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Zen Character Creator 2D Prototype

Prototype 2D Character Creation tool, with functionality for Saving, Loading, and Rendering combinations of character parts.

Character Creation tools are something I love the creativity of, so I made this tool for fun and practice to see how far I could go in a 2D space and what that might look like.

This tool is designed to be a starting point for character creation; something that can be expanded on or adapted to suit the needs of the person using it. As of writing this, source code is shared under the GNU General Public License v3.0. I know that some people are working with limited resources when creating games, sometimes completely on their own, so this tool aims to provide a way to implement a kind of character creation for 2D games, without needing to start from scratch or worry about licensing fees for expensive tools.

With the design of loading PNG images from the Assets folder, it also aims to make it easy for people to load custom assets. This makes it more feasible for modding communities to work with it, from the offset. This does mean the files are not compressed in some way, like they may be in a typical game, but you can likely set it up to load from a compressed format if you wish to do so.

Screenshot of zen character creator 2d gender menu Elf character rendered from zen character creator 2d Screenshot of zen character creator 2d species menu

Version: 1.0

Download Compatibility: Windows

Source Compatibility: Source code is made with Qt Widgets library, so it should be cross-compatible with PC operating systems, with little changes needed. You will need to compile it on/for the desired operating system.

Features

Be creative and design your own character by combining parts in the way you desire and then rendering the combination to an image of your character that you can share. You can swap parts for various areas, like Hair, Chest, or Bottom, and change the color of a variety of different parts, such as Skin Color or Hair Color. (Variety of parts is relatively low, due to this being a prototype and my having limited artistic skill. However, with color modification, you can work out greater breadth of combinations.)

How to Use

Parts are swapped by clicking the arrowed icons on the right side, then choosing a part from the given list. Colors for various parts are changed by clicking the color dropper icons on the left side. Name your character in the name input boxes. Right-click the screen to get access to saving, loading, rendering, set background color, and gender, species, or pose change.

From the right-click menu, you can choose:

  • New Character: Resets the character back to the defaults.
  • Open Character: Opens a saved character.
  • Save Character: Saves the current combination of parts for loading and modifying or rendering later.
  • Render Character: Allows you to save the current combination of parts as a PNG image that you can share or stare at.
  • Set Background Color: Changes the color of the background. This color will be used as the background color when rendering.
  • Set Background Image: Adds a background image from file, covering the background color. You can also use Clear Background Image to remove it and reveal the background color again. Any image added will be resized to fit the whole screen, without concern for aspect ratio, so keep this in mind for what size of image you use.
  • Species: Swap between Human or Elf (Elf has different ears).
  • Gender: Swap between Female or Male for the given species.
  • Pose: Swap between, uh, the one pose. With the art assets I have on hand, there's only one. But the program can support more.

License Info

The source code is licensed under GPL 3, as specified on github.

It is expected that you will replace any art or sound assets with your own when using the program as part of a project (a game, for example); they only exist to show how the tool can be used. (With the exception of the loading screen and program icon, which would make sense to keep if you're using the program as a standalone tool. If you are integrating the tool such that the character creation screen loads as part of a larger system, within a game for example, it would probably make sense not to use these either.)