I have been messing about with these sprite sheets. For testing I wrote a quick program that loads the sheets for the look the player has chosen and animates it. A bunch of AnimatedSprite2D nodes layered.
If you are familiar with these sprite sheets, they are all spec’d to be the same, meaning you might have a body sheet with walk, attack, etc. Then a head sheet, then some hair, then some chest armor, arm armor, etc. Each of these sheets has the graphics that can be drawn over the top of each other in layers.
In my app, I just put each animation over the top of the other, so in essence my character has 12 animations all layered. I want my main character to choose their equipment and look and have it appear on the character. With lots of choices.
Now, my question is: does it make sense to do it like this, or would I be better off generating a spritesheet on the fly based off of the players choices. Maybe only layering the weapon or tool, so it is easily changeable, but all of the things that aren’t changed often are baked into a single spritesheet.
Just thinking out loud. As I could see having many NPCs in the game, would it be better drawing from all of the assets on the fly or having spritesheets built up for the NPCs?
Hope this made sense, just looking for a little discussion…
Thanks.