Free Texture Packer Pipeline Extension

A Monogame content pipeline extension to load spritesheets generated from Free Texture Packer into Monogame

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Summary

Getting started
Prerequisites
Installing
Using Free Texture Packer to create a spritesheet
Adding the extension to the content pipeline
Loading the spritesheet and using it in a monogame project Contributing
Versioning
Authors
License
Acknowledgments

Getting started

Prerequisites

You must have Monogame installed.
For this example, I'm using Monogame 3.8.1.303
You must also have Free Texture Packer installed
For this example, I'm using Free Texture Packer 0.6.7

Installing

You need two nuget packages : FreeTexturePackerReader and FreeTexturePackerPipeline

dotnet add package FreeTexturePackerReader --version 1.0.0
dotnet add package FreeTexturePackerPipeline --version 1.0.0

Using Free Texture Packer to create a spritesheet

1. Open Free Texture Packer

2. Add the images in the images folder

3. Set texture name to chess

4. Set texture format to png

5. Check the Remove file ext box

6. For the format, choose custom

7. Click the little pencil next to it

8. Paste the following export template :

    {
        "name":"{{{config.imageName}}}",
        "texture":"{{{config.imageName}}}.png",
        "frames":[
            {{#rects}}
            {
            "filename":"{{{name}}}",
            "frame":{
                "X":{{frame.x}},
                "Y":{{frame.y}},
                "Width":{{frame.w}},
                "Height":{{frame.h}}
            },
            "rotated":{{rotated}},
            "trimmed":{{trimmed}},
            "spriteSourceSize":{
                "X":{{spriteSourceSize.x}},
                "Y":{{spriteSourceSize.y}},
                "Width":{{spriteSourceSize.w}},
                "Height":{{spriteSourceSize.h}}
            },
            "sourceSize":{
                "Width":{{sourceSize.w}},
                "Height":{{sourceSize.h}}
            },
            "pivot":{
                "X":0.5,
                "Y":0.5
            }        
            }{{^last}},{{/last}}
            {{/rects}}
            ],
        "meta":{
            "app":"{{{appInfo.url}}}",
            "version":"{{{appInfo.version}}}",
            "image":"{{{config.imageName}}}",
            "format":"{{{config.format}}}",
            "size":{
                "Width":{{config.imageWidth}},
                "Height":{{config.imageHeight}}
            },
            "scale":{{config.scale}}
        }
    }
   

9. Check Allow trim and Allow rotation boxes

10. For file extension, write spritesheet

11. Click Save

12. Click Export

13. Choose a folder and click Select Folder

Adding the extension to the content pipeline

1. Create a monogame desktop project
2. Add the pipeline extension to your project (see Installing)
3. Open Content.mgcb
4. Click on Content
5. Under Properties, scroll down to Reference and click it
6. Click Add
7. Locate the .dll for the extension pipeline.
   You'll find it from the root of you game project in the folder \bin\Debug\net6.0\FreeTexturePackerPipeline.dll
8. Click Ok

Loading the spritesheet and using it in a monogame project

1. Copy the spritesheet files your exported :chess.png and chess.spritesheet (see Using Free Texture Packer to create a spritesheet) into the Content folder of your game project

2. Right click on Content then Add>Existing Item...

3. Select chess.spritesheet then click Open

4. Got to Build>Build or press F6

5. Open your Game.cs and add this using at the top

    using FreeTexturePackerReader;
   

6. Load the spritesheet
   In the LoadContent method, add :

    chess = Content.Load<SpriteSheet>("chess");
   

7. Draw a sprite at the screen
   In the Draw method, add :

    _spriteBatch.Begin();
    var sprite = chess.frames["reine_blanc"];
    _spriteBatch.Draw(chess.Texture,new Vector2(100,100),sprite.sourceRect,Color.White,sprite.rotation,sprite.origin,1,SpriteEffects.None,1);
    _spriteBatch.End();
   

8. Run the game

You'll find the sample project in the SampleGame folder

Contributing

Please read CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md for details on our code of conduct, and the process for submitting pull requests to us.

Versioning

We use SemVer for versioning.

Authors

• Sesso Kosga - Initial work - sessokosga

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the licence.md file for details

Acknowledgments

Thanks to :

• Ragath for his suggestion to implement the lib I had made into this Monogame Pipeline extension
  You made me discover a part of the monogame framework that I did'nt knew.
• Matt Weber for his toturial on How to extend Monogame's content pipeline
  Your tutorial helped me to deepen my understanding of the monogame content pipeline
• RB Whitaker's Wiki for his tutorial on Building a content pipeline extension
  Your tutorial helped to fix a bug that has caused me terrible headache