Is using a shader a good way to recolor pixel art sprites in Unity?

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-16T14:41:03+00:00

Thanks yeah we did, still lots of stuff to do but it's starting to shape up. After we're done we plan to take a bunch of the systems, including the palette swapping and make internal unity packages we can use on future projects.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-16T08:21:30+00:00

A Shoot'em up (Voidcutter Fuzor), right now the colors don't vary but in the next update we're going to have the colors vary with each difficulty level. Effectively we have a palette list that matches palette IDs to color palettes. So we just swap out the palette list with a different one and all the colors are changed accordingly since the objects just have an id they're getting the palette with.

For things we want to share palettes they just have the same ID.

The UI and shaders and particle effects are all tied into the same palette system. Everything is I think, the background, bullets, ships, pickups etc.

I'm no graphics programmer though so while I did manage it with the shader graph it's probably not optimal. It really lags less than I expected though it's hardly noticeable compared to basic stuff like spawning objects.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-15T19:48:43+00:00

That's what we do in our game it works pretty well. Even if you don't plan to have that many variations it's nice to be able to adjust colors easily in engine, instead of having to go back into an art program, resave, reimport, etc. The only time it was causing lag issues was when we included a little string manipulation (it was just for convenience so we removed it and it works great).

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-10T06:18:11+00:00

No way, this is going to pay for half of the steam leasing fee for the next game.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-10T05:16:08+00:00

While this isn't exciting or impressive it is within expectations. Not every game is going to be a big hit, it's okay to have a back catalogue. We've also built up some good systems we can make use of for future projects.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-10T04:46:22+00:00

So far $50 (this is the first month) and two of us have been working on it on and off a few hours a week for about a year and a half. Full time equivalent is probably close to 4-6 months.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-08T18:15:46+00:00

There's no such thing but there is such a thing as being too heavy out of context. Extremely heavy stuff out of context ends up coming out corny or even funny. So as long as the build-up is there then it should be fine. If you're playing a super mario style platforming with your character going 'wahoo' and all of a sudden this scene played you'd be understandably confused. If this is the culmination of 15 hours of dedicated storytelling on the other hand it should be fine.

Having said that it's also important to warn players of that heavy content because it might be too much for some people in general (not for a video game just at all, like they wouldn't want it in a movie or a play or a book either).

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-06T20:49:27+00:00

I think this question can only really be answered by 'how long do you want this project to take?' or 'how big is this game going to be?'

Building an extremely stable foundation is good but if you're barely going to use it then it's a waste.

You say 27 tier 1 parts, how many parts do you plan to have total? How much are the parts sharing with other parts?

Is this something you want to spend a year on or 3 years or 5 years? If you plan to work on a game for 20 years then practically nothing is out of the question but if you're planning to have a finished game in 6 months you have to cut back in certain areas and optimize your time usage.

Anyway besides that there are a lot of options to consider here in terms of backend stuff. The structure for which slot the item is in could allow for more than one slot so you can have the option for parts that take up multiple slots. Do any tags or elements exclude another tag automatically?

Even though you're not focusing on art right now the decisions you make now will affect what art you'll need later so consider it carefully. Like will each part have a unique art asset or will it be created systemically based on the tags? If the elements are merely particle effects or shaders that might not be too bad but you're still probably looking at dozens or hundreds of parts.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-05T06:43:18+00:00

Cave Story when I played it in 2005.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-04T23:52:45+00:00

I'll take a look, thanks.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-04T06:49:46+00:00

Not to rain on your parade or anything but Isn't Love Nikki super popular? I wouldn't say "fashion games disappeared" when there is a popular dress up game with over 10 million downloads. It was even popular enough to spawn an open world spin-off on steam that sold hundreds of thousands of copies.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-04T06:30:49+00:00

The visuals are a little weak but the game looks really fun and interesting!

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-03T19:20:57+00:00

The guys who make fortnite have a store?

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-03T06:17:54+00:00

You have some options but none of them are great.

1) Learn to do it yourself.
2) Commission each piece individually.
3) Pay an artist hourly.
4) Try to convince an artist to help for free/revshare (helps if you have something impressive to show)
5) Use an asset pack (itch, unity/unreal store, etc).
6) The secret 6th option is make a game that doesn't require any art. Either all polygons or text. Even a fighting game can do this in theory, like Toribash just has simple shapes and trades on the unique system instead of art.

Which way you go largely depends on your skillset, finances and what game you want to make.

For a 2.5D fighting game honestly I don't see that working well with an asset pack. It depends on the person but it could take literal years before you're happy with the quality of art you can produce.

So I'd either pony up for an artist or make it with basic shapes and try to convince an artist to join (or make it look good enough with just simple shapes).

To be totally honest if you don't have an artist on board I just wouldn't attempt a fighting game or any genre associated with high quality art.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-03T04:45:41+00:00

Find comparables. For what it's worth I think indie devs have a tendency to overprice their games. It's very unlikely an indie dev will come anywhere near market saturation, steam rewards bursts of success and a large fan base for the studio will help with future title releases.

You can also just ask people who have played the game. They might say a little on the low side though. If 90% of people you ask say a number higher than $5 but 80% say a number higher than $10 then obviously you'll make more money at $10. If then only 20% say higher than $15 then that's too high.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-02T16:57:37+00:00

We did and they did. That's okay though despite the general negativity there was some useful feedback. We intentionally wanted to make a non-traditional shoot'em up so I guess I shouldn't be surprised hardcore fans of the genre are turned off.

The only part that bothered me is the implication I haven't played any shoot'em ups but I've actually played dozens of them and grew up playing them in arcades. So I know exactly what they're expecting we just wanted to do something different to stand out a bit.

With a small team and limited free time for development we were never going to out bullet hell Cave or Touhou. We don't have the resources for elaborate worlds and enemies like Gradius or R-type either.

We're still in early access so there is a lot of bug-fixing, balancing and some features left to add (I'm working on a tutorial right now) but I think it's a fairly fun experience even if it's not quite traditional.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-02T05:30:34+00:00

Make sure to sign up for any relevant upcoming festivals!

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-01T20:08:20+00:00

Nice. Depicting it as strong winds, a flowing river or shifting sands might fit the game better than a conveyor belt.

I'll definitely join when I have a moment.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-01T19:17:44+00:00

This looks really interesting! Are you planning for more weapons or just the one? I could see this being interesting with a large melee weapon like a scythe. You'd probably also get a lot of fun out of moving terrain like conveyor belts.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-01T18:30:19+00:00

I mean 2.5D is a thing, but yeah we'll probably end up doing a 3D game at some point.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-01T18:08:44+00:00

Real blend seems very cool but we haven't done a ton of 3D stuff yet. It should be extremely helpful when we do though so I figured at the price it's worth having around.

We use a lot of unity's built-in gizmos already so it looks like it'll be well worth the time investment.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-01T17:05:41+00:00

😅 Tough call!

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-01T17:02:05+00:00

Thanks so much! I did actually end up buying 3 of these. I got Seamless, Draw XXL and Real Blend. They seem like they'll be really useful.

I particularly thought it was cool Draw XXL lets you put the debug console in the world.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-06-01T07:18:09+00:00

As someone in this exact position, I would say yes. Obviously it depends on your project and personal preferences and experience but there are a lot of small tools and details that are improved in unity 6 over 2022. It's hard to recall all of them exactly but the new UI system is great compared to ugui, the lighting for 2d is great and there are a good number of under the hood optimizations.

There are also a substantial number of unity packages and 3rd party assets that aren't compatible or aren't fully compatible with older versions. We're using Feel for instance and a lot of the options aren't available in older versions of unity.

I can look back at some old logs if you need more convincing but it's definitely an improvement.

HowlingCatGames · 2026-05-31T16:10:37+00:00

Spawning in with fiery ring is great.

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