Process
How we
actually make the work.
The studio uses AI to generate the paintings that fill its games. We curate, theology-review, composite, and ship. This page explains the pipeline, the human contributions, the §9 discipline, and the training-data acknowledgment, at the level of detail a serious patron deserves.
Long-form announcement of the decision lives in the devlog. This page is the durable reference.
The pipeline
Generation, curation, review, ship.
Five steps from prompt to published frame. The model produces; the studio chooses, reviews, composites, and signs the work.
01
Generation
The studio writes a prompt anchored on the title's visual identity (GRIS, Persian Shahnameh, Mughal miniatures for Sira; different anchors per title). Midjourney v7+ generates four to sixteen variants. The model is a tool, not a co-author.
02
Curation
The studio keeps the strongest one or two images per scope. The decision of which painting deserves to be looked at over the dozens that surrounded it is the studio's authorial responsibility.
03
§9 review
Every kept image runs the studio's theological-cultural review checklist. No Prophet ﷺ depicted or implied, no figure in the masjid courtyard, no directional light pointing at where the unseen sits, no minarets in early-Madinan scenes, no Ottoman turbans in seventh-century Hijaz, sahaba face-framing default of profile or three-quarter-back. The off-screen rule binds AI-generated images exactly the way it binds commissioned ones.
04
Composite
Kept images are composited into Unity scenes with custom URP shaders that unify the painted look across generations. Spine rigs and pose sets attach to character art. Geometric pattern motion design and calligraphy reveal animations are bespoke studio code.
05
Ship
Same review discipline as a commissioned piece. Same revision cycle. The painting carries the scene; the studio carries responsibility for every frame the audience sees.
What is not AI
The studio's craft is in the whole, not the brushwork.
Six load-bearing contributions stay human. These are not negotiable. A DeenOD game made under this pipeline is not "an AI game"; it is a curated work whose visual surface is generated and selected.
01
Narrative
Story, dialogue, character interiority, chapter structure, beat sheets, off-screen rule application, source citations to Ibn Hisham, Ibn Kathir, al-Tabari, Bukhari, Muslim. Studio-authored.
02
Calligraphy
Arabic script that inscribes itself when the unseen speaks comes from working calligraphers with classical training. AI is unreliable with Arabic script, and the calligraphic tradition in the Islamic intellectual inheritance is itself sacred craft. This is the hard line the visual pipeline does not cross.
03
Recitation
When Qur'an is recited in-game, it's by named qaris with permission, mixed clean, never AI-generated, never modified pitch or tempo, never looped or interrupted by SFX. Real voices, named in the credits.
04
Audio
Real instruments: oud, ney, qanun, riq, daf, vocal. Real musicians, real recordings. AI music is not used in any DeenOD title's core experience and will not be.
05
Engineering
Custom URP shaders, geometric pattern motion design, calligraphy reveal animations, architecture-as-UI menu framing, FMOD bus structure, silence-as-event handling. Bespoke studio code in Unity 6 LTS. No AI in any of it.
06
Theological discipline
The §9 review pass on every kept image is the studio's. The human scholar advisor gates production beyond the agent tripwires. Sectarian neutrality, female-character dignity, violence-as-consequence-not-spectacle: all studio-enforced.
Tools, named
Everything the studio uses, on the record.
Every game's credits and main menu carries this list. The audience can decide what they want to support.
Midjourney v7+
Image generation
Adobe Photoshop / Photoroom
Compositing, masking, character isolation
Unity 6 LTS + URP
Game engine, custom shaders, scene construction
Spine 2D
Character rigs and animation from generated character art
FMOD Studio
Adaptive audio, recitation handling, silence-as-event
Human calligraphers
Arabic script, Thuluth and Diwani, sourced and paid
Named qaris
Qur'anic recitation, with permission, credited in-game
Working musicians
Oud, ney, qanun, riq, daf, vocal performances
Training-data acknowledgment
The hard part, named.
Midjourney's training corpus was scraped from artists' work without their consent. The studio knows this. The same logic that says we use real qaris with permission, that we credit and pay calligraphers, that we respect the source, does not extend cleanly to image labor in this pipeline. There is a real inconsistency here, and the studio is not going to wave it away.
Tools with cleaner provenance exist. Adobe Firefly trained on licensed Adobe Stock. Public Diffusion. Their aesthetic ceiling today does not reach what Midjourney delivers. The studio is using the tool that produces the work we can ship, and we have accepted a provenance compromise to do that.
If the ethically-trained tools reach Midjourney's quality bar, the studio moves. If a settlement or licensing model emerges that compensates the artists whose work trained these models, the studio participates. Until then, the inconsistency is on the record. It's on this page.
What you can hold us to
Public commitments.
- Disclosure on every surface. Every Steam page, every Apple Arcade listing, every press kit, every Kickstarter campaign discloses the AI pipeline on-page, not buried in a footer. Every game's credits and main menu carries a "made-with" line naming the tools.
- No human-labor obscuring. The studio does not market the curation as if it replaces the brushwork. The studio names what each contribution actually is.
- Calligraphy stays human, always. Arabic script in any DeenOD title comes from working calligraphers, sourced and paid. The studio commits to never AI-generating Arabic script on a shipped surface.
- Recitation stays human, always. Real qaris with permission per the studio's §9.4 rule. AI recitation is forbidden.
- §9 review on every kept image. No exceptions, no looser review for AI-generated work, no shortcut.
- Annual deliberate review. The decision to use this pipeline is reviewed each May. If ethically-trained tools reach quality parity, or patron community signal turns negative, or legal landscape shifts, the studio reverses. The two original commission briefs are shelved as fallback, not deleted.
Questions, objections
If something on this page reads wrong, or you have an objection the studio should weigh, or you are an artist whose work was scraped and you want to talk: the contact form works. The studio is one person; one good email finds the right hands.
Last updated: 2026-05-07.