Where to get new sprites

[Hyunchris]

Hey I am new and excited to learn how to use openBOR. I am actually building an arcade cabinet. The theme and sideart of the cabinet are cartoon versions of my kids and my wife and I, in a streets of rage style, etc game. The kids think it's cool to be in a game like this. I think it's cool too actually. Then I came across Openbor,  and thought that I can eventually put the game in the cabinet.

I have been looking through the forum and I have some newbie questions.

1. Where is the best place to find sprite sheets for characters? I came across spriters resource, but was wondering if their are other good or better places.

2. Can I color over sprites using a program like procreate, artflow, etc? Or does it have to be pixel art? I was planning on using the sprite sheet as a bottom layer and a template for body poses, etc. Then simply drawing over them.  I am a pretty good drawer, but to save time, I wasn't planning on doing it pixel by pixel. Would this work? Do yall have any better suggestions? Because my characters will be original. I'm trying to find out the best way to create original characters and not import sprites ripped from another game.

3. Just out of curiosity bc this would come much later, but is it possible to unlock players through a code or something? I was thinking of having the kids uncle as an unlockable character.

 

[DCurrent]

Hyunchris,

Welcome to the ChronoCrash community and the exciting world of OpenBOR!

About your questions...

1. Where is the best place to find sprite sheets for characters? I came across spriters resource, but was wondering if their are other good or better places.

Honestly, the best thing to do is rip them yourself. How hard that is really depends on the game and its host platform. Neo-Geo and Genesis games are almost brain dead easy because you can easily disable layers, set background colors, and then export the remains. Plus, many Neo games have a debug mode that let you play whatever animation you want to see at will. Arcade games on Mame range from similarly easy to "hand edit is the only way". 

One other option is to check out the Mugen scene. Over the years those guys have ripped just about anything and everything. They can be a little sensitive about you using their rips without asking, but most are happy to help if you contact them first. O Ilusionista can help you out some here, and point you to tutorials about ripping and preparing sprites.

2. Can I color over sprites using a program like procreate, artflow, etc? Or does it have to be pixel art?

There are a few basic rules to sprite source images.

• Source images are 8bit mode (i.e. 256 color) .png files.
• Entry 0,0 in your image's palette is the transparent color.
• By default all sprites in a single model share the same palette. Models are the building block of OpenBOR and are analogous to characters. Ex: Blaze in Streets of Rage would be one model, Max another, Apple pickups a third, and so on.
• Models can have an effectively limitless number of alternate palettes.

That's pretty much it. How you make the sprites and what's in them doesn't matter at all, so go nuts. You can overlay entities on entities in real time, and in fact you should for things like particle effects. IOW, keep your sprites clean: Don't draw special effects into them like glowing hands, flames and such - those should be their own sprites and models. For the record other file types are supported for backward compatibility, and to date most existing modules you'll find use .gif images, but same rules apply.

In short, you have more color space and design freedom for sprites than any game ever made to date, and a massive suite of graphical effects to go with it. Have fun.

3. Just out of curiosity bc this would come much later, but is it possible to unlock players through a code or something? I was thinking of having the kids uncle as an unlockable character.

Yes. And furthermore, no matter what gameplay feature you might be think of - the answer is ALWAYS yes. On top of its native feature set, OpenBOR also supports a scripting engine - you can literally write your own logic code to do whatever you feel like.

DC

 

[Wombat2112]

Hyunchris if you are familiar with emulators such as Final Burn Alpha, it was really helpful in obtaining Arcade sprites for me. As DC mentioned the Arcade ones can vary in difficulty...depends on the title. FBA also has debug, record, and you can even extract the audio clips that you like. Just remember it takes time...lots of trial and error.  It's a life learning process I know coders that have been at it 30+ years and like life continue to learn new things. The good thing though if you stick with it, is when you have a finished product it can be very satisfying and rewarding. Good Luck.

 

[Hyunchris]

thanks for the help and suggestions. I am sure this will be a long process of learning, but I love stuff like this so im excited