Posted May 18, 2025 by woofleboofle
Stage 1: Graphics
My first instinct was to go for a pixel art style game, and it all started with my main character, Snugglepuss. As can be seen in the game concept devlog, there were several different character styles i was choosing from. Once I decided on the main character, I build everything else around it to match the aesthetic.
This was all done using A.I. (Open AI's Dall-E 3). Every character, background, plant, object, weapon was all generated using prompts.
This took some trial and error to get the kinds of images I wanted.
An example of a successful prompt I used is:
"Make me a 2d pixel art sprite of a firefighting cat. Sprite must be high quality with shading. Must have transparent background. Fit the entire sprite into the image. Do not crop the sides."
However, these were.... not always successful.
Here is also a quick summary of some of the positives and negatives I encountered whilst making other images:
- Weapons were very succesful, and I found them easy to implement.
- Objects were mixed... sometimes good, sometimes not so good! A problem I would often have is that images would be made in an isometric style.
- Backgrounds were good, but very difficult to get a symmetrical sided background that can extend infinitely. This was even more challenging vertically.
- Trees and plants were generallly very good, but difficult sometimes to match the style and keep consistency. Also often had trouble providing transparent backgrounds.
- Most images required some level of modification before they could be used in the game.
(Image: Demonstrating the use of A.I. generated background, tree and plant sprites)
Stage 2: Creating Player and object animations
One of the first things I did in the game was making player movement, and I wanted some animations to match this.
I started with some idle movements such as blinking, and tail wagging.
Whilst the campfire animation was implemented later, it's a good opportunity to demonstrate it here too.