Skyfall, milestone 5: the Champion Forge (unreleased)

The newest part of Skyfall is not in a release yet. The Unreleased section of the changelog is mostly one feature: the Champion Forge. It answers a question the notes had asked since the start: can a player look like someone?

Paper dolls

Every character part (hat, head, face, mask, top, waist, legs, feet) shares one 24x24 template. That makes parts interchangeable: a helmet from one pack fits any body. At runtime the parts are baked into a single sprite sheet, so the game still draws one image per champion.

Before the game could show them, the parts were drawn by hand. The screenshot is a layer stack in Aseprite: a base body with eyes, hair, a second hair layer and a leaf, each its own layer so it can be swapped.

Fourteen champions and a dice

The forge starts from 14 pre-built champions (a dwarf king, an elf ranger, an orc warlord, a skeleton pirate, a plague doctor, a lizard shaman, a cat rogue and more), or rolls a random one. You can then change any slot, skin or hair. The result is saved locally and worn in the arena, the lobby, the main menu and the profile.

Animation

Better parts needed better motion. The character system added breathing and blinks, a run cycle that follows the player’s real velocity, a jump stretch, a hat that floats while falling, a landing squash, a wall grab, a dash lean, a KO face and a hat-toss cheer. Hat, hair, cape and tail follow the body with a small delay, which is what makes a sprite feel alive at 320x180.

Online

Champion looks sync over the network. Other players see your champion in the War Room and in the arena, in relayed and authoritative matches alike.

Where it stands

It is unreleased, so the details may change. The next items on the list are more arenas, chests and accounts. For now, the forge is the first feature where Skyfall is about the people playing it, not only the arrows.