Shop Alley - Documentation

01Quick Start

Five steps to dress your first alley:

1. Add an empty object with a CCA Wind Manager component - one per scene, drives wind for cloth and signs together.
2. Place the counter, shelves and shopfront (the window walls live in the companion Gothic Interiors pack - both must be in the project together).
3. Assign a material using the Cloth (Banner) shader to flags/awnings - add CCA Cloth Variant for per-instance variety.
4. Hang the Wooden Hanging Sign, add CCA Sign Swing to the Hanging_sing_base child (not the root!), set Chain Follower to chain2.
5. Press Play - cloth already sways in the editor, the sign starts swinging once you press Play.

02Banner & Cloth Color System

One awning/banner mesh → unlimited color, pattern and damage variants. Tearing, dirt, sun-bleach and wind sway - all procedural, on one shared material (MaterialPropertyBlock, zero extra material instances).

CCA Cloth Variant - per-instance variant

Override Colors is OFF by default - the banner keeps the material's color (e.g. a guild color), only weathering varies. Right-click the component header: Randomize (Colors + Weathering) or Randomize Weathering Only (keeps colors).

Cloth Randomizer - batch dressing

An editor window (Tools ▸ Serwus Studio ▸ Cursed Cozy Alley ▸ Cloth Randomizer) - pick a scope (selection / selection+children / whole scene), enable which properties to randomize (color, tear, dirt, wear, sway) with min–max ranges, and dress dozens of banners in one click. One Undo reverts the whole batch.

03Sign System

Two independent ways to put a graphic on a sign - a decal (icon quad, mesh-independent, works on any board) and a carved board (the graphic is carved directly into the board's own material, with depth and shaded grooves).

CCA Sign Variant - decal

A quad floated ~1 cm in front of the board, using the Sign Icon (Decal) shader. Assign CCA_SignPresetLibrary and set Preset Index - the icon swaps instantly. Wear Amount peels the paint, Glow Strength adds a cursed rune glow (needs Bloom).

CCA_SignBoard - carved board

A separate shader - the graphic is rendered directly into the board's material with a carved effect (Carve Depth, Groove Shadow) instead of a painted-on decal. Use it on a dedicated sign-board mesh instead of the decal when you want a physically engraved look.

04Hanging Sign Physics

A lightweight spring-damper (not noise-driven) for hanging signs and lanterns - wood has inertia and heavy damping, so it settles instead of endlessly waving like a flag.

Key fields

Only animates in Play mode (no [ExecuteAlways]) - it's a physics integration over time, so you can't preview it without pressing Play.

05Global Wind - CCA Wind Manager

One scene object drives every cloth banner and every hinged sign at once through a shared shader global, _CCA_Wind. Runs in Edit Mode - cloth sway previews without pressing Play (the sign swing itself still needs Play, see section 04).

The same _CCA_Wind hook is shared with the Cursed Cozy Vegetation pack - if both are in the same scene, use one Wind Manager for everything.

06Scripting API

Every variant and the swing physics are scriptable - change fields and call Apply():

// banner: the curse spreads...
var banner = GetComponent<SerwusStudio.CCAClothVariant>();
banner.tearAmount = 0.6f;
banner.Apply();

// sign: swap the icon for a cursed rune
var sign = GetComponent<SerwusStudio.CCASignVariant>();
sign.presetIndex = 2;
sign.Apply();

// player bumps into a hanging sign
var swing = GetComponent<SerwusStudio.CCASignSwing>();
swing.AddImpulse(120f); // degrees/second

The full field and component reference (including CCAWindManager.CurrentStrength / CurrentWind) is in the PDF documentation shipped with the package.

07Performance notes

• SRP Batcher - all material properties live in UnityPerMaterial cbuffers, so every shader in the pack batches correctly.
• MaterialPropertyBlock variants - a single material per system; hundreds of unique banners and signs cost no extra materials and no shader variants.
• Procedural damage - tear, dirt and peeling mean zero additional texture memory.
• The decal pass writes depth and normals, so SSAO and depth-based effects behave correctly; it skips the shadow pass entirely (free shadows).
• Vertex wind is GPU-only - no CPU animation, no cloth physics component.
• Watch CCASignSwing - it is a plain Update() spring-damper per sign. Cheap, but real CPU work per instance (unlike GPU-only cloth sway). It is meant for the handful of hero hanging signs in a scene, not hundreds.
• Godray and fog - additive + HDR materials that support soft particles. Soft edges need a Depth Texture enabled on the URP asset; without it (e.g. some mobile presets) edges are hard, but the effect still renders correctly.

08Troubleshooting

09Changelog