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Once we have both the spritesheet and the information file, we can start incorporating the sprites into our game. To keep things simple, we will just write each item on it's own line, however you could use whatever format you are provided with or can imagine (XML, JSON, etc).įor this particular example (the image is 256px x 128px), our information file will look like this: Our file will need the following: spritesheet name, transparency color (if needed), sprite groups, and individual sprite regions - we didn't rotate any sprites. These green borders show the outline of our sprite area and where our accompanying file should reference our four images.įor this example, these four images are part of one sprite animation, so our accompanying file should group these images together.Īssuming we did not have a program create the spritesheet for us, we also will have to make the information file. This is helpful when more than one item is included in the sheet, like sprites for bushes and trees. These files can also include other information about a sprite, if desired, such as a group they belong to, such as "Animation 1" or "Character XYZ". To handle the issue of designating which part of the spritesheet contains an individual sprite, spritesheets are usually accompanied by a file that tells where each sprite is located, including its width and height, and if the image is rotated, how much the image was rotated (90, 180, or 270 degrees). These sprite images are not all the same size, they have varying widths and, in practice, sprites can have varying heights within a sheet (some spritesheet makers will have an option to included rotated images to try to use up more of the padded space).

Let's call it simple programmer art we made to test the spritesheet system because that is currently our goal.

The result is you either pad an image with unneeded pixel information, wasting space, or you can place multiple sprites together in an image, filling the padded space, and creating a sheet of sprites, more commonly referred to as a spritesheet.įor this tutorial, let us say this is our spritesheet we wish to work with: There is a summary of the video content on the bottom of the same page if you scroll down below the comments.Įssentially, some graphics hardware require images to be of certain dimensions, and sprite images do not always match these dimensions. The spritesheet concepts apply to other languages and libraries.įor a nice summary of spritesheets and why they are useful, check out the video on this page that was kindly given to me for this article by Michael Tanczos: What is a sprite sheet?. Basic programming knowledge is assumed, however, knowledge of C++ and SFML is not required. This article aims to introduce spritesheets and how to incorporate them into your game.