pixelfx

Pixel art effects as code: each effect is one file, src/fx/<category>/<name>.js, that draws into two buffers, color, with opaque, dithered or truly translucent pixels, and light, an additive glow. There are no images, so an effect can be played live, recolored, mirrored, reseeded and rendered to a sprite sheet for any engine. The method is Hugo Duprez's: code is clay, trust your eyes, feed your references. One-shot prompts make mediocre effects, while drafts that are rendered, looked at and refined make good ones. Before anything, work in a pixelfx checkout, or clone one next to the project if the working directory has no tools/render.mjs. There is no install step: the tools use only Node. Checking it runs means rendering fire/torch and opening its contact sheet, which is how every effect is seen from then on. First, look for an existing effect: list tools search ids, names, tags and descriptions, and the catalog lists everything by category. Render the candidates and look at them before choosing, since most requests are an existing effect with different options, such as palette, seed, flip, angle, light strength, plus each effect's own knobs. To put an effect in a game, canvas or WebGL games in JS or TS use the code directly, with no dependencies, copying src/core and the effect files needed, or depending on the repo. Any other engine, Godot, Unity, GameMaker, Defold, LOVE, Bevy or Construct, uses exported sprite sheets: a transparent frame grid plus an Aseprite-style JSON file, with fps, loop, frame size, columns and pivot, imported with nearest-neighbour filtering and no compression. A hit needs a body behind it, so effects with a character carry an act: wind-up, freeze on contact, target reaction and recovery, either with the stock character or with the game's own character using the act timing. To make a new effect, read the authoring guide first, say the effect in one line with art direction, find references in the library, draft, look, judge and fix, with at least three rounds, then act it out if a character is involved, and run the check tool until it passes clean, deleting the drafts not kept. Limits as written in the SKILL.md: compatibility is Node 18 or newer, ffmpeg is optional for GIF and MP4 previews. Generic motifs are fine, but never recreate a specific game's sprites, characters or logos. Nothing uses Math.random, so effects stay seeded and repeatable.