We've all seen those amazing pixel art animation gifs. You know the ones. The ones that make you think, "I don't have a budget for that." The ones that bring phrases like "programmer art" to mind when you think about your own game.

I am an artist, but for this Ludum Dare I saved time and creative energy by avoiding all arty bits and letting the computer do it for me. Let me pick apart a few things that gave RASHLANDER fluid pixel art animation but without a single frame of hand animated spritework.

Play RASHLANDER here: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/38/rashlander

STEP 1: Set the game resolution to 320x240. There are no ugly pixels when every pixel is literally the same size. Now math magic can just whiz around and do all kinds of fun stuff without me micromanaging it.

STEP 2: Shaders. Nothing about 320x240 prevents me from using whatever shaders 2017 has made available to me. The cool part is 320x240 is so low resolution that heavy use of shaders is not hardware intensive.

STEP 3: Tween everything. You have to pick the right elements to tween (subtle scale tweening just does not work) but if you exaggerate your tweens the game comes alive.

STEP 4: Borrow from Nintendo. If we're being real this step can go in any tutorial on the internet. RASHLANDER's explosion effect is just a variation of something I saw in Breath of the Wild. It looks different because it's scaled to 320x240. Suddenly it's a beautiful pixel art effect, and at no cost to me.

How did you make your game's visuals work for you? Anyone else here make an hybrid beast of math and pixel art? I would love to see what you came up with!

Edit for those interested: RASHLANDER was made with Construct 2, using settings which prevent blur and anti-aliasing. You can pick the "retro" template to achieve the same effect.

Ryan Davis https://twitter.com/ryguygames