Creating ASCII Art Items

Introduction

Every item as its own colored ASCII art, that adds more depth to the game and its plot. In this guide, you'll learn how these ASCII arts get displayed by the game engine, and how to make them the best way possible. You can and should use yaml data color codes, to add color to your ASCII art. Note that as any artwork, you need to copyright it in the plugin's copyright file. Note that you can find many examples at the data/items.yaml file and imgs/ directory.

Explanation

First, you need to define your item, and as an example I'll take the vanilla game's Chuckle Sword:

Chuckle Sword: &chuckle_sword
  display name: "Chuckle Sword"
  upgrade tier: 0
  type: "Weapon"
  damage: 8
  defend: 6
  agility: .12
  gold: 67.23
  critical hit chance: .4
  description: "These swords are used by the most advanced knights, and they can cost a fortune to forge."

Then, add both thumbnail and thumbnail raw keys (note that you can use any shape or character for the box, if you don't wanna stick to the vanilla look):

  thumbnail: |
    ╔════════════════════════════╗
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ╚════════════════════════════╝
  thumbnail raw: |
    ╔════════════════════════════╗
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ║                            ║
    ╚════════════════════════════╝

You can then decide to make the ASCII all of your own, or search for examples and starting base in various ASCII art library. Here's a few that I use for the vanilla game (you can also simply search on the net):

• https://asciiart.eu
• https://manytools.org/hacker-tools/convert-images-to-ascii-art/
• https://www.oocities.org/spunk1111/

Then start creating the item's ASCII art, apart from the box:

  |]\
  |║|\
  |║||
  |║||
  |║||
  |║||
  |║||
[--+--]
   0
   0

After that, you can add it to the thumbnail raw and thumbnail box.

  thumbnail raw: |
    ╔════════════════════════════╗
    ║                            ║
    ║            |]\             ║
    ║            |║|\            ║
    ║            |║||            ║
    ║            |║||            ║
    ║            |║||            ║
    ║            |║||            ║
    ║            |║||            ║
    ║          [--+--]           ║
    ║             0              ║
    ║             0              ║
    ║                            ║
    ╚════════════════════════════╝

The thumbnail raw box won't be used by the game engine, it's used so that you can look at the ASCII art, without all that color codes, that will be added in the thumbnail box.

Finally, you can add the yaml data color codes to your thumbnail box:

  thumbnail: |
    ╔════════════════════════════╗
    ║                            ║
    ║$SILVER            |]\             $WHITE║
    ║$SILVER            |$GRAY║$SILVER|\            $WHITE║
    ║$SILVER            |$GRAY║$SILVER||            $WHITE║
    ║$SILVER            |$GRAY║$SILVER||            $WHITE║
    ║$SILVER            |$GRAY║$SILVER||            $WHITE║
    ║$SILVER            |$GRAY║$SILVER||            $WHITE║
    ║$SILVER            |$GRAY║$SILVER||            $WHITE║
    ║          $BROWN[$YELLOW--$CYAN+$YELLOW--$BROWN]           $WHITE║
    ║             $RED0              $WHITE║
    ║             $RED0              $WHITE║
    ║                            ║
    ╚════════════════════════════╝

Here's how it looks in-game: