RPG Sprites - Equipment and spritesheets

[bradgate]

Hi there!

As a first time poster to the forum, let me start off saying how amazing of a library SFML is, I have been using it for a number of years now to do some small-scale projects and loved using it every time.

I have turned my attention to creating an RPG using an ECS architecture (architecture not really relevant here). I'm just wanting to iron some particular detail out before i start to implement it and that is how to go about having characters equipping different items (armour, weapons etc.)

How would i go about implementing this using spritesheets? I'm not much of an artist and have been using open source spritesheets for my characters so far.

Would i need a set of spritesheets for each character for each item they can equip? - This method seems extremely inefficient and very hard to manage, but i can't think of how this can be achieved.

The only other alternative would be to have a single spritesheet for each character and just have equipment (other than weapons for combat purposes) provide no sprite change and just augment character stats.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again.

[Arcade]

You listed 2 viable options, though as you mentioned the first would be a lot of work depending on how may combinations of characters and equipment you had in mind.

You could alternatively create the equipment sprites separate from the character sprites and just layer them on top of each other in-game. Also, if the different equipment looks the same other than being different colors, you could try creating one sprite sheet and re-color it on the fly in the game.

[Hapax]

Just an additional option, which is similar to what was already mentioned, you can split bodies up into pieces for where each different type of item goes but still add the character to the item. That way you don't need separate 'character' sprites from the 'item' sprites.
I mention it as a possible optimisation idea but probably will turn out to be a horrible workflow.

[bradgate]

Thanks for your suggestions, they are both interesting concepts and i look forward to having a play around with them when i'm ready to implement this part of my game