Creating those directional sprites you’ve seen underneath the character’s stats and the format behind them!
 
 

I. Introduction

You’ve probably been to the Character Editor and seen the “FRONT”, “BACK”, and “LEFT” sprites underneath their stats. Those are indeed custom directional sprites you can import for your character that will display accordingly whenever their character is facing a certain direction while they’re on the arena map.
 
 
Most of you probably didn’t bother importing directional sprites, but for those that did they most likely saw their imported image take up the entire square in a bad, blurry mess- which isn’t good.
 
 
But for the stubborn and myself-
 
Here’s a comprehensive guide on how to make some crisp, nice looking directional sprites for your Ultimate Arena character.
 
 
 

II. Sprite Rules

So, in order to make your sprite not look like trash-compacted blurry garbage, here’s some rules I’ve come up with that your sprite needs to follow whenever you import it:
 
 

WARNING – Important Precaution:

 
This is important to consider before you do this-
 

• Whenever you are updating your character for something else other than the directional sprites, you MUST import/replace your directional sprites again.
• If you do not, the game (when you save your character) will for some reason stretch out pixels next to transparent ones. Every time you save without modifying it will keep on stretching the sprite further out each time. turning your beautiful sprites into pixel pancakes. This is a bug I have not been able to avoid other than the way described above.
   
   
   
  
• These sprites may be better for characters that you don’t plan on updating your character too much so you can avoid doing this repair every time you do so.
• Also, when you view characters with imported directional sprites THEN going to a character that doesn’t have any, it will keep the directional sprites from the previous character. This is easily fixed by pressing “NEW CHARACTER”, resetting it back to default.

 

Rules to Follow:

 

1. Sprite MUST be 32 x 32 pixels (32 width, 32 height)
    
    
    
   – If your width & height are more or less than this will make the gameauto-resize it to fit 32 x 32, which blurs or distorts the image heavily.
    
    
    
   – If the character’s sprite your fitting into the direction sprite is smaller than 32 x 32, that’s okay. You can just leave all the empty transparent space around them.
    
    
    
    
    
   
2. Character’s feet/bottom must be touching the bottom of the sprite.
    
    
    
   – If your character is SUPPOSED to be floating/flying, then you can ignore this rule.
    
    
    
   – If you leave your character in the direct center of your sprite, it will float slightly above the ground in the 3D Arena Map or be slighty offset in the 2D Arena map.
    
    
    
   
3. Any pitch black pixels (hex #000000) are transparent.
    
    
    
   – Keep in mind any black pixels on your sprite will show up transparent– even if there are transparent pixels in it. If you don’t want that, you will have to change the black pixels on your sprite to a lighter black hex value (ex. hex #010101)
    
    
    
   – This can be helpful, if your character doesn’t have any black pixels on them but have a black background behind them.
    
    
    
   – Whenever you import a sprite with black pixels, it will look like those pixels are showing up non-transparent, but do not let it deceive you- when you save your character with your imported sprites,the game will THEN correct those pixels to be transparent.
    
    
    
   

 
Whenever you do custom directional sprites as well, the “HUE” “SAT” “VAL” sliders no longer affect your imported sprites- so you do not have to worry about that.
 
 
 

III. Directional Sprites

Whenever your importing your sprites, you require a FRONT, BACK, and LEFT sprite. Each of them must be following the rules above.
 

• The FRONTsprite will show when the character is facing south on the arena map.
• The BACKsprite will show when the character is facing north.
• The LEFTsprite will show when the character is facing west, and will be mirrored when facing east.

The BACK and LEFT sprites in the character editor display a bit darker than the others, however in game it’s normal.
 
 
 

IV. Animated Sprites?

No, I don’t think you can do animated directional sprites.
 
You may have noticed “Animation Spd” above“HUE”, “SAT”, and “VAL”; I do not know what that slider controls. I have tried importing animated sprites (gifs) into the directional sprite, and despite following the rules above, they fail to animate or be affected by the slider.
 
 
 

V. Conclusion

 
 
artist/source for shantae’s icon: banboro (technobot)
 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 
artist/source for sans’ icon:
 

 

 
 
And there you have it, the best way to make directional sprites for your Ultimate Arena fighter so you can better recognize them on the battlefield. Happy hunting.
 
 

 
 
This is all for Ultimate Arena Directional Sprites for Ultimate Arena Fighters hope you enjoy the post. If you believe we forget or we should update the post please let us know via comment, we will try our best to fix how fast is possible! Have a great day!