Including a Sprite creator

[JasonBond2002]

My personal opinion is that it would be better if we do some kind of character creator,to make our case creation more simple.
I don't exactly how we could do that but I really want the designers to think about it !

[Enthalpy]

I agree that this would be very convenient, but there's no way to automate making character creation. If you find a way, let me know, and then we can talk again. Until then, this feature is literally impossible.

[Nicky Boy]

In theory, it could be done à la Picrew: sets of pre-made assets (eg head shape, hair, body) that the user puts together bit by bit. However, while possible, there are numerous problems:

• Those assets must be cropped from the official sprites, or made from scratch. Both would take a while to ensure variety.
• Not all characters face the same way. In Picrew, you make a static image, and every character made in a certain set will always face the same way. It would be a painstaking task to remake assets in different angles, canon or not.
• Technical detail that not many might care for, but each parts would not be connected anti-aliased. You'd have individually anti-aliased assets connected with jagged edges. Unless the parts themselves are not properly aliased (which is not the case for the canon sprites), this mismatch of quality would be distracting.
• Even if we got past these, what would be the bare base of a character? You can't make one nude body, because what if you have to put on clothes from a character thinner than the base? You can't force transparency because they may have long hair that should be visible. You also can't avoiding making some kind of naked base, because what if there's a piece of clothing like Tigre's suit (or worse, Gallactica's) or a crop-top, that shows more skin than just the neck and arms? You could make it as part of the asset, but then you'd need additional parameters to recolor just the skin part.
• All those problems so far were to make a single base sprite. The moment a second pose is introduced, things get way complicated. How many poses would have to be made to ensure variety and avoid everyone having the same poses in their set? Would each pose be made in different angles? The more variety there is, the more assets would need to be made; not just a nude base, but also clothing, hair, accessories...

It is possible, but there many obstacles to overcome and it needs a lot of effort. Even if a lot of sprite makers collaborated for this, it would be extremely difficult to execute

[Enthalpy]

And at that point, it should be an independent project which AAO authors can use, but shouldn't be part of AAO itself. A character creator like that would be far more general.

[SuperAj3]

I've been thinking about how a sprite editor could work, and it means that a group of people need to:

• Create bases of multiple body types and skin tones AND pose them in as many poses as possible
• Make hair, eyes, nose, mouth, clothing of various layers AND of various colours for all that match each of the many poses

At that stage, you're best off learning how to frankensprite yourself. It's a lot of assets to ask people to make and even then it'll be missing certain things people want and requests for more assets would be endless. I also don't think the amount of use a sprite editor would have will outweigh the effort put into making them, so it's not worth it.

In all honesty, links to the custom and random character threads somewhere in the editor might be more viable. Fans have made heaps of assets already that people can browse, and those threads are usually overlooked.

[Enthalpy]

In all honesty, links to the custom and random character threads somewhere in the editor might be more viable. Fans have made heaps of assets already that people can browse, and those threads are usually overlooked.

That, I can get behind.

[Pigfaced]

I believe that, despite the fact that this would be SUPER convenient, it would ruin what every character stands for in AA games: Characters are colorful and wacky. They are all uniquely dressed, and usually their appearance tells something about their personality. With a sprite creator, designing your own characters might be easier and more accessible to everyone, but they wouldn't be as good as designing them from scratch.

And that's coming from someone who doesn't know ANYTHING about drawing or sprite making.