice the engine does not check: at each listed crossing the bank faces the water as one straight tile edge on a grid axis, at least a cell either side of the crossing, so a landing is never pushed onto a corner. Ground behind a landing is not checked, so an island may rise in a mound and the north bank into a hill. The water's visible edge reaches past the pond tiles by the liquid's waterline outset, half a cell by default; that equals the default setback, so a landing would stand at the water's very edge and a 2-cell island would show only one cell of dry land. The pond therefore uses an outset of about a quarter cell, checked at the terrain review. It also tries a set piece made as scatter: one cell of its own unwalkable tile, `torii`, on a level terrace of the hill across the pond, holds exactly one torii gate from a scatter layer gated to that tile alone (one guaranteed prop, a very low density, a fixed yaw facing the pond). The engine stands a guaranteed prop at a fixed but random point among its cell's 3×3 candidates, so the gate may sit up to half a cell off the cell's centre; the cell being unwalkable keeps buildings, roads and footpaths off it, and it takes the gravel court's ground colour so the tile itself does not show. It spends one of the map's eight tile types. (The first set piece was a three-storey pagoda; at the final review the user asked for something smaller.) A dwelling is 20 units; the torii stands about one and a half dwellings tall.

Environment Approved

A Japanese stroll garden in spring, made by hand on the level floor of a shallow valley. Its makers dug the pond and heaped the spoil into three mossy islands, each big enough to walk on and marked by a small stone grouping and a black pine, and into an artificial hill (tsukiyama) along the north side; the lawns round the pond roll in low mossy mounds. On a terrace cut into the hill's east shoulder, above the water, a vermilion torii gate stands on a small court of raked white gravel; a larger gravel court with upright stones lies by the south-west shore, and on the east shore a cobble beach (suhama) slopes gently into the water. The banks are set with weathered stones and have mossed over in deep, soft green. Japanese maples, most in fresh spring green and a few dark red, crowd the east and west banks over ferns; cherry trees in full bloom stand on the hill's summit and beside the gravel, their fallen petals pinking the moss; black pines and maples stand singly across the lawns among drifts of clipped azalea mounds, and a few stone lanterns watch the water. The pond is still, dark jade-green water that mirrors a little of the sky. Soft, warm afternoon spring light from the south-west under a pale haze. Calm, composed and intimate.

Architecture Approved

Kyoto sub-temple carpentry: square hinoki and sugi post-and-beam frames on low grey granite plinths, white lime-plaster infill panels between broad tie beams, and deep charcoal kawara tile roofs whose wide eaves lift gently at the corners over stacked bracket blocks. Vermilion bengara lacquer is reserved for the sacred and the prestigious (pagoda frames, gates, bridge rails) and bronze for finials, while tea huts and garden shelters stay rustic: bark-on log posts, earthen mud walls, thick rounded thatch or cypress-bark roofs. Repairs show openly as pale fresh timber and bright new copper flashing that weathers to verdigris.

Gameplay Not written

Palette Approved

• Deep moss#4F6B34
• Raked gravel#DCD6C8
• Jade pond#3E6862
• Cherry blossom#F3C4CE
• Spring maple#8DB04F
• Red maple#7E2A2C
• Weathered stone#7E7B73
• Afternoon haze#F3E7CF