Overworld Sprites

List of files and folders used:

• SpriteGroups contains all overworld sprites.
• BattleSprites contains all battle sprites.
• sprite_groups.yml contains data of how the sprites are used or act in-game.
• sprite_group_palettes.yml contains the color palettes of sprites.

Editing Sprites

CoilSnake conveniently dumps all of the sprites in the game to PNGs that you can edit with any proper pixel art tool! The community reccomends GraphicsGale or Aseprite. If you have it, Photoshop supports indexed palettes and should work. People in the community have reported GIMP messing up sprite files in the past.

Let's take a look at Ness's sprite, 001.png. This is what your screen should look like:

Edit this sprite any way you like! If you're working on a playable character, be sure to add diagonal sprites! Note: NPCs don't have diagonal sprites.

You just need to stick to the main palettes - you can't add any new colors because CoilSnake doesn't actually use the palette information in the PNG files themselves! Palette colors are defined in sprite_group_palettes.yml. Changing the color values in this file is a pain because if you do it, you have to modify all the PNG files because it checks to see if there are any mismatches when you compile. (TODO: talk about how to more easily do this. it probably deserves its own page tbh)

Changing sprite dimensions

Valid canvas sizes are (16x16), (24x16), (32x16), (48x16), (16x24), (16x32), (24x24), (16x32), (32x32), (48x32), (24x40), (16x48), (32x48), (48x48), (64x48), (64x64), and (64x80).

Let's try making Ness's sprite taller! To save some time, we'll use a different sprite that already exists, like this tree in a pot!

Let's take the tree file (266.png), and save it over Ness's sprite (001.png). This is what your screen should look like:

Notice that the palette in this file is a little different - it's another one of the ones in the `sprite_group_palettes.yml file.

So, now that you've finished, and you're satisfied with what you have; it's time to open the sprite_groups.yml file. We will scroll through it and find the new sprite's (266.png) data, and paste some of its properties in 001.png's data.

This is what 001.png's data looks like now:

1:
  East/West Collision Height: 8
  East/West Collision Width: 8
  Length: 16
  North/South Collision Height: 8
  North/South Collision Width: 8
  Size: 16x24
  Swim Flags: [false, false, false, false, false, false, false, false, false, false,
    false, false, false, false, false, false]

We will want to take the Size number and change it to 16x48 and make sure nothing else is changed.

After saving and compiling, this is what it should look like in-game:

Wait! What about Battle sprites? With battle sprites, you can use any 15 colors (plus 1 transparent color) you want! Go nuts! More info in the Battle Sprites tutorial.

Unused Sprites

Currently, Coilsnake is unable to add additional sprites, meaning you always have to overwrite an existing one. Fortunately, you can do this without ruining any sprites actually used by the game! Here is a list of all the spritegroups that are completely unused, meaning you can overwrite them without any side effects:

Number	Description
31	Tiny underworld Escargo Express Man
32	Tiny underworld Gonzales (Mach Pizza delivery guy)
38	tiny underworld Ness Photo Pose
42	King climbing ladder
43	King climbing rope
191	Mr. Saturn Pu-pu emote
192	Black Zzz emote
193	Smoke/Thought bubbles emote
196	Question mark emote
247	Cracked tile
250	Steam
251	Whirlpool
275	Mother 1 Starman capsule
321	Friendly mole (not in a hole)
338	Poo jumping
339	Ness ghost jumping
340	Paula ghost jumping
341	Jeff ghost jumping
342	Poo ghost jumping
345	Unused Teddy Bear duplicate 1
351	Heart emote
354	Ness' Mom sitting (unique to English game, Japanese game is simply an X instead)
355	Unused Venus poses
358	Top left door corner
366	Smiley face flag emote
379	Unused Teddy Bear duplicate 2
380	Unused Teddy Bear duplicate 3
383	Ness sleeping with hat on
400	Sparrow
408	Money box
431	Small Monotoli secret door
445	Everdred ghost
452	Cheering Sanchez brother
453	Ness sleeping sitting up
454	Paula sleeping sitting up
462	Upper water wake
463	Lower water wake

Palettes

See Adding a New Sprite Palette