I should point out that I don't actually use the generator itself, I just cloned the repository locally to have all the assets available in one location. Well, all the assets that are in the generator anyway; I think some of them may not be up to date though (the axe is what I noticed).
One thing I didn't like about the generator when I tried it (the original version a few years ago anyway): restricting what I can include in the sheet based on body type. I think the cape was female-only, but I wanted a cape on a male character. Couldn't be done. Sure, I if I want to actually use the sprite, it needs to be touched up, but if I just want to have a quick-and-dirty version to get an idea for how it looks, it's annoying that I'm arbitrarily limited because of body type.
Regarding the cape (and similar things): yes, in fact I do want two sheets to draw, one behind and one on top of the body. The reason is that depending on the frame, some parts of the cape should be behind the body, but other parts should be in front, and relying on cutouts is not good enough. Sure, you can make it work with the standard spritesheet easily enough, and it feels clever. Then you make a character that is wearing bracers, or spiky armour and oops, the cut-out no longer works! What if the character is wearing robes, or trousers? The same cut-out doesn't work for both combinations. Similar issues when trying to switch it from male to female sprites: having to fix the cut-out is more work than it would be if you simply had two layers.
The main issue, by the way, is in the side-facing frames. For the north and south facing frames you can simply change the drawing order, and it'll work correctly.
Having said all that, I should further point out that I do very little compositing within my game itself (just weapons, because those can be swapped; I haven't decided on what to do with armour yet, but that'd probably be switched as a set too, and only for the main character). Most of the compositing work is done in Gimp. If I were to do compositing in the game though, I would build the character spritesheet on the fly, similar to how the generator works, then draw from the generated spritesheet.
Sure, here's the head (the other half is just the standard Orc spritesheet). There's no problem with the back view, so it doesn't include the head for that one, and I haven't made Orc archers yet, so it's also missing the archery frames. And the death animation, it seems.
There are some other assets where making two separate "in front" and "behind" layers makes sense, like the cape (it's much easier to put the full cape behind the body than it is to make cut-outs). That's also useful for weapons.
For hats I actually have a program that takes the necessary frames and spits out the spritesheet, which I think I've used a grand total of one time.
Still, it'll be useful if/when I get around to making my own head gear.
I have the Orc head split off on its own spritesheet for the frames I'm interested in. I also have an incomplete "carry above head" walking animation lying around somewhere. It's not hard to make these things (using existing frames), but it is very tedious to have to separate body parts first (and then fill in formerly occluded body parts).
There are some other issues with some of the assets that are worth fixing, but they can't all be done in software.
First, there's the Orc body. Because it has a bigger head, normal clothing doesn't work correctly (it goes over the Orc's chin). The easiest fix is to cut out the head in its own layer, and put the head above torso clothing in forward and sideway frames.
In general, it would be better to cut out arms, legs and heads and put them in separate layers, and then stacking them in the right order when composing the spritesheet. This avoids the need for cut-outs in strategic places that will turn out to be wrong if you use, say, a different type of clothing.
For weapons, it probably makes sense to maintain one version, and then shift it as needed for frames other than the male sprite.
@Spring: the Zelda-perspecitive is immaterial to this, really. If it looks ok on the back wall, it can be made to look ok on the other ones by rotating and mirroring (perhaps after retouching the lighting).
My own pixel-art skill is pretty non-existent, so any suggestions are seriously welcome. I don't really know how to draw thick and lush vines, for instance. ;)
Thanks, I've removed the older file. It's a little annoying that you can't keep track of downloads this way (although... it's not actually all that useful to know that), but it makes sense that you don't simply add the old count to the new one.
On the Zelda perspective: it makes more sense when you don't think of it as a way to draw a game world, but as a way to represent a map of the game world. In such a map, you normally have all four walls visible.
Well, the goal was to make it useable with the Zelda perspective, or without. It probably needs some modified edge tiles for the standard LPC perspective, but that should be fairly straightforward. Really all you need is the front-facing wall(with edge) and transition tiles for the top edge, which might not even need modification.
The Zelda perspective is... interesting, if you're trying to do art for it. Artistically, it's not so great. For gameplay, I think it's awesome though, since it does a great job of showing information to the player (for instance, where doors are) without having to do extra work to make it obvious.
@ both: Thank you for your appreciation! It's welcome.
I also apparently suck at using the update system of this site, since trying to replace the tileset with the new version just adds a second file with the same name...
I should point out that I don't actually use the generator itself, I just cloned the repository locally to have all the assets available in one location. Well, all the assets that are in the generator anyway; I think some of them may not be up to date though (the axe is what I noticed).
One thing I didn't like about the generator when I tried it (the original version a few years ago anyway): restricting what I can include in the sheet based on body type. I think the cape was female-only, but I wanted a cape on a male character. Couldn't be done. Sure, I if I want to actually use the sprite, it needs to be touched up, but if I just want to have a quick-and-dirty version to get an idea for how it looks, it's annoying that I'm arbitrarily limited because of body type.
Regarding the cape (and similar things): yes, in fact I do want two sheets to draw, one behind and one on top of the body. The reason is that depending on the frame, some parts of the cape should be behind the body, but other parts should be in front, and relying on cutouts is not good enough. Sure, you can make it work with the standard spritesheet easily enough, and it feels clever. Then you make a character that is wearing bracers, or spiky armour and oops, the cut-out no longer works! What if the character is wearing robes, or trousers? The same cut-out doesn't work for both combinations. Similar issues when trying to switch it from male to female sprites: having to fix the cut-out is more work than it would be if you simply had two layers.
The main issue, by the way, is in the side-facing frames. For the north and south facing frames you can simply change the drawing order, and it'll work correctly.
Having said all that, I should further point out that I do very little compositing within my game itself (just weapons, because those can be swapped; I haven't decided on what to do with armour yet, but that'd probably be switched as a set too, and only for the main character). Most of the compositing work is done in Gimp. If I were to do compositing in the game though, I would build the character spritesheet on the fly, similar to how the generator works, then draw from the generated spritesheet.
Sure, here's the head (the other half is just the standard Orc spritesheet). There's no problem with the back view, so it doesn't include the head for that one, and I haven't made Orc archers yet, so it's also missing the archery frames. And the death animation, it seems.
There are some other assets where making two separate "in front" and "behind" layers makes sense, like the cape (it's much easier to put the full cape behind the body than it is to make cut-outs). That's also useful for weapons.
For hats I actually have a program that takes the necessary frames and spits out the spritesheet, which I think I've used a grand total of one time.
Still, it'll be useful if/when I get around to making my own head gear.
I have the Orc head split off on its own spritesheet for the frames I'm interested in. I also have an incomplete "carry above head" walking animation lying around somewhere. It's not hard to make these things (using existing frames), but it is very tedious to have to separate body parts first (and then fill in formerly occluded body parts).
There are some other issues with some of the assets that are worth fixing, but they can't all be done in software.
First, there's the Orc body. Because it has a bigger head, normal clothing doesn't work correctly (it goes over the Orc's chin). The easiest fix is to cut out the head in its own layer, and put the head above torso clothing in forward and sideway frames.
In general, it would be better to cut out arms, legs and heads and put them in separate layers, and then stacking them in the right order when composing the spritesheet. This avoids the need for cut-outs in strategic places that will turn out to be wrong if you use, say, a different type of clothing.
For weapons, it probably makes sense to maintain one version, and then shift it as needed for frames other than the male sprite.
That's the princess sprite from the LPC base assets.
Thanks!
I like them, I'll try studying them and working out what works (and what doesn't). I may have questions later.
@Spring: the Zelda-perspecitive is immaterial to this, really. If it looks ok on the back wall, it can be made to look ok on the other ones by rotating and mirroring (perhaps after retouching the lighting).
My own pixel-art skill is pretty non-existent, so any suggestions are seriously welcome. I don't really know how to draw thick and lush vines, for instance. ;)
Thanks, I've removed the older file. It's a little annoying that you can't keep track of downloads this way (although... it's not actually all that useful to know that), but it makes sense that you don't simply add the old count to the new one.
On the Zelda perspective: it makes more sense when you don't think of it as a way to draw a game world, but as a way to represent a map of the game world. In such a map, you normally have all four walls visible.
@ Spring:
Well, the goal was to make it useable with the Zelda perspective, or without. It probably needs some modified edge tiles for the standard LPC perspective, but that should be fairly straightforward. Really all you need is the front-facing wall(with edge) and transition tiles for the top edge, which might not even need modification.
The Zelda perspective is... interesting, if you're trying to do art for it. Artistically, it's not so great. For gameplay, I think it's awesome though, since it does a great job of showing information to the player (for instance, where doors are) without having to do extra work to make it obvious.
@ both: Thank you for your appreciation! It's welcome.
I added cave entrances in all four facings.
I also apparently suck at using the update system of this site, since trying to replace the tileset with the new version just adds a second file with the same name...
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