Custom character sprite sheet shows up as Actor1 sheet in MV

[CircusPuma3000]

I'm trying to make custom character sprites for my game. My sprites are twice as tall (48x96) as normal, tile-sized character sprites (48x48), so I made the canvas twice as tall.

I have only finished the sprites for one of my characters so far, so only the top left corner is filled in. I exported the image as a png, added a dollar sign to the front of the filename, and put it in the game folder.

When I select character sprites for an actor in the Database, my custom image file shows up in the list. But when I click on it, the sprites that appear in the preview box are the ones from the Actor1 file.

Can someone please help me with this?

[Caethyril]

Originally posted by CircusLion3000:

I have only finished the sprites for one of my characters so far, so only the top left corner is filled in. I exported the image as a png, added a dollar sign to the front of the filename, and put it in the game folder.

$myChar.png means "split this sheet into 4 rows and 3 columns (1 character block)". Do not put a $ at the start of the filename if the sheet has empty space for the other 7 characters.

When I select character sprites for an actor in the Database, my custom image file shows up in the list. But when I click on it, the sprites that appear in the preview box are the ones from the Actor1 file.

Ideas:

1. Save your project, then close and re-open the editor. Sometimes the editor might not see replacements/edits of active files.
   
   
2. Have you tried renaming your sheet, e.g. a very simple file name like a.png, to see if that helps?
   
   
3. Do you see a warning symbol (yellow triangle with ! in it) in the image list beside your custom sprite sheet?
   
   • If so, that implies the editor found the image but had trouble accessing it.
     
     I've seen this happen before with .PNG images (should be .png): in that case you can manually rename the file extension. For that you may need to set file extensions to visible in your system's file explorer (how to do this depends on your OS). File extensions, e.g. .png, are just labels: they do not affect the format of the data inside a file.
   
   
4. Make a visible change to the starting map, save, test, and choose New Game from the title menu. Do you see that change in-game?
   
   • If not, delete your project's package.json file and try again...
     
     • If that fixed it, you have probably deployed into your project folder (bad idea!): in that case I recommend copying your project data (data, img, audio, and js folders) into a new project.

[CircusPuma3000]

Originally posted by Caethyril:

• Have you tried renaming your sheet, e.g. a very simple file name like a.png, to see if that helps?

That did the trick. The $ was the problem. I thought you had to put that if your sprites were a size other than 48x48 pixels, but now I understand. Thanks!