Finally!

The 0.4.0 update marks the introduction of scripting into Stipple Effect. When I set out to make my own pixel art editor in December, this was the primary feature that motivated me to take the plunge.

You might be asking yourself why.

I develop games as a solo indie dev in my spare time. It is something that I would like to keep doing and potentially take more seriously in the future. I have a couple of game ideas that I’ve been toying with for several years - since high school, in fact - that are both hugely ambitious. As I began to contemplate if, when and how I could commit to these projects, my focus shifted to the tech stack and workflow I would need in order to develop these games on my own in as short a time span as possible without cutting corners on my creative process and the game’s technical implementation details. A key part of that tech stack was a lightweight, flexible, powerful art program that could do a lot more than what I was using at the time.

One of those game ideas is a procedurally generated RPG codenamed Citizen. Every facet of worldbuilding in Citizen is procedurally generated rather than hardcoded. This extends far beyond the geography of game worlds to the cultures that inhabit the world, their attire, their languages, and even their weapons, values and philosophies.

Thus, most art assets in the game will be lookup textures that will be modified according to the various generation algorithms at runtime. Iterating on the creation of such assets in traditional art software would be very slow and painstaking, as one would have to build the game or at least run a simulation of the system that incorporated the relevant lookup texture to see the in-game render.

The problem is captured very well by this video:

That is where scripting in Stipple Effect comes in.

Scripting

An example of a custom preview script that animates the lookup texture in the project in real-time:

There are three types of scripts in Stipple Effect:

• Automation scripts
• Preview scripts
• Color scripts

Automation scripts take no parameters and return nothing. They merely execute a series of instructions, usually operating on the project(s) that are active in Stipple Effect. The scripting API is very feature-rich; almost anything that can be accomplished in the editor can be automated via scripting.

Preview scripts, like the example above, can be applied to the preview window to modify the preview of the active project. In the above example, the project contents are being mapped onto an animation of the character swiveling in place so that he can be viewed from all angles.

Color scripts allow for the transformation of the colors of a user-defined scope of pixels in the project. For example, they can be used to turn the entire project greyscale, or to isolate the R (red) color channel of the current selection.

Stipple Effect script files are written in an extension dialect of my own scripting language DeltaScript and have the file extension .ses. DeltaScript has an easy-to-learn, intuitive syntax.

More on scripting:

• Wiki
• API
• Example scripts

Other Changes

Other updates in 0.4.0 include:

• Added HSV level shifting
• Added “Flatten project” layer action
• Overhauled the outline system
  • Allows for both internal and external outlines
  • Outlines can vary in thickness from 1-10 pixels
• Bug fixes

Changelog

For the full changelog, please refer to the GitHub release.

What’s Next?

Stipple Effect is tentatively scheduled for a full release on June 3, 2024.

This update (0.4.0) marks the program as mostly feature-complete. There will be one more update released before the full release, scheduled for the final week of May. This update will prioritize the following:

• Performance optimizations: Stipple Effect is still far too laggy and resource-intensive. I will identify the biggest bottlenecks and perform major refactors of the codebase to improve performance.
• Larger maximum canvas size: the current maximum canvas size is 800x800 pixels. Depending on how drastic the performance improvements are, I would like this to be closer to 2000x2000 pixels.
• Overhaul selection overlays and the move/pick up selection tools
• Pasting from the system clipboard: Users can presently only copy and paste image content from within Stipple Effect. If the system clipboard contains an image copied more recently than the most recent internal copy/cut operation, this should be prioritized by the paste action.