How to Share Sprite Art

Arcade
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1

Customizing the Gallery

Extensions often add custom blocks to your workspace, but did you know that they can also add custom images? The Arcade Sprite Pack Generator is a way to create bundles of images that anyone can add to their project gallery:

arcade-sprite-pack
arcade-sprite-pack1012×800 3.63 MB

Try it out by clicking on Advanced → Extensions in the Toolbox, and pasting in https://github.com/shakao/arcade-slimes or https://github.com/shakao/arcade-rpg-items

What you need

We want to make it easy for you guys to share character or background art! You only need a couple things to get started:

  • A Github account
  • Some sprite art to share!

How to do it

  1. Go to https://shakao.github.io/arcade-sprite-pack/ and draw your sprites. You can copy/paste between the Arcade sprite editor and this editor, or click the “Import” button on the top right and paste in a share URL.

  2. When you’re done, click the Export button, name your project, and select Download MKCD

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  1. Go to arcade.makecode.com and make an empty project. Drag your MKCD file from your computer into the editor.

  2. Click the Github button in the bottom toolbar next to the project name. Sign in if necessary.

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  1. One you are signed in, go back to your project and click the Github button again. This time, click Go ahead! to create your asset pack extension!

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  1. You’re done! You can go to github.com to see your extension or just paste the URL into another Arcade project to see your sprites. The URL should be:

https://github.com/[your-github-username]/[your-repository-name]

  1. (optional) Post your asset pack to the forums so we can check out your awesome sprites!
16 Likes
2

Cool! I made mine!

The only problem is that you have to get the color fading extension and inset these blocks. :arrow_down:

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1 Like
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@shakao

I am able to drop the .mkcd file into the Arcade editor to get the sprite resources and also save this to GitHub. However, I am not sure how to update the repository in GitHub. If I paste an updated version of the .mkcd file into the editor, I have lost my connection to GitHub and it asks to create a repository again. I guess this happens as dropping in a new .mkcd files replaces/removes certain .git files. I thought about creating a branch and changing the files locally, but the files in the editor are not stored locally.

@jwunderl
I hope you don’t mind me asking, but do you know how I can update a repository with an updated .mkcd file?

4

Hm, this is a good scenario that we… definitely didn’t think of while implementing haha. The nonoptimal work around that first springs to mind is:

  1. Open the updated mkcd file in a separate project.
  2. Switch to Javascript
  3. From the Explorer (under the simulator), copy the contents of assets.ts and assets.jres into your Github project

It’s a little tedious but it should allow you to update your sprite pack for now!

1 Like
5

I have just discovered this tool - it’s a great idea, thank you! I want to use it to share some tiles and animations with my students, for some tutorials I have written for them.

I have created a small test extension. The animations I have made work fine, and everything I have made appears correctly in the main assets gallery. However, the tiles I have made do not appear in the tilemap editor - and when I go to My Tiles and add a new tile, they do not appear in the tiles gallery.

Do you have any thoughts on how I can fix this? It would be even better if the tiles showed up in their own category in the tilemap editor, but I don’t know how baked-in to MakeCode Arcade those categories are.

This is the repo for my extension, in case that’s useful: https://github.com/dcgs-sbu/dcgs-tutorial-assets

Thank you very much!