pixling

Coding agents can write your game, but they can't draw. pixling gives them pipelines that render real pixel art from code, curated styles that ship with how they were made, and the taste rules behind them. The agent writes a spec, builds it, looks at the result and iterates, the way it does with a failing test.

Install

uv tool install pixling        # or: pipx install pixling   ·   or: npx pixling
pixling agent install .        # in your game repo: adds the skill and an AGENTS.md block

Python 3.9+. Some pipelines need more, and pixling doctor says what is missing: Blender 4.2+ for painted (and for repainting arena maps), ffmpeg for video, pip install 'pixling[reel]' for lit sprites, Node + Playwright for screenshots of the web views.

Then ask your agent:

make a harbour town in the vista style, with lamps that light up at dusk, into assets/maps

Quickstart

pixling new house_5 inn          # start a spec from an example -> specs/inn.json
pixling build specs/inn.json     # -> out/inn/: sprite sheets, GIFs, JSON
pixling review out/inn           # a zoomed sheet to judge by eye
pixling arena bundle --map emberleaf   # a painted battle map as one html; `pixling arena export` -> its level.json
pixling                          # every command; each takes -h, the ones agents parse take --json

Pipelines

Pipeline	Makes
spec	8-direction sprites, props and buildings from a JSON spec, byte-for-byte reproducible
blocks	small iso units and creatures from a few voxel layers, in your board's projection, light and shadow
iso	exact 2:1 isometric scenes and animal sheets from a Python kit
map	living maps: building states, hour-of-day lighting, a meaning layer, engine layers
fx	VFX sheets posterised to a style's palette
video	sprites cut from AI video into 8-direction sheets (via Scenario, optional), or lit side-view sprites with normal maps for 2D lights (web and Godot players)
strike	melee hits that land where the art paints them: weapon, feet and hurtbox measured in every frame of any sprite sheet, and the melee range the art supports
painted	painterly, non-pixel sprites and scenes rendered in Blender
fp	a walkable pixel world: a painted scene in layers with a small walker, or first person in WebGL
arena	painted battle maps for your units, with a checked game level: collision, nav, line of sight, zones
style	a new art style from scratch: refs, hand, kit, review

pixling pipelines NAME shows each one's steps, code and lessons. Output is engine-ready: sheets, GIFs, JSON metadata, .aseprite files, and for maps collision, depth and light layers.

Styles

Three launch styles, each with its own hand (camera, shading, line, shadows) and kit. pixling styles NAME --how shows how each was made.

Vista	Crisp Tactics	Flat Minimal
painted aerial towns and world maps	exact isometric, flat faces, soft line	exact isometric, two hues, long flat shadows

Everything above is rendered by the engine. Units and creatures for these boards are block tokens (pixling blocks): a few voxels in the board's own iso, light and shadow.

Painted worlds and battle maps

Not everything is pixels on a grid. These are rendered in Blender as data (light, material, depth), then painted into a locked palette in Python, so a ramp can be tuned in seconds without a re-render.

Emberleaf Hollow (arena)	Hushfall Crossing (arena)
a kill map in a clearing of red-crowned trees, 68 degrees	two camps, a ruin terrace and a bridge over a sea of dusk cloud, 40 degrees
First Snow (fp)	Hollow Brook (painted)
a painted place in layers with crisp pixel actors: walk anywhere, one html file	painterly sprites and scenes: swaying trees, paddling ducks, 8 headings

The battle maps ship with a full game level: collision shapes, a nav grid per unit radius, line of sight, spawns and zones, and pixling arena check proves both sides fair. The viewer (one html) shows the map's sway and drifting clouds and overlays for sizing your units: colliders, nav, sight, paths, a test agent.

Melee hits that land on their frame

pixling strike measures where the weapon, the feet and the body are in every frame of a sprite sheet, from the alpha alone: no hand-drawn hitboxes. Then the art sets the rules. pixling strike reach gives the distances where the contact frame's blade crosses a defender, so your melee spacing goes inside that band, and the guide shows how to drive attack frames from your sim's ticks and the walk cycle from distance walked.

This is the beginning of the README. Read the rest at the original. Read the full README ↗