[RELEASE 1.3 - Now Includes Source!] Stellar Sprites - Unlimited Procedural Space Sprites!

Stellar Sprites 1.3 Is Out! (Includes Full Source!)
Real-time procedural sprites

Stellar Sprites is a dynamic and powerful sprite generator. It's extremely easy to use resulting in countless unique sprites.

Do you need space sprites? Whether you are creating a Space Shooter, Adventure, RPG, Trader or any other type of genre, Stellar Sprites has you covered. Drag a prefab of a ship to your editor window and everytime you run your game, that ship, planet or whatever it is, will be brand new. If you find something you really like, save its seed or click the Save to File button and use it later. Stellar Sprites can also just be used to generate sprite files (.png) and you can fine tune them to meet your needs.

Features:
:: Unlimited Ships
:: Unlimited Planets
:: Unlimited Moons
:: Unlimited Asteroids
:: Unlimited Suns
:: Unlimited Stations
:: Unlimited Backgrounds
:: Unlimited Starfields
:: Unlimited Black Holes
:: Unlimited Nebula Clouds

Any sprite can be saved to a file if you want to add your own polish to it. Everything you need is provided to get you started.

Official Thread

 

Update on the way (published for review 1 week ago)

 

Update 1.1 Available on the Asset Store!

 

This is a great update, I'm verry pleased with the extra settings for the Stellar Sprites and the new demo scenes. The looks of the new added Suns are awesome. I still can't believe what you get with just one Asset, MILLIONS of SpaceShips, MILLIONS of Planets, Suns and Asteroids. Can't wait for the MILLIONS of Moons to arrive...

The added types for the SpaceShips (fighter, fighter 2, Hauler and Saucer) was a good idea, now you can generate a random sprite with a choice of Length, WingSpan and Type even faster...

This Asset was Great already but is even BETTER now, I purchased over 50 assets in 4 or 5 months but this is my favorite Asset for sure. Your coding style is also very clean and easy to read. Well Done!

 

Thank you! The next update will have moons, improved terrestrial planets (see up above), improved ships (this will be on-going) and skybox/background generator that works just like the rest of the sprites. I've also improved the custom inspectors for everything. I'll probably be ready for another update after the moons since a lot has been done since 1.1 already.

Inspector example:

 

1.2 WIP - Moons!

 

Improved Ships and Planets, Manual Planet Shading, Moons and Spawn points ...
The developing process is at Warp Speed...
Beam me up Scotty...

Can't wait to get my hands on Version1.2...

 

Thanks for that link on my site – Moons won’t be all grey(ish) after all. I’ve also added a mineral color and noise option to asteroids in case they are to be used for mining. I think I might dive into random engine trails/particles this weekend. I had one texture included as the trailer renderer texture, but that's one too many static textures this project

This asteroid contains gold - or something like that.

 

A few new shots - Improved planets (night city lights), suns and yes, a black hole (it's really terrible though so far).

 

New video - Here is a 2 minute video which shows Stellar Sprites generating tons of ships at runtime. I stupidly had the ship setting set to only one kind of ship so they all have the same components but every one is still different.

 

Stellar Sprites - Asset Store || Website

Easily create color groups. Set the color of a prefab, and leave the rest of it's properties as random and you will get all unique ships but of a specific color.

 

Very interesting asset! Looks fantastic at what you can achieve. Is there a way to build the ships how we would like, or it it purely a random system? I know you can use a seed, but would be interesting if you can choose pieces and just randomise certain features?

 

Hello! Thanks for the interest. While cannot build/specifiy piece by piece, you can adjust or nudge the ships towards a certain build. Pretty much everything is based on procedural noise so the inspector will allow you to adjust settings.

As you can see, on the right side in the inspector, there are some adjustable properties. The Custom Type has 4 different types of ships so far and they are basically presets of how many wings, weapons, engines... etc. I do plan on expanding this later on to specific how many weapons or engines for example. Even with the presets, you are unlikely to ever see duplicates. A custom seed with random Body/Wing detail will still produce a different (though similar) ship. I have similar options for Planets and any other object type.

 

Thats great, thank you for the response. Definitely considering this kit for a new project. What are the planned updates you have? And is this going to be on sale any time soon (nobody likes buying something and it be on sale the next day ).

 

In 1.2 you can expect to see:

• Ships (4 types as of now)
• Planets (2 types: Terrestrial, Gas Giant)
• Moons (basically bigger asteroids)
• Asteroids (with minerals)
• Suns
• Backgrounds (pretty basic so far)
• Blackholes (very basic - not sure how to randomize these yet, currently all the same)
• Space Stations (started these last night - they will be pretty basic for 1.2)

I think that's it. I don't really consider it to be a "Game Toolkit" since it's providing graphics only. There are some helper scripts included but they are primarily to make it easy to start using and for the demos - they are by no means the only way to use Stellar Sprites. I hope to publish 1.2 tonight or tomorrow. I'll probably try and release more frequent small updates as I fine tune the newer additions.

As for sales, I have no idea. I'd love to see this pop up on sale though from what I understand, that's out of the publishers hands. I've entered it into the sales pool but I think it's Unity's asset store team that decides when and what.

Thanks again for the interest!

 

Thanks for the update. When I start the project ill probably grab this then

 

Let's be honoust, this Asset is a sale. Where else can you get Millions and Millions of Space Sprites for this price.
I purchased it for the full (low) price and woudn't care if the price drops a few bucks. The developer might increase the price because it's worth much more, so if I where you I would grab it now...

Just my 0,02

 

Looks great Scotty!!!
This will be in 1.2 or 1.3?
And when can we aspect 1.2 in the Asset Store?

 

Hi Fronne,

You'll see the color options in 1.2 which I want to get submitted tonight.

 

Stellar Sprites – Asset Store || Official Website

For 1.2, all the stations will have a similar style to this. The number of pods and their shape that are around the center structure will be random as well as the texturing. I want to make the texture make a bit more sense and have some procedural "lights" as well. I think the stations have a lot of potential to become pretty damn cool.

 

Stellar Sprites 1.2 - Submitted! Very exciting!

Asset Store || Official Website
I'm already working on additional updates that will be released under 1.2 since they will be minor fixes to what's already in 1.2.



Things I want to get fixed/added ASAP.

1 - Muzzle/Engine positions (spawn empty GameObjects as sprite children)
I wasn't able to get the engine/muzzle positions generated just yet. I'm close but I'm not quite happy with the implementation yet. It seemed overly complicated for a relatively simple idea and wasn't perfect. It added a good chunk of code to the provided start-scripts which I am trying my best to keep simple.

2 - Simple particle/engine effects
I never really considered this to be a main feature in Stellar Sprites, however I think some basic effects would be nice to include. The screenshot below has a very subtle engine effect which I really like (I did it in paint.NET), however I do think that that effect is what my short-term goal will be.

3 - Additional texturing/static lighting on space stations
Currently, as cool as the stations are, I think they still could use some more work. I would like to add more details to them so I need to put a little more work into them. I find texturing using noise often provides a very organic look which is not really want I'm going for. I think I need to find a way to achieve a more industrial/synthetic look.

 

Stellar Sprites 1.2 is out! Points 1 and 2 above are already done - I will be submitting a quick update with them this weekend (1.2.1). 3 is the next step.

 

New price! Now only $10 which is pretty amazing.

 

I don't seem to be able to get Ships or Stations to generate. everything else works.

Any pointers? I followed your Docs.

screencast+2015-05-09+16-12-50_0_edited.mp4



System.Drawing.GDIPlus..cctor ()
Rethrow as TypeInitializationException: An exception was thrown by the type initializer for System.Drawing.GDIPlus
System.Drawing.KnownColors..cctor ()
Rethrow as TypeInitializationException: An exception was thrown by the type initializer for System.Drawing.KnownColors
System.Drawing.Color.get_Magenta ()
Stellar_Sprites.SS_Ship..ctor (Int32 seed, SS_ShipType shipType, Single bodyDetail, Single wingDetail, UnityEngine.Color[] colors, Single colorDetail)
Ship.GenerateSprite () (at Assets/Stellar Sprites/Scripts/Ship.cs:152)
Ship.Generate () (at Assets/Stellar Sprites/Scripts/Ship.cs:223)
Ship.Start () (at Assets/Stellar Sprites/Scripts/Ship.cs:63)
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()


Tried to reimport

Loading script assembly "Assets/Stellar Sprites/Core/System.Drawing.dll" failed!

 

Sorry about the issue. Seems to be something to do with system.drawing.dll

what OS are you using? This is something I didn't consider when I decided to use the .net drawing libs. However that doesn't explain everything working but ships and stations.

have you tried a completely new project and adding a single ship prefab to the scene? I'm on mobile at the moment so I can't look too deep into it.

 

Hello, Yes I have tried and empty project.

MAC OS X Yosemite. Unity 5.

I guess its the .net requirement.

Strange thing is in an empty project nothing works, but in my working project the only things that won't generate are Ships and Stations.
​

Scratch that, in your demo scenes in an empty project same results. Everything will generate except ships and stations.


DllNotFoundException: user32.dll
System.Drawing.KnownColorTable.SystemColorToArgb (Int32 index)
System.Drawing.KnownColorTable.UpdateSystemColors (System.Int32[] colorTable)
System.Drawing.KnownColorTable.InitColorTable ()
System.Drawing.KnownColorTable.EnsureColorTable ()
System.Drawing.KnownColorTable.KnownColorToArgb (KnownColor color)
System.Drawing.Color.get_Value ()
System.Drawing.Color.ToArgb ()
System.Drawing.SolidBrush..ctor (Color color)
(wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.Drawing.SolidBrush:.ctor (System.Drawing.Color)
Stellar_Sprites.SS_Station..ctor (Int32 seed, UnityEngine.Color[] colors, Single colorDetail, Int32 numberOfPods)
Station.GenerateSprite () (at Assets/Stellar Sprites/Scripts/Station.cs:133)
Station.Generate () (at Assets/Stellar Sprites/Scripts/Station.cs:185)
Station.Start () (at Assets/Stellar Sprites/Scripts/Station.cs:67)

 

It looks like it can't find user32.dll which I assume is a mac related issue. I unfortunately do not own one so I can only put some guesses towards this.

Apparently user32.dll is statically linked to a few other dll's as well. I can put them in a zip for you we can try putting them in the same folder as the system.drawing.dll. I have no idea if this will work however and have very little mac experience. I added the ones I could actually find. If you get another error message please post it to see if it's failing for the same reason.

Try these
I hope this works. I took a look and sure enough, only the stations and ships require the .net drawing stuff.

 

Will give this a go later today, Thanks for getting back to me. Ill update you as soon as I have tried.

 

Hello, Sorry to say it also failed.

DllNotFoundException: user32.dll
System.Drawing.KnownColorTable.SystemColorToArgb (Int32 index)
System.Drawing.KnownColorTable.UpdateSystemColors (System.Int32[] colorTable)
System.Drawing.KnownColorTable.InitColorTable ()
System.Drawing.KnownColorTable.EnsureColorTable ()
System.Drawing.KnownColorTable.KnownColorToArgb (KnownColor color)
System.Drawing.Color.get_Value ()
System.Drawing.Color.ToArgb ()
System.Drawing.SolidBrush..ctor (Color color)
(wrapper remoting-invoke-with-check) System.Drawing.SolidBrush:.ctor (System.Drawing.Color)
Stellar_Sprites.SS_Ship..ctor (Int32 seed, SS_ShipType shipType, Single bodyDetail, Single wingDetail, UnityEngine.Color[] colors, Single colorDetail)
Ship.GenerateSprite () (at Assets/Stellar Sprites/Scripts/Ship.cs:152)
Ship.Generate () (at Assets/Stellar Sprites/Scripts/Ship.cs:223)
ShipEditor.OnInspectorGUI () (at Assets/Stellar Sprites/Scripts/Editor/ShipEditor.cs:111)
UnityEditor.InspectorWindow.DrawEditor (UnityEditor.Editor editor, Int32 editorIndex, Boolean forceDirty, System.Boolean& showImportedObjectBarNext, UnityEngine.Rect& importedObjectBarRect, Boolean eyeDropperDirty) (at /Users/builduser/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/Inspector/InspectorWindow.cs:1150)
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()


I did come across this very old Stack Overflow

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1314645/equivalent-of-user32-dll-on-os-x

Looks like its not going to work on mac. "sad face"

I could VIRTUALISE a windows environment but that seems overkill for this situation.

May be worth putting this info in your asset description if you don't plan of a solution.

 

Thank you for the info. I do plan on a fix - most likely see if I can replace the windows specific libraries with something crossplatform. Worst case scenario I write my own drawing routines. Issue will probably be resolved in the next major release.

In the mean time I definitely will update the asset information to reflect this!

Thanks again for your interest!
Scott

 

Hi, I'm finding that the starry background is opaque purple on my LG G2, but it looks great on my PC. I'm running Unity 5. Does anybody have any ideas what is causing this? I believe it's shader related?

Richy

 

Hi Richy,

I've had that issue before! I fixed it by having to include certain shaders into my project. Here is a screenshot from the included shaders in my project. I switched over to Android and it seems to work fine with these included shaders. Stellar Sprites doesn't actually use any custom shaders so you should have access to all these. I hope this helps!

Found in [Edit]->[Project Settings]->[Graphics]

 

I checked my settings and those are all included. My settings look the same as yours except the last line that says Currently tracked: 4 shaders 7 total variants. All the other settings are the same though.

 

I will troubleshoot this as soon as I can after work. I do you get the opaque purple background even in the unity editor when you've changed your build settings to a mobile device? I only tried it using the Android settings however I could have had something else changed since I opened an existing project. I'll try one from scratch when I get home and see if I can replicate your issue.

 

It works fine in the editor play mode with Android settings, only when I build and run on my G2

 

Hrm, so far any testing I've done has been on a windows machine only. Does everything else work except for the backgrounds? I'm wondering if android has some limitations to texture sizes or something related to that. I'll hopefully have a solution for you once I do a bit of research and testing. If you make any progress, I'd really appreciate hearing about it. I just recently got an android phone (galaxy s6). I have to learn how to build and run it on the device.

 

Ok, i've officially duplicated your problem. Now to figure it out I tried Unity Remote 4 and that worked fine. Not sure why a built and installed apk would act different.

 

The planets seemed to be working fine, from what I could tell it's only the background Glad you've replicated the issue!

 

Hi Scotty,

Long time no speak...
Your website is stuck on the 1.2 release for a long, long time...
Any news about a future release?

Cheers,
Franco Palmieri - Fronne

 

Hi Franco,

You're right. The summer season keeps me away from much computer time. Next release will focus on fixing some cross platform issues. I don't expect any additional sprite types.

 

Also, I am planning to release all the source which will mean a lot of code clean-up

 

Good move to release the source code, despaghettifying code can be a pain in the ass but it will definitely clear the sky at the end. Good Luck and hope to see some results soon...

Cheers,
Franco Palmieri - Fronne

 

Hey @ScottW , are the planets 3D or 2D?

 

Everything is a 2D texture/sprite! I've done my best to give them a slight 3D appearance during their generation so they don't look *too* flat.

 

Looks very useful for programmers with no art skills whatsoever (e.g. me).
Any ETA on when will 1.3 will come out? I'm interested to use this on my mobile game.
Or can I generate sprites, save them, and use it in mobile?

 

Glad to hear it, I'm horrible with art so I figured why not just have some math I can tweak until I like its appearance.

1.3 will be out by the end of the year I'm sure. I've been having trouble finding the time to sit down and work on it. It's mostly a rewrite and a change to the drawing library (needs to work cross platform). So it's nothing new really being added, but the source needs to be presentable and readable as well since I plan to release it.

As it is now, you can absolutely save sprites to a file and use them in other projects. When you have the sprite generated (I think the project needs to be running, not in edit mode), you can just click the Save to File button on the inspector and it will get saved within the directory of the project.

 

Hey ScottW, I just bought the pack as I'm starting a project and was about to write my own procedural sprite generator, then I stumbled on this and thought WOW! What a deal, saves me a ton of work...

I notice your asset store item says compatible with Unity 4.x, which I have 4.x pro.... But unfortunately the asset store won't let me download it as it says I need Unity5... Any way we can work out a direct download of some kind for the asset bundle?

Or am I going to have to install unity5 alongside 4 and manually download, and copy assets over to my project lol...

Also any ETA on the source? I'm fine with the DLL for this stage in development, but eventually want this to go to mobile, meaning I assume I'll need source code.

Thanks for this FANTASTIC asset by the way!

 

Thanks for the interest! I have no problem sending you the asset if you can provide a copy of the invoice/receipt. Just Email to swojtowicz@gmail.com and I'll send you a copy of the asset. Its kind of annoying that it doesn't let you download it anyways regardless.

As for the source ETA, I could release it anytime but it's a mess. I really want to get the re-write done with cross-platform support otherwise I feel like I'd be creating a nightmare for myself trying to support it. I hope to get it released this year. Summer isn't very productive for me and I just bought a new development laptop so hopefully I get some work in soon... Though Fallout 4 just came out

Scott

 

Hey, thanks! I ended up solving the problem (Just installed 5 alongside 4 and used the store in it to download lol, not sure why I didn't think of that earlier lol)

As for the source, I certainly understand, for now I can work with the precompiled lib, I'm nowhere near release anyway, but my ultimate goal is to release for mobile platforms, so I'll likely need the source for that. Eventually I'll want to refactor my project around your source release, so once it's ready let me know! In the meantime I'm happy to work with what you've released.

One question I have encountered though, I'm instantiating stars/planets from source at runtime instead of as prefabs... And I'm trying to add circle colliders to my stellar objects (stars,planets,moons,asteroids and so on)... At first I assumed it would be pretty straightforward, the problem I'm having is determining the actual (ingame) diameter of the object in order to accurately add a circle collider...

I've tried basing off the resolution, and scale... which seemed to be the way you were doing it at first... Then I tried using the SpriteRenderer itself and determining it's bounds, then basing off that...

None of the methods result in a realistic representation of the circle of the stellar object... And without seeing the code it's quite difficult for me to determine the real math...

Because my starsystems are generated procedurally as well, I have stars/planets in all different sizes, so I really need to know the math so I can procedurally assign a collider...

Any suggestions?

 

This is all great stuff. I'm at work so unfortunately I can't browse through the code. When I get home I can probably be a bit more helpful.

The size of the star or anything really, is just in pixels. So a 256px star is exactly as it sounds and how it is represented in screen space is dependent on your camera settings (I still find some this stuff confusing). I don't remember how the collider sizes work but I'm pretty confident it's in the typical Unit measurement.

Check some of the helper code I included (that the prefabs use). Colliders are generated for ships so I'd expect they could be added to stars the same way. It could actually just be commented out at the moment or non-existent since I figure getting too close to a star is bad news lol. I'm 95% confident the Ship.cs file should help you. Also check the Moon.cs and Planet.cs in case I have collider code there too.

Sorry for being so vague. I can't let that code touch a work computer for obvious reasons - all mine!