Some items require multiple layers, such as long hair that has a piece that needs to be drawn in front of everything, and a second piece that needs to be drawn behind everything.

Problems to solve:

• How to indicate additional images in the sheet definitions
• Naming and folder structure for additional images

As more options are added it would be nice to have ways to filter them by license, supported animations, etc.

As more items are added to the generator the sidebar will start to become difficult to navigate. Collapsing the categories and the colors would help this issue a lot.

Categories could hide all options except the selected one, and the colors could be in a color selection menu.

A rough mockup of how this could look:

Currently, the color needs to be set separately for the head and body. This will be extra annoying once ears and noses are added.

This should be implemented in a way that allows the user to override the color if they want. This could possibly be done by adding a special "match" color option that is selected by default.

As of August 10, GitHub Pages build and deploy using GitHub Actions, which should allow customizing the build process. This opens up several possibilities, including:

• Processing CSS with Autoprefixer.
• Split sheet definition JSON files, which are combined (or an index file created) in a build step
• JavaScript bundling. Useful for external packages, but otherwise not crucial.
• Asset fingerprinting. Though, GitHub Pages sets a 10 minute max-age in the Cache-Control header, so this isn't a huge win.

Hi,

I started to use https://github.com/DrJamgo/Godot_LPC_Spritesheet_Gen/tree/main/addons/lpc_spritesheet_gen for Godot integration. This uses the JSON input from https://sanderfrenken.github.io/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Generator/.

If your tool would export something similar the Godot addon could be changed to support both asset sources.

regards
Andreas

Sanderfrenken's generator recently implemented a feature where certain assets can declare new animations by re-arranging existing animation frames. Example: the fishing rod uses frames from the "thrust" animation, played in a different order. https://sanderfrenken.github.io/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Generator/#?body=Body_color_light&head=Human_male_light&weapon=Rod_rod .

Implementation there: https://github.com/sanderfrenken/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Generator/blob/master/sources/chargen.js#L406-L471

Implementation here would likely be related to #2

This would require being able to set the frame size for an asset in the sheet definitions file. This may need to be done on a per-animation basis.

Other selected assets would need to be drawn to fit the largest frame size.

All assets, metadata, and credits will eventually need to be transferred from https://github.com/sanderfrenken/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Generator to here:

a. Images are stored like this in this generator https://github.com/BenCreating/LPC-Spritesheet-Generator/tree/main/resources/spritesheets/pants/male vs. like this in Sander's generator: https://github.com/sanderfrenken/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Generator/tree/master/spritesheets/legs/pants/male . It would generally be possible to convert from one to the other using lpctools but someone will need to go through and do so, either manually or with a script.

b. Image/layer metadata is stored like this https://github.com/sanderfrenken/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Generator/blob/master/sheet_definitions/cape_solid.json in Sander's generator, vs. like this here https://github.com/BenCreating/LPC-Spritesheet-Generator/blob/main/resources/sheet-definitions.json#L491-L548 . Again, will need to be translated. Ben's generator also uses a slightly different ontology, which I'll discuss below.

c. Sander's generator stores attributions in this format https://github.com/sanderfrenken/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Generator/blob/master/CREDITS.csv while this generator stores credits in this format https://github.com/BenCreating/LPC-Spritesheet-Generator/blob/main/resources/sheet-definitions.json#L503-L516 . These would need to be translated over, accounting for any changes in arrangement of the image files described in 2a.

Would like to use this tool but for my needs, I would like a single sprite pose for each direction.

How would I go about getting this generator to make a sprite with only Left/right/Up/down poses. Do not need to be animated.

Also a side question, how would I export an upscaled version?

Maybe add a checkbox that replaces the full spritesheet with the preview? I'm not sure if there's any other way to display all animations at once, especially as more animations are added.

Names would make discussions easier and the color URL parameters would be less brittle if the order ever changes.

I'd like to propose changing the structure of data in sheet-definitions.json:

• in Sander's generator, even though male and female pants (for example) use different images, they are treated as the same "asset;" that is, they share the same JSON metadata file in sheet_definitions and represent a single entry in the tree on the left side of the generator. A different image is applied depending on the selected body type. https://github.com/sanderfrenken/Universal-LPC-Spritesheet-Character-Generator/blob/master/sheet_definitions/legs_pants.json#L6-L9 (It is also possible that one image is used for multiple or even all body types; for example, the "female" shoes are used for female, teen, and pregnant body types).
  • The main advantage: if you have red pants selected on a male character and you change the body type to "female", the character updates automatically and keeps their red pants, but adapted to the female body. In this generator, when you do the same thing... actually the body type changes but the character keep their male pants, which seems like a bug :p Anyway I think Sander's behavior is more desirable.
• in this generator, male pants and female pants are treated as separate metadata entries https://github.com/BenCreating/LPC-Spritesheet-Generator/blob/main/resources/sheet-definitions.json#L439-L489 and there doesn't seem to be a clear connection between them.
  • This generator should allow for a more flexible system of constraints, e.g. certain assets could be declared mutually exclusive on criteria other than body type.

There's a related issue with credits: in Sander's generator, credits are assigned to each image. In Ben's generator, they are assigned to the asset. In a lot of cases, one person draws the "male" version of the asset and someone else adapts it to the "female" (and other) version(s), so the credits for the male and female version of an asset are overlapping but not identical. In Ben's current setup, this situation kinda requires any two objects that have separate attributions to be separate "assets" (i.e. separate entries in resources/sheet-definitions.json.

I would propose that this generator adopt a model of "one asset, multiple images", similar to Sander's generator. In fact, perhaps we can (ab)use the notion of layers to implement this model, and create a "cascading" series of definitions: category > asset > layer:

• Each category (e.g. https://github.com/BenCreating/LPC-Spritesheet-Generator/blob/main/resources/category-definitions.json) contains zero or more assets, which are mutually exclusive. The category has some default properties (e.g. z_order, tags, perhaps others)? that apply to any assets in that category, but that can be overridden by assets or layers.
• Each asset contains one or more layers. The asset can have properties such as excluded-by, credits, tags, palettes, etc.; if given, those properties will serve as defaults for all layers within the asset.
• Each layer has properties like excluded-by, credits, tags, palettes, etc. If given, these override properties with the same name from the asset.
• An asset is selectable in the generator as long as one or more of its layers is selectable, i.e. it is not excluded by any tags used by any other assets (at least, I think that is how the excluded-by key is supposed to work; put another way, an asset is selectable if at least one of its layers is not excluded).
• Credits are assembled for a sheet by combining the credits for all layers in use.
  • within a layer, the credits block would by default overwrite the credits for the asset. However, the layer credits block can have an append key, which, if true, causes any authors and links given to be appended to those for the asset. For example, it is often the case that someone draws an original asset for the male body type, then someone else adapts it to the female body. So the credits for the female version are (credits for the male version) + (additional author and/or URLs). (licenses probably shouldn't work this way, since the rules about when more licenses can be added to a derivative work are complicated.)

Example:

"cape": {
    "solid": {
      "tags": [],
      "credits": {
        "authors": [
          "bluecarrot16",
          "David Conway Jr. (JaidynReiman)",
          "Nila122"
        ],
        "licenses": [
          "CC-BY-SA 3.0",
          "GPL 3.0"
        ],
        "links": [
          "https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-curly-hair-elven-ears-white-cape-with-blue-trim-and-more",
          "https://opengameart.org/content/lpc-roman-armor",
          "http://opengameart.org/content/lpc-clothing-updates"
        ],            
      },
      "palettes": [
        "cloth"
      ],
      "layers": {
        "male": {
          "excluded-by": [
            "child",
            "muscular",
            "female",
            "teen"
          ]
        },
        "female": {
          "excluded-by": [
            "child",
            "muscular",
            "male"
          ],
          "credits": {
            "append": true,
            "authors": [
              "someone_else_who_made_the_female_version"
            ],
            "links": [
              "http://opengameart.org/content/lpc-special-clothing-modifications"
            ],
          }
        },
        "solid_behind": {"z_position": 5 }
      }
    }
  }