Thanks so much for posting this, Hyptosis! I love the way the floor tiles imply so much texture, but they're borderless so you can mix and match. Very effective. Also the giant anvil is so cool, lots of personality there.
Looks like there is some banding in the preview image, but it's not present in the actual download.
Looks nice! Maybe adjust the shading so that it implies more of a 3/4 perspective than top-down? E.g. move the light-gray shading from the middle more towards the top.
Thanks YuriNikolai! That is a great idea to focus on foragable plants. I found this Wikipedia article (which is not very comprehensive), as well as this neat website. (I definitely referenced that Wikipedia article on culinary fruits, as well as the List of Vegetables page while working on my Foods pack :p). Still seems like a huge list, I would love it someone could help prioritize for me ;-)
FiveBrosStopMosYT, that is great, exactly what I was thinking! Now you just need a biting/tugging animation (maybe?). And maybe it needs different directions, or maybe it just gets rotated in-engine?
Good discussion here, thanks for contributing everyone. Not sure we're any closer to a consensus, but it's helpful to talk it out. Sorry if this is a bit pedantic, I'm just trying to think thru the best structure to make our lives easier going forward.
w/r/t file layout: Ben's proposed scheme (${body_type}/${head_type}/${animation}/${category}/${subcategories}/${object}/${variant}.png) is elegant in that it goes from broadest to narrowest category. It also means you could easily identify all objects available for a given base and remove entire bases/bodies that you don't use. However I see three related issues:
spritesheets for same object (e.g. a hat) on different bases (or head types) are very similar. (In the case of hat, hair, etc. they are probably derived from the same source image(s)). But this scheme puts them in very distant folders. This means that when someone adds/edits an asset, they have to touch multiple distant folders and also update the CREDITS.csv file in probably very distant places. This would be a minor but very practical annoyance.
this scheme requires duplicating a rather large and deep file hierarchy, i.e. the categories/subcategories of every object, across all body_types and head_types and animations. As opposed to duplicating body_type/head_type/animation for each object, if the scheme were more like ${category}/${subcategories...}/${object}/${body_type}/${head_type}/${animation}/${variant}.png , which I'm beginning to think I favor. It seems more likely that the folder hierarchies would end up "out of sync" (i.e. we end up with female/human/torso/jacket but male/human/torso/clothes/jacket, just by accident). Enforcing a scheme like ${category}/${subcategories...}/${object}/${body_type}/${head_type}/${animation}/${variant}.png with a "linting" script would be relatively simpler; you just check that every path ends in ${body_type}/${head_type}/${animation}, with a list of permissible values for each (perhaps derived from elsewhere in repo, e.g. body_type can be the name of any of the subdirectories of bodies/
some objects may use the same spritesheet for different body_types. For example, hair for female and pregnant can mostly use the same images. The generator JSON system allows this (you just mention the same file path for the two different body_types). But it seems somewhat less intuitive in this scheme... there would have to either be a) both female/human/universal/hat/tricorne.png and pregnant/human/universal/hat/tricorne.png, or b) you would have to know to search for some pregant assets in the female directory, i.e. you would need to parse the JSON files anyway, negating the advantage of having all assets for a given body_type in one directory, or c) you would need top-level directories for various combinations of body_types, e.g. female_and_pregnant, male_and_muscular, etc. All of these solutions seem somewhat inelegant to me.
w/r/t separate vs. combined sheets: agreed w/ Herodom that a single combined sheet is easier for the generator web page; we'd have to re-write a lot of things to accommodate separate images per animation, and I don't think anyone is really too eager to do that given how previous efforts to revamp the generator from scratch have all fizzled out. I also get Evert's point that making the sheet longer and longer is not optimal, but I feel like introducing some kind of packing scheme other than "animations arranged top-to-bottom, N/E/S/W" is too complicated for the generator. If someone wants to pack sheets more tightly, they can use a sprite atlas packer, or even lpctools.
What if we add space for the other directions of the hurt animation (i.e. add two blank rows after "shoot", then the current south-facing hurt animation, then another blank row), then start adding new animations below that, in the order they are added to the generator? We adapt the generator to assume the assembled image will be 832x1536px (current "universal" layout is 832x1344px, add 3*64px height for the other directions of the hurt animation) or taller, and align all layers to the top-left corner? That would be a fairly minor change I think. Adding support for new animations to the generator would just mean telling it which named animation comes next, which would be simple. After scaling everything for the missing death animations (a one-time operation that could be done with lpctools), we wouldn't have to edit any of the existing images until someone drew the new animations for them.
A final alternative, that might (??) please everyone: we separate each animation into distinct images, but then also programmatically assemble a universal stacked layout (as I described above) offline using lpctools as part of the build process. So every asset has ./cast/*.png, ./thrust/*.png, ... ./jump/*.png, and ./universal/*.png. It could also have ./legacy/*.png which would use the old layout (i.e the single-direction death animation); perhaps we re-name the "universal" layout to "stacked" or "universal-stacked" or something like that. The generator website only needs to support the growing universal stacked layout, but if someone wants to use the collection of images in their game, they can work from the individual animations if they prefer.
w/r/t separate heads necessary? @Herodom/Castelonia: agreed we could easily start by replacing the bases with these ones, that is definitely most practical. However it will not produce very useful results; many of the bases (e.g. lizard, wolf, probably minotaur?) will not work well with existing clothing assets since the head overlaps with the torso more than the human head, so the chin will be covered by shirt collars, etc. So we definitely need an ability to add heads on a separate layer and we should figure out how to do that.
w/r/t adding any head to any body, the more I think about it the solution seems to be to name the head_types human-male, human-female, human-child, orc-male, orc-female, etc. rather than just "human", "orc", etc.
The head variant (i.e. color) should be linked to the body variant by default. I think we can add a field in the JSON file called "match_variant_to_body" or something, and for layers where that is `true`, if the variant of the body changes then the variant of that layer will be changed as well. Heads would obviously have this propery, so would ears, noses, wings (if we add them), tails, etc., anything that follows a skin color.
One final issue to consider is that many assets won't care about the head_type (e.g. shirts, pants, etc.). So maybe they get a folder in the hierarchy that is just head_type=all, e.g. torso/clothes/longsleeve/male/all/universal/green.png , or maybe the head_type subdirectory is optional, e.g. torso/clothes/longsleeve/male/universal/green.png . The former seems more consistent and therefore probably better.
So in summary, I think I vote for ${category}/${subcategories...}/${object}/${body_type}/${head_type}/${layout}/${variant}.png , where "layout" is either the name of an animation, or a composite layout such as "universal" or "legacy". The individual animations are the ground truth and the composite image is assembled using lpctools as part of the build process.
By the way, I am pleased to announce Memberships are live on my Ko-fi page: https://ko-fi.com/bluecarrot16 . Members get early access to my new art, (starting with the new LPC Sailing Ship, available now!), and members at higher tiers can choose from a set of discounted commission projects here . All art will ultimately be released under a free/libre license on OGA, as always. Thanks for your support!
Never too late; I appreciate the feedback! Thanks also for your support on Ko-fi, your patronage definitely buys greater influence! XD
The ship currently only supports east/west (west is mirrored). North/south would certainly be possible to add. It would be some work but not a terrible amount---basically would need new bow/stern tiles, sails, ratlines, quarter gallery, and stairs, I think everything else could be re-used. Diagonal is not happening (sorry to whoever asked for that earlier :p)
Wield-able/character animated Shears, tongs, chisels, and pliers are all great ideas. I bet I can work those into the south-facing thrust animation, though might not work for east/west. Inventory items/tiles are definitely possible for those items that don't exist.
How about jeweler's magnifying glasses, or a face shield for welding/smithing, or goggles?
I think for fish in the water, there could just be a small/medium/large fish silhouette, like in Animal Crossing or similar. There are side view images of all those fish (and some others) for inventory etc. in the LPC Foods pack.
Thanks for the feedback everyone! Good points all around.
@Evert: any specific weapons or tools you'd like to see?
@FiveBrosStopMosYT: yes, this is exactly what I had in mind for the ladies clothing! Eliza started something similar years ago and I would like to finish it!
@YuriNikolai: are there some particular realistic plants/crops that you'd like to see? In terms of crops, there are a lot of items from my food pack that I could do, but I've definitely done the most common ones already... I would like to do some growing animations for herbs, which would be useful both as crops (e.g. for farming) and for foraging. For non-crop plants, I'd have to do some research/thinking to figure out what would be most useful... for most games, a bush is a bush. I can definitely imagine scenarios where the specific kind of bush would matter, but I'd appreciate some suggestions on which bushes (/flowers/plants/shrubs) would be worth drawing.
Do you have suggestions for expansions to the workshop/crafts packs? I think the next logical ones would be farm, camp, kitchen. Woodcutter/lumber mill? Stonecutter/quarry? Herbalist? MedicineStorm suggested bowyer/fletcher, magic emporium, those could be fun too.
@All: love the idea of having more animals, but to be honest I'm unlikely to do big animals like bears, deer, camels, etc. unless someone commissions them. It's just a ton of work; they're big sprites so each frame takes a long time, plus it would take me a lot of time looking at videos of the actual animals to get the movement right. Every once in a while, I look longingly at these great animations https://opengameart.org/content/animated-wild-animals and think about it though. I will say that bear and deer have been requested numerous times so those would probably be first on my personal list.
Smaller animals are definitely doable though. I've been playing Stardew Valley with my partner recently and I love all the little wild critters. Plus just a few frames can add a ton of personality. I've often thought about revisiting the birds, cats, and dogs. One of my favorite pixel artists recently posted this, which was very inspiring.
Squirrel, rat, raccoon, fox, seagull, duck... fish?
As the year ends/begins, I am wrapping up a lot of projects and looking ahead to next year. I'd like to gauge interest in future LPC art packs.
Tilesets:
Antique office: office furniture for a Victorian-Edwardian to early 20th century office. Think stuff that would show up in an office in Dishonored, or a hardboiled detective's office. Bank lamp, antique telephone, typewriter, filing cabinets, evidence board
Study: think of the independent gentleman-scientist of the post-Renaissance or Victorian era---microscopes, test tubes, telescopes, maps, globes, scales, an abacus, perhaps a phonograph, or even an early film projector?
Hospital: early modern hospital wards, a medical laboratory, a surgical theater; picture the set of the Knick.
Farm: obviously we have tons of crops, fruit trees, and animals; this set would collect and expand on items and buildings to support them---barn, chicken coop, mill, apiary, cheesemaking workshop, etc.
Camp: tents, firepits, camp stoves, primitive tables/chairs/benches, sleeping rolls, drying racks for hides or jerkey
Grasslands/terrain expansion: tall grasses, more terrain varieties
Houses: some more general-purposes houses---updated timber-frame cottage, log cabin, various modular trims in combination with different types of planking (like in the Victorian set)
Steampunk: pipes, furnaces, boilers, smokestacks, gears (maybe...). Could work well with some of the systems I developed for the alchemy pack, and would work great with all the Victorian buildings.
Tavern/Pub: a meeting house, bar, or gambling den; tables, chairs, booze; card and table games, booths. Imagine the Kingfisher Inn from the Witcher, or The Garrison Pub from Peaky Blinders
Ladies: modular dresses, skirts, and aprons. I'd like to incorporate the updates here https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-character-bases into the existing female assets in the spritesheet generator, then base future additions off that corrected base
Pants: Breeches (could be useful for medieval peasants, pirates, Victorian gentlemen, etc.), trunkhose, cargo pants? (e.g. for a steampunk mechanic)
Shirts: gambeson, doublet, waistcoat...
Shoes: tall boots, buckled shoes, sandals for all body types...
Hand tools: basically anything I can squeeze into the existing animation frames. Knives, sickle, cooking tools, fishing rod, crowbar, etc.
Hats and helmets: these are so much easier than anything else and they add a ton of flavor so I love doing them. Lots of medieval hats for peasants, merchants, etc.; "Victorian" hats (deerstalker, newsie cap, leather aviator hats, bonnet, lady's hats, etc.); new helmets (sugarloaf greathelm, flat-top crusader helm, combat close helm); variations of my existing helmets, perhaps in combination with Eliza's, or with parts from there
Expanded weapon animations: e.g. backwards slash and thrust animations for swords
New weapons (open to ideas)
Several of my existing submissions could use some attention and updates as well:
Furniture: updates to wood furniture and upholstery sets to add more modular counters/cabinetry/cupboards, shelves, hutches, cribs/cradles/bassinets, desks, etc.
Trees: apply more consistent art style to all objects; expand to each style of tree has at least 3 variants; add more styles (more realistic too?)
Plants: this just needs to be totally updated. Many of the items are stylistically inconsistent and I think I could do a lot better today.
Crops: expand to add more objects from the LPC Foods pack
Of course, I still have a few projects in the pipeline from 2021 that I'm hoping to finish and release soon:
Ship: modular square-rigged sailing ship; furled and set sails, bowsprits, quarter galleries, shroud ladders, crow's nests; all fully modular, with tons of combinations possible. (This is actually complete and will be available soon...)
Hand tools, part 1: hammers, shovel, watering can
Beach/Desert updtes: I have some re-drawn (and in my opinion, much-improved) cactuses, other succulents, creosote scrub, and a few other items. I'd like to add others too.
By way of disclosure, I am also soon planning to launch subscriptions on my Ko-fi page, https://ko-fi.com/bluecarrot16 . The gist is that subscribers will get early access to my completed art, as well as work-in-progress screenshots and updates via Discord. I will also have a standing pool of projects that anyone can sponsor for a reasonable price. All art will ultimately be released for free to everyone on OGA, as always!
Please let me know what sets you would be most interested in seeing! The suggestions last year were very helpful, and I think I made great progress adding lots of craft shops, ruins, and the sailing ship to the available LPC assets.
OK, I have finished making the jump animations for all the bodies. Now I'm hung up on a silly minor organizational issue... wondering if any/either of you have any thoughts.
To recap, the new version of this submission will include
six "body types": male, female, child, teen, muscular, or pregnant,
six "head types": orc (male, female, child), human (male, female, child), lizard (male, female, child), wolf (male, female, child), minotaur (adult, child), boar (adult, child)
I propose that head_type be promoted to a new layer in the generator, so any combination of head and body type is permitted, and appropriate recolors of the bodies and heads be added as well, based on the palette(s) that Evert comes up with. I'm not tackling that here, just providing a minimal set of recolors of the bodies to match the heads.
For the generator, we settled on this folder structure: ${category}/${subcategories...}/{object}/${body_type}/${variant}.png , where body_type would be one of male, female, muscular, etc. listed above (at present, more could be added), and variant would be the recolor or other variety. hat/pirate/tricorne/male/black.png. For many assets there is now also ${category}/${subcategories...}/{object}/${body_type}.png , i.e. the asset in a standardized palette, which is used to generate the recolors, e.g. {body_type}/{variant}.png . So the rule of thumb is that the variant is at the deepest file nesting, then the body type, then the object type/group. (Of course, not every object has a unique spritesheet for every body type; most only have male and female, and some only male or female. The JSON definition files clarify if a given asset can be used with multiple body types (for instance, male hair can be used with the muscular base, etc.))
The goal of having a consistent file structure was to make it clear where to put new stuff, to make it obvious where to find existing assets, and to make repetitive assets amenable to generating with scripts. For example, since hats would be auto-placed according to body type, then subsequently recolored, it kinda fits the workflow to make hat/pirate/tricorne/male.png first, then recolor that to create hat/pirate/tricorne/male/{black,brown,green,...}.png .
With adding these bodies with modular heads, three complications are introduced:
1) How to incorporate animations/layouts into this heirarchy: The jump animations do not fit on the "universal" spritesheet layout. Several people have expressed a desire to have sheets split up by animation, which would have a few advantages. Splitting and combining spritesheet layouts is trivial with lpctools, so I'm not opposed to introducing this, but I'm trying to figure out the most sensible way to organize things. Should it be ${category}/${subcategories...}/${object}/${body_type}/${animation}/${variant}.png ? Or ${category}/${subcategories...}/${object}/${animation}/${body_type}/${variant}.png ?
2) Likewise, by introducing the modular heads, there are now various body_type/head_type combinations. For example, head_type could be human, lizard, wolf, orc, boar, minotaur, skeleton, etc. For assets that involve the head, a different head_type might require using a different spritesheet (for example, human hair may need to be masked differently than orc hair). Or there might be assets that are unique to a particular body_type/head_type combination, e.g. https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-lizard-headgear . I'm not worried about adapting every single asset to every single body_type/head_type combo, but just figuring out the structure... should it be ${category}/${subcategories...}/${object}/${body_type}/${animation}/${head_type}/${variant}.png ?${category}/${subcategories...}/${object}/${body_type}/${head_type}/${animation}/${variant}.png ? ${category}/${subcategories...}/${object}/${animation}/${body_type}/${head_type}/${variant}.png ?
3) Finally, how should cross-sex body_type/head_type combinations be handled? Take the orc head for example; the "male" orc head is much different from the "female" orc head. But there's no reason why the male orc head couldn't be placed on the "female" body. So do we have something like head/female/orc/female/green.png , for placing the female head on the female body, and head/female/orc/male/green.png , for placing the female head on the male body? or should the heads just be named e.g. head/orc-female/female/green.png (female head on female body), head/orc-female/male/green.png (female head on male body), etc.? The latter scheme seems clearer to me. But for other objects (such as hats or hair)... it seems like they should be organized by body_type then head_type, e.g. hat/pirate/bandana/female/orc-female/black.png . Still not sure where ${animation} should go in all this if you all still want those separated out...
Ideally I want it to be clear to someone who just downloads the whole repo what combinations are possible/make sense. But anyway I am clearly just bikeshedding with myself and going in circles about this pretty unimportant issue... please help me make a decision so I can upload everything :p
Thanks so much for posting this, Hyptosis! I love the way the floor tiles imply so much texture, but they're borderless so you can mix and match. Very effective. Also the giant anvil is so cool, lots of personality there.
Looks like there is some banding in the preview image, but it's not present in the actual download.
Looks nice! Maybe adjust the shading so that it implies more of a 3/4 perspective than top-down? E.g. move the light-gray shading from the middle more towards the top.
Thanks YuriNikolai! That is a great idea to focus on foragable plants. I found this Wikipedia article (which is not very comprehensive), as well as this neat website. (I definitely referenced that Wikipedia article on culinary fruits, as well as the List of Vegetables page while working on my Foods pack :p). Still seems like a huge list, I would love it someone could help prioritize for me ;-)
FiveBrosStopMosYT, that is great, exactly what I was thinking! Now you just need a biting/tugging animation (maybe?). And maybe it needs different directions, or maybe it just gets rotated in-engine?
Good discussion here, thanks for contributing everyone. Not sure we're any closer to a consensus, but it's helpful to talk it out. Sorry if this is a bit pedantic, I'm just trying to think thru the best structure to make our lives easier going forward.
w/r/t file layout: Ben's proposed scheme (${body_type}/${head_type}/${animation}/${category}/${subcategories}/${object}/${variant}.png) is elegant in that it goes from broadest to narrowest category. It also means you could easily identify all objects available for a given base and remove entire bases/bodies that you don't use. However I see three related issues:
w/r/t separate vs. combined sheets: agreed w/ Herodom that a single combined sheet is easier for the generator web page; we'd have to re-write a lot of things to accommodate separate images per animation, and I don't think anyone is really too eager to do that given how previous efforts to revamp the generator from scratch have all fizzled out. I also get Evert's point that making the sheet longer and longer is not optimal, but I feel like introducing some kind of packing scheme other than "animations arranged top-to-bottom, N/E/S/W" is too complicated for the generator. If someone wants to pack sheets more tightly, they can use a sprite atlas packer, or even lpctools.
What if we add space for the other directions of the hurt animation (i.e. add two blank rows after "shoot", then the current south-facing hurt animation, then another blank row), then start adding new animations below that, in the order they are added to the generator? We adapt the generator to assume the assembled image will be 832x1536px (current "universal" layout is 832x1344px, add 3*64px height for the other directions of the hurt animation) or taller, and align all layers to the top-left corner? That would be a fairly minor change I think. Adding support for new animations to the generator would just mean telling it which named animation comes next, which would be simple. After scaling everything for the missing death animations (a one-time operation that could be done with lpctools), we wouldn't have to edit any of the existing images until someone drew the new animations for them.
A final alternative, that might (??) please everyone: we separate each animation into distinct images, but then also programmatically assemble a universal stacked layout (as I described above) offline using lpctools as part of the build process. So every asset has ./cast/*.png, ./thrust/*.png, ... ./jump/*.png, and ./universal/*.png. It could also have ./legacy/*.png which would use the old layout (i.e the single-direction death animation); perhaps we re-name the "universal" layout to "stacked" or "universal-stacked" or something like that. The generator website only needs to support the growing universal stacked layout, but if someone wants to use the collection of images in their game, they can work from the individual animations if they prefer.
w/r/t separate heads necessary? @Herodom/Castelonia: agreed we could easily start by replacing the bases with these ones, that is definitely most practical. However it will not produce very useful results; many of the bases (e.g. lizard, wolf, probably minotaur?) will not work well with existing clothing assets since the head overlaps with the torso more than the human head, so the chin will be covered by shirt collars, etc. So we definitely need an ability to add heads on a separate layer and we should figure out how to do that.
w/r/t adding any head to any body, the more I think about it the solution seems to be to name the head_types human-male, human-female, human-child, orc-male, orc-female, etc. rather than just "human", "orc", etc.
The head variant (i.e. color) should be linked to the body variant by default. I think we can add a field in the JSON file called "match_variant_to_body" or something, and for layers where that is `true`, if the variant of the body changes then the variant of that layer will be changed as well. Heads would obviously have this propery, so would ears, noses, wings (if we add them), tails, etc., anything that follows a skin color.
One final issue to consider is that many assets won't care about the head_type (e.g. shirts, pants, etc.). So maybe they get a folder in the hierarchy that is just head_type=all, e.g. torso/clothes/longsleeve/male/all/universal/green.png , or maybe the head_type subdirectory is optional, e.g. torso/clothes/longsleeve/male/universal/green.png . The former seems more consistent and therefore probably better.
So in summary, I think I vote for ${category}/${subcategories...}/${object}/${body_type}/${head_type}/${layout}/${variant}.png , where "layout" is either the name of an animation, or a composite layout such as "universal" or "legacy". The individual animations are the ground truth and the composite image is assembled using lpctools as part of the build process.
Thanks, great ideas for animals!
By the way, I am pleased to announce Memberships are live on my Ko-fi page: https://ko-fi.com/bluecarrot16 . Members get early access to my new art, (starting with the new LPC Sailing Ship, available now!), and members at higher tiers can choose from a set of discounted commission projects here . All art will ultimately be released under a free/libre license on OGA, as always. Thanks for your support!
Never too late; I appreciate the feedback! Thanks also for your support on Ko-fi, your patronage definitely buys greater influence! XD
The ship currently only supports east/west (west is mirrored). North/south would certainly be possible to add. It would be some work but not a terrible amount---basically would need new bow/stern tiles, sails, ratlines, quarter gallery, and stairs, I think everything else could be re-used. Diagonal is not happening (sorry to whoever asked for that earlier :p)
Wield-able/character animated Shears, tongs, chisels, and pliers are all great ideas. I bet I can work those into the south-facing thrust animation, though might not work for east/west. Inventory items/tiles are definitely possible for those items that don't exist.
How about jeweler's magnifying glasses, or a face shield for welding/smithing, or goggles?
I think for fish in the water, there could just be a small/medium/large fish silhouette, like in Animal Crossing or similar. There are side view images of all those fish (and some others) for inventory etc. in the LPC Foods pack.
Thanks for the feedback everyone! Good points all around.
@Evert: any specific weapons or tools you'd like to see?
@FiveBrosStopMosYT: yes, this is exactly what I had in mind for the ladies clothing! Eliza started something similar years ago and I would like to finish it!
@YuriNikolai: are there some particular realistic plants/crops that you'd like to see? In terms of crops, there are a lot of items from my food pack that I could do, but I've definitely done the most common ones already... I would like to do some growing animations for herbs, which would be useful both as crops (e.g. for farming) and for foraging. For non-crop plants, I'd have to do some research/thinking to figure out what would be most useful... for most games, a bush is a bush. I can definitely imagine scenarios where the specific kind of bush would matter, but I'd appreciate some suggestions on which bushes (/flowers/plants/shrubs) would be worth drawing.
Do you have suggestions for expansions to the workshop/crafts packs? I think the next logical ones would be farm, camp, kitchen. Woodcutter/lumber mill? Stonecutter/quarry? Herbalist? MedicineStorm suggested bowyer/fletcher, magic emporium, those could be fun too.
@All: love the idea of having more animals, but to be honest I'm unlikely to do big animals like bears, deer, camels, etc. unless someone commissions them. It's just a ton of work; they're big sprites so each frame takes a long time, plus it would take me a lot of time looking at videos of the actual animals to get the movement right. Every once in a while, I look longingly at these great animations https://opengameart.org/content/animated-wild-animals and think about it though. I will say that bear and deer have been requested numerous times so those would probably be first on my personal list.
Smaller animals are definitely doable though. I've been playing Stardew Valley with my partner recently and I love all the little wild critters. Plus just a few frames can add a ton of personality. I've often thought about revisiting the birds, cats, and dogs. One of my favorite pixel artists recently posted this, which was very inspiring.
Squirrel, rat, raccoon, fox, seagull, duck... fish?
Are there other animals you would like to see?
Hi everyone,
As the year ends/begins, I am wrapping up a lot of projects and looking ahead to next year. I'd like to gauge interest in future LPC art packs.
Tilesets:
Clothing/Characters:
Several of my existing submissions could use some attention and updates as well:
Of course, I still have a few projects in the pipeline from 2021 that I'm hoping to finish and release soon:
By way of disclosure, I am also soon planning to launch subscriptions on my Ko-fi page, https://ko-fi.com/bluecarrot16 . The gist is that subscribers will get early access to my completed art, as well as work-in-progress screenshots and updates via Discord. I will also have a standing pool of projects that anyone can sponsor for a reasonable price. All art will ultimately be released for free to everyone on OGA, as always!
Please let me know what sets you would be most interested in seeing! The suggestions last year were very helpful, and I think I made great progress adding lots of craft shops, ruins, and the sailing ship to the available LPC assets.
OK, I have finished making the jump animations for all the bodies. Now I'm hung up on a silly minor organizational issue... wondering if any/either of you have any thoughts.
To recap, the new version of this submission will include
I propose that head_type be promoted to a new layer in the generator, so any combination of head and body type is permitted, and appropriate recolors of the bodies and heads be added as well, based on the palette(s) that Evert comes up with. I'm not tackling that here, just providing a minimal set of recolors of the bodies to match the heads.
For the generator, we settled on this folder structure: ${category}/${subcategories...}/{object}/${body_type}/${variant}.png , where body_type would be one of male, female, muscular, etc. listed above (at present, more could be added), and variant would be the recolor or other variety. hat/pirate/tricorne/male/black.png. For many assets there is now also ${category}/${subcategories...}/{object}/${body_type}.png , i.e. the asset in a standardized palette, which is used to generate the recolors, e.g. {body_type}/{variant}.png . So the rule of thumb is that the variant is at the deepest file nesting, then the body type, then the object type/group. (Of course, not every object has a unique spritesheet for every body type; most only have male and female, and some only male or female. The JSON definition files clarify if a given asset can be used with multiple body types (for instance, male hair can be used with the muscular base, etc.))
The goal of having a consistent file structure was to make it clear where to put new stuff, to make it obvious where to find existing assets, and to make repetitive assets amenable to generating with scripts. For example, since hats would be auto-placed according to body type, then subsequently recolored, it kinda fits the workflow to make hat/pirate/tricorne/male.png first, then recolor that to create hat/pirate/tricorne/male/{black,brown,green,...}.png .
With adding these bodies with modular heads, three complications are introduced:
1) How to incorporate animations/layouts into this heirarchy: The jump animations do not fit on the "universal" spritesheet layout. Several people have expressed a desire to have sheets split up by animation, which would have a few advantages. Splitting and combining spritesheet layouts is trivial with lpctools, so I'm not opposed to introducing this, but I'm trying to figure out the most sensible way to organize things. Should it be ${category}/${subcategories...}/${object}/${body_type}/${animation}/${variant}.png ? Or ${category}/${subcategories...}/${object}/${animation}/${body_type}/${variant}.png ?
2) Likewise, by introducing the modular heads, there are now various body_type/head_type combinations. For example, head_type could be human, lizard, wolf, orc, boar, minotaur, skeleton, etc. For assets that involve the head, a different head_type might require using a different spritesheet (for example, human hair may need to be masked differently than orc hair). Or there might be assets that are unique to a particular body_type/head_type combination, e.g. https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-lizard-headgear . I'm not worried about adapting every single asset to every single body_type/head_type combo, but just figuring out the structure... should it be ${category}/${subcategories...}/${object}/${body_type}/${animation}/${head_type}/${variant}.png ?${category}/${subcategories...}/${object}/${body_type}/${head_type}/${animation}/${variant}.png ?
${category}/${subcategories...}/${object}/${animation}/${body_type}/${head_type}/${variant}.png ?
3) Finally, how should cross-sex body_type/head_type combinations be handled? Take the orc head for example; the "male" orc head is much different from the "female" orc head. But there's no reason why the male orc head couldn't be placed on the "female" body. So do we have something like head/female/orc/female/green.png , for placing the female head on the female body, and head/female/orc/male/green.png , for placing the female head on the male body? or should the heads just be named e.g. head/orc-female/female/green.png (female head on female body), head/orc-female/male/green.png (female head on male body), etc.? The latter scheme seems clearer to me. But for other objects (such as hats or hair)... it seems like they should be organized by body_type then head_type, e.g. hat/pirate/bandana/female/orc-female/black.png . Still not sure where ${animation} should go in all this if you all still want those separated out...
Ideally I want it to be clear to someone who just downloads the whole repo what combinations are possible/make sense. But anyway I am clearly just bikeshedding with myself and going in circles about this pretty unimportant issue... please help me make a decision so I can upload everything :p
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