Sorry for the wait!

I’m excited and relieved to announce that version 1.2.0 of Top Down Sprite Maker is available right now! I want to apologize for the timing, as this update comes several weeks later than I had hoped and planned.

Create, edit and distribute sprite styles

The main feature of this update is simply the separation of sprite styles from the program code. The sprite styles that were available in v1.1.0 are no longer hard-coded into TDSM. Going forwards as of v1.2.0, sprite styles are distributed separately from the program, allowing the community to create, edit and distribute sprite styles themselves.

How sprite styles work now

Sprite styles are uploaded to TDSM as a single ZIP archive. This archive includes a manifest.tds script file at its root that defines the sprite style’s supported directions, animations, layers, and composition logic. The ZIP archive also includes any image assets referenced by the script using relative paths, and may optionally include project files to facilitate editing.

The Pokémon sprite styles that were included in previous versions of TDSM will remain free, but must now be downloaded separately. Sprite styles either made or approved by the developer will be added to this collection.

More new features

Scripting API

This update introduces a scripting API, which is how sprite styles are defined. My next priority will be fully documenting the API and publishing a VS Code extension that adds syntax highlighting for TDSM scripts.

You can follow along with API-related developments in this GitHub repository.

Saving and loading sprites

Sprites can now be loaded back into TDSM with their customization and configuration data intact by uploading their JSON metadata export file back into TDSM, provided that the sprite style associated with the sprite is also uploaded to TDSM.

Help guides

TDSM now features help guides on a range of concepts related to the program. This is primarily meant to give users that want to create or modify sprite styles an intuition of how the program works under the hood, and a better grasp of its key concepts. You can navigate to these guides from the main menu via the menus About -> Help -> Concepts and tutorials.

Full changelog on GitHub

Housekeeping

Due to the scope and scale of this update, I will be keeping v1.1.0 available for download for the time being. I would greatly appreciate constructive feedback about v1.2.0, specifically confirming…

• you can launch the program on your target operating system
• you can upload sprite style archives to TDSM
• you can recover sprites by uploading an exported JSON metadata file to TDSM