Separate the object into parts
A card has a printed image, a border, corners and a surface. The slab adds another material around it. If every effect is painted across all those parts at once, the result feels like a filter laid over a screenshot.
Smash & Grab's wear model separates the strength of condition from the kind of treatment. The four subgrades help determine intensity. A dominant style and additional incidents determine how that intensity is expressed.
This is related to a broader graphics principle: different material properties deserve separate controls. Khronos' explanation of physically based materials distinguishes properties such as base color and roughness. The card-wear model has its own implementation, but the same practical lesson applies: a change to the print shouldn't accidentally become the same change to every surrounding surface.
Give the print a different treatment from the paper
Sun bleaching is a good example. A pale wash over the entire card can make it look as though fog sits in front of the object. Reducing the print's contrast creates a different reading: the image itself has lost some of its punch.
The current model therefore treats image fading separately and limits how far it can go. The character should remain recognizable even on a heavily affected copy. A collectible loses part of its purpose when the subject disappears beneath the effect.
| Part of the look | What changes | Why it needs its own control |
|---|---|---|
| Print placement | Drift and rotation within the card | Centering should be readable as placement. |
| Perimeter | Corner and edge treatment | Handling marks belong to particular areas. |
| Print character | Contrast, color and reproduction effects | Fading shouldn't look identical to dirt. |
| Incidents | Specific marks such as a crease or annotation | A copy needs restraint as well as variation. |
Let different wear styles have different voices
Handled, Sun bleached, Photocopied and Corrupt scan should not be four names for one brown texture. A photocopied look can push contrast and flatten color. A faxed reproduction can simplify tones and introduce a different print character. Handling can emphasize the card's physical-looking perimeter.
The model also avoids giving every style baseline scratches. Scratches appear only where the chosen treatment earns them. That small rule keeps a faded card from automatically becoming a scraped card as well.
These are fictional material stories, not verified histories. A Water damage label doesn't mean a real object got wet. It gives the player a way to recognize and discuss an intentional visual treatment.
Keep the grade in charge of intensity
Overall grade places a ceiling on how dramatic the wear can be. The highest grades allow only restrained effects; a 10 has no generated wear. Lower grades permit stronger treatments and more incidents.
The four subgrades add direction within that ceiling. Weak corners should have more influence on corner-related wear than a uniformly strong condition profile. That relationship makes the smaller numbers useful when you're inspecting the larger image.
The rule isn't that every defect maps to a fixed number of pixels. The rendering interprets the condition consistently, with limits that stop a near-perfect copy from looking wrecked merely because a random combination was visually loud.
A mark should stay where you found it
The implementation uses stable placement information for a given copy and wear version. Reopening the same slab should not move a corner mark or redraw its print drift as though you opened a different collectible.
The shared model supplies the condition description to multiple renderers, including card and slab views. Different lighting and display sizes can change how strongly a detail reads, but the underlying choices need to agree.
None of this runs a durability system during Jobs. Playing a character doesn't scratch its collectible, and a pristine copy doesn't gain stronger stats. The wear exists to make the Stash worth exploring after the heist: an object with enough visible detail that you can look twice and notice something.