Customisable character outfits?

[wjt]

We have 5 different versions of StoryWeaver in the game, though we only use the blue one in the game proper. e.g.:

I used the purple one in a test scene. My daughter saw me playing it and said she prefers the purple storyweaver. I showed her the aseprite file which has different layers for the helmet, button, etc. and she asked me: can she choose the colours for the character when she plays?

Swapping between the 5 assets & corresponding SpriteFrames resources might be a relatively simple piece of customisation to support (or perhaps the different outfits could be collectibles?). Doing the more general customisation – pink helmet/sword + yellow button + green clothes – would be harder because:

1. We only have the Aseprite file in blue (but this is not insurmountable – we could recolour it based on the colours in the 4 other variant PNGs)
2. We would either need to export 5³ sets of spritesheets for each combination of helmet × button × clothes; or change the player scene to have multiple sprites (and the sword is sometimes in front of the body and sometimes behind it – there are 2 different sword layers in the Aseprite file)

but it might be cool. What do people think?

[cassidyjames]

I love the idea of character customization! I feel like it could be something you can do out of the box, but it could also be an interesting component to work into the larger game play. Like,

1. Have a ColorWeaver character who lives in a hut in a specific area who you can visit to customize your outfit

2. Maybe the colors/patterns/outfits that are available to you are collectables you get throughout the game?

I am not a game designer and that's not at all fully thought out, but it could be fun. :) Similar to how you can visit that one person in the original Pokémon games to rename your Pokémon, combined with the sticker-/material-collecting in Little Big Planet where once you collect a certain material in a level, you can then go and use it to decorate your character.

[manuq]

An alternative to exporting 5³ sets of spritesheets from Aseprite is to export the layers, and dinamically create the textures while loading the level.

Just for reference, the reason this is so complex is because we use frame by frame "traditional" animation. As much as I love traditional animation, it makes things like this complex. Here is a GDC talk that compares it with "asset sheets" which I prefer to call bones animations or cut-out animations. Here is a sneak peek video that show how bones animations is used in Rayman Legends. Still, some pixel art games have fancy character customization. Here is how it looks in Stardew Valley, although in that case the super tiny assets makes it much easier.

If our game style would be suitable for bones or cutout animation, a single shield graphic would be used for all (idle, walk, attack, etc). Making it easier to create custom ones, either for having collectables in the Lore, and for learners to create their own.