Editing Tools Sprite Editor

Sprite Editor

The sprite editor is designed to be used both for sprite-wise editing and for freeform pixel-level editing. The sprite navigator at the bottom of the screen provides an 8x8 sprite-wise view into the sprite sheet, but it is possible to use freeform tools (pan, select) when dealing with larger or oddly sized areas.

Draw Tool

Click and drag on the sprite to plot pixels, or use RMB to select the colour under the cursor. All perations apply only to the visible area, or the section if there is one. Hold CTRL to search and replace colour.

Stamp Tool

Click to stamp whatever is in the copy buffer. Hold CTRL to treat colour 0 (black) as transparent.

Select Tool (shortcut: SHIFT or S)

Click and drag to create a rectangular selection. To remove the selection, press ENTER or click anywhere.

If a pixel-wise selection is not present, many operations are instead applied to a sprite-wise selection, or the visible view. To select sprites, shift-drag in the sprite navigator. To select the sprite sheet press CTRL-A (repeat to toggle off the bottom half shared with map data)

Pan Tool (shortcut: SPACE)

Click and drag to move around the sprite sheet.

Fill Tool

Fill with the current colour. This applies only to the current selection, or the visible area if there is no selection.

Shape Tools

Click the tool button to cycle through: oval, rectangle, line options.
Hold CTRL to get a filled oval or rectangle.
Hold SHIFT to snap to circle, square, or low-integer-ratio line.

Extra keys

keys	description
CTRL-Z	Undo
CTRL-C/X	Copy/Cut selected area or selected sprites
CTRL-V	Paste to current sprite location
Q/A,W/Z	Switch to previous/next sprite
1,2	Switch to previous/next colour
TAB	Toggle fullscreen view
Mousewheel	or < and > to zoom (centered in fullscreen)
CTRL-H	to toggle hex view (shows sprite index in hexadecimal)
CTRL-G	totoggle black grid lines when zoomed in

Operations on selected area or selected sprites

keys	description
F	Flip sprite horizontally
V	Flip sprite vertically
R	Rotate (requires a square selection)
Cursor keys	to shift (loops if sprite selection)
DEL/BACKSPACE	to clear selected area

Sprite Flags

The 8 coloured circles are sprite flags for the current sprite. These have no particular meaning, but can be accessed using the FGET() / FSET() functions. They are indexed from 0 starting from the left.

See FSET() for more information.

Loading .png files into the sprite sheet

To load a PNG file of any size into the sprite sheet, first select the sprite that should be the top-left corner destination, and then either type "IMPORT IMAGE_FILE.PNG" or drag and drop the image file into the PICO-8 window. In both cases, the image is colour-fitted to the current display palette.