In tutorial 3 we are focusing on getting our sprites ready, before we start combining them with our background tiles and game map to start making our first level.
Again we recommend you use a separate paint program to produce your sprites. When creating your sprites you need to remember the following:
1. use colour zero as your background colour - this colour is used for transparency.
2. use colour one as your border colour.
3. Each sprite must have its own border and there needs to be space between each of your sprites.
4. You must use the same palette as your background tiles.
Below is an example of my WIP game sprite sheet. I have 6 frames for walking right and 6 frames for walking right ( I think you can have a maximum of seven frames). I have 0 frames for jumping and three frames for climbing. The reason for this is that I have just followed the structure of the original skeleton disk.
The enemy sprites can have a maximum of 5 frames of animation.
Again we recommend you use a separate paint program to produce your sprites. When creating your sprites you need to remember the following:
1. use colour zero as your background colour - this colour is used for transparency.
2. use colour one as your border colour.
3. Each sprite must have its own border and there needs to be space between each of your sprites.
4. You must use the same palette as your background tiles.
Below is an example of my WIP game sprite sheet. I have 6 frames for walking right and 6 frames for walking right ( I think you can have a maximum of seven frames). I have 0 frames for jumping and three frames for climbing. The reason for this is that I have just followed the structure of the original skeleton disk.
The enemy sprites can have a maximum of 5 frames of animation.
Once you have created your sprite sheet in your paint program you then need to convert it to the unique format for reality. Similar to the background tiles tutorial you need to load the Graphic Converter program from the Reality Master Disk.
Once you have loaded up the Graphic Converter, you need to load in your IFF file. As long as your sprite sheet has followed the structure of using colour 1 to create a separate border for each sprite, and colour 0 for the background, then Reality will automatically cut your tiles. You will see the number of sprites converted in the top right corner, in the example below 194 sprites have been converted.
You now need to save the sprites in the format used by Reality. Select Save Sprites from the options. For the sprites to be used in your game, you need to save them on your skeleton disk. Remember to save the file under the main files folder and replace the Sprites.GRA file.
You should now have your own background tiles, background map and sprite files. For the next tutorial we will bring the map and sprites together and look at zones.
Before ending this tutorial, we will just mention the palette file. In order for your game to display your sprites and background tiles correctly, you must ensure that you have the correct palette saved to your skeleton disk.
To do this load your skeleton disk in reality (Reality seems to be a bit strange in that you have to place the skeleton disk into your disk drive after selecting edit skeleton disk from the Reality Master disk menu option rather than have it already inserted in your drive.
Before ending this tutorial, we will just mention the palette file. In order for your game to display your sprites and background tiles correctly, you must ensure that you have the correct palette saved to your skeleton disk.
To do this load your skeleton disk in reality (Reality seems to be a bit strange in that you have to place the skeleton disk into your disk drive after selecting edit skeleton disk from the Reality Master disk menu option rather than have it already inserted in your drive.
Once you have successfully loaded your skeleton disk all you need to do is select Grab Palette. Reality will then ask you to load an IFF file which contains the palette you wish to use. Load either your IFF file for your sprites or background tiles (they should both be using the same palette) and then Reality will save the file to your game disk.
