Give NPCs and mobs a fresh look every spawn, and bake pack characters into sprites.
Look Rules and Baked Characters
Two more tabs in the Character Creator turn your creator pack — and your sprite sheets — into looks for the world, not just for players:
- Look Rules — a named recipe for a random look. Every NPC or mob that uses one rolls its own look each time it spawns: a crowd of guards, a camp of bandits, a field of slimes in three colours.
- Create — design one character from the pack and bake it into an ordinary sprite you can put on any NPC, mob or event.
Where you'll find it#
| What | Where |
|---|---|
| Make and edit Look Rules | Asset Manager → Character Creator → Look Rules |
| Use a Look Rule on an NPC template | Database → NPCs → Generator → Templates → open a template → Appearance → Look rule |
| Use a Look Rule on a mob | Database → Mobs → open a mob → Avatar → Look Rule |
| Design and bake a character | Asset Manager → Character Creator → Create |
Make a Look Rule#
- Open Asset Manager → Character Creator → Look Rules and press New look rule.
- Give it a Name ("Town Guard", "Bandits").
- Pick a Source and fill it in (see the table below).
- Press Preview looks to roll six spawns the way the game will. Roll again for six more.
- Press Create. Then pick the rule on an NPC template or a mob.
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Name | How the rule is listed and picked |
| Notes | For you; players never see it |
| Source → Fixed sprite | Each spawn picks one of your sprite assets. Add several; a higher weight makes a look more common |
| Source → Generated | Each spawn is built from your active creator pack |
| Body builds | (Generated) The builds a spawn may roll, each with a weight. None ticked = the pack's default build |
| Layer rules | (Generated) One row per slot (hair, outfit, cloak…): the part is rolled from that category, optionally only parts with certain tags, and Chance % says how often the slot is filled at all — 30% for hats means most go bare-headed |
| Size | In-world size of everything that rolls this look (1 = one tile wide). Empty = the sprite's own size, or the pack's size from Packs & Rules |
Use it on an NPC template or a mob#
- NPC template: Appearance → Look rule. The template then rolls from the rule instead of its own appearance fields. Its own Size still wins when set.
- Mob: Avatar → Look Rule. Every spawn rolls a look from the rule; it wins over the mob's visual variants. A respawn rolls again.
Bake a character#
- Open Asset Manager → Character Creator → Create. It uses your project's default pack.
- Pick a Body build, then a part for each slot and its colours — or press Randomize.
- The sheet on the right is the bake itself: what you see is what gets saved.
- Name it and press Bake to sprite. The finished sheet is uploaded to Media → /characters and a new sprite asset appears in Sprites, tagged character-creator, ready to use like any other.
Gotchas#
- Looks are rolled per spawn and shared by everyone. All players see the same look for a given spawn; it changes only when it respawns.
- Deleting a Look Rule is safe. Mobs that used it go back to their own look; NPC templates fall back to their own appearance fields. The delete prompt says how many use it.
- Generated looks need a creator pack. Without an active pack, a generated rule uses its sprites if it has any, and otherwise the mob or NPC keeps its own look.
- Preview pictures need the pack on this computer. On hosted projects the preview lists the parts each spawn rolled instead of drawing them.
- Look Rules publish like any content. Changes reach a running game after Publish (or Apply on live server); mobs already in the world keep their look until they respawn.
- RPG Tools packs bake their animation strips. Their full sheets are too large to bake in a browser, so any animation that only exists on the full sheet is left out — the Create tab lists which. RPG Maker packs bake whole.
- Baking doesn't change the pack. Bake again after changing the pack to get the new art; the sprite remembers the look it was baked from.