itch.io

Hey everyone! I’m Jordan, the developer of Stipple Effect, a new scriptable pixel art editor that I’ve been working on for the past few months.

I’ve posted about Stipple Effect in a few subreddits over the past few weeks and have received plenty of valuable feedback from the community!

Two things now stand out to me:

1. Some people are still confused by what exactly my program does, or what it does differently.

I have provided examples and descriptions of the scripting system, arguably Stipple Effect’s biggest unique selling point, in some of my other posts. While many people have intuitively understood why I felt this enabled such powerful workflows and was such a game changer, too many people were left confused.

Here are select examples of those posts:

• How useful would you find this pixel art tool as a Godot dev?
• My scriptable pixel art editor for making game art faster is on sale

2. I still don’t know what the program’s biggest pain points are.

I designed Stipple Effect for myself and have not had the opportunity to gather a sufficient amount of feedback from people that have actually used the program to know what its biggest issues at present are.

So, I am turning to the game development and pixel art communities once again…

If Stipple Effect is something you might find useful, please help me improve it. The program is released under a distribution model where the precompiled binaries are paid, but the program remains open source and can be compiled free of charge. The store page also has a freely downloadable demo available with all features except the ability to save and export your work. And since I am asking for help, I am happy to arrange download keys for a limited time if you message me privately.

This is what I need help with:

1. Help me gain a better understanding of which aspects of the program are intuitive and which are cumbersome or unclear

2. Help me get a sense of how accessible scripting is

I have written a wiki and an API for the scripting system, but I have little idea of how people are getting on with writing scripts in the program. I am curious to see how users with varying levels of programming experience can turn ideas for scripts and preview workflows into reality. Is the scripting language too complicated? Is it under-specified?

3. Help me improve my communication about the program’s features

The comments under this post best illustrate the trouble I’ve been having. If you have familiarized yourself with Stipple Effect, how would YOU communicate what it does?

4. Help me to identify bugs

You can report bugs in the Community forums linked at the bottom of the store page or the Issues section of the Git repository. General feedback is best suited to the Community forums or under this post.

The best ways to keep up to date with the development of Stipple Effect are:

• Star jbunke/stipple-effect on GitHub
• Add Stipple Effect to a collection
• Subscribe to my YouTube channel, where I will be releasing devlogs, tutorials, and major update videos

Thank you all so much!

Shape tool has been added!

Yeah, I’ve been mulling over whether to add a shape tool and I think it’s worth the convenience it would add.

For now though, you can use the Box Select tool in combination with the Fill tool or the Fill shortcuts (Backspace for primary color, Shift + Backspace for secondary color) to create filled rectangles, and the Box Select tool in combination with the outline tool or the outline shortcuts ([Ctrl / Shift / Ctrl + Shift] + 9) to create outlined rectangles.

You can also use the polygon select tool to freehand an approximate oval, but I will add a proper shape tool that lets you draw mathematically defined ellipses.

Hello everyone! My name is Jordan and I am the developer of Stipple Effect, which is a pixel art editor with animation capabilities that I have been developing on my own for the past six months! I am in the home stretch now. I have just released the penultimate major update before the editor’s full release, which basically marks the software as feature-complete, so I figured now is the best time to share what I’ve been working on!

Why?

You might be asking yourself why I would go through all this effort when there is plenty of state-of-the-art software available at various price points depending on one’s budget.

I develop games as a solo indie dev in my spare time. It is something that I would like to keep doing and potentially take more seriously in the future. I have a couple of game ideas that I’ve been toying with for several years - since high school, in fact - that are both hugely ambitious. As I began to contemplate if, when and how I could commit to these projects, my focus shifted to the tech stack and workflow I would need in order to develop these games on my own in as short a time span as possible without cutting corners on my creative process and the game’s technical implementation details. A key part of that tech stack was a lightweight, flexible, powerful art program that could do a lot more than what I was using at the time.

One of those game ideas is a procedurally generated RPG codenamed Citizen. Every facet of worldbuilding in Citizen is procedurally generated rather than hardcoded. This extends far beyond the geography of game worlds to the cultures that inhabit the world, their attire, their languages, and even their weapons, values and philosophies.

Thus, most art assets in the game will be lookup textures that will be modified according to the various generation algorithms at runtime. Iterating on the creation of such assets in traditional art software would be very slow and painstaking, as one would have to build the game or at least run a simulation of the system that incorporated the relevant lookup texture to see the in-game render.

The problem is captured very well by this video.

That is where Stipple Effect comes in.

Scripting in Stipple Effect

There are three types of scripts in Stipple Effect:

• Automation scripts
• Preview scripts
• Color scripts

Automation scripts take no parameters and return nothing. They merely execute a series of instructions, usually operating on the project(s) that are active in the program. The scripting API is very feature-rich; almost anything that can be accomplished in the editor can be automated via scripting.

Preview scripts, like the above example, can be applied to the preview window to modify the preview of the active project. In the above example, the project contents are being mapped onto an animation of the character swiveling in place so that he can be viewed from all angles.

Color scripts allow for the transformation of the colors of a user-defined scope of pixels in the project. For example, they can be used to turn the entire project greyscale, or to isolate the R (red) color channel of the current selection.

Overview of Features

• Symbiotic relationship between layers and frames
  • Linked and unlinked layers
• Two-color system: Stipple Effect’s brush, pencil, and gradient tool allow for interesting combinations of the primary and secondary colors
  • Dither mode
  • Blend mode
  • Noise mode
• State management
  • Granular undo and redo
• Animation playback
  • Onion skinning
  • Edit during playback
• Split/stitch
  • Split a project into frames
  • Stitch frames together into a sprite sheet
• Palettes
  • Import and export palettes
  • Palettization
  • Extract colors in a project to a palette
• Selection
  • Family of selection tools designed for pixel-perfect selection
  • Intuitive and powerful outlining utilities
• Pixel grid
  • Easily enable/disable and modify the size of the pixel grid cells
  • The box select tool can snap to the grid
• And much more!

Download

Until its full release, Stipple Effect can be downloaded for free! If this post captured your attention or curiosity, it would mean the world to me if you gave the program a try and provided me with feedback. The program can be downloaded here and is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux distributions. The best user experience is to run the program on a 1920x1080 pixel monitor on Windows, installing it via the Windows installer. Conversely, installing the cross-platform build will require a separate installation of the Java 17 Runtime Environment (JRE 17).

Additionally, the program is open-source. You can read the source code and follow the development on GitHub here.

Thank you and enjoy!

Hello everyone! My name is Jordan and I am the developer of Stipple Effect, which is a pixel art editor with animation capabilities that I have been developing on my own for the past six months! I am in the home stretch now. I have just released the penultimate major update before the editor’s full release, which basically marks the software as feature-complete, so I figured now is the best time to share what I’ve been working on!

Why?

You might be asking yourself why I would go through all this effort when there is plenty of state-of-the-art software available at various price points depending on one’s budget.

I develop games as a solo indie dev in my spare time. It is something that I would like to keep doing and potentially take more seriously in the future. I have a couple of game ideas that I’ve been toying with for several years - since high school, in fact - that are both hugely ambitious. As I began to contemplate if, when and how I could commit to these projects, my focus shifted to the tech stack and workflow I would need in order to develop these games on my own in as short a time span as possible without cutting corners on my creative process and the game’s technical implementation details. A key part of that tech stack was a lightweight, flexible, powerful art program that could do a lot more than what I was using at the time.

One of those game ideas is a procedurally generated RPG codenamed Citizen. Every facet of worldbuilding in Citizen is procedurally generated rather than hardcoded. This extends far beyond the geography of game worlds to the cultures that inhabit the world, their attire, their languages, and even their weapons, values and philosophies.

Thus, most art assets in the game will be lookup textures that will be modified according to the various generation algorithms at runtime. Iterating on the creation of such assets in traditional art software would be very slow and painstaking, as one would have to build the game or at least run a simulation of the system that incorporated the relevant lookup texture to see the in-game render.

The problem is captured very well by this video.

That is where Stipple Effect comes in.

Scripting in Stipple Effect

There are three types of scripts in Stipple Effect:

• Automation scripts
• Preview scripts
• Color scripts

Automation scripts take no parameters and return nothing. They merely execute a series of instructions, usually operating on the project(s) that are active in the program. The scripting API is very feature-rich; almost anything that can be accomplished in the editor can be automated via scripting.

Preview scripts, like the above example, can be applied to the preview window to modify the preview of the active project. In the above example, the project contents are being mapped onto an animation of the character swiveling in place so that he can be viewed from all angles.

Color scripts allow for the transformation of the colors of a user-defined scope of pixels in the project. For example, they can be used to turn the entire project greyscale, or to isolate the R (red) color channel of the current selection.

Overview of Features

• Symbiotic relationship between layers and frames
  • Linked and unlinked layers
• Two-color system: Stipple Effect’s brush, pencil, and gradient tool allow for interesting combinations of the primary and secondary colors
  • Dither mode
  • Blend mode
  • Noise mode
• State management
  • Granular undo and redo
• Animation playback
  • Onion skinning
  • Edit during playback
• Split/stitch
  • Split a project into frames
  • Stitch frames together into a sprite sheet
• Palettes
  • Import and export palettes
  • Palettization
  • Extract colors in a project to a palette
• Selection
  • Family of selection tools designed for pixel-perfect selection
  • Intuitive and powerful outlining utilities
• Pixel grid
  • Easily enable/disable and modify the size of the pixel grid cells
  • The box select tool can snap to the grid
• And much more!

Download

Until its full release, Stipple Effect can be downloaded for free! If this post captured your attention or curiosity, it would mean the world to me if you gave the program a try and provided me with feedback. The program can be downloaded here and is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux distributions. The best user experience is to run the program on a 1920x1080 pixel monitor on Windows, installing it via the Windows installer. Conversely, installing the cross-platform build will require a separate installation of the Java 17 Runtime Environment (JRE 17).

Additionally, the program is open-source. You can read the source code and follow the development on GitHub here.

Thank you and enjoy!

Hello everyone! My name is Jordan and I am the developer of Stipple Effect, which is a pixel art editor with animation capabilities that I have been developing on my own for the past six months! I am in the home stretch now. I have just released the penultimate major update before the editor’s full release, which basically marks the software as feature-complete, so I figured now is the best time to share what I’ve been working on!

Why?

You might be asking yourself why I would go through all this effort when there is plenty of state-of-the-art software available at various price points depending on one’s budget.

I develop games as a solo indie dev in my spare time. It is something that I would like to keep doing and potentially take more seriously in the future. I have a couple of game ideas that I’ve been toying with for several years - since high school, in fact - that are both hugely ambitious. As I began to contemplate if, when and how I could commit to these projects, my focus shifted to the tech stack and workflow I would need in order to develop these games on my own in as short a time span as possible without cutting corners on my creative process and the game’s technical implementation details. A key part of that tech stack was a lightweight, flexible, powerful art program that could do a lot more than what I was using at the time.

One of those game ideas is a procedurally generated RPG codenamed Citizen. Every facet of worldbuilding in Citizen is procedurally generated rather than hardcoded. This extends far beyond the geography of game worlds to the cultures that inhabit the world, their attire, their languages, and even their weapons, values and philosophies.

Thus, most art assets in the game will be lookup textures that will be modified according to the various generation algorithms at runtime. Iterating on the creation of such assets in traditional art software would be very slow and painstaking, as one would have to build the game or at least run a simulation of the system that incorporated the relevant lookup texture to see the in-game render.

The problem is captured very well by this video.

That is where Stipple Effect comes in.

Scripting in Stipple Effect

There are three types of scripts in Stipple Effect:

• Automation scripts
• Preview scripts
• Color scripts

Automation scripts take no parameters and return nothing. They merely execute a series of instructions, usually operating on the project(s) that are active in the program. The scripting API is very feature-rich; almost anything that can be accomplished in the editor can be automated via scripting.

Preview scripts, like the above example, can be applied to the preview window to modify the preview of the active project. In the above example, the project contents are being mapped onto an animation of the character swiveling in place so that he can be viewed from all angles.

Color scripts allow for the transformation of the colors of a user-defined scope of pixels in the project. For example, they can be used to turn the entire project greyscale, or to isolate the R (red) color channel of the current selection.

Overview of Features

• Symbiotic relationship between layers and frames
  • Linked and unlinked layers
• Two-color system: Stipple Effect’s brush, pencil, and gradient tool allow for interesting combinations of the primary and secondary colors
  • Dither mode
  • Blend mode
  • Noise mode
• State management
  • Granular undo and redo
• Animation playback
  • Onion skinning
  • Edit during playback
• Split/stitch
  • Split a project into frames
  • Stitch frames together into a sprite sheet
• Palettes
  • Import and export palettes
  • Palettization
  • Extract colors in a project to a palette
• Selection
  • Family of selection tools designed for pixel-perfect selection
  • Intuitive and powerful outlining utilities
• Pixel grid
  • Easily enable/disable and modify the size of the pixel grid cells
  • The box select tool can snap to the grid
• And much more!

Download

Until its full release, Stipple Effect can be downloaded for free! If this post captured your attention or curiosity, it would mean the world to me if you gave the program a try and provided me with feedback. The program can be downloaded here and is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux distributions. The best user experience is to run the program on a 1920x1080 pixel monitor on Windows, installing it via the Windows installer. Conversely, installing the cross-platform build will require a separate installation of the Java 17 Runtime Environment (JRE 17).

Additionally, the program is open-source. You can read the source code and follow the development on GitHub here.

Thank you and enjoy!

Hey everyone!

I’ve spent the past three months or so working on a pixel art image editor called Stipple Effect. I’m a hobbyist game developer, and I’ve used Paint.NET for my pixel art since I was in middle school. However, I have a couple of quite ambitious games that I want to make as a solo indie dev in the next few years once I can dedicate real time to it, and I’m starting to plan ahead and think about my tech stack now before I commit to anything.

I realized that while Paint.NET is a great free resource, it’s pretty much useless for animation, and horribly inefficient for large-scale projects with lots of pixel art sprites. Instead of just buying Aseprite or something, I decided to make my own image editor. I chose to do this because I eventually want to expand it to support complex real-time preview scripting for something like what is described in this video by aarthificial, and other features particular to my needs.

Stipple Effect overview

• Supports layers, frames, and color palettes
• Has all the tools you expect from from a modern pixel art image editor
• Designed to get out of the artist’s way
• Supports workflows by having shortcuts baked in for almost every operation
• You can export a project as a PNG sprite sheet, as separate PNGs for each animation frame, as a GIF, or as an MP4 video
• Lightweight and designed specifically for pixel art, so it won’t bog you down with complicated features that are only useful for high-resolution raster or vector images

Stipple Effect is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux distros. Please check out the project page here if this might be something for you! Any and all feedback is highly appreciated!

Thank you :)

If you are having trouble with something in Stipple Effect, this is the place to find answers!

All feedback is appreciated! Please remember to be nice and considerate.

Hey everyone!

If you have been using Stipple Effect, I want to encourage you to share projects that you have made in the program below!

If you encounter any bugs while using Stipple Effect, please leave detailed comments - and if applicable, pictures - surrounding the circumstances of the bug below.

Useful background information includes:

• Operating system
• Screen resolution
• Key inputs that led to the bug
• Operations that led to the bug

Hello everyone! Thank you for taking the time to check out my post.

I recently updated my first game, TRANSLATION, with a level editor.

The game is a simplistic platformer with physics-based mechanics and a unique movement system that relies on two types of teleportation In its current state, it has 12 tutorial levels and 64 regular levels split across four campaigns.

With the level editor and the campaign creation and import systems, I hope the game can be infinitely extensible through content created by the community.

TRANSLATION is free to play on Windows, macOS, and Linux, as long as you have at least the Java 17 runtime installed on your machine. You can check the game out here!

Thanks again and have fun :)

Hi everyone! I recently added a level editor to my first published game, TRANSLATION.

TRANSLATION is a simplistic platformer with physics-based mechanics and a unique movement system that relies on two types of teleportation. If you are interested, I would love for you to download the game, check it out for yourself, and let me know how many of the 64 levels you are able to beat. I'm also curious to see how you get on with the level editor and to see what sorts of levels you guys produce.

The game is free to play and you can check it out here.

Thank you!

TRANSLATION

CHECK OUT THE GAME HERE!

You can buy the game under early access now, or download and play the tutorial and first 16 levels of the campaign for free. I will be updating the game regularly, including adding tons more levels, a level editor, and campaign sharing, so that the community can expand the experience by hours and hours.

Thanks for your time and attention,

- FF