Hi, I think this belongs in the game programing forum as it is related to the programing side of game development.

I'm in the process of creating 2d characters for my asset website site. The files included in the each character's download folder are spritesheets with all animation sequences, individual keyframes and atlas maps with all body parts as well as original working photoshop or vector files. organising the folder and exporting and saving each image takes almost as much time as drawing and animating a character, In my previous animated characters I have always included the flipped version I.e separate files for character face left and character face right.

Is this really necessary? should I bother exporting the left/right facing versions of a sprite? Whenever I make a game I just flip the sprite in the engine. Does anybody know of a use case where this is not possible? Do you think it's important to inclde the flipped versions of the sprite?

Also on a separate issue , which might not belong in this section and might also be a bit of an open ended question, What do you think would be the optimum image size for each Charater, How big should I export each bitmap?

Any input is much appreciated!

The only time I feel it's necessary to actually sprite both sides is when there should be a slight variation. For example, I'm making a 2D roguelike that includes a knight class. The knight carries a sword in his left hand, and a shield in his right. In this particular situation, I would just go ahead and draw the other side; otherwise, the left-handed knight will appear to hold the sword with his right hand when I flip the image. If the character looks the same on both sides however, I would just flip the sprite in the engine.

Josh Petrie and Onigiri Flash have already covered what I think about the question you asked, however...

organising the folder and exporting and saving each image takes almost as much time as drawing and animating a character

It sounds like your export & save process can be adjusted somehow. It might be possible to automate (parts of) this process, or streamline it, which would save you quite a lot of time.

Two reasons:

1. Technical: Saves memory and performance. Useless argument today.
2. Budget: Drawing 2x the sprites can take up to 2x the time and money. You need to make & ship a game, not spend your time making more almost-redundant sprites. If you're done and want to polish go ahead, but don't lose the main goal from sight. From a technical standpoint, nowadays it's very easy to program your game to support both mirrored sprites and custom left&right sprites. Start with mirrored sprites, if you manage to make more art, toggle the asset to use the custom left&right system.

Thanks for the feedback everybody, I'm really trying to find ways to cut back on asset production time, There are some good points, I can see that having characters that look different when facing left compared to when facing right is something which will require a flipped version included in the download folder but some of the characters and animated objects I'm creating wont really be any different when flipped.

Sometimes automating the process is difficult especially if I have to draw each frame by hand, if the character is made up of small animatable pieces i do use spine or spriter do do most of the work for me, But sometimes I just can't automate more.

I gather from most replies is that in the gamedev world the majority just flip, unless of course there is variation between character faces. I don't think I'm going bother exporting flipped spritesheets for characters that have no difference.

Thanks everyone for helping me come to a decision!

I'm not very experienced with art, but doesn't it depend on the lighting?

If you're making a 2D platformer and light is coming partially from the side, e.g. the top left, then you can't flip something because it'll flip the highlights to the wrong side, right?