How to prepare a sprite for a game?

Question

For example, I created my character drawing on Paint.NET using the Pencil tool and now it's a sprite like asset.

If I want him to move do I need to create many different poses for him and render them according a timer? Or do I need to have each pose side by side in a single image, then render the rectangle I need, thus loading the picture only once?

Thanks.

Answer 1

Usually you try to have them in a single file(maybe even fit multiple characters/backgrounds in just 1 image) and then do all the magic in memory.

This files with a lot of images are called Sprite Sheets and you can find a lot of them online.

There are many tools out there to manage sprites and aprite sheets both language/framework specific or general use.

Some of the things to consider is if you have things of different sizes, perspectives, how do you represent that information about the sprite sheet.

Depending on the platform and type of game it might be more or less important to use optimization in this area, I would suggest to always Keep It Simple if possible.