03 sprites and textures

Tutorial 03 — Textures and sprites

Copyright (c) 2024-2026 Jack Waechter. MIT licensed.

A texture is a GPU image. A sprite is a slice of that image with origin, scale, rotation, and animation.

Load and draw a texture

AP_Texture *tex = AP_LoadTexture("player.png");
if (!tex) {
  AP_ERROR("texture: %s", AP_GetErrorMessage());
}

AP_SetTextureScaleMode(tex, AP_SCALEMODE_NEAREST);

AP_DrawTexture(tex, NULL, &(AP_FRect){64.0f, 64.0f, 128.0f, 128.0f});

NULL source uses the whole image. NULL destination fills the viewport (usually not what you want for a sprite).

Destroy what you create:

AP_DestroyTexture(tex);

Supported image formats come from stb_image (PNG, JPEG, and others).

CPU images

AP_Image is the CPU-side bitmap. Edit pixels, then upload to a texture:

AP_Image *img = AP_LoadImage("player.png");
AP_FlipImage(img, true, false);
AP_ImageGrayscale(img);
AP_MapImageColorKey(img, (AP_Color8){255, 0, 255, 255});

AP_Texture *tex = AP_CreateTextureFromImage(img);
AP_DestroyImage(img);

Blit, scale, crop, and save:

AP_BlitImageBlend(src, NULL, dst, 16, 16, AP_BLENDMODE_BLEND);
AP_Image *small = AP_ScaleImage(img, 64, 64, AP_IMAGE_NEAREST);
AP_SaveImage(small, "out.png");
AP_DestroyImage(small);

Read a GPU texture back with AP_CreateImageFromTexture(), or write one with AP_SaveTexture().

Source rectangles and rotation

AP_FRect src = {0.0f, 0.0f, 32.0f, 32.0f};
AP_FRect dst = {200.0f, 200.0f, 64.0f, 64.0f};
AP_DrawTextureRotated(tex, &src, &dst, 45.0f, NULL, AP_FLIP_NONE);

Angle is degrees, clockwise. NULL center rotates about the destination rectangle.

Tiled and nine-slice:

AP_DrawTextureTiled(panel, NULL, 1.0f, &(AP_FRect){0.0f, 0.0f, 400.0f, 240.0f});
AP_DrawTexture9Grid(panel, NULL, 12.0f, 12.0f, 12.0f, 12.0f, 1.0f, &dst);

Sprites

AP_Sprite player = AP_CreateSprite(tex);
AP_SpriteSetOriginNormalized(&player, 0.5f, 0.5f);
AP_SpriteSetScale(&player, 3.0f);
AP_DrawSprite(&player, 640.0f, 360.0f);

(x, y) is where the origin lands in window pixels.

Atlas frame (columns × rows, then index):

AP_SpriteSetFrame(&player, 8, 4, 3);

Animation

AP_SpritePlay(&player, 8, 1, 0, 8, 12.0f, true);

/* each frame */
float dt = (float)(AP_GetTime() - last_time);
last_time = AP_GetTime();
AP_SpriteUpdate(&player, dt);
AP_DrawSprite(&player, x, y);

Tint:

AP_SpriteSetColor(&player, AP_C4(1.0f, 0.7f, 0.7f, 1.0f));

Pixel look

Nearest filtering plus integer scale keeps pixel art crisp:

AP_SetTextureScaleMode(tex, AP_SCALEMODE_NEAREST);
AP_SpriteSetScale(&player, 4.0f);

Next

Input · Tilemaps