This article contains information for Artists working or interested in working for The Mana World

This article is for reference purpose

The features described in this article are already implemented in the game. The article should describe how a certain aspect of the game currently works. You may of course edit this article to improve the description of the circumstances. Your opinions or improvement suggestions about the described aspects themself are of course appreciated, too. But please put these on the discussion page of this article to keep facts and fiction separated.

Needs to be added to Sprites in general.
Our monster spritesets currently consist of two files. the first file is a .png image file (32 bit color with alpha transparency) with all animation phases of the monster aligned to a grid. the 2nd file is an animation definition file with the ending .xml that declares the size of the grid and which subimage is used when.

Style Guidelines

You should study the already existing monster spritesets and try to stay in a consistent style with them. Some things most of the sprites have in common are:

• Outline in black or in a dark shade of the main color of the sprite.
• Perspective diagonal from above.
• Light source used for shading south west up (over the left shoulder of the spectator) except for one of the side moving animations (Yes, we are lazy and mirror those. Please don't hit us!).
• Use as many color shades as necessary but don't take it too far. Usually, four or five shades of the same color are more than enough.
• Dropshadow only for flying creatures.

(Yes, there are some exceptions from these rules in the current spritesets. We want to get rid of those and get all monsters into the same style. Maybe this is a task for you?)

The Spriteset File

the png file contains all the animation phases. Currently the animation system can display the following actions in each of the four directions, so the spriteset should contain at least one sprite for each of them:

• Standing
• Attacking
• Walking
• Dead

There is no upper limit for the number of animation phases for each action.

All the phases have to be arranged in a grid. the grid can have any size but it has to be the same for the whole spriteset. The organization can be any way you want. It is even possible to use the same frame multiple times in a sequence or even in different animation sequences, but the creation of the xml file is much easier when subimages that belong to the same animation are next to each other in the correct order from left to right.

The XML File

For a description of the animation definition files see Animations

Monster Proposals

For a list of creature proposals and concept art see Creature_proposal