Create Game Assets Skill

When to Use This Skill

• User asks to generate game assets, sprites, or game art
• User wants to create UI icons, character sprites, backgrounds, or tilesets
• User mentions DALL-E or AI image generation for games
• User has a YAML asset specification file

Prerequisites

• OPENAI_API_KEY environment variable must be set
• Node.js installed
• Run npm install in the skill folder first

How It Works

1. Ask user what game assets they need (characters, items, backgrounds, style)
2. Create an assets.yaml specification file based on their requirements
3. Review the spec with --dry-run to preview prompts
4. Run the generator to create images via DALL-E 3
5. Images are saved organized by type with metadata

Procedure

# Navigate to the skill script
cd ~/projects/ai-tools/skills/create-game-assets

# Install dependencies (first time only)
npm install

# Preview what will be generated
npx tsx src/index.ts --spec /path/to/assets.yaml --dry-run

# Generate the assets
npx tsx src/index.ts --spec /path/to/assets.yaml --output /path/to/output

Asset Specification Format

Create a YAML file like this:

project: my-game
style: pixel-art-16bit  # or: hand-drawn, vector, 3d-render, realistic
outputDir: ./assets

assets:
  - type: character
    name: player
    description: "Knight in silver armor, front view"
    size: 1024x1024
    variants: 2

  - type: ui-icon
    name: health-potion
    description: "Red potion in glass bottle"

  - type: background
    name: forest
    description: "Magical forest with glowing mushrooms"
    size: 1792x1024

Asset Types

• character - Players, NPCs, enemies (centered, full body)
• ui-icon - Inventory items, buttons, status icons
• background - Level backgrounds, title screens
• tileset - Seamless tiles for game maps

Style Presets

• pixel-art-16bit - Retro 16-bit pixel art
• hand-drawn - Illustrated sketch style
• vector - Clean flat vector graphics
• 3d-render - 3D rendered with soft lighting
• realistic - Photorealistic textures

Output

outputDir/
├── characters/
│   ├── player-1.png
│   └── player.meta.json
├── ui-icons/
│   └── health-potion.png
└── manifest.json

Examples

User: "Generate pixel art sprites for my platformer game"

Expected behavior:

1. Ask what assets they need (characters, enemies, items, backgrounds)
2. Ask about art style preference (pixel-art-16bit, hand-drawn, vector, etc.)
3. Ask for descriptions of each asset
4. Create assets.yaml with all specifications
5. Run dry-run to preview prompts
6. Generate images after user approval

User: "I need a knight character, slime enemy, and health potion for my RPG"

Expected behavior:

1. Ask about preferred style
2. Create assets.yaml:

project: rpg-game
style: pixel-art-16bit
outputDir: ./assets

assets:
  - type: character
    name: knight
    description: "Knight in silver armor with sword and shield, heroic pose"
    size: 1024x1024
    variants: 2

  - type: character
    name: slime-enemy
    description: "Green slime monster with angry expression"
    size: 1024x1024

  - type: ui-icon
    name: health-potion
    description: "Red healing potion in glass bottle"
    size: 1024x1024

3. Show dry-run preview
4. Generate after approval

User: "Use create-game-assets to generate assets from my spec.yaml"

Expected behavior:

1. Read the existing spec.yaml file
2. Show dry-run preview
3. Generate images to specified output directory