WIP Wednesday: April 26, 2023

WIP WednesdayWIP WednesdayWIP WednesdayApril 26, 2023April 26, 2023April 26, 2023

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Hey everyone, I’m here for a Work-In-Progress Wednesday to show off what I’ve been working on!

Effects Pack 3

Work on Super Pixel Effects Pack 3 continues! Here’s a sneak peek of the latest animations.

Toon Impact:

Smoke Bomb:

Like the previous packs, there’ll be 10 effects in all, with both large and small versions. The small versions aren’t just rescales- They’re touched up with a lot of care to make sure there’s no jittering pixels and to preserve the symmetry of the effects. For example, here’s the large version of the splatter effect you saw last week…

…And here’s a comparison of some small versions. On the left is plain rescaling, and on the right is the final cleaned up version. (The animation is slowed down a little so you can compare more easily.)

The simple rescale is a good start, but breaks the symmetry of the animation and has some pretty janky or flickering pixels in certain places, making it look less smooth. The final touch-ups really make a difference!

Effects pack 3 will be coming your way on Friday, so stay tuned.

Programming Work

I’ve been continuing my work on MetaMaker 2.0, a personal project to help me make images for all the asset stores I put stuff on. A lot of the work I’m doing on it can also be used in SparkBolt Studio, the pixel art / level editor I’m working on.

This past week I made a couple big advancements: Folders in the scene library section, and the ability to load Old MetaMaker projects!


(Above: Playing around with moving folders)


(Above: The old MetaMaker project for Skill Icons Pack 3, loaded in MetaMaker 2.0. The graphics, scenes, text, and project title are all correctly loaded!)

So far so good. Being able to move stuff around in the folders in the scene library isn’t necessary for MetaMaker, but it will be for SparkBolt Studio’s library and layer lists, so it was a good opportunity to get it working. And man, was it complicated! Hope I got all the bugs…

Loading from an old project is also a nice feature, of course. I won’t have to remake all my old store images if I want to change something! More importantly, it gives me the ability to load at least some data from my old game engine. That means it could be possible in the future to load levels from games made with my old engine! This is good news for Atmocopter, which I still plan on coming back to someday with a rewrite in the new engine.


(Above: A screenshot from Atmocopter, my game that’s on hiatus.)


(Above: One of the big reasons Atmocopter is on hiatus. My old level editor is awful, and that’s why I’m making SparkBolt Studio!)

Coming up next…

I’ve been shuffling around my schedule a bit, because May is going to be busy. I moved the next Speed Spriting video to early May, and in the second half of the month we’ll be seeing two new asset packs: Sci-fi Pickups Pack 2 and Sci-fi FX Pack 1! Don’t worry- fantasy-themed packs will get their turn in June. I’m particularly excited for the sci-fi effects. After drawing the warp animation for the current pack I just knew I had to do more like that!

See you soon with more awesome stuff, and an extra special thanks to all the new patrons who joined recently!

– Will