So generally speaking, this has been my first foray into making a game at all, but most of all a visual novel. I could have used static character sprites, but instead I chose to use a template system using RenPy’s LiveComposite feature.

That means making a bunch of character expression sprites that I exported separately from the plain base sprite.

In the coding, you wind up with something like this:

		
			# HALLIE sprites
# character sprites and animations!
image hallie flirt = "images/hallie/hallie_flirt.png"
image hallie engaged = "images/hallie/hallie_engaged.png"

# lean expressions
image hallie lean away = LiveComposite(
    (631, 942),
    (0, 0), "images/hallie/hallie_base2.png",
    (0, 0), "images/hallie/hallie_leanaway.png")

image hallie lean towards = LiveComposite(
    (631, 942),
    (0, 0), "images/hallie/hallie_base2.png",
    (0, 0), "images/hallie/hallie_leantowards.png")

# base expressions
image hallie curious = LiveComposite(
    (631, 942),
    (0, 0), "images/hallie/hallie_base.png",
    (0, 0), "images/hallie/hallie_curious.png")

image hallie smile = LiveComposite(
    (631, 942),
    (0, 0), "images/hallie/hallie_base.png",
    (0, 0), "images/hallie/hallie_smile.png")
		
	

Hallie wound up with 16 different sprite configurations, and she was the first finalized sprite that I worked on for the game as the focal point to build everything else around.

I’m hoping that for a future update I can give her a different outfit on her base sprite, and hopefully it’ll be a fairly simple affair considering how I structured the PSD layers.

Anyways that’s a peek behind the curtain on Hallie’s character sprites and the work that went into her! Let me know if this is interesting to you, and what other characters or art you’d like to see! Or heck, the thought process behind writing the characters. :)

#behindthescenes #devlog #visualnovel #renpy #livecomposite #photoshop