Images

Wildflower is pre-configured with a variety of different sizes of images available for use in your games. To add or change art in wildflower you don't add new images but instead edit the images provided which are mostly empty and ready to be filled up. Wildflower uses .png files for images. All of the images are broken down into 8x8 tiles or a multiple of that.

All of the art in "source/data/images" can be changed simply by editing it in your favorite image editor. When you resave an image the Wildflower will automatically detect the change and update the view to reflect that. The images are mostly empty, ready to be filled up, but you shouldn't re-size any of the tile sheets or Wildflower may not run properly.

Wildflower objects are setup to recognize these images when passed to an image attributes parameter. For most objects the first 2 parameters they take are a image name and frame in that image. The frame is a the index of the tile in that image when counted from the top left. If you want your object to not be rendered you can use frame -1.

The images that can be referenced from object attributes are all in the "source/data/images" folder of the Wildflower root directory and sored as png files. Here are all the images that can be referenced by object parameters...

• sprites8x8 - Default 8x8 sprites mostly for game objects
• sprites8x16 - Double tall sprites, or for extra NPCs
• sprites16x8 - Wider sprites like moving platforms
• sprites16x16 - Double sized sprites like large crates
• sprites32x32 - Very large sprites
• background0 - Default background tile sheet
• background1 - Extra background tile sheet
• background2 - Extra background tile sheet
• background3 - Extra background tile sheet
• background4 - Extra background tile sheet
• background5 - Extra background tile sheet
• backgroundAnimated - Holds animated frames for background tiles
• foreground0 - Default forground tile sheet
• foreground1 - Extra foreground tile sheet
• foregroundAnimated - Holds animated frames for foreground tiles
• npcs8x8 - Small npcs like cats
• npcs8x16 - Normal height npcs like people
• portraits - Holds the 16x16 closeups that slide out for messages
• powerups - Art for each of the powerups in the game
• font - The normal game font
• font2 - The game font with alpha behind it
• fontLarge - 16x16 version of the game font

Please note that while objects accept any of these images as parameters, some objects have a limitation where can only use images that have 8x8 sized tiles. Only objects that support sprite rendering can use larger then 8x8 sized tiles, like the [NPC Object] or [Static Object] for example.

Other Images

There are several other images in the "source/data/images" folder that can't be referenced by objects but can still be edited by the user. All the art can be edited to fully customize your game.

The player is a special case of image that is rotated in all 4 directions to account for the screen rotate ability. You will not need to worry about this if you do not include the screen rotate ability in your game. There is also a separate image to represent the different frames of rotation when in ball form.

You may also notice images used by the [Minimap]. These are generated automatically whenever you click "Save Minimap" in the editor. Advanced users may want to edit the mini map file to make custom changes to it rather then using the built in minimap generator.

You can change "icon.png" to change how your game looks in the Sifteo Menu. You can also change "loadscreen.png" or any of the other images in that folder to further customize the look of your game.

Editing Images

Images can be edited and saved via an external image editing program of your choice. When images are saved Wildflower will automatically refresh to reflect the changes. All art for Sifteo games is configured to use 8x8 tiles because of the hardware limitations, so it is recommended to turn on an 8x8 grid if possible when editing sifteo art.

If you have never edited images before then Windows Paint is always a good place to start and comes installed on any Windows computer. For more advanced users we recommend GIMP or Photoshop.