Loading Sprites

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Loading Sprites
In this section of the manual you can learn about sprites and
how to create them with the GameMaker: Studio sprite editor.
Sprites are generally the visual representations of objects within the game you are creating. As such, a
sprite is either a single image, drawn with any drawing program you like, or a set of images that,
when played one after another, looks like a looping animation. For example, the following 10 images
form a sprite for a character who is waving his arms while skydiving.

And the actual finished animation would look like this when placed in a game:

That looks pretty good, eh? Most games need you to make sprites like this for all the things in your
game world, from enemies to power-ups, from walls to menus, and when you start to make a game
you normally collect or create a set of nice sprites for the objects you are going to use. A considerable
number of useful sprites are bundled with GameMaker: Studio to help you get started and other
collections of useful sprites can be found on the YoYo Games website which can all be used as "place
holders" until you have enough confidence to make your own or get together with an artist, but please
note that the bundled sprites are not for distribution in any finished works that you make. You can
also find many more sprites on the web, normally in the form of PNG strips or animated GIFs.
To create a sprite, choose the item Create Sprite from the Resources menu, or use the corresponding
button on the toolbar. Either will cause the following window to open:

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As you can probably see, the top left of the window has a field for the "Name" of the sprite. All
sprites (and all other resources) must have a name given to them so that you (and GameMaker:
Studio!) can identify them easily, although you should note that the actual name itself is really just a
variable which holds a number that "points" to the resource, in this case a sprite. It's best to give each
sprite a descriptive name so that you can identify at a glance whether a particular resource is a sprite
or an object or anything else, and many people do this by prefixing or suffixing the resource with the
letters "spr". For example, the above sky diver sprite could be called spr_SkyDiver or SkyDiver_spr.
Even though this is not strictly required, you are strongly advised to use only letters and digits and the
underscore symbol (_) in a name of a sprite (and any other resource) and to let it start with a letter, not
a number as this will become very important once you start using code.
To load a sprite, click on the button Load Sprite. A special file dialog window opens in which you
can choose the sprite you want to import into GameMaker: Studio:

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The left part is a fairly standard file selector in which you can navigate around your computer and
select the sprite that you want to import. On the right you have a preview of the sprite image you
select and some basic information about its size. Here you can also indicate a couple of things that
you'd like GameMaker: Studio to do when you import the sprite, like make opaque (remove any
transparent parts), remove the background colour (if it has one) making it transparent, or whether to
smooth the edges of the sprite (only if it is transparent), which can greatly improve its appearance.
When you have found the sprite you need and selected the transparency options you like, press Open
to load the sprite into GameMaker: Studio.
GameMaker: Studio can load many different formats of graphic files - with JPG, BMP, PNG and GIF
being the most common bitmap formats, although you can also import SWF vector sprites and JSON
skeletal animation sprites (made with Spine). There are a couple of things that should be noted when
loading the different bitmap files:
When you load an animated gif, the different images of the animation
automatically form the sprite subimages.
When the file name ends with _stripXX, where XX a number, it is considered to
contain a strip of XX subimages next to each other, and GameMaker: Studio will
import it as such. For example, an image file with the name ball_strip4.png is
assumed to contain 4 subimages and will be split up as such when loaded.
If you have a sprite strip image that you wish to load into GameMaker: Studio
which does not have the above-mentioned format, this must be done from the

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Sprite Editor File Menu.

Although JPG images are supported, it is best to avoid using this file type as, due to
the compression used, the images are generally of poorer quality than either PNG
or BMP.
Once the sprite is loaded you are returned to the sprite properties window where the first subimage is
shown on the right of the screen. When there are multiple subimages, you can cycle through them
using the arrow buttons that appear beside the part of the window labelled "Show", and, should you
make any changes to the sprite, you can then save it again using the "Save" button.
For a more in-depth look at the sprite editor in GameMaker: Studio, as well as details on the SWF and
JSON formats, you can go to the Advanced Section of this manual.

Back: Using GameMaker: Studio Copyright YoYo Games Ltd. 2015 All Rights Next: Sounds And Music
Reserved

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