Hello, I've recently acquired a console and I'm enthusiastic about exploring game development, despite my limited experience in the field. Instead of approaching each module separately, I've chosen to focus on tasks. My first objective is to replicate a small project similar to the beginning of Undertale. Currently, I'm facing the challenge of creating maps and sprites. Could you recommend any software for designing these assets? Additionally, are there specific requirements for these assets, such as file format and size? Moreover, I would greatly appreciate any additional advice as I begin my journey into game development.
There are plenty of tools out there to make these types of assets! Most of the time I use Piskel because it's web based and easy to use. There are more complex pixel art tools that have more features.
As for the requirements for assets, PNG files work really well for me; The size depends on what you need, If i'm working on a sprite of a little guy that is 32 pixels by 32 pixels on the Playdate screen, then I just make the canvas 32x32 in Piskel. If you're working on a tilemap with a bunch of different tiles, you can work on them all within Pisekl as frames and then export them all together from Piskel as a spritesheet.
Also, reminder that once you're working with tilemaps and imagetables for creating your maps, the naming of the files will matter. For example, if I have a spritesheet for my tiles where each tile is 32 by 32 then you should name the file something like: something-table-32-32.png more info here.
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I started out using Piskel, but then Aseprite was on sale so I bought that. It was much better for me personally. It's not expensive even when not on sale, plus you can get the open source version which I understand as being pretty feature complete.
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