Sprite
Last updated
Was this helpful?
Last updated
Was this helpful?
The Sprite is a flat graphical object which is commonly used as the visuals for entities and for particles. Sprites can also be used to display tilemaps and UI, although Tiled and Gum provide more flexibility and performance. The Sprite class inherits from the class.
Sprites are usually created through the FlatRedBall Editor when associated with entities, although Sprites can also be created in code when dynamic visuals are needed.
In most cases, a Sprite can be created in code by instantiating it, assigning a texture, and adding it to the SpriteManager so that it is drawn. The following code assumes that TextureFile
is a valid Texture2D:
Once the Sprite has been created, it will persist until it is removed. If your game does not navigate to other Screens, and if you do not need to remove the Sprite, then no additional code is needed.
If you would like to remove your Sprite, you can call SpriteManager.RemoveSprite:
If you are creating a Sprite that is owned by a FlatRedBall Screen or Entity, then you will need to either:
Explicitly call RemoveSprite when it is time to destroy the object containing the Sprite (usually CustomDestroy
)
Add the Sprite to a PositionedObjectList<Sprite> created in the FlatRedBall Editor on the container. When the container is removed, then the contents of the sprite list will automatically get removed from the engine.
For information on Scale, see the . To match the on-screen pixel dimensions of a Sprite to its referenced pixel dimensions, see the .
Sprites can be thought of as picture frames or canvases - they define how big a displayed image will be, its position, its rotation, and so on. However, the image or picture that they display is separate from the Sprite itself. This is an important realization because this often differs from other game engines where the image and the Sprite are one and the same at runtime. For more information, see the page.
For information on color and alpha operations (blending), see the .
Using a Z Buffer allows Sprites to properly overlap. For more information, see the .
Particle Sprites are created through the just like other Sprites. Particle Sprites are created from a pool of Sprites that is created when the engine is first initiated. The following code creates a particle Sprite:
Particle Sprites have all of the same functionality as regular Sprites - in fact, they are just Sprites. The only difference is that there is minimal memory allocation and garbage collection so they can be useful when creating particle effects. Particle Sprites are used by .