how do I make a good top down character sprite? (I know I should probably make the major mechanics first and do this later)

[lunchboy360]

I'm making a top down survival game, but I have a problem, I dont know haw to make good top down character sprites, could someone give me some advice?

[lunchboy360]

what size should I make my sprites?

[BOYCOTT S-T-E-A-M!]

I would suggest checking out the tutorial / demo on surfaces that is provided with Gamemaker Studio.

In that tutorial it is a top down shooter game where you control a swat guy and shoot skeletons.

While the tutorial is mainly focused on teaching the effects that you can do using surfaces it is also a good example of how to handle controling a character in overhead style as well as how to construct a character.

In that tutorial the players character is made up of three seperate pieces. The head, body with arms, and the legs. The legs are the only piece of the player that actually has animation, which in this case is the walking animation of the legs. The head and body are static. All of these parts are combined together in the draw segment of the player to create what looks like a single character sprite.


As far as good practices for creating top down sprites, you'd have to search the net for them.

[lunchboy360]

thanks for the help.

[BOYCOTT S-T-E-A-M!]

No problem. I know its not an exact answer, but it should point you in the right direction.

One final piece of advice I can give would be that when you add your sprites into Gamemaker be sure that the sprite has its "front" pointing towards the right.

The reason for this is that the angle system in Gamemaker considers right to be 0 degrees, up to be 90 degrees, left to be 180 degrees, and down to be 270 degrees. If you had made your sprites to face a direction other than to the right then when you added them into Gamemaker and tried to rotate them, like say to point towards the mouse, it wouldn't be the front of your sprite aiming that way but whatever side of the sprite was on the right in the sprite editor.