Spritestacks - Pygame Tutorial

Spritestacking is a simple technique for making layers of 2D artwork appear 3D! Spritestacking is quite easy to implement in Pygame, but any scalable implementations will probably require that you implement caching.
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#python #pygame #gamedev

[@DaFluffyPotato]

accidentally recorded with my gain too high. oops.

[@justinkim5692]

The audio actually sounds better

[@eboatwright_]

This effect never gets old! It's so charming

[@onebigsnowball]

bruh you again

[@eboatwright_]

@@onebigsnowball 😳

[@solstice_enigma]

That is a super neat and simple little trick! I guess the hardest part of all of this is just making everything consistent.

[@maybe_tankerguy05]

This is a pretty cool effect. When I get to a point where I am able to make my dream project, I might add in spritestacking to give it a bit more of a unique look than a standard, 2d top down game.

[@matheus5806]

Nice to see you exploring other genres. I really liked the aesthetics in this video, good shit

[@sbd2639]

I tried to make a car racing game before and used a free asset from itch but didn't realize the asset was meant to be used as spritestacks and just took the upper layer of the car and added rotation to make it turn which ended up looking very bad. I gave it a try after watching this video and sure enough, it looks 100x better :)

[@Dailyfiver]

Duuuuude this is amazing! I never knew what it was called but I accidentally did a lower form of this for my first game ever! We also had drawn all the maps with regular flat “brightness” and then added a “shadows” layer over top of the entire game so that the shadows looked like they covered moving objects dynamically lol.

[@PaulHindt]

Your racing game reminds me of Codemasters' NES racing game called "Micro Machines", based on the toy cars from the 1990s of the same name. Have you ever seen that game? They rotate the car sprites in a way that looks very similar, albeit without sprite stacks. Also, your rotating background looks awesome, and is something that was not done in Micro Machines.

[@DaFluffyPotato]

I only know the name because someone else said the same thing.

[@dslowcoder]

I love how it looks, you allways find ways of making better looking games with pygame, it's awesome. Btw, how did all end with pygame and pygame-ce??

[@DaFluffyPotato]

There is no end

[@zvisger]

:O I can't wait to watch this tonight!

[@zvisger]

Ok so I watched it and this is awesome... idk why I never thought of this. Thanks Fluuff

[@QUASAR098]

damn this looks great! i really want to try out this racing game when it is finished

[@quantum_hg3299]

Really cool concept

[@rowanw5912]

In a game like this with a locked isometric perspective it seems more efficient to just do the spritework in 3d to begin with, that way you're not wasting performance on pixels that will never be rendered (the inside of the car for example). Even for the backgrounds since you're not using parallax the result will be identical to predrawn sprites with a clever tiling system. Spritestacking only seems worthwhile if you're trying to do 3D with perspective.

[@DaFluffyPotato]

You don't waste anything on the middle if you cache.

[@emperor8716]

this is crazy

[@blunderingfool]

I was wondering when someone would make a game with 2KliksPhillip's "dolly mixture" method. :D It looks great!

[@novialriptide]

5:24 looks trippy.. wow

[@howezae6338]

Interesting concept! May I ask if you will ever be developing using a more efficient platform, say using C# or Java?

[@DaFluffyPotato]

I have no reason to at the moment

[@Fezezen]

I think I first saw this on a 2kliksphillip video where he called them "dolley mixtures"

[@bloctans_4]

pygame is a wrapper for sdl2, i dont understand why people hate pygame but love sdl2

[@TamerlanSerik-c9h]

coder space made the similiar stuf likes you but he used magica voxel to make stacked sprites))

[@himitesolaymane]

Can you do a tutorial about top down sprite rendering I have problems at ordering them correctly

[@DaFluffyPotato]

Sort by Y of the base

[@himitesolaymane]

@@DaFluffyPotato thx

[@carrotsandcats]

Thanks, thats so cool, i’ve try this before but it was slow af.

[@red-52]

I use pg.RESIZABLE and pg.SCALED is there a reason why the other method is better?

[@DaFluffyPotato]

SCALED is faster but is more difficult to make work nicely with RESIZABLE. Also, I started using that technique before SCALED was even a thing.

[@knut-olaihelgesen3608]

Have you developed your own framework when using Pygame?

[@DaFluffyPotato]

yes

[@OtateriheemEdRiemLav]

It looks like the spinning 3D rat meme xD

[@bobyjoegames2]

Are the fences in this scene sprite stacked too?

[@DaFluffyPotato]

yes

[@smosa605]

for a bigger game wouldn't this be very cpu intensive rendering all of these images for a 3d model because if they're multiple different 3d sprites in a game it could be a lot?

[@DaFluffyPotato]

No, it's as fast as rendering a 2D tile if you cache properly.

[@smosa605]

@@DaFluffyPotato by cache do you mean iterations?

[@metgaming9545]

Is there a trick to caching? Or do you just add layers you’ve already generated to a dictionary or array

[@DaFluffyPotato]

I actually prerender the whole stack and store it based on angle

[@simonjones90]

I'd love to know what base resolution you are setting with your games?

[@DaFluffyPotato]

it varies. you can just run the games and check

[@kevinkim9309]

Hey dude, I have learnt way too much from you for free. Do you have a separate payment link? I'd like to donate some cash privately, without commission being taken off. Any cashapp would do.

[@DaFluffyPotato]

Patreon takes a pretty small cut (

[@RiveBlakBerry]

i been working on a same thing

[@rapha4220]

tutorial for caching!!

[@majomajo36]

wait its online or its ai?

[@__Rizzler__]

CUMAZINGGGGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!!

[@Ansino558]

Hi there guys

[@plexus2000]

wsg

[@fmailscammer]

What did you use to render the environment? is it just a huge version of spritestacking as well? it looks so good as well

[@DaFluffyPotato]

It's just a big flat image (aside from fences, which are also spritestacked)

[@fmailscammer]

@@DaFluffyPotato thanks so much. I was about to start another game in Godot (which my only motivation for came from watching your "I make fast gaem" video and wanting to create a movement-based melee combat platformer) but now I really want to try and make something like this in pygame as a placeholder until I can come up with a real premise.