Warning: Fairly long and blunt post ahead. Please know that it's only because I really want to see this sprite used that I'm providing this criticism now (rather than later).
I really want somebody to try making a game using every frame I provided of the Fat Guy.
As a programmer who intends on entering Part 2, I can honestly say that
the only spritesheet you provided is not going to be simple or easy to import into a game engine as-is.
Unless you present these sprites in a more organized format, I believe that it is unreasonable to hope that anyone could fulfill your wish of using every frame of animation and still abide by the contest rules.
The
restrictions for Part 2 of the competition explicitly state:
2. In the second part, designers and programmers will have a month to take the assets created in part one and make games with them (assets used need not be limited to one person or team). The programmers cannot make any changes to the assets unless it's done during runtime. The best game will be voted on in the normal fashion.
(emphasis my own)I really want to see these sprites used in a game, as I think they're fantastic. But I can tell you that
the poor format in which these are provided will be a significant barrier of entry for anyone wishing to use them according to the competition rules. I'm a reasonably experienced hobbyist game programmer, but I honestly don't even know where I would start in trying to use every frame in this sprite sheet with nothing other than run-time modifications.
Here's what I see when I bring your sprite sheet into a graphics editor:
From this image, here are the main problems that I see with your sprite sheet as-is:
1. Sprite frames are not a consistent size between animation strips. I.E., the hammer smashing sprites are spaced differently than the running or idle frames.
2. The first frame of some animation strips are clipped, and would need special masking to work around. For example, look at the Roll animation strip. I've lined the grid up correctly with the other animation frames, but the gray border intrudes on the first frame of the animation.
3. Animation strips are not presented on grids that line up with other animation grids. Even though I've gotten a grid for the Roll frame that looks correct, it doesn't line up anywhere close for any of the other animation strip.
4. Not all animation frames are present on this sprite sheet (such as the block pushing animation).
5. The block-pushing sprite sheet has an unnecessary block there that is yet another thing that needs to be masked out at run-time.
For a positive example of how to do this better, I would point you to the
Dragon Princess sprite sheet that
Kazerad posted is an excellent example of how to do a sprite sheet so that it's easy to turn into a game. All frames (even the small ones) are scaled up to the size of the largest frame.
Everything on the sprite sheet lines up on the same base 135x103 grid. It makes for a lot of wasted space, but it's well worth it for the programmers.
In your case, I would put the stomach segments on their own sheets, but I would scale every frame of the guy up to the largest frame (probably one of the stomach hammer poses).
Sorry for the bad news, but I hope that's helpful.
[Side Note]It seems that so many of the assets for Part 1 have been submitted as animated GIFs, or other inane formats. Very few game engines that I've ever worked with have been able to import animated GIFs as usable sprites. Unless the stated restrictions for Part 2 are slacked (so that programmers can organize sprites like Pencerkoff's otherwise excellent fat man), it really limits the number of reasonably usable assets in this competition.
I love restrictions in game competitions -- but there's a point at which restrictions cease being a fun challenge, and become inane tedium. Must I really write my own animated GIF parser for my game-engine-of-choice just so that I can use some of these sprites?[/Side Note]
I hope this was helpful criticism, and I really hope I didn't piss the Pencerkoff.
These are just such excellent sprites, and I think we all want to see them used in a game -- so I felt that somebody had to say it.
--clint