Included, among others are:

• Concrete
• Brick wall
• Cork board
• Manhole cover

Enjoy!

Example screen showing how the tiles fit together.

Included in the pack are:

• Bricks (tiles in all directions)
• Grass (tiles horizontally)
• Grass with rocks (horizontal)
• Soil (multidirectional)
• Soil with rocks (multidirectional)
• Snow top (horizontal)
• Snow (multidirectional)
• Brown stone top (horizontal)
• Brown stone (multidirectional)
• Grey stone top (horizontal)
• Grey stone (multidirectional)
• Key sprite
• Coin sprite

Which just about covers it! All sprites are in PNG-24 format and are 256 x 256 each. For the full pack, click here: ism-assets-09-platform-game-tiles.zip

The free game assets on this site are released under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence. This basically means that you can download them, use them in your game(s) and modify them as you like. If you use them in your games, we’d appreciate a small mention somewhere in the credits / on the website (and a free copy of the game would be cool!). Basically, the only thing we don’t want you to do with our assets is sell them as assets to other developers.

The compulsory sample image for your perusal;

Included in the pack is a classic set of cards, a modern set of cards and a set of cards with space in the middle for custom artwork. Each set is available in 3 formats – individual card files (high resolution), sprite sheets (high resolution – you will need to resize them down to the correct size for your project) and as sprite fonts (so you can SpriteBatch.DrawString(…) them in your project).

When you are ready to take the plunge, download the pack here; ism-assets-08-playing-cards.zip

We have based the images of the royal cards on what we believe to be Public Domain imagery that is commonplace on most card decks available in the UK. Many websites imply that these are in the Public Domain, but we’ve not confirmed this to be true. If are to use these images in your commercial project, I would suggest that you confirm that the likenesses we used are Public Domain and can be used in your project.

The free game assets on this site are released under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence. This basically means that you can download them, use them in your game(s) and modify them as you like. If you use them in your games, we’d appreciate a small mention somewhere in the credits / on the website (and a free copy of the game would be cool!). Basically, the only thing we don’t want you to do with our assets is sell them as assets to other developers.

Fancy Bitmap Font Generator Screenshot (Click to Enlarge)

To read more about this free utility, please head over to the Iron Star Media Fancy Bitmap Font Generator page.

Here is a sample of what you will find in the pack (not all icons are shown);

Sample Icons / Spritefonts from our Free Icon Pack (Click to Enlarge)

So, if it’s icons that you’re looking for, why not download the Iron Star Media Free Game Assets Pack 07 – Icon Pack 01? As per usual, you can pretty much do what you like with this stuff apart from sell it. Although, if you use them in your project, a charity purchase of Ikaroids wouldn’t go amiss!

Don’t forget, that you can win a copy of Ikaroids by entering our competition which ends on Friday 15th January 2010. To find out how you could win a copy of Ikaroids, read about our Ikaroids Competition here.

The free game assets on this site are released under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence. This basically means that you can download them, use them in your game(s) and modify them as you like. If you use them in your games, we’d appreciate a small mention somewhere in the credits / on the website (and a free copy of the game would be cool!). Basically, the only thing we don’t want you to do with our assets is sell them as assets to other developers.

This week, we’ll mostly be serving planets – both in the form of sprites for your 2D games and as textures for your 3D games. Obviously, we’ve not packaged models with the textures, as you’re probably more than competent at creating a sphere for the texture to stretch over!

Here are the obligatory screen shots to sell the pack. You’ll probably have more luck making the textures look good than I managed this morning. I applied a simple phong shader in XSI Mod Tool with some dodgy speculative settings, but I’m sure you could get a lot more out of the textures with a better shader and some basic Hue/Saturation changes.

Sample screenshot using the Free Planet Textures

Screenshot of the free Planet Texture Giveaway

And here is a mash-up generated using the sprite versions of these planets. Sprite version of the planets have been provided as 8-bit PNGs at 1024×1024 so that you can drop them straight into your project and get using them straight away.

Screenshot mash-up using the free planet sprites.

As usual, if you like what you see, then you’re free to use this pack either for use in a prototype version of your game or the real deal.  Download the pack here; Iron Star Media Free Game Assets 05 – Planet Sprites and Textures. In order to save some space, we’ve not provided the source PSD files – we’ve packaged the textures as JPG files with maximum quality (they were 60% of the size of PNG24s) and the sprites are 8-bit PNG files. If you have a burning desire to see our Photoshop Source Files, just give me a buzz and we’ll throw what we can your way.

The free game assets on this site are released under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence. This basically means that you can download them, use them in your game(s) and modify them as you like. If you use them in your games, we’d appreciate a small mention somewhere in the credits / on the website (and a free copy of the game would be cool!). Basically, the only thing we don’t want you to do with our assets is sell them as assets to other developers.

So, what do we have for you? A collection of sprites for you to use in creating a user interface for your XNA game. We’ve specifically sized the elements to fit a 1080×720 resolution, but I’m sure with some minor shinanigans you could use them on other resolutions too.

Pictures speak a thousand words (search for ‘top 20 ugly celebrities’… go on, I dare you). So here are some shots of the buttons and dialog boxes we’ve included in this weeks giveaway.

Sample Industrial Game Interface

Sample Grunge Game Interface

If you like the look of these interfaces and fancy using some parts of these packs in your game, then enjoy! Download the pack here; Iron Star Media Free Game Assets 04 – Game User Interface Sprites. We’re not able to package the font with the files I’m afraid, so you’ll have to source your own font for your interfaces. You can either generate buttons for each sprite using a custom font, or you might be able to get away with layering the text over the top in your engine. Experiment, explore and have fun!

We understand that we don’t want stacks of games all looking the same, so we’ve packaged up the source files for the Grunge and the Industrial themes and you can download the .PSDs to make your own derivative works below. Download the Free Game User Interface Sprites Source Files.

Buttons from the Industrial Game Interface

The free game assets on this site are released under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence. This basically means that you can download them, use them in your game(s) and modify them as you like. If you use them in your games, we’d appreciate a small mention somewhere in the credits / on the website. Basically, the only thing we don’t want you to do with our assets is sell them as assets to other developers.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s are the particle sprites in this pack on a black background;

 Free particle effect sprites for game developers

The particles all come as 24-bit png’s and they’re intended to be used with their colour settings and alpha settings being tweaked as the particle moves about. If you’d like further information about how they were made – please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

If you’d like to use these in your project – Download the Iron Star Media Particle Effect Sprites Pack 01.

As always, if you have any specific requests for what type of assets we should be giving away, just leave a comment below and we’ll do our best.

The free game assets on this site are released under the Creative Commons Attribution Licence. This basically means that you can download them, use them in your game(s) and modify them as you like. If you use them in your games, we’d appreciate a small mention somewhere in the credits / on the website. Basically, the only thing we don’t want you to do with our assets is sell them as assets to other developers.

1. Create a background

It’s important when making your sprite to see how it will look in the game, so it’s worth creating it on a background very similar to the one it’s going to appear on in the finished product, as this will affect your choice of colours and let you see how visible your sprite will be.

2. Make a temporary set of frameholders

Work out beforehand what space you have to work with. In my example I drew a grid on a separate layer so that I could see exactly what space I had to work with. It’s important that your frames are each of dimensions that are a multiple of four in order for your sprites to be compatible with certain types of rendering surfaces. This way sprites can be packaged into memory (ask your coder!).

3. Basic shapes

Now we can get down to the fun stuff! In a spare frame, I drew the knight using basic shapes, until I got a basic unshaded sprite of him standing as viewed from above, as shown in the following image. I’ve enlarged it to three times normal size for the purposes of this tutorial. I made the separate shapes using anti-aliased primitives in Photoshop, and every different element is on a separate layer. This made him easier to animate later.

4. Stroking

I then applied 1px strokes of various colours to the different shapes, mainly dark colours so as to show up the relatively light colours better.

5. Shading and details

Now we can bring this guy to life! I used dodge and burn to shade the surfaces, and then applied some red to give him a Templar colour scheme.

6. Creating the animation frames

Now, we can get some movement going. The first standing image is not going to be used in the final animation, unless you need such an image in your final animation. For this tutorial I’ve gone for a simple 3-frame animation, with the standing frame shown alongside for reference. I set up the knight’s position in each frame by transforming and rotating the different elements until I was satisfied.

7. Animating

The animation itself will obviously be handled by the game engine, but I made this animated gif in Photoshop CS4 to give you an idea. For the finished in-game sprite, I would remove the frames layer and the background, and then save the whole thing as a transparent 128-bit PNG file.

That’s it! This is just a very simple example of what’s possible – with enough time, I wish you all luck with your own elaborate creations!

Tools needed:

Photoshop

1. The Base Shape

For this example, I’m going to work with a basic sphere.  Draw a circle the basic colour of the surface you want to add detail to. In my case  I’m just going to use a simple metallic gray. Make sure your circle is on a separate layer to the background.

2. Shading the Surface

Next, using the Dodge and Burn tools, add shadow and highlight as required. I recommend setting the Exposure to 25% and the Range to Highlights, but of course this is just my preference.

3. Panel Shapes

Now create a new layer and call it something like ‘Panel Shape’. Change your foreground colour to something highly visible (red in my case) and draw a shape over the sphere. I recommend using the path tool for this. The tricky part here is getting a convincing shape, but this will of course be easier on flat surfaces. The important part is where the red area intersects the sphere itself, as this is the line we will be working with. It does not matter if the shape goes over the edge of the sphere. Then, fill the path with your chosen colour.

4. The Magic

Now, turn off the Panel Shape layer’s visibility, so that you can just see the sphere. Then, CTRL+click on the thumbnail image  in the Layers palette, so that you get a selection the shape of the Panel Shape.

Next, go to Select > Modify > Expand, and select 2 pixels. Higher numbers will yield deeper grooves. Once you have expanded the selection, CTRL+ALT+Click on the thumbnail image  of the Panel Shape in the Layers palette, which subtracts the shape of the shape from the current selection. This will give you a thin outline selection.

Then, select the Burn tool and set the Exposure to 100%. Then, on the Sphere layer, shade the parts of the selection area that are facing away from the light source, and 100% Dodge on those that are.

5. The Clever Part

CTRL+Click again to select the shape of the Panel Shape, as before. Only this time, we’re going to contract the selection. Select > Modify > Contract, by 2 pixels again. Then, invert the selection (CTRL+Shift+I). Next, CTRL+Shift+ALT+Click on the thumbnail of the Panel Shape in the Layers palette. This will give another thin selection, only this time inside the previous shading area.

Now, use the 100% Dodge and Burn again, making sure that the shading is reversed from before, i.e. dark areas touching light areas, and vice versa. It will take a little practice!

6. Repeat!

Repeat the process as much as required to produce an assortment of panels and effects. I used this extensively on many of my sprites, for example, this guy:

I hope you find this useful in making your own sprites!

Tools used:

Adobe Photoshop (or similar graphics program)

1. Basic Shapes

First, I made a plain coloured circle. It’s worth making this nice and big, bigger than your final sprite will require, as then it will be suitable for any purpose.  It may sound obvious, but scaling down is not a problem, but scaling up to a larger size will result in pixellation, so make sure it’s larger than it has to be.

2. Surface Chaos

I then created a new layer, selected my foreground and background colours, selected only the circle, and used Filter > Render > Clouds. It’s important to only select the circle here, or you will get clouds everywhere!

Then, I inverted the image. Note that it will take some playing around with colours to get the effect you’re after. Next, I applied Mac’s Remove White Filter (available from http://morepunkinstuff.tripod.com/filters/Mac/mac.html). Then , I inverted the image again, so now the blue below showed through.

Then, I merged the blue and ‘cloudy’ layers , and inverted the resulting layer again. Again, experimentation is key here.

3. Shadows and Shapes

A bit of tweaking using Image > Adjustments > Levels and I had a shade and colour I was happy with. Next, I selected the circle only and applied Filter > Distort > Spherize, set to 100%. This gave the effect of the planet’s curvature.

At this point I applied an Unsharp Mask of 500% to the image, to give it a little more texture.

Then, I used the Dodge and Burn tools to apply highlight and shadow to the planet.  Both were set to 25% percent exposure and range: highlight, but a huge range of effects is possible.

A temporary black background helps show up the final step much better.

4. Glow

Finally, to give it that extra effect, I applied a white Outer Glow to the planet, lowering the opacity of the glow slightly.

Then, I blurred the edge of the planet slightly to give it a slightly hazy look, and that was it! One rather smooth desert planet.