Pixxoku — Advanced

#What you'll learn

• All 35 rules by category, and which ones fix automatically.
• Exactly how severity and issue counts turn into category scores and a grade.
• The fields in the JSON report, the rules file and the QA data that travels with sent art.
• How the same rules run inside Pixxizi and as quality gates in Flow.
• The limits: frame sizes, sheets and batches.

#Before you start

• Read Pixxoku — Intermediate first: presets, your own rules, project style and batch are assumed.
• JSON knowledge helps for the report and rules file sections.

#How-tos

#How to read the rule reference

Every rule has a category, a default severity and a strictness from 1 to 5. Open any rule in the left panel to change them, or Learn to see a lesson.

1. 31 rules have a pixel-exact fix; 4 are guided (Pixxoku shows where, you draw the fix).
2. Fixes only touch the pixels listed in their issue, except the whole-image fixes: re-lighting pillow shading, reducing to the colour budget, snapping to the palette, and padding or cropping the canvas.
3. Animation rules only run with two or more frames.

#How to understand the score

1. Each issue has a severity weight: Error 14, Warning 7, Hint 2.
2. For each rule, the penalty is its weight × (1 + log₂ of how many issues it found). Ten orphan pixels cost far less than ten times one.
3. A category's score starts at 100 and loses its rules' penalties. Animation is only scored for animations.
4. The overall score is the average of the category scores. Grade: A 90+, B 80+, C 65+, D 50+, E below 50.
5. Ignored issues and ignored rules don't count; the report shows how many were ignored.

#How to use the JSON report

1. Open the Report tab and click Download JSON.
2. Top-level fields: app (pixxoku), version, created, name, size, frames, preset, overall, grade, scores (per category), counts (error, warn, hint) and ignored.
3. rules lists each rule that fired: id, name, category, severity, count.
4. issues lists up to 500 issues: rule, severity, frame (1-based), x, y, w, h and message.
5. Feed it to a script or spreadsheet to track art quality across a project.

#How to share rules as a file

1. Click Export rules. You get <name>.pixxoku-rules.json with app, kind: "rules", v, name and config.
2. config holds the colour budget, palette, light direction, backgrounds and every rule's on, strictness and severity.
3. Import rules loads such a file into the current check (your ignore list is kept). Files from anything else are refused.
4. Save as my rules… after importing to keep it in your account's synced presets.

#How to read the QA data sent with art

1. When you Send to App, the art keeps its kind (image, frames or sheet) and carries the report as meta.qa.
2. meta.qa is the same report as the JSON download without the issue list: grade, scores, counts, preset and which rules fired.
3. Apps further down the pipeline (and your own tools reading .pxasset files) can use it to refuse art below a grade. See Pixx asset formats.

#How to run the same checks in Pixxizi

1. Pixxizi uses the same rule engine before it exports a game package.
2. In Pixxizi's package settings, choose the art check: Engine essentials, Game-ready, Everything or Off.
3. Engine essentials only checks what breaks in a game engine: light halos, partial transparency, art touching the frame edge and frame jitter. Its findings are warnings, never blockers.
4. Check in Pixxoku on a finding opens the art here with the full rule set.

#Workflows

#A quality gate in Flow

1. In Flow, select the art step and add a quality check with the preset you want (for example Game-ready).
2. The step can only be marked Done when its newest result passes: no errors and no warnings.
3. If it fails, open the step in Pixxoku, fix, and Send result to Flow again.

#Nightly clean-up of a sprite folder

1. Load your team's rules (Import rules) and set the project palette.
2. Batch the folder with Apply safe fixes to every file ticked.
3. Download the reports ZIP and look for files graded C or lower; open those for hand fixes.

#Readability pass for small screens

1. Choose Mobile icons or your own rules with Weak small silhouette and Low contrast with the background set to Error.
2. Check every icon on both dark and light backgrounds, and in the Readability tab at ½ and ¼ size.
3. Fix silhouettes by hand in Pixxivi, then re-check.

#Tips and shortcuts

• Frames are checked up to 480 × 480 px. Bigger images open as sprite sheets (each cell is a frame); images over 1024 px are refused with a hint.
• The sprite sheet dialog finds the grid from the gaps; adjust Columns, Rows, Cell width and Cell height when it guesses wrong.
• The default contrast background is a mid grey (#5b6472), so a dark outline on a dark game background doesn't flag every sprite.
• Jitter compares each frame with both neighbours, wrapping at the loop, so steady movement isn't flagged.
• Undo keeps 60 steps.

#Troubleshooting

• The grade is low but there are few issues. One error-level rule costs a lot. Check the severity you set on your rules.
• The report lists only 500 issues. The list is capped; counts and scores still include every issue.
• Imported rules didn't keep my ignored issues. Ignore lists belong to the art, not the rules file. Ignore again, or ignore whole rules in the project.
• Pixxizi shows warnings Pixxoku doesn't. They may use different presets. Open the art with Check in Pixxoku and pick the same preset.
• A Flow gate never passes. The gate needs zero errors and zero warnings with its preset. Set noisy rules to Hint in your rules, or choose a gentler preset for the gate.

#Related guides

• Pixxoku — Beginner · Pixxoku — Intermediate
• Pixxizi · Pixx Flow · Pixx asset formats