Hi y’all,
I was wondering if anyone knows a good program to make RPGMaker sprites. I’m using VX Ace if it helps. My current project has quite a few characters that can grow so it doesn’t look like I can rely on existing resources and just copy the characters.
Actually this may be the wrong channel to ask, my bad
a general rule with RPG maker starting from at least VX is that normally a sprite file is divided in 4 by 2 sections . each section is a 3 by 4 sub section.
Here’s a visual of that:
now this is default and each “actor” takes up 1/8th of this file using the 4 by 2 rule.
now the interesting thing here is that there is NO limit to how big this file can be.
this being 384 x 256. but nothing is stopping you from using double or more the file size, you can go as big as you like. as long as it can be divided using this 4 by 2 rule.
one thing to consider however is of course file size and storage it uses and if you sprite is too big it may cover the entire screen making it hard to navigate around the maps.
the reason i bring this up is you don’t need a particular program to make bigger sprites. you can make them manually, but there are for sure resources out there that help you get started. one example being this one
also in case you don’t know. adding a $ before a file makes RPG maker treat that file as 1 entire 3 by 4 section regardless of size. this is often used in RPG maker for very big sprites to save data.
So even if I want to add one character it has to be four by two sections, with seven of them empty?
as i said before, adding a $ before the name of your file will make RPG maker treat it as 1 entire 3 by 4 section.
so by doing for example $actor1 the entire file size is treated as if it was one actor as opposed to 8 actors
now the thing about the 2 by 4 is nothing is stopping you from having the same character take up every section in a 4 by 2… in fact the link i send with those assets shows a good use of that. having the same “actor” but each one has a slightly bigger size then the previous one, without breaking it apart.
to put it in visual ways here are two circles. these two files are both 64 x 64 pixels but the circles size is different.
if your character doesn’t take up the full space of 1 sub section you can copy paste it to the next and have the body size be slightly different just as long as the size stays in the same space size as the first sprite (if this is for example 30 by 50 then make sure that none of the other sprites goes beyond that) this won’t break the other 7 sections and you have 8 varying sizes for one character (in fact SFRPG uses this method in their game if you saw the assets)
the reason you want to use $ for somewhat bigger sizes is the amount of data it would take up if you don’t, my general rule of thumb for using $ is when a single sub section becomes bigger than 150 by 150 pixels, you can go bigger than that, just be careful because files this big using 4 by 2 takes more space than it should.
as a bonus here’s a snippet from the RPG maker VX ace manual:
Resource Standards
A character can be of any size, and a total of twelve patterns (four directions (down, left, right, up) × 3 patterns) are arranged in the designated order. In each file, arrange characters two down and four across, for a total of eight. The size of this character is calculated based on one-twelfth the width and one-eighth the height of this file.
Note that RPG Maker VX Ace displays characters offset four pixels from tiles so as to more naturally portray them with buildings.